And should he be. As much as some like Tabor, many people he is following a conman, er, conperson in Simcha (I’m not using the dollar sign because Simcha said it was an attack against his Jewish ethnicity. I don’t want to be accused of that, because that’s not my goal. I just think Simcha is out to make money, regardless of truth).
Anyway, read something of Jim’s thoughts here.
Joel figured if Hermann Cain and Simcha can speak in the third person, why not Joel? So Simcha has responded, although not to Joel directly, but to the supposed attacks coming his way. Joel has been a party to this… I can’t. I’m sorry, this is annoying.
Anyway, Simcha is not a real scholar. Yes, he is out for the money and the attention, but so are a host of Gentiles too. Oh? Where did that come from? See, Simcha believes that every attack against him is anti-Semitic. This is simply not the case, but when you are as delusional as Simcha, there is no telling what world you are living in. So, anything is liable to happen in his bubble. Anyway, Simcha wants A-list scholars to respond, to rush to his aid.
But, every scholar who does respond, if they are against Simcha, are doing for some theological trauma reasons, anti-Semitism, or the like. In other words, only the scholars who agree with Simcha are considered scholars. Of course, few real scholars will ever validate Simcha’s work, so there is not much of a chance in fulfilling his request.
I guess for me, Simcha is more like on the F-list, where Robert Atwill, Ken Ham, Little Honey Tee-Tee, and Giorgio Tsoukalos reside. He is latching on to self-created hypothesis drawn from no basis in reality. And then, demands that they are answered. Why? Why should real scholars – real, as in real – pay any attention to anything Simcha says? Simcha doesn’t make discoveries anymore than Columbus discovered the new world. No, instead Simcha pulls things out of thin air and wonders why no one else did this before. Argument from ignorance. That is the hallmark of the F-List.
Simcha begins his latest rant – not, it is really not even organized well enough to be called a rant – by stating,
Here’s the latest twist on the Jesus Wife Papyrus. To review; prior to this discovery, the common wisdom was that there was nothing – I repeat, nothing – substantiating the idea that Jesus was married. No ancient text whatsoever. It was all “Da Vinci Code” stuff. Then along comes the Jesus Papyrus: (http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/research-projects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife), a 2nd to 4th century Coptic text in which Jesus refers to someone – apparently Mary Magdalene – as his “wife”. (here)
A few things. First, why is it that his default is the Da Vinci Code? Second, the Gnostics and others had theories about the wife of Jesus a long time ago. Third, the text does not talk about the “wife” of Jesus. It uses a Coptic word that can be translated one of several different ways. Forth – is this number four already? – Simcha supplies the ending of the garbled sentence, in true — oh dang it, he now has me doing it — Dan Brown style. Let us add to this that Simcha, with no academic training to speak of in this field, decries the academic work of trained scholars by simply saying that because it is so dead-on, it must be wrong.
(Hang on, let me put on my Freudian hat and light a cigar).
Simcha seems to suffer from the theory of motivated reasoning wherein the subject will use whatever psychological means at his or her disposal to ignore the truth. It is most likely related to Simcha’s desire to “know” Jesus’s wife.
(And I’m back)
His, um, posts are getting worrisome due to the almost borderline break down that we are witnessing. Good thing Canada has single-payer health care.
….Now all that has changed. From the most conservative academic quarters, Professor Karen King and the Harvard Divinity School (unofficially identified with the United Church of Christ and Unitarian Church), comes the admission that there is an early Coptic gospel (late 2nd century!) that has Jesus referring to Mary Magdalene as his “wife”.
via Jesus Was Married. Something Has Changed! | Simcha Jacobovici TV.
Um… First, the provenance has not been settled… it may be the late second century… or the late fourth century, or sometime else. Such a late source does not in fact have any real connection to the Historical Jesus.
Second… Karen King… a Conservative? The United Church of Christ… conservative? Sure, there are is a string of UCC churches in the Evansville and other German-immigrant areas of southern Indiana that are conservative, but as a whole the UCC is far, far from conservative. And the UU church?
And of course, Simcha provides straw men persons to discard. So many problems with his statements…
But, others will do better in correcting them.
I just thought with the pseudos popping up, this was funny:
We analyze the Talpiot tomb, which has been alleged to be the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. Using Bayes’ Theorem, we derive a simple function that estimates the probability that the tomb houses the remains of Jesus and his family. Unfortunately, this function cannot be evaluated exactly, because several of the key parameters are unknown. By using random variables with reasonable probability distributions, we examine the mean behavior and range of the function under a variety of conditions. We conclude that the probability is low (on the order of 2% or less) that the Talpiot tomb is the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. (pdf)
Wonder where Carrier got his idea of Bayem’s theorem at?
I’d say yes.
Maybe it’s me, but I’m funny about words.
In terms of your work, April, on Early Christology you state: “Once the link had been forged between Jesus’ exaltation and the investiture of the Divine Name, there was no turing back” (How We Talk About Christology Matters page 6). In this tomb, there is an inscription asking “Jehova” to “rise up”, i.e. an “exaltation”. No Jew, then or now, would write the Tetragrammaton on a box full of bones i.e. “Tuma”, or impurity. So whoever wrote this name may not have meant it in the usual way. Given that this inscription appears 60 meters from a “Jesus, son of Joseph” and inches from an ossuary that breaks the commandment concerning graven images, can it be that the Tetragrammaton here is referring to Jesus? Can it be that the combination of the inscription and the Jonah image demonstrates that, from the very beginning, Jesus’ followers parted company from normative Judaism?
Jehovah? Really? Beyond that, this series of questions have already been answered,
“Regarding the reading of line two, I wish to emphasize that I do not consider the reading “Yahweh” (i.e., the Greek form of it) to be convincing at all. Simply put, this reading is wrong. To be sure, the tetragrammaton is attested in ancient Greek (with various spellings) and Iaio can be considered a viable Greek spelling of the tetragrammaton.
Also, see here. I think* Simcha may be wrong about the whole ossuary thing. See here as well. And here. And here. And really, here.
because he can photoshop really well!
and….
This is a rather silly attack and shows that the current meltdown at Associated Producers, LTD
I just posted something, but the Associated Producers was the wrong associated producers. My bad. I apologize. I also have removed it. So, I’ve recovered what I could…
I’ve had to stay out of the main story for a while due to lots of things, and frankly, I’m not an archaeologist (See, $imcha, that really is an easy thing to say). But, it seems that the Documentary by Tabor and Simcha is made by Associated Producers (I wanted to capitalize the first three letters, by my wife won’t let me).
What? Who cares… at least they go it made…
Anyway, they have produced, what the looks of it, nearly EVERYTHING Simcha has done. They have supported all of his stuff, from Exodus Decoded to the James the Brother of Jesus to the Naked Archaeologist. Of course… they should, right? I mean he seems to be connected to the organization. He owns the organization:
Twelve years ago, Jacobovici and his coproducer, Elliott Halpern, founded Associated Producers, a documentary film company. Together they have produced 15 feature-length documentaries and reaped more than 60 awards, including the 1996 and 1997 Emmys for outstanding investigative journalism for The Plague Monkeys, about the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire, and The Selling of Innocents, about the child sex trade in India. Jacobovici’s best-known film to date, 1991′s Deadly Currents, about the Arab-Israeli intifada, won a Genie for best feature-length documentary.
Nicole, someone who works for the group, has taken to the ‘net to defend and defame. You can find two comments she has left at Dr. Cargill’s blog here and here where they are defending $imcha and defaming actual Scholars. I’m not sure I would take their opinion seriously, however, as it seems about on the level of a porn producer calling the finest poets who have expressed the deepness of human love over the course of humanity dullards.
I mean, look how they describe the ‘biblical archaeologist’ above or how they have discovered the face of Jesus.
Skeptics are calling the new claim “Rorschach test archaeology.” Steve Caruso, a professional translator who analyzes inscriptions on ancient artifacts for antiquity dealers, said Charlesworth’s interpretation of the inscription is “more of an exercise in reading tea leaves.”
Robert Cargill, assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa, concurs. “One must do some rather strenuous mental gymnastics to arrive at the letters for the name of Jonah in this image, including ignoring lines that are clearly present but do not fit the desired inscription, joining together lines that are clearly not conjoined, reshaping letters, and eliminating any semblance of linear alignment,” Cargill says on his blog.
If all those adjustments are permissible when interpreting ancient text, the lines in the inscription can be made to spell out anything from “Jesus” to “Yo Yo Ma,” the scholars note.
This is a rebuttal of a previous piece written today and posted on MSNBC.com.
Poor thing… Simcha forgot that this was the internet age.
I dvr’d the Nightline News program and watched it first thing this morning. (Reactions here, here, here, here, here and here.)
One of the things that stood out to me was Simcha and Tabor’s insistence that anything during the time period which has in anyway a connection to the belief of a/the Resurrection must be “Christian.”
Resurrection entered Jewish belief long before Christ and was, for several sects, a central part.
We see this in the Maccabees and even, somewhat, in Tobit. It’s in the Wisdom of Solomon and at Qumran.
While the fish is a vase, and other lies persist, the must striking thing to me is the glaring and self-serving theological lunacy which allows these authors to think that just because they read something on an ossuary (a frakin ossuary… a bone box which looked to a resurrection) regarding an upward direction that suddenly there is proof of Christianity… and what’s more, that they have a right to sell this trash to the public.
But whom I really have disgust in are those people who just believe it.
“He’s seeing things that simply aren’t there,” Goodacre said. “His head is so full of ‘DaVinci Code.’”
via ‘Jesus Tomb’ Controversy Rages as Archaeologists Explore Another 2,000-Year-Old Tomb – ABC News.
He says this in relation to Simcha’s constant search to find the Holy Grail…
I’m DVRing the show which is on at 11:30 tonight.
Dr. Cargill is also quoted. Surely, they will include both find scholars on the program.
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