First, we don’t know the filmmakers personally, we don’t know their motives, and we don’t know their hearts, therefore not only have we no grounds for judgment of them, but using such a judgment to thereby invalidate their claims is a logical fallacy called ad hominem.
Second, almost everyone forming judgments either in support or refutation of the claims that this is or might be Yeshua’s family tomb are doing so NOT on the basis of a careful evaluation of the evidence in question, but on a presuppositional bias and either blind ignorance or folkloric hearsay (he said, she said). Few people have bothered to think about and examine the evidence before forming their opinions.
Third, quite a few arguments are either reactions to claims that are NOT being made about the Talpiot tomb or its contents OR are refuting the claim with judgments based solely on previous understanding. I hope I am not saying something new when I suggest that it is foolhardy to dismiss new evidence simply because it doesn’t jive with previous evidence.
I quote from one of the scholars who worked directly with the evidence, who comments on the reactions among the Christianity community. Hopefully it will be sobering…
In this rush to judgment
without hearing any of the facts, one detects a bit of paranoia. I noticed this on the Larry King Show last night as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention tried to defend the faith based on a host of erroneous assertions and almost no knowledge whatsoever of the most basic evidence related to the Talpiot tomb…It is difficult carry one [sic] discussion when the main content of the evidence is not clear to those who are making their assertions.
To come to grips with what the evidence is and what it is not, what is and is not being claimed by the evidence, and make a wise judgment on the issue:
- Read James Tabor’s blog at www.jesusdynasty.com. His professional, hands-on experience will demystify a lot of the hocus-pocus out there resulting from people who have made prejudgments in ignorance of the evidence or claim. Thus, for instance, he helps us understand why the argument
this could not be Yeshua’s family tomb because it is the tomb of a wealthy family
is incorrect (because the tomb has been identified archaeologically as belonging to the poor class).
- Visit the Discovery Channel tomb discussion site at http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/forum/forum.html, where you can ask questions from scholars and read responses.
- Download some of the actual evidence such as archaeological reports and such here: http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/explore/media/tomb_evidence.pdf
- Watch the documentary and/or buy the book and do research on any points of interest arising from it/them.
- Allow time for cross-examination and questioning of supposed
facts
regarding the evidence (for example, it took time for the fact to come to light that the IAA’s—Israeli Antiquity Authority’s—judgment against the James brother of Jesus
ossuary was not only unprofessional, but outright misleading).
In many Dead Sea Scrolls, the divine name or Tetragrammaton was written using a different script…Paleo-Hebrew (this is true even in the earliest Greek LXX fragments). The script characters of The Name chosen for this font were taken from the Psalm Scroll 11QPs. The entire Tetragrammaton is instantly triggered by a single keystroke.
By a stroke of luck, I stumbled on a high quality image of one of the earliest Leviticus scroll fragments and am now using it in combination with the smaller Great Isaiah Scroll pics for reference. As you can see, the font is taking on a stylized typesetting which is not only readable and printable, but makes the archaic script look quite elegant.
After rummaging around online and only finding a couple fonts for the script of the Dead Sea Scrolls (which looked like handwritten scribbles other than any kind of typeface and were not Unicode), I decided to take it upon myself to create one. The Unicode DSS Font will be based on the script of the Great Isaiah Scroll (since it had the highest quality images I could find online for reference). When finished, it will be available here under the Open Source General Public License to freely download, copy, manipulate, distribute, print, or use in any program or software for any purpose. Pictured is an example of a few preliminary script characters from the Unicode DSS font (lower) in comparison with the SBL Hebrew font (upper).
Having converted to Christianity, William Wilberforce took the cause of Christ to the British Parliament and fought for the abolition of slavery in the West. It was a battle not only against the pernicious degradation of humanity, but against one of the greatest powers of the civilized world. But by the amazing grace of God, he defeated them. Visit http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/ for the trailer, see the film this opening weekend, and stop by http://www.theamazingchange.com/ or http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/ to learn about the slave trade that still exists today (even here in the U.S.!) and what you can do to help bring healing, love, justice, mercy, and deliverance.
Learn about the ancient Hurrian city of Urkesh in Syro-Mesopotamia in a free public lecture this Thursday, 7:30 PM, UCLA Fowler Museum.
The final summarized argument against the Documentary Hypothesis of the Pentateuch as detailed in The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch by Umberto Cassuto. (See also argument 4)
5 – Composite Sections
Pro:
There are many duplications or inconsistencies that can only be explained as having been formed by combining fragments from different sources.
Con:
A. Literary purpose
Again, supposed duplications or inconsistencies arise from purpose and design in the story as a whole and therefore argue for Torah’s inner unity.
B. Inconsistent
Pieces which are said to belong to one author contain the divine name which is supposed to be characteristic of a different author.
C. Impossible language divisions
Many of the supposed sections which come from different authors are joined together by the rules of the Hebrew language and therefore show a fundamental connection in their very structure.
D. Many duplications
are complimentary, not contradictory
As shown in Pillar 4, many parallels are not contradictory, but add details to previous statements or occurrences.
So you have Hebrew working in OpenOffice under Linux and a handy keyboard map for reference (see previous entry). Or perhaps you are ready to write Hebrew using some other piece of software…
The problem is…you have no experience using an Israeli keyboard! You have to learn to type all over again. Fortunately, Yale University has made it easy. Learn to use an Israeli keyboard online with the Hebrew Keyboard Tutor.
This quick tutorial is provided to help those who, like myself, are or have been interested in utilizing Hebrew in OpenOffice under the KDE desktop.
I’m going to assume, first of all, that you’ve downloaded and installed the latest stable version of OpenOffice. Apparently, versions previous to 2.0.0 have been somewhat buggy trying to render vowel points/diacritics or nikud. Since I’m using Fedora Core 5, I simply used my package manager to update everything and install any extra language components. It doesn’t hurt to update KDE to the lastest release either.
Next, download the SBL Hebrew font from the Society of Biblical Literature website. This is a Unicode Hebrew font (which means you can copy and paste the Hebrew into other software applications and it will be recognized and displayed correctly). Trust me when I say this Hebrew font looks immaculate.
Once you have the font, install it in your KDE Control Center (kcontrol in the terminal) under System Administration – Font Installer
While you’re in Control Center, you need to enable a Hebrew keyboard (so that when you type, it will display Hebrew characters instead of English ones).
click on Regional and Accessibility – Keyboard Layout – double click on Israel (il) to add it
Note: To enable use of vowel points/diacritics or nikud, go to layout variant
and select lyx
. Now you can write vowels.
Hit apply.
KDE automatically generated a keystroke shortcut for you to switch easily between English and Hebrew keyboards (CTL+ALT+K). To check or change your keystroke shortcut, go to Keyboard Shortcuts. I changed mine to CTL+ALT+Up Arrow.
Lastly, set up OpenOffice.
Go to Tools – Options – Language Settings – Languages – and check to see that Complex Text Language (CTL) is enabled. Then set SBL Hebrew as your default font in Format – Character – CTL font.
Hopefully, you already have two buttons in your menu bar which change the direction of writing from a left-to-right
orientation to a right-to-left
one. If not, the default shortcuts are CTL+SHIFT+A (left-to-right) and CTL+SHIFT+D (right-to-left).
Diacritical marks are:
- SHIFT+E = qamets/quamets-chatuf
- SHIFT+R = dagesh/shureq
- SHIFT+U = cholem/cholem-vav
- SHIFT+P = patach
- SHIFT+A = sheva
- SHIFT+S = dagesh/shureq
- SHIFT+G = cholem/cholem-vav
- SHIFT+H = the mark for shin
- SHIFT+J = chireq
- SHIFT+X = segol
- SHIFT+C = qibbuts
- SHIFT+V = chatef-segol
- SHIFT+B = chatef-patach
- SHIFT+N = chatef-qamets
- SHIFT+M = tsere
Check out the keyboard chart map below and get your Hebrew on.
The name of the terrorist organization which heads the Palestinian Authority is known as Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya or HAMAS. In Arabic, the acronym means zeal.
But it is an interesting bit of irony that the acronym is identical to the Hebrew word חָמָס which means a wrong
.
