THE EMPTY TOMB: NO BONES ABOUT IT!

THE EMPTY TOMB: NO BONES ABOUT IT! 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 April 1, 2007 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction (Read text at 1 Cor. 15:1-8 – 3 slides) One more time the exploiters of religious opportunism have tried to hitch a ride on the reputation of Jesus Christ. A couple years ago Suzanne Olson said she found the tomb of Jesus in a Muslim shrine in India. Last year, the timely promotion of the blockbuster movie The DaVinci Code hit the marketplace full force at Easter time. This year what does the lucre-lusty media bring us? The “The Lost Tomb of Christ,” a Discovery Channel documentary alleging that the bones of Christ have been discovered in an ossuary. The media went nuts, skeptics cried, “Aha!” and the reputation of scientific investigation sank to an all time low. The hubbub is all about Yosef-Gat’s discovery of a group of bone crypts at Talpiot in southeastern Jerusalem, dating from the time of Christ. One of the ossuaries was inscribed with the words “Jesus (Yeshua) son of Joseph (Jose)” (still no full agreement that this is the name inscribed) and two of the others with “Mara” and “Jose”. Another box was inscribed with the name “Mariamene”, which author Simcha Jacobovichi suggests is Mary Magdalene. Then there is another man names Matia, whose name doesn’t appear in the gospels, who doesn’t get much press because he doesn’t fit the fictional composite. But there’s more! They also found the bones of a child named “Judah, son of Yeshua.” Therefore, the sensationalists conclude, Jesus had a child, and probably by Mary Magdala! That makes perfect sense, right? Well, someone named Jesus had a son named Judah! Yosef-Gat’s discovery took place 26 years ago in 1980. It wasn’t until just this year that someone like filmmaker James Cameron figured he could capitalize on it by weaving a highly unlikely story and imposing incredible conclusions on data that Gat and his team dismissed over a quarter century ago. But it’s not surprising that a speculative movie producer will build on thinner evidence than a careful scientist and even liberal scholars. What gets a lot less press is that the archeological establishment has lined up to label this whole claim as bunk. Amos Kloner, the first actual archeologist to visit the site says the idea fails to stand by archeological standards, “but it makes for profitable television.” Biblical and historical scholars have shunned it decisively and unanimously. The promoters make a big deal out of the odds of finding all these names together in the same grave. What is not published is the fact that the names found on the caskets “are the most common names found among Jews at the time.” (Kloner) What would be truly against the odds would be if there weren’t at least a dozen gravesites with these popular names on the ossuaries. The name Mary was the name of every tenth woman in Palestine. Yeshua was one of the most popular names in the area at the time of Jesus. Josephus writes about 15 different Jesus’ and the New Testament refers to six different Jesus’ besides the Christ. Apart from Jesus’ step-father, there are no less than 8 different Yosefs in the New Testament. And if Mariamne was Mary Magdalene’s real name (itself a dubious notion), the best evidence has Mary Magdalene buried in Constantinople or France. The documentary claims, “Jesus and Mary were married, as the DNA evidence suggests.” But that is nonsense. DNA cannot establish that two people are married. The only DNA test that was run was between the Yeshua and the Mariamene bones, and they were not a match, so they weren’t related, so—now catch this—they must have been married! This is reasonable? Who said the Mary buried there was even married at all? Why wasn’t she married to Yosef or Matea? And, speaking of DNA, the promoters are suggesting that further DNA tests will prove the identity of Jesus. I’m no expert on DNA, but I think they’ll have a hard time getting comparison DNA from God the Father! Out of the blue comes the supposition that Mary “was Jesus’ most trusted apostle”, and in a page out of Dan Brown’s anti-female conspiracy theory, and a little dash of Jesus Christ Superstar to lift Mary Magdala to supra-biblical prominence and almost deified position. This may be story-telling, yarn-spinning and imaginative scripting at its best, but it is decidedly not science! William Dever is professor emeritus at the University of Arizona and an expert in near eastern archaeology and anthropology who has worked for fifty years with Israeli archeologists. He says that specialists have know about these ossuaries for many years. “The fact that it’s been ignored tells you something,” say Dever, “It would be amusing, if it didn’t mislead so many people.” Quickly, a couple more reasons the Talpiot ossuaries did not contain the bones of Jesus Christ: 1. 1. There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. They were a poor family from the Galilean town of Nazareth with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb had to have belonged to at least a middle class family who lived in Jerusalem. 2. The Jewish and Roman forces would have benefited greatly had they produced the body of Jesus and said it was stolen—the gospels make that clear. Had they been found within 30 years of the crucifixion they would have established the bones as a monument to the failure of a delusional and cultic religion. 3. It was the custom of the Jews that any criminal sentenced to death by the Sanhedrin was “not to be buried in the sepulchers of their fathers… ” They were to be buried in entirely separate tombs. (Lightfoot’s Commentary from the Talmud and Hebraica) Gregory Koukl: The entire argument is based on the statistical significance of the names in a cluster. IF Jesus was married, and IF Jesus was married to a woman named Mariamne, and IF Mariamne was also a nickname for Mary Magdalene, and IF Jesus had a brother named Matthew, and IF Jesus had a son named Judas, and IF the now-famous James ossuary belonged to James the brother of Jesus, THEN you’d have all the members of Jesus’ family together in one tomb. But that’s a lot of IF’s. What we have here are two different characterizations of what happened to the body of Jesus of Nazareth 2,000 years ago. One is based on artifacts—the ossuaries—and one is based on document—the historical records of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Paul…all things being equal, which to do think gives us more precise information—bone boxes or written records? If you are a Christian you shouldn’t run whine, scream, or have a religious tantrum. You should be thanking the Discovery Channel for giving you the chance to step up to the plate and knock this soft ball out of the park. In the first verses of 1 Corinthians 15 which we read earlier, the apostle Paul clearly articulates that the heart of the gospel message is this: Jesus died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, AND that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. It is in trusting that truth bundle that we find our salvation in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the Bible teaches that because Jesus rose from death, we, too, will rise from death to an eternal existence with him in heaven. (First fruits – 1 Corinthians 15:20-22) In the church at Corinth there were some who were saying there is no resurrection of the dead. Watch Paul’s reasoning now as we read verses 12-19. Basically it goes like this: Hunh, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then we must conclude that Jesus was not raised from the dead! And if that’s the case, then the gospel is stripped of all meaning and power, and we who’ve been preaching it have been dishonoring God, untruthfully saying He raised Christ. In fact, preaching the gospel is meaningless, believing it is just as meaningless and we who do believe would be nothing but fools! The most dangerous assumption of all: That Jesus is still in a tomb! The Bible declares: His tomb is empty ! 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 . . . But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the linchpin, the main ingredient, the sine qua non of the Christian faith. Without the resurrection, the Christian faith is NOTHING. Verses 17-18 say, If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. American soldiers who do not survive the conflict in Iraq come back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Since 1955, the Dover mortuary has been the next-to-last stop for some 60,000 Americans, most killed during wars in service to their country. Robert Bauer is one of two full-time morticians on staff at Dover, and has seen plenty during his 40-plus years in the business. As difficult as the mortician's job may be, the hardest part of the job, according to Bauer, is dealing with anguished loved ones. No matter how horrific the death, he finds it easier to deal with the autopsy room than with the grief of those left behind. Four decades in the business has taught him that all grief is not created equal. "When a family comes in here with some kind of faith, some kind of belief in God, they hold up so much better than someone who has nothing to hold onto." Listen, God intended that the hope of eternal life with Him would sustain us in this life. In His loving plan for us, His intent was that the life that He purchased for us in His Son Jesus, would be infused with meaning and abundance. An assurance that physical death is not the end—only a doorway into even greater fellowship with Him. The Lord willing, I plan to address the awesome benefits of resurrection in the lives of believers next week on Easter Sunday. I hope you’ll come and bring your friends and family with you. Now to the biggest question of all. Why should anyone entertain the possibility of Jesus’ bones being in any tomb? If the New Testament teaches anything at all it teaches that Jesus rose bodily from the grave. He left nothing but grave clothes in the tomb—even those he folded neatly and laid on the stone. He didn’t leave a business card, a forwarding address, directions to his next gravesite, an apology for not saying goodbye—and he most certainly did not leave his bones! Muhammad left his bones. Zoroaster left his bones. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha left his bones. Confucius left his bones. Mohatma Ghandi left his bones. But Jesus Christ rose, the Victor over death—and he took his bones with him! What leaves unspiritual people without biblical wisdom vulnerable to the malarkey of such empty theories is precisely this—they refuse to believe the report that has been handed down from the eyewitnesses; the report that has remained intact despite centuries of skepticism and incessant attack; the report that the faithless shun because of their shallow, superstitious pseudo-science that insists Jesus could not have risen from the dead because no one has ever risen from the dead; the report that God has breached the divide between the temporal and the eternal and has entered His created world to save humanity from their sin; the report that has come from without our space-time continuum—a report that could not come from within us—and has been miraculously preserved for us in the pages of the Bible. Why would the enemies of God—the spiritual forces of darkness—pay so much attention to this one doctrine of the Christian faith, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead? Why is it so crucial? What has Satan to gain by causing people to doubt that God’s Son rose miraculously from the grave? It just makes so much sense . . .In an age of irrationality, relativism, “spiritism” and widespread gullibility, why wouldn’t the devil take advantage of the spirit of the age, and try to un-convince believers of the core element of the faith—that Jesus rose bodily from the grave. Why not foist on the people a “We found the bones” hypothesis, scare up some spurious evidence, and try to pass it off as scientifically and archeologically valid? After all, people will believe anything. It is the perfect moment in history and culture to go for the jugular vein of Christianity—the belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ. This is exactly what happens, you know. We see it manifested year after year at Easter time—that season when the church celebrates the resurrection of Christ. Time magazine, the New York Times, network television and the silver screen. Writers and producers from every quadrant of worldly entertainment parade out one more futile story trying to persuade people to not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. They all end up as yesterday’s news, but the truth and the glory of the resurrection has marched on for 2,000 years, untamed and untainted by the skeptics, the cynics and the scoffers. How does the truth remain so strong? Because it is God’s truth and nothing else makes sense of the evidence. The Bones of Jesus theory makes no sense because it doesn’t deal with the obvious issue. He rose from death and there’s no bones about it. Why bother trying to piece together another theory that is based on nothing but conjecture and imagination? On the other hand, we have the historical record of the miracle-working, compassionate, suffering servant of God, who perfectly corresponded to and fulfilled every ancient prophecy about him; who himself prophesied the manner and purpose of his own murder, and further prophesied explicitly that He would not stay dead any longer than three days because He would be raised from the dead. And then it all happened, without a glitch! He not only rose bodily from the tomb, but carefully showed himself to at least 550 people as eyewitnesses, eating with them, talking with them, giving them opportunity to touch his resurrected body. Then, called to return to heaven, he didn’t mystically evaporate, but He allowed eyewitnesses to watch Him ascend physically from the earth into the presence of God. Finally, just as He promised, He sent His Holy Spirit in a powerful manner, and those once wimpy, unsure disciples became unstoppable witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. Every one of them went to their death testifying of the Christ’s bodily resurrection. They went out to testify to an often hostile world exactly as Jesus said they would. Which sounds like truth to you? This historically verified account of the work of God or some foolish fairy tale about a dubious box of bones held together by the vain imaginings of profiteering publicists? Which makes more sense to you? This threadbare theory or the glorious gospel that has remained resilient against all manner of attack for more than two millennia? Men who call the idea of God foolishness, or the God whose seemingly foolish ways turns the so-called wisdom of man into foolishness? My money’s on God. I stake my life, my future and my hope on the sure word of the Perfect Book. Let the producers and panderers of this world go on writing their books and making their movies, taking their brief turns in the dim spotlight of their temporary stages. We who trust in the risen Christ will go on in resurrection representing the living Lord in apostolic succession as we witness to the glory of the gospel and await our own blessed hope.     [Back to Top]