Science Features
'Great mystery' solved with discovery of Herod's tomb
By Shabtai Gold May 8, 2007, 17:49 GMT
On the Web
Latest Headlines in Science
- 1. US marks 50th anniversary of its first orbit of Earth
- 2. CleanSpace One Satellite Images
- 3. Swiss plan to send waste-disposal satellite into space
- 4. EU provides funding for 'affectionate' robots
- 5. Tiger poachers growing bolder, experts say
Older Talkback
page: 1
Stand up guy
The discovery of Herod's tomb is very significant to both Christians and Jews in that it proves the New Testament to be true.
One cannot but wait until Herod Antipas, King Herod's son and heir who executed John the Baptist and confronted Jesus Christ, inscriptions are found. Since King Herod was pronounced 'King of the Jews' by Rome, he was paranoid of the news brought him by the wise men from the east:
'Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.' Matthew 2:1-3
Believe the Gospels friends, seek the Truth.
Religious fanatacism is the most dangerous form of insanity. christ save us from the christian zealots.
It is interesting to find antiquities. It's interesting to talk about history.
But these digs do not prove nor disprove ANYTHING in the Bible.
If you are a true Christian, you believe on Faith alone and don't need PROOF of anything.
Faith.
Yellowbird is right...
All it proves is that there was a king named Herod....
And it proves that Herod or his son pissed off some people big time.
I just hope I don't piss of a mob of people and make 'em destroy my grave. That would suck.
Bob Elliot says the discovery of a tomb proves the gospels are true and that Jesus lived. So what? There was also a man named Jim Jones who lived in the 20th century (we know for sure because it is all recorded and documented and some living people actually met him) and Jones claimed to be God. Bob, I guess the fact that we have proof that Jim Jones lived also proves that he was right that he was God? The fact that we have documentary and living evidence that David Koresh lived and claimed to be 'the Son of God, the Lamb who could open the Seven seals' also means he was indeed the Christ? Please.
Bruce Barney
So because they find the grave of any mayan king do we have to believe the popol vuh is true and kukulkan is the real god ?
To me this proves only that the evangelist biggots have no more sense and logic rthan any other religion .
Even less if they believe against all evidence that the world is only 6000 years old and men lived together with dinosaurs .Must be true,I saw it in the Flintstones.
Yellowbird, that's a little silly, annd presents a bad witness if you are a Christian. God never wants us to turn off our brains. We are saved through the faith that God gives us, and the writer of Hebrews says '...faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.' (HEB 11:1, NIV)
Doesn't ISA 1:18 say ''Come now, let us reason together,' says the LORD.'?
And what was the example of Jesus Himself, in Acts 1:3? 'After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing PROOFS that he was alive.'
God has made us rational beings in His image. A true Christian *thinks*! A true Christian *tests*!!! Faith is never blind, but founded on the Rock.
PROOFS are given to bolster our faith! God has always given proofs, orften called 'signs' of His Word. He gave a sign to Mary, to the Shepherds, to the Apostles, even to the Pharisees (even though what they got wasn't what they wanted. ;-)
What was Gideon asking for? (over and over again...) PROOFS!
Probably Mr. Elliot could have said that this was even more supporting evidence that the Bible is True and Accurate; the same way as when people used to claim 100 years ago or so that the Bible was false since nobody had ever found evidence of the Hitite peoples...that is, until they finally discovered their works and ruins. :-)
All that being said, YellowBird is right about one thing...that the single greatest foundational truth of the Bible- in fact, the central focus of all human history, can never be proved by direct evidence! That is, the bodily resurrection and ascention of the Christ? (And why not? Because if you actually found a *body* then the claims would be false!)
We can see innumerable indirect facts around it, witness accounts, the early martyrs, the rise of the church, changed lives and the witness of the Spirit within us, etc. But the risen Lord must be embraced in faith.
The proofs help reinforce our faith and remove obstacles for unbelief.
What a raving minds,do you guys also believe the world is 6000 years old ?Come on guys,speak up
Interesting that so much of Herod-era history comes from the writings of Josephus, who recorded in great detail prominent people and events around himself, and who is possibly the best historian of that time. So one would think that he'd have written considerably about Jesus Christ, and yet he's shockingly silent on this supposedly big event. Many Christian theologians will parrot the 'Testimonium Flavianum,' an alleged little paragraph in Josephus's writing that's an extreme stylistic and grammatical mismatch to the prose surrounding it, completely at odds with the theological opinions he expressed in subsequent writing, and most noticeably does not even appear in his writing until four centuries later, when suspiciously quoted by Eusebius, who was already known to take scholarly liberty in support of his prior religious agenda.
The more we learn archaeologically, the more we find evidence of certain places and politicians described in the New Testament, yet a striking absence of the central religious figures and their miracles and great followings.
sarcophagus destroyed 70 years after his death 4bc 66bc he never went after Jesus SO THE GOSPEL IS WRONG
Do the arithemtic folks... How could Herod have reigned over Jesus when the article clearly states he was buried 4 years BEFORE the putative date of Jesus birth?
'Herod was buried some 2011 years ago...' cannot be followed by
'Herod is perhaps best remembered today as the Biblical tyrant who reigned when Jesus was born...'
i was right the first time. u screwy christians are as dangerous as the screwy muslims...my god what a bunch of crazies.
>HB
>Do the arithemtic folks...
Actually lots of people have, and pretty much everyone agrees that the current calendar's year 0 was incorrectly calculated...but nobody's going to bump the calendar a few years to fix it. The doofy Y2K debacle was bad enough!
I've got no clue where Shabati Gold got that year from. From the context I'd infer he wasn't quoting the professor.
It's an OK article, but I wouldn't accept everything he said as gospel! :-D
>HB
>Do the arithemtic folks...
Actually lots of people have, and pretty much everyone agrees that the current calendar's year 0 was incorrectly calculated...but nobody's going to bump the calendar a few years to fix it. The doofy Y2K debacle was bad enough!
I've got no clue where Shabati Gold got that year from. From the context I'd infer he wasn't quoting the professor.
It's an OK article, but I wouldn't accept everything he said as gospel! :-D
So we have further proof that a history book (the bible) covers some real events in history, but we do NOT have any evidence of the existence of God (this one or any of the many others dreamed up by humans as a palliative for the fact that we all die and become nothing)
These experts are still debating the facts, with all the written records available.
Except the bible is not a written 'record', it is a collection of stories and memoirs written and copied (many times) years after the events they cover
The story has all been 'sexed up' folks and it still goes on today. To make people believe their point of view the story has been exagerated and untruths have been told, please remember that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
How interesting that the biggest arguements on this site are about politics, and religion...
Both revolve around unprovable prophecies and false promises
Your right sp4, they got run off by facts over on the global warming stories and ran over here. Maybe Christians are paid by Big Oil. Yo, Tonny What exactly do you believe about volution and the age of the earth, I know everything just happened for no reason. When is the next Ice Age?
We see it most everywhere we go; the big push to go green and save the environment. It's even in the movie theaters, and that’s where Lisa Coots of Miami says she got the idea to switch out her traditional light bulbs to the new compact fluorescent bulbs.
Coots made her decision after seeing Al Gore's documentary about global warming 'An Inconvenient Truth'.
Besides saving the environment, the new CFL save you money and last longer. This all sounded great to Coots, who put the new bulbs in her daughter's bedrooms, the living room and closets.
What she says she didn't know is that the bulbs can burn longer because they contain Mercury, a liquid metal which has been linked to a host of neurological problems. Coots says she didn't know there was a toxic chemical in the bulb and didn't see anything on the package warning of the proper disposal of the product.
'The package did not say anything about it containing any mercury or how to dispose of it,” Coots said. If she had seen it contained mercury, she said, would not have bought the bulbs, especially because she has three young children at home.
'I think it's very scary' she said.
The warning on the packages are in small print and some are hard to read. They are also voluntary, with many of the CFL's being sold and distributed with no disposal warning at all.
Brandy Bridges of Prospect, Maine broke a CFL in her daughter's bedroom, with the glass and mercury landing all over the shag carpet.
Bridges knew enough not to vacuum it, but worried about getting all the mercury out of the carpet. She says she called Maine's Department of Environmental Protection and the agency sent over a specialist who found elevated levels of mercury in the room.
Bridges says the specialist told her not to clean it up herself and referred her to a hazardous materials cleanup company who estimated the cost of the cleanup to be two thousand dollars.
While cases like Bridges are rare and she was told later by the DEP that she could have cleaned it up herself. parents like Coots worries about exposing her kids to the toxic chemical.
While the amount of mercury in CFL’s is minimal, Stephen Webster of Florida's Department of Health says you do need to be careful.
'There's one to two drops of mercury inside this not very much,' Webster said, 'but still enough to raise some concerns and you should avoid being exposed to mercury.'
The bigger fear is that million of people are like Coots, unaware unaware that the CFL’s cannot be tossed in the trash when they burn out.
Webster says the agency is trying to educate the public about sites available in Dade and Broward Counties where you can properly dispose of your burned or broken bulbs.
The question is just how many people would take the time to do that, instead throwing the bulbs in the trash, the mercury then ending up in our landfills and eventually in our groundwater.
Webster says 'Our primary concern is that mercury over time possibly getting into the ground and contaminating our groundwater because once mercury gets into our groundwater it is very difficult and very expensive to clean up.
Webster agrees more needs to be done to make disposal easier for consumers to make sure the toxic material does not end up in the water or air. Webster says its going to be a challenge the public needs to be educated the public needs to be aware of what they are buying.
Still Lisa Coots is worried we might be putting the cart before the horse, marketing the technology so aggressively while some consumers are still in the dark about the proper disposal, making for a possibly toxic future for her children.
What a pathetic example of people living in a Nanny State. So a few drops of mercury were dropped - an inspector found 'elevated levels of mercury' in the rooom = yes, but were they anywhere near dangerous levels ? Then considering $2000 for disposal by a specialist company. How on earth are stupid people like this going to survive in the coming climate change - whether too hot or an ice age doesn't matter, they won't cope with either
page: 1
Your Talkback on this Story