More terrible archaeology on the Christianity front

www.codewolf.com...

A Jordanian archaeologist of 0 repute claims to have discovered a Christian worship place that dates '33 to 70 AD' and which he says may have been used during the life of Jesus.

In a nutshell, this guy has no evidence, he has only "scripture" written decades after the events described, oral tradition from the local church, and pottery than dates at least 300 years after he wants it to be dated.

Terrible. This story is being reportedly even more credulously that Cameron's "Lost Tomb of Jesus" fraud.

Full evisceration:

teapotatheism.blogspot.com...

Gee, whenever I see a "discovery" like that, it reminds me of the book, "The Mystery & Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls" by Hershell Shanks. At least Shanks has some credibility in "biblical arecheology"...In fact he's the founder & editor of "Biblical Archeology Review" & "Bible Review," as well as being editor or author for several other books in this field.

The Dead Sea Scrolls form the basic root of what we're likely to find in the Bible today & the area where the Scrolls were found was a Jewish settlement (Qumran) about 13 miles from Jerusalem. During the time period in which Qumran was most active coincides with a sort of "reformation period" experienced by Judaism...This reformation was similar to the more modern "Roman Catholic Reformation" in that Judaism was being "re-interpreted," with the result that there were "sub-religions" splintering away from the main religion.

The Scrolls (many lost due to severe deteriation & others surviving only in small fragments, extremely few found whole but fragile) seem to contain studies & teneants of a number of these off-shoot "sub-cults" of Judaism. One of these sub-cults (Essen) seems somewhat related to modern Christianity (described in the book as "Essen-oid"), but also with some extensive "mutations" along the way.

Since the Old Testament is the writings of Judaism & Christianity is the basis of the New Testament, I think that this is why modern Orthodox Jews practicing Judaism don't put any faith in the New Testament at all...Under the circumstances of the history of Christianity, I can't blame them much...Because to them, Christianity represents a mutated version of their own beliefs. This attitude is understandable when you consider how the Roman Catholic Church feels about the Protestant religions.

At any rate, while there is no real evidence to support the theory, it's highly possible that Jesus of Nazareth had the opportunity to study at Qumran before he began the three-year ministry that ended when he got nailed to the cross. At Qumran, Jesus would have had the chance to learn not only about Judaism, but also would have had access to these other writings that could have inspired his (Essen-oid?) ministry.

So I personally doubt that the article you linked from Codewolf has much validity...