{"id":827,"date":"2007-02-25T23:14:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-25T23:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=827"},"modified":"2007-02-25T23:14:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-25T23:14:00","slug":"little-boxes-little-boxes-little-boxes-full-of-bible-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=827","title":{"rendered":"Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes full of Bible people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the 2002 American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum had a well-timed display of the so-called &#8220;James ossuary.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It was a 1st-century CE stone box of a type used in the Middle East back then for storage of cleaned and dismembered skeletons of the dead. This one was inscribed, &#8220;James the brother of Jesus,&#8221; and much excitement was felt over that.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu\/relstds\/columns\/2004\/Jan%2018%202004.htm\">Until it turned out to be a fake<\/a>. The box was real enough, <a href=\"http:\/\/ccat.sas.upenn.edu\/ioudaios\/articles\/finalreport.html\">but the inscription was not<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>So you have to wonder about these inscriptions that claim to read &#8220;Judah son of Jesus,&#8221; &#8220;Mary,&#8221; and so on.<\/p>\n<p>Now the Discovery Channel is about to unleash <a href=\"http:\/\/dsc.discovery.com\/convergence\/tomb\/tomb.html?dcitc=w99-502-ah-1024\">a show about a whole stack of ossuaries<\/a>. Yes, it&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/dmnnewswire.digitalmedianet.com\/articles\/viewarticle.jsp?id=108410\">Jesus Family Tomb<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, biblical archaeology. It&#8217;s rarely dull. The &#8220;Lost Tomb of Jesus&#8221; indeed. How the Christian bloggers will blog, the preachers will preach, and the dull thumping sound you hear is an archaeologist beating his head against the wall.<\/p>\n<p>(The title is an homage to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Little_Boxes\">Malvina Reynolds<\/a>, whose songs helped me to survive high school.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the 2002 American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum had a well-timed display of the so-called &#8220;James ossuary.&#8221; It was a 1st-century CE stone box of a type used in the Middle East back then for storage of cleaned and dismembered skeletons of the dead. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[20,24],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-archaeology","tag-christianity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-dl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":342,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=342","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":0},"title":"Joe's World More seasonal thoughts:\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Joe's World More seasonal thoughts: Consider the Holy Family as the prototype of the typical television sitcom where everybody is smarter than dumb ol' Dad. Let's call the show Joe's World Joe is this hardworking contractor. He drives a pickup truck with tool boxes and a ladder rack. He stops\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10410,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10410","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":1},"title":"Pixie Problems, or Working Things Out with the &#8216;Cousins&#8217; (2)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1 here Anne Johnson responded promptly. Since the shrine is a minute's walk from the house, she suggested putting out more shiny objects closer in. I repurposed an odd birdfeeder shaped like a snail into a pixie-feeder (trap?). I put some shiny things in it (some broken silver spoons,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/red-snail-candle-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10392,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10392","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":2},"title":"I Can Quit Collecting at Any Time; In Fact, I Have","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"1940s technology to the rescue. But I still get a twinge when reading about this typewriter repairman-restoration specialist in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. One of three in the state, it turns out. \"Talk QWERTY to me: A vintage typewriter shop in Glenwood Springs gets analog hearts racing.\" Typewriters are lined up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/SmithCoronaSilent1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4437,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4437","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":3},"title":"Puppy Mills for the Gods","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"When I read an article like \"Millions of Mummy Puppies Revealed at Egyptian Catacombs,\" I realize how little we know about what was really going on with popular religion there centuries ago. It's one thing to study the tombs of high-ranking individuals. We still put high-ranking individuals in fancy tombs,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4147,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4147","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":4},"title":"Necrophilia: An Ancient Egyptian Tradition?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This may be the worst sort of environmental determinism, but what is it with Egypt? Is there something in the Nile water? For centuries Egyptian Paganism seemed to function\u2014on one level\u2014as as sort of post office of the dead. All those mummified cats, ibises, crocodiles, etc. neatly stacked in little\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"death\"","block_context":{"text":"death","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=death"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8060,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8060","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":5},"title":"Thoughts after a Funeral","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 27, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A member of my little rural volunteer fire department died last week at the age of 47.((It was not a line-of-duty death; other causes)) So the chief, the treasurer, and I put on our rarely worn dress uniforms for the funeral \u2014 M. came too \u2014 and we went off\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}