Error No. 1? Geologists treading WAY beyond their area of
expertise.
Error No. 2? Geologists taking what is poetic license, at
least, as literal truth.
Error No. 3? Geologists taking a story with legendary
elements, at least, to be literally true, if even in parts.
Error No. 4? Taking the New Testament Gospels as anything
close to history. That includes assuming that Jesus was crucified over a
Passover period. If the “Palm Sunday” story is true, this would actually fit
other festivals more closely, as Hyam Maccoby, among others, has argued.
Error No. 4A? Assuming that (outside of Luke, who still
blows it) these books were written to be taken as documents of history, not
polemic.
Error No. 5? Assuming that a Yeshua bar Yusuf, if he
existed, had the approximate life and death dates that literalists and
semi-literalists claim.
Error No. 6? Assuming we can know enough about this Yeshua,
from the Christian New Testament, to even guess at facts that might mitigate
Error No. 5.
Error No. 7: Assuming that this Yeshua was a historic
personage.
Ohhh, other than THAT, there’s nothing wrong with
geologists, on what’s probably shaky (pun highly intended) evidence, assuming
that something from the geological record proves a Jew named Jesus was
crucified on April 3, 33 CE.
Now, they do leave the door to the world of rationality cracked open a small bit:
In terms of the earthquake data alone, (Jefferson) Williams and his team acknowledge that the seismic activity associated with the crucifixion could refer to “an earthquake that occurred sometime before or after the crucifixion and was in effect ‘borrowed’ by the author of the Gospel of Matthew, and a local earthquake between 26 and 36 A.D. that was sufficiently energetic to deform the sediments of Ein Gedi but not energetic enough to produce a still extant and extra-biblical historical record.”Only to then shut it even more firmly:
“If the last possibility is true, this would mean that the report of an earthquake in the Gospel of Matthew is a type of allegory,” they write.
Williams is studying yet another possible natural happening associated with the crucifixion — darkness.Go BACK to studying sedimentary rocks, Mr. Williams, and stay there.
Three of the four canonical gospels report darkness from noon to 3 p.m. after the crucifixion. Such darkness could have been caused by a duststorm, he believes.
Williams is investigating if there are dust storm deposits in the sediments coincident with the earthquake that took place in the Jerusalem region during the early first century.
