Live Blogging Larry King

   I am listening to Larry King Live. At least the outlines are becoming very clear, even before the release of the video. (I find it ironic that Jacobovici keeps pointing out people who are responding to his claims have not seen the film as if that means something. Well, try following the normal canons of scholarship so that those responding to your claims have your data before you are producing movies presenting your conclusions!). Evidently, they could only “test” the two ossuaries they claim are of Jesus and Mary (Mariamne). Jacobovici just said Mariamne is the real name of Mary Magdalene, but, as yet, no one has explained how they know this.
   Al Mohler is now coming on. Cameron is now responding. Cameron is now claiming Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Mary were “leaders” of an oppressed movement. No one, not even the Jewish opponents of the time, ever made such a claim. Now he is saying that in later years they would have had the “resources” to have such a tomb. Of course, he is ignoring the realities of first century Israel, politics, etc. Jacobovici is now doing the “you haven’t seen it yet” thing again. They keep going back to the “name cluster” idea. We need to remember this: the “chance” of your family names, your “cluster,” coming into existence by chance, is very high. Yet, you have parents with names, do you not? You have a name as well, do you not? This kind of statistical abuse is so obvious!
   James Tabor is up next (see my previous blog reference to him). Three on one against Mohler. That’s ol’ Larry King. “Renowned” theologian? Goodness, does King have any idea how grossly biased he is? Mohler just accurately points out Tabor’s idea that Jesus was the son of Pantera, and that he said the proper tomb for Jesus would be in Galilee. Here comes the false statistics argument again. I am getting tired of the “I am not a theologian, I am not a statistician, I am not an archaeologist” thing. I don’t think Dr. Mohler has had the time to consider the error of this statistical argument. What we need to do is take another tomb that has been found, at random, put the names together, and run the statistics on it as well.
   Now Bill Donahue is blowing a cork, unfortunately. He has rightly raised the James issue and the questions about its accuracy. But he is coming across as quite belligerent. King is such a royal post-modernist. Donohue is correct about the “making connections” argument.
   Jacobovici is clearly clueless about Christian theology. This “we are not challenging the resurrection” argument is grossly false.
   If this is a good example of the viewpoint of these men, we now know, before the film, exactly what the key elements are: does Mariamne mean Mary Magdalene? How accurate are the inscriptions? And can we get a statistician to run the “chances” of the “name cluster” of a few representative families today to demonstrate the misuse of this kind of argumentation?