October 29, 2002 - 1:41 p.m.
Another year, another reminder that buying Halloween candy a week before Halloween is a bad idea - particularly when one bag of it is Hershey's Assorted Miniatures.
All your Special Dark are belong to us.
So back to the store today to pick up milk, bread, pop tarts (Zachary's breakfast of choice these days) and two bags of sweet tarts. Mike hates them and I can resist so long as the bag remains sealed.
An interesting footnote in the news has occupied my mind lately - a discovery of a little limestone ossuary labeled " Ya'akov (James), son of Yosef (Joseph), brother of Yeshua (Jesus)." I'm instantly reminded of the questions with which I once plagued a Sunday School teacher who was a professed "Biblical literalist." Curiously, she told me that James wasn't really Jesus's sibling but a close cousin and the word "brother" was used to convey that closeness.
Yeah, I didn't buy it then, either.
But it did open the notion to me that no one really believes in the literal truth of the Bible completely. We're all selectively literal. Unfortunately a lot of Christians choose to get literal about condemnations of homosexuality, the role of women in the church, and the book of Revelation.
But back to James - poor, forgotten James. He never gets the kind of attention Peter or Paul do - perhaps it is because of that "brother" byname that no one really wants to think about. His ossuary is tragically empty. There is, of course, no way to prove conclusively that it once held James's bones (or if the James mentioned is that James) - but wouldn't it have been incredible if there had been some remains? A little DNA testing and we could have a possible genetic glimpse of Jesus of Nazareth. He and James would have shared the same RNA...
If there were bones. But, no. And I rather expect that more research will debunk the whole thing as a hoax anyway. [sigh]
