I'll wait until I can see more information on this before passing judgement. That article, at least the first one, wasn't really put together too well.

Alowishus wrote:

Okay i have a few criticisms. First: "This estimate is based on the form of corrosion which has taken place, which experts believe would be impossible to achieve artificially." So i guess it's cool to be able to date that stuff but if you do any other type of dating and it's over 5000 years old i guess it's wrong. I guess dating only suits them when they feel like it.

Testing metals, which is what it's composed of, is much easier to do than carbon dating. Judging by the patina on the metal and it's chemical content, it should give scientists a very good idea when it was made. Metal, especially worked metal, is somewhat easier to date than radiocarbon dating, which you seem to be referring to.

Alowishus wrote:

Also the biggest point of all.... so what? They are saying this could change biblical history... need i point out that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of christian denominations and within some of these denominations some accept different books than others. I'm pretty sure there is a mormon bible with it's own books and there are countless other books, some of which haven't been included at all. Just because this is some new history doesn't mean that all these denominations will agree and they may just omit it. Some christians take the bible totally as true, some use it as allegories. What if this new evidence contradicts some practice or belief they have? They will just discard it. It's more likely that a hundred new denominations will be born out of this. Also lets be honest, they could say anything. I also wouldn't be surprised if the church just decided to make up what they meant. I really wouldn't put it past them.

First off, by "the church", do you mean the Roman Catholic Church? To my understanding, yeah, they don't have it. And you're really missing the point. Any religion, any single one, usually has countless different denominations because not all people interpret Scripture (be it Christian, Islamic, Hebrew, occult, etc) the same. To be honest, the world would be a kind of boring place. As far as interpretation goes, considering it's import, I doubt that just one group will get to see what it says; the Holy See, especially, doesn't really have a lot of muscle when it comes to things in the Middle East, and hasn't for quite some time.

More importantly, if it does detail information about Jesus's life, many, many people may find it beneficial or comforting to have that knowledge. Apart from his youth and his time preaching the Gospel, there's a real dearth of information on Jesus, much like there are many other holy people (Mohammed, Lao-Tze and others). Each of them 'went off into the wilderness' so to speak and left many people wondering just what they'd done. I, for one, am very interested in seeing what kind of fruit this could bear, and so are a lot of other people. That's so what.

*handjob gesture ditto'ed*

I knew it wasn't an attack, but what caught in my craw was your "so what" question. So what is that a lot of people are very interested in seeing how this turns out. And if you don't want the handjob sign, don't be a jerkoff with derisiveness about a topic that genuinely interests quite a lot of people. I'm certain that people will interpret things differently, as you'd asserted. I wouldn't be surprised if some crazy cult takes a Kool-Aid death trip because of it. That said, it's still an important topic. And for the record, I am a Christian, and I do believe in radiocarbon dating and that the world is well over 10,000 years and some change old.