God and Grammar at the Chicago Tribune

Photo of Ken Shepherd.
By Ken Shepherd | April 25, 2008 - 13:29 ET

In her April 24 post at The Seeker blog, Chicago Tribune's Manya Brachear asked readers how they would keep the peace between Armenian and Greek Orthodox priests that maintain the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Brachear also noted the concern at least one reader of the Tribune expressed as to the grammatically, historically, and theologically sloppy way in which the print edition rendered a caption describing the church (emphasis mine):

Revered by most Christians as the site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the sanctuary was built over the place where Jesus is said to have been buried.

It’s the latter description of the church that sparked a newsroom debate this week. Reader Marcia Smith Marzec of Joliet pointed out that a caption in the Tribune’s April 21 edition described the church as "built over the site in Jerusalem where Jesus is said to be buried."

"Even non-believers know that for Christians, Christ rose from the dead, and therefore is not ‘buried’ anywhere," Marzec wrote.

After surveying the staff for solutions, our public editor, Tim McNulty, ruled that the caption could have been more accurate. "Without getting all Sister Bernadette on you, I think it is wrong," he said. "What’s needed here is the ‘perfect infinitive’ that shows an action prior to the verb."

McNulty argued for "where Jesus is said to have been buried." Simply replacing the word "is" with "was" wouldn’t work because people are still saying that Jesus was buried there, "even as we all know that the place is empty now."

—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters

Comments Policy

All comments are owned by whoever posted them and are subject to our terms of use. They should not be assumed to represent the views of NewsBusters.

Viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Brachear must have just

Brachear must have just watched a Simcha Jacobovici/James Cameron Christian production. She seems a little discombobulated.

To be honest, Islam is the

To be honest, Islam is the major religion in Palestine and they believe that either there where 2 Jesus' (one crucified and one escaped) or that the "real" Jesus escaped and left someone else to die.

In other words, they think that someone connected closely to Jesus (if not Christ himself) is buried there. So I can see where she might have picked that up.

Islam nothing

Islam didn't make its way over to Israel until more than 500 years after these events occured.  It offers no new information that is credible.

 

Sorry, gotta go with the Tribune

Much as I hate to do it, I have to side with the Trib on this one.  Jesus was buried.  He didn't stay buried, but he was buried. 

When you put the clowns in charge, don't be surprised when a circus breaks out.

I thought---

I thought he was entombed????

You're right

You're right nkviking75, I ment to say why she would slip up on implying that Jesus is still buried there. My bad.

I'm a little confused as to

I'm a little confused as to what you are agreeing with: The original, printed caption, "...where Jesus is said to be buried", McNulty's correction, "...where Jesus is said to have been buried", or the correction McNulty dismissed, "...where Jesus was said to be buried"? I agree with McNulty, but his is a correction of the actual caption from the ChiTrib article, so I would think that means he and I both disagree with the print version. Stupid English language...

www.rhjunior.com Great comics with a hefty dose of Christian and anti-nutjob goodness.

"With your mind as high as Mt. Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just the things near to you." -Miyamoto Musashi

Buried or entombed

Matthew  27:59 Joseph took the body [of Jesus], wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut in the rock.Then he rolled a great stone across the entrance of the tomb and went away

 Mark 15:46 After Joseph bought a linen cloth and took down the body [of Jesus], he wrapped it in the linen and placed it in a tomb cut out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone across the entrance of the tomb

 Luke 23:53 Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and placed it in a tomb cut out of the rock, where no one had yet been buried

 John 19:41 Now at the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden was a new tomb where no one had yet been buried.

 

I was at this place in Israel, it's called the Garden Tomb.  It's right next to a dingy gas station/bus stop that has a little rocky hill adjacent to it with a skull pattern on its face.

The website for it is here

 http://www.gardentomb.com/

 

New writers needed

"After surveying the staff for solutions, our public editor, Tim McNulty, ruled that the caption could have been more accurate."

And even after "surveying the staff," they still get it wrong. Here's a suggestion: Laid to Rest. You know, oldspeak (language that is rarely used any more) for buried, entombed, interred, etc. It's past tense, and non-specific and is, therefore, universal in application for past events, even for a case of resurrection like how Jesus was "laid to rest" but didn't' stay that way for long.