FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF MISLEADING SUMMARIES, the Faith News column in the Times devotes the following paragraph to the news of the stone jar fragments excavated in what may be ancient Cana (my emphasis):

ARCHAEOLOGISTS in Israel have found pieces of large stone jars which they say Jesus may have used to turn water into wine at the wedding in Cana. They made the discovery during a salvage dig in present-day Cana, between Nazareth and Capernaum. But New Testament scholars said that it would be difficult to authenticate the jars because experts disagreed on the location of biblical Cana.

Now I don't know if the writer, Luke Coppen, is really ignorant enough to think that the archaeologists are claiming that these are the very stone jars Jesus used in the story in John 2. I suppose it's possible that he's just perpetuating the misunderstanding of the earlier A.P. article (see second link above). Still, I'd like to think that he means to say the jars are of the same type as the ones Jesus is reported to have used and he just can't write a clear sentence. Either way, I'm not impressed with the journalism.

So 2005 is already shaping up to look much like 2004.