Commenting on Luke 11:47-8 --

<blockquote>"Woe to you! for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses and consent to the deeds of your fathers; for they killed them, and you built their tombs"</blockquote>

Critics have argued that building a tomb for someone whom ancestors killed certainly does not mean one approves of the killing.

However, "scientific precision" is not at issue; irony is. The charge made by Jesus in this pericope is that the religious authorities of his day were demonstrating a similar hardness of heart. He was therefore using the building of monuments as an ironic sign of their true motives and shared spiritual trajectory with their ancestors.