Jesus’ Family Tomb?

If you're looking for Jesus in India, Jesus in Tibet, Jesus' tomb in Kashmir, etc, that's over here.

THIS PAGE links to articles reviewing the March 2007 Discovery Channel movie The Lost Tomb of Jesus directed by James Cameron, and featuring Dr. James Tabor, which claimed to have found Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem, primarily by suggesting that a particular burial-box what that of Mary Magdalene. The show hasn't screened in Australia yet, so I've no comment of my own.

The background facts seem to be:

• Ossuaries are large stone boxes used to store bones after a body has decomposed in a tomb.
• The purported family tomb was excavated in 1980 by Jewish archaeologists led by Amos Kloner; all usual procedures were followed for cataloguing the ossuaries and reburying the human remains.
• 17 sets of remains were found in ten ossuaries; other remains were were also entombed in the cave bringing the total to 35. Six ossuaries were labelled with names, five in Aramaic and one in Greek: Yehuda bar Yeshua (Juda son of Jesus), Matia (Matthew), Yeshua bar Yehosef (Jesus son of Joseph), Yose (abbrev. Jehosef), Maria (Mary), and miriamenoumara (Mary-something, in Greek, see below)

My summary of the concerns of the articles linked below are these:

• The big issue is whether Jesus' family would have been wealthy enough to have owned a tomb. A discussion of Bayes' theorem on the NT Gateway site shows how this factor controls the likelihood of these names cropping up in his family tomb (as you would expect). Tabor thinks Jesus did run a Dynasty (hence his book title), so he wouldn't think this is a problem.
• The best shot at a 'smoking gun', I think, is finding a Jesus son of Joseph together with a Mary of Magdala. The other names are all pretty common. This combination gives you something interesting. Using Witherington and Bauckham's numbers (see below), Joseph and Jesus/Joshua (same name) were the second and sixth most common names for Jewish first-century men. Amos Kloner knows of at least two other Jesus son of Joseph ossuaries. Mary/Miriam and Mara were the first and fourth most common names for women. By comparison, these frequency positions were held in the 1990 U.S. census by John, David, Mary and Barbara -- How unusual is John, son of David?
• What mariamenoumara means was initially much disputed. Mariamenou could mean the ossuary of Mariamene, whose name would possibly be an affectionate diminutive of Mariame, the Greek form of Mary. The first time I saw a photo of the inscription, though, a week or two after the media scrum, I would have naturally read it mariame kai mara -- Mariame and Mara -- though the letters for kai could just as well have been nou since the writing was quite a scrawl. This is sensible and quite straightforward in meaning. Stephan Pfann has documented other inscriptions also showing the same cursive style that makes 'ka' and 'no' look similar (see PDF link, below). Also, a mark taken as one side of the upsilon ('u') is identical to other background markings on the stone, leaving only an 'i' as part of the inscription itself. It is most likely then that a Mariame and a Mara were at one time the occupants of the ossuary.

The two most interesting sideshows are the DNA test and the supposed link with the James Ossuary of recent controversy.

• Only dust was DNA-tested. How many sets of bones originally occupied each ossuary? They very often held more than one set of remains per box, and sometimes as many as six, which of course affects DNA testing. Also, and how many people handled the ossuary since then, leaving DNA?
• If whatever pair were tested had no common maternal ancestor, this shows that one of them married into the extended family during the time-period that the tomb was used (the archaoelogists are suggesting 4-5 generations). This is not a very strong conclusion.
• Where is the tenth ossuary -- stolen or misplaced? -- which could be that of James, which attracted much skepticism last year, and which involved some of the same scholars? There seems to be no connecting evidence as yet, and the original archaeologist, Prof. Amos Kloner, has stated the tenth was blank, hence not specially stored like the others for reasons of space.

The bottom line is that it is difficult to find scholars (Christian, Jewish, secular, anyone) backing the theory, and many are rejecting it in very plain terms (the term archeo-porn was even used on the academic round-table which followed the broadcast). For example, the above-mentioned Kloner, who first publicised the find, sees nothing in it of statistical import. Dr Tabor's blog -- a very good read, incidentally -- conveys a palpable sense of isolation, though he says he believes the general reaction is unjustified, and mentions private encouragement from peers.

There's also a question of method here? Why go to the media rather than academic journals, to be acclaimed by your professional peers? Also, what's new since this first came up in 1980? Was this unfairly overlooked? Or has The da Vinci Code merely made Mary of Magdala much, much more marketable? Mmmm...

Anyway, have a read...