An Ancient Inscription Written in an Archaic Jewish Script

James Tabor at TaborBlog has a report on the extraordinary findings at the excavation on Mt. Zion. Among the findings was an ancient inscription written in an archaic Jewish script. This is how this finding was described:

A stone vessel with an ancient inscription of ten lines written in an archaic Jewish script. Such stone vessels were used in connection with maintaining ritual purity related to Temple worship, and they are found in abundance in areas where the priests lived. We have found a dozen or more on our site over the past three years. However, to have ten lines of text is unprecedented. One normally might find a single name inscribed, or a line or two, but this is the first text of this length ever found on such a vessel. We have shared high-resolution photos with various epigraphic experts in Jerusalem who are working together to try and decipher this text. It is written in a very informal cursive hand and is quite difficult to read.

Read the complete report by visiting James Tabor’s blog.

HT: Jim Davila

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Inscription, James Tabor

Christ's Tomb Found?

IN THE NEWS

Simcha Jacobovici , Canadian filmmaker known as the naked archaeologist is claiming that Christ's tomb has been found and that burial boxes found in the tomb belonged to Christ's family

Jacobovici will reveal at a news conference that he has strong evidence a group of burial boxes unearthed in Jerusalem belonged to Jesus Christ and his family.

Here is the new report published in the Toronto Star:

The discovery could have profound implications 2,000 years after the boxes were placed in the ground, shaking the foundations of modern faith and raising Da-Vinci-Code-like speculation that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene.

"It's mind boggling. It's an altered reality," Toronto documentary director Simcha Jacobovici told the Star last week.

The location of the press conference is being kept secret until Monday to prevent a stampede of people wanting to see the artefacts on display.

The documentary is called The Lost Tomb of Jesus and its claim that the burial box of Jesus has been found along with his DNA, are sure to be met with scepticism, if not outright hostility, by church leaders.

In an interview, Jacobovici said that while nothing in archaeology can ever be proven beyond doubt, there is "compelling evidence" that the tomb he explores under a Jerusalem apartment building is that of the holy family.

"You have to kind of pinch yourself," said Jacobovici, known as the Naked Archaeologist after a Vision TV series. "Are we really saying what we are saying?"

James Tabor, chair of religious studies at the University of North Carolina and an expert featured extensively in The Lost Tomb, said that as an academic he has seen enough to convince him of the evidence, but admits to some trepidation about claiming that the tomb of Jesus has been found.

"There's a part of you that says, it's too amazing. How can this be true?" Tabor told the Star. "It's an archaeological dream."

Critics are already dismissing the documentary's claims.

"It's a beautiful story but without any proof whatsoever," Bar Ilan University professor Amos Kloner, who researched the tomb for the Israeli periodical Atiqot in 1996, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Friday.
Jacobovici says there is nothing in the documentary that should offend devout Christians, since he does not argue that Jesus did not ascend to heaven, at least spiritually, as told in the Bible.

"People who believe in a physical ascension — that he took his body to heaven — those people obviously will say, wait a minute," he said, adding he hopes the film sparks more scientific study of the tomb and the ossuaries found inside.

The tomb was unearthed in 1980 during construction of an apartment building and was first connected to the Jesus family in a 1996 BBC documentary. Jacobovici's documentary uses scientific methods, including DNA testing, statistical analysis and forensic examination, not available to the BBC 11 years ago.

It airs on Discovery in the U.S. and on Channel 4 in the U.K. on Sunday, and March 6 in Canada on Vision TV. A book, The Jesus Family Tomb by Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, comes out this week. Titanic director James Cameron, executive producer of the documentary, wrote the introduction.

The film and book follow years of growing interest in the private life of Jesus, fuelled by the 2003 Dan Brown novel The Da Vinci Code, made into a movie last year, in which Jesus is said to have married Mary Magdalene and had a daughter, sparking a centuries-long cover-up.

The novel, denounced by church groups around the world, spawned a mini-industry speculating about the historical Jesus, his relationship to Mary and his family life. Church leaders, including the Pope, dismissed the book and movie as pure fiction.

Tabor, whose book The Jesus Dynasty last year raised many of the same questions as the documentary, says the film cannot be as easily dismissed as Brown's novel, even though it too suggests that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene.

"This is archaeology. We got the casket. We've got the bones," he told the Star. "I think we can say, in all probability, Jesus had this son, Jude, presumably through Mary Magdalene."

DNA tests conducted for the documentary at Lakehead University on two ossuaries — one inscribed Jesus son of Joseph and the other Mariamne, or Mary — confirm that the two were not related by blood, so were probably married.

"Perhaps Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married as the DNA results from the Talpiot ossuaries suggest and perhaps their union was kept secret to protect a potential dynasty — a secret hidden through the ages," narrator Ron White says over re-enacted scenes of a happy Jesus and Mary home life.

"A secret we just may be able to uncover in the holy family tomb."

The tomb was found in the Talpiot neighbourhood of Jerusalem during the construction of an apartment building in 1980. Archaeologists were given three days to document the tomb and excavate it for treasures.

Inside, they found 10 ossuaries and three skulls. Six ossuaries had names etched into them — Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne, Joseph and Matthew — all Jesus family names.

At the time, however, the inscriptions raised few alarms. These were, after all, very common names at the time of Jesus. Besides, with all the construction around Jerusalem at the time, it was a boom time for uncovering tombs, and the Israeli Antiquities Authority could barely keep up.

Any connection to the holy family was not made until 15 years later, when a BBC crew researching and Easter special stumbled across the collection in an IAA storage room. They immediately began work on a new program, based on the tomb, which aired a year later.

That show, aired as part of the BBC's acclaimed Heart of the Matter newsmagazine, was dismissed by Biblical scholars as "laughable" for suggesting, as Jacobovici does, that the tomb was that of Jesus Christ's family.

Today, Kloner and others still argue that the names were so common that there is no significance to them being found in a tomb.

"The names that are found on the tombs are names that are similar to the names of the family of Jesus," he conceded. "But those were the most common names found among Jews in the first centuries."

In The Lost Tomb, however, University of Toronto statistician Andre Feuerverger calculates that while the names are common, the chances of them being found together are 600 to one.

His conclusion is based on a few assumptions: that the Maria on one of the ossuaries is the mother of the Jesus found on another box, that Mariamne is his wife and that Joseph (inscribed as the nickname Jose) is his brother.

As the documentary tells us, there is reason to make these assumptions.

Maria is the Latin form of Mary, and is how Jesus's mother was known after his death as more Romans became followers. Mariamne is the Greek form of Mary. Mary Magdelene is believed to have spoken and preached in Greek. Jose was the nickname used for Jesus' little brother.

As well, the Talpiot Tomb is the only place where ossuaries have ever been found with the names Mariamne and Jose, even though the root forms of the name were very popular and thousands of ossuaries have been unearthed.

This is not, however, the first time a Jesus ossuary has been found. The first was in 1926.

Another famous ossuary, inscribed James son of Joseph brother of Jesus, is also featured in the documentary.

Forensic testing of the patina on the Jesus ossuary and that of James conclude that they came from the same tomb — seemingly proving the authenticity of the often-questioned James ossuary and further increasing the likelihood that it is the tomb of the holy family.

Feuerverger calculates for Jacobovici that if James is added to the equation, there is a 30,000 to one chance that the Talpiot Tomb belonged to the holiest families in Christendom.

The documentary speculates that the James ossuary was stolen shortly after the tomb was found. The archaeologists examining the tomb 26 years ago found 10 ossuaries, but only nine are in storage at the IAA. In The Lost Tomb, it is alleged that the James ossuary is that missing box.

But there is one wrinkle that is not examined in the documentary, one that emerged in a Jerusalem courtroom just weeks ago at the fraud trial of James ossuary owner Oded Golan, charged with forging part of the inscription on the box.

Former FBI agent Gerald Richard testified that a photo of the James ossuary, showing it in Golan's home, was taken in the 1970s, based on tests done by the FBI photo lab.

Jacobovici concedes in an interview that if the ossuary was photographed in the 1970s, it could not then have been found in a tomb in 1980. But while he does not address the conundrum in the documentary, he said in an interview that it's possible Golan's photo was printed on old paper in the1980s.

I have not seen The Lost Tomb yet, but if the documentary is like Jacobovici’s documentary on the exodus event, then there is no reason to worry. It is just amazing the documentary is coming out just at the time Jacobovici’s book The Jesus Family Tomb is being published.

Should you as a Christian worry about this discovery? No, if you believe the tomb is empty.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, James Tabor, Jesus Ossuary, Mary Magdalene,Simcha Jacobovici, The Lost Tomb

Toilets, Qumran, and the Essenes

In an article written by Alan Boyle, Science Editor for MSNBC, Israeli anthropologist Joe Zias and James Tabor, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte report the discovery of latrines at Qumran. Below is an excerpt of the article:

One of the less sanitary aspects of life in Jesus' day has come into play in the debate over who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, how they lived and how they died.

The latest evidence comes from a site that two researchers have identified as the communal latrine for Qumran, the ancient settlement near the caves where the 2,000-year-old scrolls were found.

Israeli anthropologist Joe Zias and James Tabor, a biblical scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, say the unusual placement of the latrine would be consistent with the theory that Qumran was inhabited by a hard-core Jewish sect known as the Essenes. They even speculate that the latrine's unsanitary conditions may have contributed to ill health among the sect's members.

The prevailing view among archaeologists has been that Essenes at a Qumran monastery were the keepers of the Dead Sea Scrolls — but that view has come under increasing challenge in recent years, with some experts saying Qumran was a fortress or a pottery-making center that had nothing to do with the Essenes.

One of the most vigorous critics of the Essene connection, University of Chicago historian Norman Golb, told MSNBC.com that the latest report from Tabor and Zias "does nothing" to prove that the Essenes lived and worked in Qumran.

"The recent finding of a latrine can, at the most, show no more than that the inhabitants of the area were human beings who practiced some form of sanitation," Golb said.

So what do ancient potty practices have to do with the mystery of Qumran? Although the findings of Zias and Tabor may not be a smoking gun, they represent an intriguing blend of textual analysis and "CSI"-style forensics — intriguing enough to be accepted for publication in Revue de Qumran, an international journal on Dead Sea Scroll science.

Toiletries in texts

It all started with Tabor's reflection on historical texts: The book of Deuteronomy, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, considered bathroom duties to be unclean in the sight of God. Thus, the faithful were told that their latrines had to be placed far enough away from the community to be out of sight. Various references specify distances of 1,000 to 3,000 cubits (1,500 to 4,500 feet, or 457 to 1,370 meters), preferably to the northwest of the community.

According to the 1st-century historian Josephus, the Essenes in Jerusalem strictly observed this custom. He marveled at the Essenes' religious and intestinal fortitude, noting that they refused to "go to stool" on the Sabbath — and Tabor speculated that this was because the latrine was farther away than Jews were allowed to travel on the holy day.

Years ago, it struck Tabor that Essenes at Qumran should have had a similar practice. "I thought, 'They must have been doing this if they believed it so fervently. Has anyone ever gone out and looked for this?'" he recalled.

Looking at a map, Tabor saw there was a prime site about 1,640 feet (500 meters) northwest of the Qumran site, sheltered from view behind a bluff. When he walked up to the site, he could see that one area of soil had a significantly different coloration. But how could he prove that it was a latrine, where the Essenes felt it was their religious duty to dig a trench, do their business and shovel dirt back on top?

That's when Tabor called upon Zias, a "bioarchaeologist" who has taken on other biblical puzzles such as the mechanics behind Roman-style crucifixion.

Parasites in ancient poop?

Zias took 10 soil samples — four from the site identified by Tabor, and six from elsewhere in the area as control samples — and had them analyzed by Stephainie Harter-Lailheugue, a French parasitologist from the Centre National de la Recerche Scientifique.

Three of the four samples from the suspected latrine contained desiccated eggs from parasitic worms commonly found in human stool samples (tapeworms, roundworms and pinworms). Meanwhile, none of the control samples turned up evidence of human-specific parasites.

Zias said that would indicate "heavy and continual use" of the site as a latrine.

Usually, the parasites in fecal matter would die out due to exposure to the elements in the Dead Sea region, Zias said. That's what happens to the waste left behind by modern-day Bedouins, for example. But Zias said the Essenes' practice of covering up their waste may have actually preserved the parasites.

Yet another curious twist strengthened the Qumran connection: Similar traces of parasites were found in a soil sample taken from inside the settlement, at a spot that Zias and Tabor think served as an emergency restroom for the Essenes.

As he put together the story, Zias came around to the view that Qumran was actually a pretty unsanitary place to live. "This should be a warning to religious people that you can take things a little bit too far," he told MSNBC.com.

Godliness vs. cleanliness

As time went on, pathogens would likely build up in the latrine, Zias said.

"What happened was that 20 to 40 people went out there every day over a period of 100 years," he explained in a University of North Carolina news release. "By burying their fecal matter, they actually preserved the microorganisms and parasites. In the sunlight, the bacteria and parasites get zapped within a fairly short amount of time, but buried, the parasites can live in the soil for up to a year. Then people pick up things by walking through fecally contaminated soil — it's like a toxic waste dump, and if you have any cuts on your feet..."

If the people who used the latrines were indeed Essenes, their religious practice would require them to undergo a ritual washing when they returned to the settlement. For modern-day Westerners, that sounds like good hygiene. But 1st-century Qumran was a different environment, and such practices would actually make matters worse, Zias said.

Water would typically stand in the ritual pools for months at a time, replenished only by three months' worth of winter rains. When the residents immersed themselves in the pools, they'd leave behind bacteria and parasite eggs. The warm water and sediment would serve as a fertile breeding ground for the pathogens, leading to cross-infection.

"Can you see yourself going into whirlpool water standing there for nine months, and 100 people have been going in there before you, day in and day out?" he asked.

Zias said the parasites detected at the presumed latrine would cause intestinal distress — which, in his mind, also helps explain the emergency toilet identified within the community. "If you're sitting there reading the Torah and you've got diarrhea, you think you're going to make it up the hill? You're not going to make it," he said.

To read the article in its entirety, visit the MSNBC Web page by clicking here.

The article presents more details about the findings by Zias and Tabor. The article also sheds additional light on the lives of the people who lived and worked at Qumran.

If you are interested in one aspect of at life Qumran and how the Essenes lived, this is an article that you should read.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old TestamentT
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Qumran, Essenes, Joe Zias, James Tabor,Norman Golb