William Dever: The Lost Tomb of Jesus Is A Publicity Stunt

IN THE NEWS

An article in the Washington Post today declares that the claim that the lost tomb of Jesus has been found is only a publicity stunt.

Alan Cooperman, reporting for the Washington Post writes:

Leading archaeologists in Israel and the United States yesterday denounced the purported discovery of the tomb of Jesus as a publicity stunt.

Scorn for the Discovery Channel's claim to have found the burial place of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and -- most explosively -- their possible son came not just from Christian scholars but also from Jewish and secular experts who said their judgments were unaffected by any desire to uphold Christian orthodoxy.

I'm not a Christian. I'm not a believer. I don't have a dog in this fight," said William G. Dever, who has been excavating ancient sites in Israel for 50 years and is widely considered the dean of biblical archaeology among U.S. scholars. "I just think it's a shame the way this story is being hyped and manipulated."

The Discovery Channel held a news conference in New York on Monday to unveil a TV documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," and a companion book about a tomb that was unearthed during construction of an apartment building in the Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1980.

James Cameron, the filmmaker who explored the wreck of the Titanic and directed an Oscar-winning feature film based on its sinking, is executive producer of the documentary. Its claims are based on six ossuaries, or stone boxes for holding human bones, found in the tomb.

The filmmakers contend that the inscriptions on the boxes say Yeshua bar Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph), Maria (Mary), Yose (Joseph), Matia (Matthew), Mariamene e Mara (Maria the Master) and Yehuda bar Yeshua (Judah son of Jesus). They maintain that "Mariamene e Mara" is Mary Magdalene and that Yehuda bar Yeshua may be her son by Jesus.

Simcha Jacobovici, the film's Israeli-born director, said in a telephone interview yesterday that he commissioned four statistical studies that concluded that the odds of those particular names appearing in a single family tomb from the 1st century are "somewhere between 600 and 2.4 million to one."

Jacobovici also said tests on the patina, or surface residue, of the "James Ossuary," which surfaced in 2002, indicate that it also came from the Talpiyot tomb. Israeli authorities have pronounced the James Ossuary, which purportedly held the bones of a brother of Jesus, a forgery and are prosecuting its owner. Jacobovici, who made a 2003 Discovery Channel film about it, maintains it is real.

Dever, a retired professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, said that some of the inscriptions on the Talpiyot ossuaries are unclear, but that all of the names are common.

"I've know about these ossuaries for many years and so have many other archaeologists, and none of us thought it was much of a story, because these are rather common Jewish names from that period," he said. "It's a publicity stunt, and it will make these guys very rich, and it will upset millions of innocent people because they don't know enough to separate fact from fiction."

Similar assessments came yesterday from two Israeli scholars, Amos Kloner, who originally excavated the tomb, and Joe Zias, former curator of archaeology at the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Kloner told the Jerusalem Post that the documentary is "nonsense." Zias described it in an e-mail to The Washington Post as a "hyped up film which is intellectually and scientifically dishonest."

Jodi Magness, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, expressed irritation that the claims were made at a news conference rather than in a peer-reviewed scientific article. By going directly to the media, she said, the filmmakers "have set it up as if it's a legitimate academic debate, when the vast majority of scholars who specialize in archaeology of this period have flatly rejected this," she said.

Magness noted that at the time of Jesus, wealthy families buried their dead in tombs cut by hand from solid rock, putting the bones in niches in the walls and then, later, transferring them to ossuaries.

She said Jesus came from a poor family that, like most Jews of the time, probably buried their dead in ordinary graves. "If Jesus' family had been wealthy enough to afford a rock-cut tomb, it would have been in Nazareth, not Jerusalem," she said.

Magness also said the names on the Talpiyot ossuaries indicate that the tomb belonged to a family from Judea, the area around Jerusalem, where people were known by their first name and father's name. As Galileans, Jesus and his family members would have used their first name and home town, she said.

"This whole case [for the tomb of Jesus] is flawed from beginning to end," she said.

Read also:

“Scholars Criticize Jesus Documentary” by Karen Matthews.

Dever’s authoritative words should put to rest the claims of the producers of "The Lost Tomb" that this is the tomb of Christ.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: James Camerom, Jesus’Ossuary, The Lost Tomb, Simcha Jacobovici, William Dever

Archaeologists and the Lost Tomb of Christ

Archaeologists are denying the validity of James Cameron’s claim that the tomb at Talpiyot is the tomb of Jesus’ family. Archaeologists say that there are more than 900 tombs like this one within two miles from where the so-called “the lost tomb of Christ” was found.

In a report by ABC News, Matt Gutman wrote:

Two years earlier, Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner was the first to find the tomb. He found the tomb and the ossuaries — the urns or vaults used to hold the bones of the dead — interesting but of no particular archaeological importance. He said there are more than 900 buried tombs just like the "Jesus" tomb within a 2-mile radius of Talpiyot. Of them, 71 bear the name Jesus and two Jesus, son of Joseph. The tomb in Talpiyot is one of them. But the inscription, he said, was barely decipherable and therefore questionable.

At the time, Jesus was a very common name, as was Mary. But the cluster of all those names together, Jesus, Joseph Mary, not to mention what the filmmakers claim is Jesus' son, Judah, son of Jesus, is indeed unusual. Simply because the tomb is labeled a tomb that "belonged to a Jesus, doesn't make it the tomb of Jesus Christ," Kloner told ABC News.

Jerusalem-based biblical anthropologist Joe Zias goes a step further to discredit Cameron's documentary. "What they've done here," Zias said, "is they've simply tried in a very, very dishonest way to try to con the public into believing that this is the tomb of Jesus or Jesus' family. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus."

Zias pointed out a number of contradictions that he said undermine the claim. Jesus was a very common name at the time — Mary even more so. Zias said 48 percent of women living at the time were named Mary, Mariam or the Hebrew name Shlomzion. In addition, Jesus' family was poor. Those who paid for the tomb were middle-class, at least. If Jesus' family did have the cash, the family tomb would likely have been situated in Nazareth. After all, Jesus was known as Jesus of Nazareth

James Cameron told a news conference at the New York Public Library that two stone ossuaries, or bone boxes, found at Talpiyot might have once contained the bones of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The claim that James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici are making, that the end of Christianity has arrived, is just that, their opinion. Both men are film producers who have a product to sell. In addition, Jacobovici is a writer who is promoting his book.

Cameron and Jacobovici are not archaeologists and they are not theologians and yet the media is accepting their claim that, after more than 2000 years of Christianity, they have discovered what no one else has been able to do in all these years: prove that Jesus died and that the resurrection is a myth.

There are many people who are willing to accept Cameron’s and Jacobovici’s claim that Christianity has been preaching a false gospel all these years. This is the cry of atheists, that Christianity is false.

Atheists ask for a sign: prove to us that Jesus was real. Well, Cameron gave them a sign: here are the bones of Christ. Presto! Christianity is false.

Only gullible people can believe Cameron’s claim. In a recent interview on television, Jacobovici said that there is a statistical probability that this is the real tomb where Christ was buried. A person can manipulate numbers and arrive at almost any preconceived conclusion. You cannot prove historical claims by using statistics.

The Lost Tomb is just another effort at making money using Jesus as the attraction. Again, I say, Christians have nothing to worry about the two filmmakers’ claim that Christianity is false. The tomb at Talpiyot is the wrong one; Jacobovici should look for an empty tomb.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary.

Tags: Archaeology, James Cameron, Jesus’ Ossuary, Simcha Jacobovici, The Lost Tomb

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