Yep, this is going to be controversial. But then what can you expect from James D. Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici. The following is from an excerpt published in The Huffington Post from their new book:
On the morning of Tuesday, June 29, 2010, outside the Old City of Jerusalem, we made an unprecedented archaeological discovery related to Jesus and early Christianity. This discovery adds significantly to our understanding of Jesus, his earliest followers, and the birth of Christianity. In this book we reveal reliable archaeological evidence that is directly connected to Jesus’ first followers, those who knew him personally and to Jesus himself. The discovery provides the earliest archaeological evidence of faith in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the first witness to a saying of Jesus that predates even the writing of our New Testament gospels, and the earliest example of Christian art, all found in a sealed tomb dated to the 1st century CE.
Fasten your seat belt:
We now have new archaeological evidence, literally written in stone, that can guide us in properly understanding what Jesus’ earliest followers meant by their faith in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, with his earthly remains, and those of his family, peacefully interred just yards away.
Does the shroud trump the interpretations of these guys? I think so.
Hat tip to Joe Marino: ‘Jesus Discovery:’ Jerusalem Archeology Reveals Birth Of Christianity
One thing that Tabor does not seem inclined to mention is that the “Jesus” ossuary from the Talpiot tomb is essentially empty. One of the authors of the original Talpiot story, Charles Pellegrino recently stated the following in a blog response:
“Almost two years ago, Simcha told me that another lab had independently come to conclusions consistent with my survey of trace fiber evidence from the Talpiot tomb’s Jesus Ossuary. The fibers are inconsistent with a primary burial. Only a single hemispherical bone fragment, consistent with a carpal, appears ever to have been placed in the ossuary, with two cloths of unusual composition. In any case, he’s not there, in the ossuary.”
Is it possible that the Shroud may have been stored in an ossuary in some Jerusalem tomb (maybe not at the original burial site) for a period of time (possibly centuries) after the Resurrection? Given that this is an object related to a Jewish burial, I assume that the disciples would have been mystified by it and might default to how the burial remains would’ve been handled. In any event, I can’t see how it would’ve been handled casually.
Yeah, I saw this the other day. Did you notice the critics who finally had a chance to unload on this ostensibly saying it’s a fantasy? They have no clue what they’re looking at yet the conjectures fly. The fact that they are willing to conjecture at this stage coupled with the nature of the conjectures themselves say a lot more about the motives of the individuals engaging in this than the artifacts themselves.
Here are some sites to visit for expert analysis on this “Just In Time for Easter” offering:
http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/
http://asorblog.org/?p=1610
http://asorblog.org/?p=1612
http://www.antoniolombatti.it/B/Blog02-11/Voci/2012/3/1_Never_seen_a_fish_depicted_upside-down.html
Jacobovici and Tabor’s conclusions seem very “fishy” to me!
A more serious quoting of Jesus has been recently discovered by the Spanish theologian Dr. Chapa. In a 2nd century papyrus kept by the University of Oxford but never analyzed before he has found very interesting information about Jesus and what Christians believed at that time. Sorry, only in Spanish.
http://www.larazon.es/noticia/8246-un-espanol-descubre-un-fragmento-de-un-texto-del-ano-200-que-habla-sobre-jesus
I read “The Jesus Family Tomb” back in 2008, and have regularly followed up web discussions, mainly hostile, since then, Despite all the web hostility, I’m inclined to think that the Talpiot tomb was indeed the Jesus Family Tomb. Randy makes a valid point above in quoting Pellegrino’s belief that no skeleton was ever placed in the Jesus ossuary, but only the burial cloths.
The case was not helped by Jacobovici’s highly dubious interpretation of some aspects of the case, including citing the aprocrophal “Gospel of Philip” and taking on board the Dan Green hypothesis that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were husband and wife, and that Judah was their son.
The various names of Jesus’ family members can be found in the gospels Mt 13:55, Mk 6:3. The early 4th century Fathers in their doctrine of “Mary ever Virgin” asserted these were cousins of Jesus or other close relations. John P Meier in “A Marginal Jew” is insistent that they were indeed brothers and sisters of Jesus, because of the gospels’ use of the Greek word “adelphos” in preference to “anepsios”,
I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site the extensive practice of adoption of orphans in 1st century Judaism and also throughout the Empire, because of the high mortality rates. Under both Jewish and Roman Law, legal adoption created the same rights as did birth.
Meier’s assertion can still maintain the “Mary ever Virgin” doctrine, if the various brothers and sisters were indeed adopted, and Mary and Joseph certainly seem to have been the compassionate type of people who muight well do this. Likewise Judah could well have been the adopted son of Rabbi Yeshua, but the secret would be kept to avoid the implied threat to the lad’s life as son of “King of the Jews”
The case of the Talpiot tomb was badly handled by the Israeli Antiquities Authority from the very beginning, and they seem seldom to have ever shown any interest whatsoever in early Christian archaeology.
Nor was it helped by the casual treatment of the original 1980 discovery by the IAA, the challenge to cherished beliefs by protagonists of the Christian Right, archaeologists miffed that others were trespassing on their professional territory, and by a thriving black market in forgeries, each stake-holder having their own personal agenda on the discovery.
The opportunity to have explored one of the most potentially significant findings of early Christianity has now been irretrievably lost. Pellegrino has expressed some hope that a match might be found between the Jesus ossuary fibre traces and the Shroud or Sudarium, but I’m unaware of any progress in this matter.
The IAA and other “nay sayers” have made much of the fact that the names on the ossuaries were very common in 1st c Judaism. They conveniently overlook the unlikelihood of getting the full combination of names. I carried out some probability analysis at the time together with some “Monte Carlo” simulation tests, based on the frequency of individual names found on 1st c ossuaries. The odds for seven of the names occurring were calculated at 1 in 11,456; If the James ossuary was also included, the odds worked out at 1 in 38,140. It has to be significant!
As Pellegrino has said: “If nothing else but an ossuary inscribed with the words ‘Jesus, son of Joseph’ were found in a tomb, bearing fibre evidence indicative of a missing body and two apparently sacred cloths, if these are indeed the two cloths described in John’s gospel, with a cross-mark attached to Jesus’ name, and a star on the lid – and if the antechamber bore a symbol known to the Jesuit order to this day as a glyph, translated as ‘Jesus Saviour of man’ – – if nothing else had been found, we would all be crazy not to look on with a sense of mystery and wonder.”
Based on the precedent of the Talpiot Tomb discovery, I would not be too hopeful that the present work by Jacobovici and Tabor will receive any more sympathetic treatment, particularly if Jacobovici has pursued his usual tendency to flights of fancy. If apostles are involved, we can for instance expect to see howls of anger from those ancient churches which still claim to hold their remains, whereas many of these claims are highly dubious.
The use of ossuaries seems to have been fairly common in 1st c Palestine, from the time of say Herod the Great, but the practice ceased in 70AD. With the early expectation of the Parousia, it seems to have been fairly common among the early Jewish Christians. The Simon of Cyrene ossuary has been definitely identified together with at least one of his sons (possibly both), as also has the ossuary of the high priest Caiaphas. However some ossuaries included more than one set of bones, I think this may be true of the Caiaphas ossuary for instance.
Typically about one year after burial, family would visit the tomb, and place the skeletal remains in a prepared ossuary. It was not the usual practice to inscribe the ossuaries; In a population of 917 ossuaries, 231 ossuaries were inscribed with 286 names, the balance being uninscribed. .
When a tomb (or other archaeological site) is discovered during modern developmental work, the IAA becomes involved. Any archaeological research involving burial sites is usually hampered by ultra-Orthodox Jews, so the work has to be done unduly quickly. The IAA removes any ossuraries, any contents are buried in a common grave, and the ossuaries are then internally cleaned which removes practically all useful DNA information. This happened in the case of Talpiot. The “James” ossuary went missing, but was later found in the possession of a dealer, who was accused of fraud, although the case against him was eventually abandoned.
As with most tombs, Talpiot had at some time been plundered by thieves, and also had been entered by medieval Crusaders, who buried three skulls there, and may have also marked the entrance with the “Jesus, Saviour.of man” glyph (circle and chevron), unless it was done by early Christians.
If the “Jesus” ossuary had contained the Shroud, and other burial cloths, then one wonders when they might have been removed. Both the Mandylion and Sudarium were known in the sixth century, so it seems unlikely that they were removed by the Crusaders, despite any thoughts that the Shroud may eventually have fallen into the hands of the Knights Templar. One might fall back on the Abgar legend, or speculate that the thieves may have purloined the cloths off to early Christians.
Possibly reasonable objections to Talpiot being the Jesus family tomb, include no mention of Nazareth or Galilee on the ossuaries, traditions that some of the family members were buried elsewhere, and the expensive costs involved for such an ordinary family. We might speculate that if Joseph of Aramathea was prepared to fund a costly burial cloth for Jesus, he might also be seen as a wealthy patron to ensure a respectable burial place for the rest of the family.
One of the compelling or persuasive factors for me, is the very low probability of the combination of names, mentioned in my 7:27pm posting above, Any player of a Numbers gambling game such as Lotto, knows that it is quite easy to draw one or two numbers of a combination, but the highest prizes are reserved for those who are able to beat the odds with a full line of six or seven qualifying numbers, which seems to be the case at Talpiot.
Hi Daveb, for a very informative video in rebuttal of the Talpiot tomb Documentary by Cameron/Jacobovici and it’s proposed findings please go to YouTube and search for; The Jesus Tomb Unmasked. This video will show how preposterous the whole theory is.
R
It’s interesting to note how much everyone here is ready to condemn the hypothesis of the lost tomb of Jesus and, at the same time, is willing to do anything he can to defend the hypothesis of Wilson versus the Mandylion ! In fact, it’s pretty funny to see ! :-)
Am I the only one to see the link between those 2 hypothesis ???
1- Both relied almost solely on speculations and extrapolations.
2- Both lack solid historical proofs to stand as real theories.
3- Both are full of evident bias and serve a well-define agenda.
4- Both have sell very well in some circles…
It’s fun to see how most people around here use 2 different scales to judge the validity of those 2 hypothesis, while, in fact, both fits very well in the same “polemical” category, but with just a major difference between them : one is a pro-Christian kind of hypothesis (Wilson) and the other one is an anti-Christian kind of hypothesis… That is enough to explain the big difference of appreciation we can see on this blog between the two ! ;-)
The bottom line is this : Both of those hypothesis are completely ridiculous when someone take time to make an in-depth research on the subject. Of course, the authors of those 2hypothesis have only presented one side of the coin to the public ! And, of course, those with a mindset that goes in the same direction of those hypothesis have been easily convince regardless of all the speculations and extrapolations that those hypothesis need just to stand up !!!
I’ll say it again and again : It’s pretty pathetic ! I I dream of the day when most pro-Shroud people will be willing to apply the same critical look for the “pro” hypothesis than they apply for the “con” hypothesis. This is the only way to do good science and to avoid bias appearances. Unfortunately, this is not really the case around here.
To conclude my point, I’ll ask you a question : What’s the big deal if the Mandylion hypothesis is really false ??? If all the scientific evidences convince you (like me) that the Shroud is authentic, I have no problem to live with the fact that his ancient history is, for the most part, completely unknown, historically speaking. Again : What’s the big deal with this situation ? That doesn’t mean one bit that the Shroud isn’t authentic. That just mean that this cloth was most probably controversial from the very first day !!!! So much controversial in fact that, for a very long time, it was most probably kept hidden somewhere and no ancient writer knew nothing about it… That’s all…
Thanks Ron for referring me to the video which I watched through to the finish. I decided not to post a comment there as I have no wish to make all my personal details known to Google as required by their Sign-up process.
The video is yet another unfortunate example of how badly the whole business of Talpiot has been handled, including a whole lot of butt covering.
Much is made in the video of the incorrect allegation that the “bones of Jesus” had been discovered, whereas you’ll note in Randy’s posting at the head of this blog that no such assertion is made by Pellegrino, only some traces of fibres and a small hemispherical carpal bone in the Jesus ossuary. The video chases this straw man diversion of “bones of Jesus” whereas it appears that there were virtually no significant skeletal remains at all. Why were there no bones in this ossuary? The answer is fairly obvious, but the video does not touch on this aspect at all, but responds to an allegation that in fact is not asserted.
Again, much is also made of the common use of the names found in 1st c Palestine. I think I’ve already covered that aspect in my postings above. The frequencies of the names used in my analysis were identical to those published in “L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries, Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Jerusalem: 1994)”, probably the same source as used in the video.
Certainly, the names were common, but when the full combination of names found is considered, the probability falls to very long odds indeed: The odds for seven of the names occurring were calculated at 1 in 11,456; If the James ossuary is also included, the odds worked out at 1 in 38,140. It has to be significant! Rather like the Lotto ticket analogy I mentioned.
The whole investigation was contaminated by Jacobovici’s quest for sensationalism, and his more outrageous statements which I’ve dealt with at length above.
It is now too late to pursue the investigation in any meaningful scientific way, unless a correlation between the ossuary fibres and the Shroud/Sudarium cloths can be taken further.
I don’t see that there is a significant problem between the two different tombs at “Holy Sepulchre” and Talpiot; Holy Sepulchre, close to Golgotha may be where Jesus was laid, in accordance with tradition, but the osssuary with the burial cloths could still be taken to a family tomb at Talpiot.
Incidentally, the James ossuary had an identical patina to the other ossuaries at Talpiot, suggesting that there may be more to it than admitted.
The whole business has been incompetently handled from the outset, and early Christian histiography is the poorer for it. I will continue to have an open mind about it, but I do find the combination of names highly persuasive.