Talpiot tomb

File:The Talpiot Tomb.jpg

An image of the Talpiot Tomb

The Talpiot Tomb is a tomb discovered in the Talpiot neighbourhood of Jerusalem, Israel, in 1980. The tomb contained ten ossuaries upon discovery, one of which has since disappeared.

A documentary film produced by James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, and a book written by Jacobovici, The Jesus Family Tomb, argue that the Talpiot Tomb was the burial place of Jesus, as well as several other biblical figures from the New Testament. This argument is heavily disputed.

Discovery

The tomb was discovered in 1980 by workers constructing an apartment complex in the Talpiot neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The Israel Antiquities Authority initiated an excavation of the site led by archaeologist Amos Kloner. The archaeologists were given three days to document and excavate the tomb. The tomb was determined to be from the Second Temple period, between 538 B.C. and A.D. 70. Typical of the area, the tomb belonged to a middle to upper-class Jewish family. About 900 similar tombs have been unearthed in the same area.[1] Inside the tomb were found three skulls and ten ossuaries, with six bearing the inscriptions of names. Following the discovery, the bones contained in the ossuaries were buried in unmarked graves to accord with Orthodox Jewish beliefs.[2]

Media coverage

The BBC first aired a documentary on the Talpiot Tomb in 1996 as part of its Heart of the Matter news magazine. At that time, Amos Kroner, the first archaeologist to examine the site said the claims of a connection to Jesus did not hold up archaeologically, adding "They just want to get money for it." Others were similarly skeptical, though another of the archaeologists who discovered the tomb admitted "I’m willing to accept the possibility."

The tomb was featured on the Today Show on February 26, 2007 where it was mentioned that the ossuaries were sent to New York.Template:Fact

The Lost Tomb of Jesus and The Jesus Family Tomb

Main article: The Lost Tomb of Jesus

A second documentary about the tomb, titled The Lost Tomb of Jesus, has been produced by James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici, and will premiere on The Discovery Channel on March 4, 2007. The documentary is being released in conjunction with Jacobovici's book The Jesus Family Tomb.

With the help of statisticians, archeologists, historians, DNA experts, robot-camera technicians, epigraphers and a forensic expert from New York's Long Island, Jacobovici argued that the bones of Jesus, Mary and Mary Magdalene, along with some of their lesser-known relatives, were once entombed in this cave. James Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary consulted with Jacobovici on the project and is intrigued: "A very good claim could be made that this was Jesus' clan.". Others have expressed skepticism.

Inscriptions

The inscription attributed to Yeshua` bar Yehosef is the most disputed.

Six of the ten names are claimed by Jacobovici and others to be associated with figures from the New Testament. As translated in The Lost Tomb of Jesus and The Jesus Family Tomb, they read as follows:

• Yeshua` bar Yehosef - "Jesus son of Joseph"
• Maryah - "Mary"
• Yoseh - "Joses," short for "Joseph"
• Mariamene e Mara - "Mary also known as Mara" - (the only inscription in Greek)
• Mattiah - "Matthew" (no relation ever given of a Matthew as being related to Jesus)
• Yehudah bar Yeshua` - "Judas son of Jesus"

Some of these translations are disputed. William G. Dever, a retired professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, stated that some of the inscriptions are unclear.[3]

Support

Epigraphy

Four leading epigraphers have corroborated the ossuary inscriptions for The Lost Tomb of Jesus, according to the Discovery Channel.

Statistical report

On February 25, 2007, Andrey Feuerverger, professor of statistics and mathematics at the University of Toronto conducted a statistical calculation on the name cluster as part of The Lost Tomb of Jesus. He concluded that the odds are at least 600 to 1 for the Talpiot Tomb actually being tomb of Jesus' family. The methodology of this study is due to be published in a journal soon, but in the meantime a summary can be found on the Discovery Channel website as well as the Official Site for the documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus.

Feuerverger multiplied the instances that each name appeared during the tomb's time period with the instances of every other name. He initially found "Jesus Son of Joseph" appeared once out of 190 times, Mariamne appeared once out of 160 times and so on. He next divided the resulting numbers by 25 percent, a statistical standard, and further divided the results by 1,000 to attempt to account for all tombs that could have existed in first century Jerusalem, including those that have not yet been uncovered. The study concluded that the odds are at least 600 to 1 in favor of the Talpiot Tomb being the tomb of Jesus and his family. Feuerverger posits that the explanation that the tomb is that of Jesus and his family works 599 times out of 600.

Some of the study's assumptions include:

• that the Maria on one of the ossuaries is the mother of the Jesus found on another box,
• that Mariamne is his wife
• that Joseph (inscribed as the nickname Jose) is his brother.
• that Jesus is the correct name on his box, whereas "Hanun" might be more accurate (see below)

Feuerverger's conclusions have been called into question. Richard Bauckham compiled the following data to show just how common the names on these ossuaries are:

"Out of a total number of 2625 males, these are the figures for the ten most popular male names among Palestinioan Jews. the first figure is the total number of occurrences (from this number, with 2625 as the total for all names, you could calculate percentages), while the second is the number of occurrences specifically on ossuraies."

Rank	Name	Total References	Found on Ossuaries	Percent of Total References (2625)
1	Simon/Simeon	243	59	9.3%
2	Joseph	218	45	8.3%
3	Eleazar	166	29	6.3%
4	Judah	164	44	6.2%
5	John/Yohanan	122	25	4.6%
6	Jesus	99	22	3.8%
7	Hananiah	82	18	3.1%
8	Jonathan	71	14	2.7%
9	Matthew	62	17	2.4%
10	Manaen/Menahem	42	4	1.6%

"For women, we have a total of 328 occurrences (women's names are much less often recorded than men's), and figures for the 4 most popular names are thus:"

Rank	Name	Total References	Found on Ossuaries	Percent of Total References (328)
1	Mary/Mariamne	70	42	21.3%
2	Salome	58	41	17.7%
3	Shelamzion	24	19	7.3%
4	Martha	20	17	6.1%

Criticism

When interviewed about the upcoming documentary, Amos Kloner, who oversaw the original archaeological dig of this tomb in 1980 said:

"It makes a great story for a TV film, but it's completely impossible. It's nonsense."

Newsweek reports that the archaeologist who personally numbered the ossuaries dismissed any potential connection:

"Simcha has no credibility whatsoever," says Joe Zias, who was the curator for anthropology and archeology at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem from 1972 to 1997 and personally numbered the Talpiot ossuaries. "He's pimping off the Bible... He got this guy Cameron, who made 'Titanic' or something like that—what does this guy know about archeology? I am an archaeologist, but if I were to write a book about brain surgery, you would say, 'Who is this guy?' People want signs and wonders. Projects like these make a mockery of the archaeological profession."

Stephen Pfann, president of Jerusalem's University of the Holy Land and an expert in Semitic languages, who was interviewed in the documentary, also said the film's hypothesis holds little weight:

"How possible is it?" Pfann said. "On a scale of one through 10 - 10 being completely possible - it's probably a one, maybe a one and a half."

Pfann added that the inscription read as "Jesus" has been misread by suggesting that the name "Hanun" might be a more accurate rendering.

Asbury Theological Seminary's Dr. Ben Witherington III (who has been aware of the tomb since 1980) points out some other circumstantial problems with linking this tomb to Christ.

• "So far as we can tell, the earliest followers of Jesus never called Jesus ‘son of Joseph’. It was outsiders who mistakenly called him that."
• "The ancestral home of Joseph was Bethlehem, and his adult home was Nazareth. The family was still in Nazareth after he [Joseph] was apparently dead and gone. Why in the world would he be buried (alone at this point) in Jerusalem?"
• "One of the ossuaries has the name Jude son of Jesus. We have no historical evidence of such a son of Jesus, indeed we have no historical evidence he was ever married."
• "The Mary ossuaries (there are two) do not mention anyone from Migdal. It simply has the name Mary-- and that's about the most common of all ancient Jewish female names."
• "We have names like Matthew on another ossuary, which don't match up with the list of [Jesus's] brothers' names."
• "By all ancient accounts, the tomb of Jesus was empty-- even the Jewish and Roman authorities acknowledged this. Now it takes a year for the flesh to desiccate, and then you put the man's bones in an ossuary. But Jesus' body was long gone from Joseph of Arimathea's tomb well before then. Are we really to believe it was moved to another tomb, decayed, and then was put in an ossuary?"
• "Implicitly you must accuse James, Peter and John (mentioned in Gal. 1-2-- in our earliest NT document from 49 A.D.) of fraud and coverup. Are we really to believe that they knew Jesus didn't rise bodily from the dead but perpetrated a fraudulent religion, for which they and others were prepared to die? Did they really hide the body of Jesus in another tomb?"
• "We need to remember that the James in question is Jesus' brother, who certainly would have known about a family tomb. This frankly is impossible for me to believe."

Other theologians have also disputed this claim, with the Israel Museum's Mevorah calling it "a good trick."

Connection to the James Ossuary

Main article: James Ossuary

In The Jesus Family Tomb, Simicha Jacobovici claims the James Ossuary would have been a part of this tomb, but was removed by artifact dealers, and thus discovered separately. The James Ossuary's authenticity has been called into question, and one of its past owners has been charged with fraud in connection to the artifact.

Ben Witherington, who worked with Jacobovici on a Discovery Channel documentary on the James Ossuary, denies this connection on two grounds:

• "The James ossuary, according to the report of the antiquities dealer that Oded Golan got the ossuary from, said that the ossuary came from Silwan, not Talpiot, and had dirt in it that matched up with the soil in that particular spot in Jerusalem."
• "Furthermore, Eusebius reports that the tomb marker for James' burial was close to where James was martyred near the temple mount, indeed near the famous tombs in the Kidron valley such as the so-called tomb of Absalom. Talpiot is nowhere near this locale."

Another consideration is that the measurements of the James Ossuary do not match the measurements listed for the tenth ossuary, which is no longer stored with the rest of the collection. The James Ossuary is listed as being approximately 50 centimeters long by 30 centimeters wide on one end, and 25.5 centimeters on the other end . The tenth ossuary in the Talpiot collection is listed as 60 centimeters long by 26 centimeters by 30 centimeters.

See also

• The Lost Tomb of Jesus (documentary by James Cameron about the Talpiot Tomb)
• The Jesus Family Tomb (book that accompanies the above documentary)
• Death and resurrection of Jesus
• Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the traditional tomb of Jesus)
• James Ossuary

External links

• Jesus Family Tomb Believed Found
• MSNBC Newsweek story
• Discovery channel news story
• Official Site for the Lost Tomb of Jesus
• TombOfJesus.org--Analysis of various claims regarding Jesus' burial place