Resurrecting Mary Magdalene and excavating Migdal

In his latest contribution to the Talpiot tomb debate, James Tabor commends to us Jane Schaberg's 2002 monograph, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament. I agree: Schaberg's work is a delightful read. She is a wordsmith whose passion and imagination serve, rather than obscure, her scholarship. Stitching traditions to texts to physical remains to meditations, she advances a savvy feminist agenda, a "Magdalene Christianity" meant to challenge the prevailing "Petrine Christianity" (p.19).

Toward that end Schaberg's second chapter is a poignant lament over Migdal, home to the Magdalene. In sharp contrast to the attention (and money) lavished on Capernaum, Migdal, a few miles down Galilee's shore, suffers from severe neglect. Pilgrims descend from their tour buses at Capernaum only to ascend into a modern "(magnificent? tasteless? expensive)" (p.59) church that memorializes and protects what may well be the ancient house of St. Peter. By contrast, the excavations at Migdal lie overgrown and abandoned (ostensibly due to flooding), the desolation of the site summoning Schaberg to the "feminist task" (p.48) of reclamation and recovery. The difference between the opulent Franciscan church at Capernaum and the barbed wire of Migdal illustrates, for Schaberg, "the sexual politics of archaeology" (p.60).

I'm inclined to agree. Even if archaeologists have shied away from Migdal because of its high water table, and even if New Testament ties to the site are limited to references to Mary Magdalene's provenance (Mk 15:40, 47; 16:1; Matt 27:56, 61; 28:1; Lk 8:2; 24:10; Jn 19:25; 20:1, 11-18) and perhaps to Jesus' port of call after feeding the crowds (Dalmanutha/Magadan in Mk 8:10; Mt 15:39), I'm betting the ruins would have received much more attention had Migdal been, say, home to one of Jesus' male disciples.

Tabor's interest in the home of Mary Magdalene is principally driven, it seems, by the Talpiot tomb ossuary bearing the name Mariamenou Mara. Is there anything about ancient Migdal that might encourage us to link this Greek inscription to Mary of Migdal? Tabor's summary of Schaberg's chapter (pp.47-64) on Migdal hints that there might well be.

Schaberg’s treatment surveys the material/archaeological evidence on the city of Migdal, home of Mary Magdalene. That portion of the book alone recast things for me as much as beginning to factor in Jesus’ hometown Nazareth being just outside Sepphoris, the urban capital of the Galilee. Migdal, according to our sources, had a large aqueduct system, a theatre, hippodrome, and a market. Josephus describes it in some detail and made the city his headquarters when he became commander of the Galilean revolt. It was culturally and commercially diverse, opulent, and “wild.” Meyers and Strange concluded that the city was more “Romanized” than Capernaum or Chorazin, and thus closer to Sepphoris, Tiberius, and Beth Shean as a Roman polis.

This summary of Schaberg is close enough to be considered fair, though the phrase "Roman polis" seems to be Tabor's (somewhat loaded) paraphrase of J. F. Strange's suggestion (cited by Schaberg, p.57) that places like Migdal show us "the imprint of the Roman idea of the city" (p.57). And terms like "opulent" and "wild" are apt only as descriptions of Migdal's reputation in the Talmud and Midrashim (p.55), which later rabbinic reputation likely derives (according to Schaberg) from evolving Christian legends about Mary Magdalene rather than from historical knowledge about the town.

In any case, the implication seems to be that Migdal's "Romanized" character may well explain the Greek on the Mariamene ossuary inscription. Recall Tabor's comments from a week ago:

We don’t know much about Mary Magdalene in our N. T. sources, but she does seem to be a woman of means and she is associated with several other women of standing (Luke 8: 1-3). The Mariamene ossuary is decorated and the inscription is in Greek, which surely fits this data, and Migdal, according to the record of Josephus, was a large, thriving, and culturally diverse “Romanized” city with theatre, hippodrome, and a large aqueduct system.

Was Migdal as "Roman" as, say, nearby Tiberias? Should we perhaps even expect that the ossuary of someone from such a town would be inscribed in Greek? Does the size and significance of the town lend credence to the translation of Mara as master or honorable lady?

Scholars these days (Tabor included) know better than to dichotomize sharply between Hellenism and Judaism. All 1st century "Judaisms" were Hellenized to some degree. Nevertheless, the emerging consensus is that pre-70 Galilee was much less Hellenized than previously thought. Mark Chancey's recent monographs (The Myth of a Gentile Galilee and Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus), for example, show how most evidence for Roman culture in Galilee dates to the time of Hadrian. Even the use of Greek seems to have been limited in earlier periods.

But if Roman culture and influence (including the use of Greek) were limited in the Galilee, and not evenly distributed, can we say anything specific about Migdal? Was it uncharacteristically cultured, cosmopolitan and Hellenized for pre-70 Galilee? Ben Witherington's assessment of Mary Magdalene's hometown seems to differ sharply from Tabor's:

As for Migdal, it is simply false that it was a major cosmopolitan commercial center. It was a tiny Jewish fishing village---give me a break! No one who has been there and compare it to Bethsaida just up the road could ever come to that conclusion about Migdal. Their explanation is one based on ignorance apparently.

Unfortunately, the overgrown, unfinished state of affairs at Migdal makes it difficult for visitors to assess just how "major" or how "tiny" the town was; surely there was far more there than now meets the eye. Witherington seems to underestimate the economic heft of the place, perhaps to offset overstatements in the Jesus Tomb documentary.

Dennis Duling describes the first century town as a noteworthy "boat building and fish processing center." Chancey's analysis, however, highlights the city's "adherence to Jewish tradition" and its apparently enthusiastic support of Josephus' mobilization against Rome during the first revolt (Myth, 99). Although Josephus mentions a theater and a large hippodrome in Migdal (a.k.a. Taricheae; cf. War 2.598-599), the lack of corroborating archaeological evidence has led some (including Schaberg) to declare Josephus' description and population estimates exaggerated. For her part, Schaberg bemoans the lack of a full-scale scholarly treatment of the site but she does find enough evidence to suggest that Migdal was a place of "traffic, commerce, and the flow of ideas and information" (57, citing J. F. Strange). Fair enough. But when she says that Migdal was "a place where Jews and non-Jews met" (idem), she seems to move beyond the evidence she herself has so carefully mustered. The idea that Migdal's Jews in the early 1st century would have spoken and written principally in Greek rather than Aramaic or Hebrew moves us even further beyond that evidence.

Charlesworth: Jesus' bones? No. Jesus' family tomb? Maybe.

Perhaps to qualify or clarify his earlier statements that seemed to validate Jacobovici's claims, James H. Charlesworth, George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary has posted a statement on the seminary webpage that includes seven observations about the "Jesus, son of Joseph" ossuary. I like them because they span the disciplines from epigraphy to archaeology to social science to history to biblical studies. Here they are, as they appear on Deinde:

1. The scribbling is not an inscription, it is a sloppy graffiti.
2. The name "Jesus" before "son of Joseph" is the most difficult name to read among all the names in the tomb.
   
3. All archaeologists and historians know that the names "Jesus" and "Joseph" are two of the most common names in first-century Jerusalem.
   
4. The ossuary is remarkably ordinary without any ornamentation; this may indicate that the remains placed inside belonged to someone rather common.
   
5. After Jesus' crucifixion as a common criminal, some priests wanted to stop (even kill) those who were claiming that Jesus was the Son of God because God had raised him from the dead. They could have produced the bones of Jesus rather easily and thus thwarted those who claimed that God had raised Jesus from the dead.
   
6. The so-called "Jesus tomb" is not far from the place where Caiaphas's ossuary was recovered. The "Jesus tomb" is decorated and elegant and would have been clearly visible before 70 CE when Roman soldiers destroyed the area. The priests who sought to stop the Palestinian Jesus Movement would have known about this tomb, regardless of who was placed inside.
7. The authors of the Gospels report that Jesus was placed in a tomb prepared for the family of Joseph of Arimathea; there is no New Testament evidence that Jesus' family had a tomb.

Points 1, 2, 4 & 6 are more substantive together than separately. For the Jacobovici hypothesis to be true, we would have to imagine that although the family tomb was "decorated and elegant," Jesus' clan did almost nothing to honor the bones of their most honorable member. Indeed, his ossuary was more hastily and less carefully "inscribed" than any of the others, including the one belonging to little "brother" Jose.

Points 5, 6 & 7, in combination, amount to a historical argument that Jesus' enemies would likely have known where his family tomb was. This has not, to my knowledge, received an adequate response from the documentary's proponents. To be fair, though, the claim that the tomb's location and association with Jesus would have been public knowledge involves a measure of speculation.

Point number 3 (the commonness of two names) is not in disupte but carries little weight if the issue is the statistical probability of a cluster of names.

Two additional thoughts relate to other remarks by Charlesworth. First, about Jesus' "clan":

a good case has been made for the possibility that the tomb of Jesus' "clan" may have been discovered. By "clan" I mean "extended family group". This possibility needs to be researched and debated in a scholarly symposium.

This puzzles me. If Charlesworth doesn't think the "Jesus, son of Joseph" bone box held the bones of Jesus of Nazareth, how would the Talpiot ossuary evidence amount to a "good case" that this particular tomb belonged to Jesus' "clan"? Perhaps he doesn't view his seven observations as ultimately decisive.

Second, about his closing word:

There is nothing that archaeology can provide that can be damaging to Christian faith. Archaeology cannot form faith; it can only inform faith.

This notion that nothing unearthed by archaeology can be damaging to Christian faith is entirely unpersuasive to me. If Christianity is a fundamentally historical faith--a faith that rests on claims about events that really happened--and if archaeology sometimes overturns the way we understand history, shouldn't we be open in principle to archaeological discoveries that undermine faith? What if the Talpiot tomb had been found, intact and undisturbed, with ossuaries inscribed with the names of all known members of Jesus' family (but no one else), each one containing bones (one with nail holes in all the right places)? And what if the same tomb held jars containing previously unknown scrolls (whose authenticity and dates could not be denied) that offered a narrative that completely challenged the Gospels credibility? Would Charlesworth's faith still come through unscathed? It's a crazy hypothetical, of course, so maybe it doesn't help. But I still have to wonder.

Who's your daddy? The contribution of Patronymics to the Talpiot ossuary inscriptions

The ancient practice of patronymics--of naming people based on their fathers--spans both continents and centuries. Examples from four different languages are Johnson, Ben-Gurion, Ibn Ezra, and Barnabas. On the Society of Biblical Literature Forum, Christopher Rollston, Professor of Old Testament and Semitics at Emmanuel School of Relgion, helpfully explains the significance of patronymics for the current Jesus tomb debate. Rollston's point is simply that it is irresponsible to imply that we can know how the tomb's various occupants are related since only two of the inscribed names (Yehudah bar Yeshua and Yeshua bar Yosep) have patronymics:

without patronymics it is not possible for someone in the modern period to ascertain the precise kinship relationships of antiquity

He is not the first to note that the nuclear family the Jacobovici team claims to have found is only one of many possible configurations. But he may be the first to press the point based on the regretable lack of explicit father-child relationships among the inscriptions. Here's what Rollston has to say about Jose/Josah, the name Jacobovici matches with Jesus' brother Jose (Mark 6:3):

Yoseh could be the son of Mattiyah, or the son of Yehudah, or the son of Yeshua'. Perhaps, he was the father of Maryah, or the father of Miriamne, or Mattiyah. Maybe he is the uncle of one of these. Perhaps, Yoseh was the son or father or brother or uncle of someone who was buried in one of the ossuaries that does not contain an inscription. It is possible to suggest that he was a cousin of someone in the tomb. Not all of these are mutually exclusive, but ultimately, because there is neither patronymic, statement of relationship (e.g., brother), or title, any suggestion about the relationship of Yoseh to those interred here remains conjecture and speculation. (emphasis added)

You get the idea: the lack of patronymics dooms us to uncertainty regarding the various family relationships in the Talpiot tomb. But it seems to me that James Tabor, Simcha Jacobovici and Andrey Feuerverger would conceed the point. Their argument only requires that the collocation of these four names--Jesus, Joseph, Mary and Jose (with only one father-child relationship specified)--be sufficiently improbable that it would not have occured more than once in, say, every 600 familes. Rollston's point carries weight: we can only guess at how to draw the family tree. But it is not clear to me that it defeats the argument from probability.

James Tabor on the 10th ossuary

I posted earlier on the shifting fortunes of the so-called "James ossuary." Apart from its role in the on-going antiquities fraud trial of Oded Golan, the issue garnering attention on the blogs is whether or not it might have come from the Talpiot tomb. Even if someone forged brother of Jesus, the first half of the inscription--James, son of Joseph--could be significant in its own right. Two recent blog entries by James Tabor are sure to add fuel to this debate.

In the first, from March 6, 2007, Tabor takes issue with the story (recounted, e.g., here) that Joe Zias claims the 10th Talpiot ossuary was plain, un-inscribed, and thus relegated to the lowly courtyard of the IAA warehouse where it cannot now be located. According to Tabor, Zias acknowledged to him on June 30, 2006, that

he had no idea what might have happened to it but it was possible, in those days, that it was put back in the courtyard and just left and forgotten. He also suggested it might have just been misplaced in the IAA warehouse and gave me examples of other things that had just gone missing, or were just misshelved and could not be found.

So we have two versions of what happened back in 1980, both attributed to the same source: Joe Zias. Curious.

In the second post, dated Mary 7, 2007, Tabor explains that the designation "missing," as applied to the 10th ossuary, was not coined by him or Jacobovici for dramatic effect. Rather, it was used by the curator of the IAA warehouse in Bet Shemesh, when Tabor and Shimon Gibson inquired about the 10th bone box in 2005. And in response to suggestions that the 10th box was placed outside because it was plain, Tabor observes:

the other “plain” ossuary (80.506), of the four listed “uninscribed,” is not much to look at, yet it was retained and is on the shelves today, and there is a photo and description of it in the files. In contrast there is no photo nor description of the “10th.”

Why would some plain boxes be catalogued and photographed while others are not?

I'm struck by three things in reading Tabor's latest posts. One, he knows more than he is telling. Two, back in the 70s and 80s the IAA may have had difficulty handling the influx of archaeological artifacts. And three, Tabor (at least in print) is remaining remarkably gracious, irenic and non-combative, in the face of harsh criticism. If only the rest of us were as well-behaved.

Archaeo-p_o_r_n

I guess I was hoping for more from Ted Koppel and the post-game discussion of the Lost Tomb of Jesus documentary. He did show that he'd done his homework; he'd called a number of the scholars quoted in the film and learned that they weren't nearly so supportive of the film's thesis than they appeared to be on screen.

But Koppel spent so much time challenging Simcha for his lavish historical re-enactments. Apparently they were too well done (or something) and too "powerful" (so, Professor Judy Fentress-Williams from Virginia Theological seminary, one of Koppel's panelists). This is curious to me for two reasons.

First, what's wrong with dramatizing what you are describing? As Darrell Bock rightly pointed out, preachers do it all the time. The film was clearly advocating (commending, proposing) a particular reading of the evidence; it did so explicitly through the journalistic bits and implicitly through the dramatic scenes. I disagree with the film's findings but I thought the acted bits were nicely done. James Cameron knows what he is doing. (Indeed, many of the scientific and archaeological scenes were re-enactments as well. And superbly done. Nothing wrong with telling a well-wrought tale.) The problem is that The Lost Tomb of Jesus consistently fails to live up to the ideals of dispassionate journalism. It isn't an even-handed documentary, it's one-sided advocacy bordering on propaganda.

Second, I thought this angle took valuable time away from more important matters. William Devers and Jonathan Reed were woefully underused. They should have been given much more air time than they got. Rather than have Koppel ask the questions, why not let Dever and Reed pose a few? Both seemed to have much more to say and, from all I've read, their negative assessments of the project are typical of the academy at large, so they spoke on behalf of the (vast?) majority of religion scholars and archaeologists.

Jonathan Reed, archaeologist and University of La Verne professor (and friend), had one of the best phrases of the night. He called the documentary "archaeo-p_o_r_n." I don't know if he coined the term but it's a keeper. Dever leveled a similar charge but used less colorful language. The complaint is that the film makes archaeology look like an Indiana Jones movie or a Dan Brown novel. Real archaeologists, scientists and historians labor in relative obscurity and poverty trying to say only what the evidence requires. And no more. By contrast, the wild speculations of the Jacobovici documentary are to responsible investigation what promiscuous sex is to faithful monogamy.