Thanksgiving from a prison camp

Gregory Petrov died in 1942 in a Soviet prison camp. About his life I know very little except that he composed, shortly before his death, a remarkable hymn. On Good Friday my wife and I attended All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal where Petrov's Akathist was performed by a robust, robed male chorus.

Over the years, my low-church Good Fridays have tended to be introspective and somber. More about Jesus' pain and grief than about God's grace. More about darkness than light. Perhaps that's why Petrov's litany of praises was so breathtaking to me. The cross, draped in black, and the crown of thorns gave silent testimony to the horrors of Roman crucifixion. But we were not summoned to writhe in pain, to reenact an execution. We were called, rather, to gratitude.

Here's a sampling:

Glory to Thee for calling me into being
Glory to Thee, showing me the beauty of the universe
Glory to Thee, spreading out before me heaven and earth
Like the pages in a book of eternal wisdom
Glory to Thee for Thine eternity in this fleeting world
Glory to Thee for Thy mercies, seen and unseen
Glory to Thee through every sigh of my sorrow
Glory to Thee for every step of my life's journey
For every moment of glory
Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age

And another:

O Lord, how lovely it is to be Thy guest. Breeze full of scents; mountains reaching to the skies; waters like boundless mirrors, reflecting the sun's golden rays and the scudding clouds. All nature murmurs mysteriously, breathing the depth of tenderness. Birds and beasts of the forest bear the imprint of Thy love. Blessed art thou, mother earth, in thy fleeting loveliness, which wakens our yearning for happiness that will last for ever, in the land where, amid beauty that grows not old, the cry rings out: Alleluia!

For all 23 sparkling, scented stanzas, go here.

Do we get to say stuff like this on Good Friday? Aren't our hearts supposed to grow dim like the sky over Golgotha? Aren't we supposed to identify with Christ in his abandonment? Or can we remind each other, even on Friday, of the glorious goodness and tender mercies of God? I hope so. God knows there's enough pain and loneliness out there. Soviet prisons are not the only places this hymn needs to be heard.

Robert Gundry on the physicality of Jesus' resurrection in earliest Christian proclamation

In the following guest post, Robert H. Gundry, Scholar-in-residence & professor of New Testament & Greek at Westmont College, enters the Jesus tomb debate by examining James Tabor's claim that the earliest Christians did not proclaim a physical resurrection.

Robert Gundry

There’s an element in the current discussion of Jesus’ family tomb, so-called, that needs more scrutiny, it seems to me. I have in mind the agreement or disagreement between the earliest oral and literary traditions of what happened to Jesus’ corpse, on the one hand, and the interpretation of an ossuary found at Talpiot as having contained the secondarily buried bones of Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand. If I understand Professor James Tabor correctly, he believes:

1. that the said ossuary probably did contain Jesus’ bones;
   
2. that Jesus’ brother James revived and carried forward a messianic movement started by John the Baptist and taken over by Jesus;
   
3. that because of the removal of Jesus’ corpse from the tomb into which Joseph of Arimathea had put it, and because of a secondary burial of Jesus’ bones about a year later, James and others in the revived messianic movement knew that Jesus hadn’t physically risen from the dead, nor did they proclaim that he had;
   
4. that because of visions Paul claimed for himself, he proclaimed that Jesus had risen from the dead;
   
5. that Paul presented Jesus’ resurrection (and ours to come) as spiritual rather than physical; and
   
6. that in the Pauline offshoot from the messianic movement then headed by James, the notion of a spiritual resurrection morphed into legendary stories of a physical resurrection, such as we have in the canonical Gospels (The Jesus Dynasty [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006]; idem, jesusdynasty.com/blog/).
   

With such an understanding, there’s no disagreement between the earliest literary version of Jesus’ resurrection—that is, Paul’s presentation of it as spiritual rather than physical—and an ossuary’s having contained the bones of Jesus.

It would be problematic, though, if the earliest oral and literary versions of Jesus’ resurrection presented it as physical. For the earlier the notion of a physical resurrection of Jesus, the greater the tension between that notion and the knowledge of Jesus’ original followers that his bones lay in an ossuary of nearby, known location, especially if those who held the notion of a physical resurrection and those who had contrary knowledge of Jesus’ ossuary-interred bones were in conversation with each other. On so fundamental a point we should expect some literary evidence of disagreement among them. And the tension becomes even more severe if the original followers of Jesus knew about his bones and some of these followers had themselves interred those bones yet proclaimed him as physically resurrected.

Professor Tabor affirms correctly that Paul and Jesus’ original followers were in conversation with each other: “There is little doubt that the apostle Paul was accepted into the inner circles of Jesus’ original followers,” and they “publicly endorsed his missionary preaching to the Gentile Roman world (Galatians 2:9). It was what he preached and taught that began to create problems” (The Jesus Dynasty, 262). But Tabor immediately goes on to discuss Paul’s view of “a heavenly Christ,” including a nonphysically resurrected one, as though that view of him created problems for Jesus’ original followers. Not so! As Paul clearly points out in Galatians 2, the problems had to do with issues of circumcision, law-keeping in general, and table fellowship. There’s nothing about a problem of disagreement over whether Jesus was physically resurrected.

To support a Pauline presentation of a nonphysically resurrected Jesus, though, Professor Tabor states that Paul “claimed to hear a disembodied ‘voice’ that he identified as ‘words’ of Jesus” (The Jesus Dynasty, 262). But the texts Tabor cites in note 4 on page 262—that is, 2 Corinthians 12:9; 1 Thessalonians 4:15; 1 Corinthians 11:23—say nothing about a disembodied voice. (Nor, for that matter, does the word voice appear in those texts despite Tabor’s putting quotation marks around it.)

Professor Tabor’s view that Paul presented a nonphysically resurrected Jesus rests above all, however, on Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 15:44, 46, 50, about which Tabor states, “Paul, our earliest witness to the resurrection, speaks of a ‘physical body’ and a ‘spiritual body,’ and though it is a body, he clearly presents both the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead at the end of the age, as putting off the flesh like a garment and being transformed into a higher spirit life.” Likewise, Tabor writes that according to Paul, at the second coming the Christian dead will be resurrected “in gloriously transformed spiritual bodies” (The Jesus Dynasty, 264), that Christians still living at the time “will likewise be instantaneously changed from flesh to spirit” (ibid.), and that “Paul seems to be willing to use the term ‘resurrection’ to refer to something akin to an apparition or vision. And when he does mention Jesus’ body he says it was a ‘spiritual’ body. But a ‘spiritual body' and an ‘embodied spirit’ could be seen as very much the same phenomenon” (ibid., 232). (Actually, Paul talks about a spiritual body only in connection with Christians’ resurrection, but the parallel with Jesus’ resurrection, which Tabor draws, is to be accepted.)

Has Professor Tabor understood Paul’s discussion of resurrection correctly? I think not. In the first place, Paul contrasts “a spiritual body” with “a soulish body,” not with a “physical body” (1 Cor 15:44, 46). But what do these expressions mean? Take first the adjective “spiritual.” When Paul describes some Christians in Corinth as “spiritual” rather than “fleshly” or “carnal,” he doesn’t mean that some Christians in Corinth are floating around its streets in a ghostly form as opposed to others who are pounding the pavement with their feet. No, he’s describing some Christians as taught, filled, and led by the Holy Spirit, whose temple is their present physical bodies, as opposed to others dominated by their sinful proclivities despite the indwelling Spirit (1 Cor 2:10–16; 3:1; 6:19; 14:37; Gal 6:1). When Paul speaks of “spiritual gifts,” he means gifts given by the Holy Spirit (Rom 1:11; 1 Cor 12:1; 14:1). The manna, the water-supplying rock, and the Mosaic law—all in the Old Testament—are “spiritual” in that the Holy Spirit gave them to the Israelites (Rom 7:14; 1 Cor 10:3–4). And the gospel is “spiritual” as given by the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:27; 1 Cor 9:11). So we should capitalize the adjective Spiritual and dismiss the notion that it indicates nonphysicality. In Paul’s view, that is to say, the resurrected body is Spiritual not in the sense of nonphysicality (he even switches back and forth between “body” and “flesh” in 1 Cor 15:35–41) but in the sense of its having been raised by God’s Spirit, which is none other than Christ’s Spirit, rather than procreated, as in the case of our present bodies, animated as they are by the soul—hence the contrast with “soulish bodies.” But let Paul speak for himself to the effect that in resurrection a Spiritual body is a body raised by the Holy Spirit: “The last Adam [Christ] became a life-making Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45); “But if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will make alive also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwells in you” (Rom 8:11).

Ah, but what about 1 Corinthians15:50, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”? Professor Tabor appeals also to this text for a nonphysical understanding of resurrection on Paul’s part (The Jesus Dynasty, 264). Well, the immediately following statement reads, “Nor does perishability inherit imperishability.” These two statements parallel each other, so that the phrase “flesh and blood” corresponds to “perishability.” Together, the terms refer to the present body in respect to the perishability of its flesh and blood, not in respect to the physicality of its flesh and blood. For Paul proceeds to say that it is “this perishable body” that will put on imperishability and “this mortal body” that will put on immortality (1 Cor 15:51–55, especially verse 53). And since for Paul the resurrection of Christians will follow the pattern of Christ’s resurrection, as Tabor recognizes, Paul must have thought that when Christ was raised, it was the perishable, mortal body of his earthly lifetime that put on imperishability and immortality, not that he was raised and exalted to heaven in some nonphysical form.

According to 1 Corinthians 15:1–7 Paul “received” information about Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and appearances as resurrected to Cephas (Peter) and others, including James. On the basis of Galatians 1:10–23 Professor Tabor interprets this reception as a direct revelation from heaven rather than as the passing on of tradition by one or more earlier followers of Jesus. But in Galatians Paul is talking about the gospel he preached before going to Jerusalem and conversing with Cephas three years after that direct revelation, whereas in 1 Corinthians he’s talking about the sort of information he’d get from one or more earlier believers. So contrary to Tabor’s earlier cited identification of Paul as “our earliest witness to the resurrection,” our earliest witnesses to it are the ones or one (probably Cephas) who passed this information on to Paul. Or, rather, our earliest witnesses are those who claimed to have seen Jesus as resurrected before Paul did, as admitted by Paul in his phrases, “And last of all . . . also to me” (1 Cor 15:8). Therefore we have to investigate not only Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ resurrection, whether it was physical or nonphysical, but also what was the understanding of it by the earlier witnesses and traditioner(s). “Cephas,” the Aramaic form of “Peter,” and the two instances of “according to the Scriptures” in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 favor that the tradition stemmed from Jesus’ original followers, Jews still closely tied to their ancestral faith, Judaism. Now Tabor correctly writes, “In Judaism to claim that someone has been ‘raised from the dead’ is not the same as to claim that one has died and exists as a spirit or soul in the heavenly world. What the gospels [here we might substitute the witnesses and traditioners behind 1 Cor 15:3–7] claim about Jesus is that the tomb [in which he ‘was buried,’ according to the pre-Pauline tradition] was empty, and that his dead body was revived to life [‘raised,’ according to that same tradition]—wounds and all. He was not a phantom or a ghost . . .” (The Jesus Dynasty, 232). So it looks as though those witnesses and traditioners, given their Judaistic upbringing, would have understood Jesus’ resurrection as physical just as Paul did and just as we should expect in that by definition “resurrection” means the “standing up” of a formerly a supine corpse.

We’re left with this question: If Jesus’ bones were known to be lying in an ossuary near Jerusalem, how is it that the earliest literary tradition in 1 Corinthian 15:1–7, the even earlier oral tradition stemming from Jesus’ original disciples, and Paul’s properly exegeted understanding—how is it that all of them presented Jesus’ resurrection as physical? This question seems to me hard to answer.

James Tabor's curious appeal to Randy Ingermanson

James Tabor's latest post is a plug for the book by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino that accompanies the Discovery Channel documentary. As someone who bought the book (before watching the film), I agree with Tabor that the book moves along nicely and tells a good tale. It's a fun read with great graphics.

For additional praise of the book, Tabor points us to Randy Ingermanson, self-described physicist (U. C. Berkeley Ph.D.) and author whose work lies at the interesection of faith and science. But here's the thing: the page (posted March 3, 2007) that contains Ingermanson's brief commendation of the book is also the page where he lays out, in great detail, what I consider to be the most damning critique to date of the statistical argument for identifying the Talpiot tomb with Jesus and his family. Ingermanson writes as a Christian (so one could suspect him of bias against the documentary) but there isn't a hint of defensiveness or righteous indignation. And he uses phrases like "binomial distribution"without breaking a sweat.

Bottom line: Ingermanson's statistical argument (which you really should read in its entirety) reaches a stunning conclusion: the odds are 10,000 to 1 against this being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. I'll let others (hopefully including Andrey Feuerverger) respond to Ingermanson's math. All I'll say is that his calculations (using the same basic data) do not bode well for the Jesus family tomb proposal.

Tabor has read enough of the post to know that Ingermanson disputes the book's thesis. But what puzzles me is that he cites the incidental comment about the book but completely ignores the substance of a potentially damning argument. Hopefully Feuerverger (and qualified others) will respond.

In the mean time, here are a few of Ingermanson's points. For the rest, do see for yourself.

• Since Maria and Mariamenon are two of many variants of the name Mary, they should be treated as such. (If one ossuary had read, say, Mariam, Jacobovici would have been just as inclined to investigate the Jesus family connection.)To treat Mariamenon as more than a variant of Mary, and thus as more statistically significant, one has to show that this variant is distinctly appropriate as a designation for Mary Magdalene. This is precisely what they have not done.
  
• The correct factor to use when estimating the probability that we have found Jesus' tomb is 80,000, not 1,000. That is, we want to know "how many men in Jerusalem could have conceivably had a father named Joseph and who could have been buried with five persons with a given set of names related to Jesus of Nazareth (2 Marys, 3 males with names chosen from the known brothers and disciples of Jesus)." The number of males who lived during the relevant period is estimated at 80,000.
  
• The proper question is not: "How many such men might have existed and then been buried in family tombs of the type we've found?" Feuerverger "effectively added a factor that is irrelevant -- being buried in a family tomb. There is no reason to believe that the family of Jesus of Nazareth was more likely to have a family tomb than other families."
• "The probability is VERY low that Jesus of Nazareth had a son." This fact should have been included in the Feuerverger's calculations.

UPDATE (March 12, 2007): In a comment posted on Mark Goodacre's NTGateway blog James Tabor, gentle and respectful as ever, has promised a reply to the substance of Ingermanson's critique:

What a model of sensibility and good taste. I do not think he is correct on his statistical analysis as far as I can follow it, but I want to consider it further and run it by the people I am working with. I have a take on the historical circumstances that I think really adds to the picture considerably from the work I have done on the Jesus Family.

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.

Was the Talpiot tomb robbed in antiquity?

Thanks to James Tabor for posting the preliminary report written by the late Yosef Gath, the archaeologist who was assigned to the Talpiot excavation in 1980. Shimon Gibson is credited for the English translation. It confirms that when excavated the tomb floor lay buried under a meter of soil. Two other lines caught my eye:

It appeared that the blocking stone for the entrance had been removed

This seems to be describing the state of the tomb before it was discovered by construction workers (though this point should be confirmed). Consistent with this, the report also notes that:

Two ossuary lids, found on the floor of the central room, under the fill of soil, indicate an ancient disturbance.

Presumably these two points complicate an argument that the remains (including DNA material) in each box must correspond to the names on the lid. And they raise other questions. Do we know to which ossuaries the two lids belonged? Can we know when the grave was disturbed? And for how long it stood open? Tabor promises to add his own comments that may address some of these points.

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.

Ground Zero in the Jesus Tomb Debate

Whether due to fatigue or the onset of March Madness, "Jesus tomb" blogging is definitely slowing. The key issues continue to be two:

1. The statistical improbability of the collection of names inscribed on the Talpiot ossuaries.

How significant is it that we would have in one tomb the names Jesus son of Joseph, Maria and Jose, all of which are known to belong to Jesus' nuclear family? [Far less clear is the statistical relevance of the other three Talpiot names: Mariamenou Mara, Mati and Judah son of Jesus. As for James son of Joseph brother of Jesus on the separate James ossuary, the jury is literally out.] Evidently Andrey Feuerverger, Professor of Statistics at U. of T., has been quoted and misquoted, understood and misunderstood. Alas, most of us know just enough to know that we don't know enough to add anything useful to the debate. Meanwhile the beseiged James Tabor, aided by statistical "advisors," continues to find the stats in the documentary persuasive and promises more blog entries to come.

2. The historical improbability of several key claims.
These claims include:

• that Jesus' family would have had a family tomb in Jerusalem
• that Jesus' family would have continued to use a tomb (containing Jesus' bones) between 30 and 70 C.E. while the Jesus movement was emerging
  
• that Jesus of Nazareth was married
• that Jesus of Nazareth had a son
• that Mariamenon was a name applied to Mary Magdalene in the 1st century
  
• that Magdala (Mary's home town on the Sea of Galilee) was a center of Greek language and trade (thus explaining why her inscription is in Greek while her "husband's" is in Hebrew characters)
  

Lingering Questions and Loose Ends

Here's a list of lingering questions about the Jesus tomb controversy. Several of them were prompted by remarks from archaeologist Joe Zias whose "viewer's guide" I noted earlier:

1. What are the odds that a DNA sample taken from any given ossuary is from the name of the person inscribed on it? Joe Zias says he "published in 1992 a tomb with 15 ossuaries, 88 people and one name." That's almost six skeletons per ossuary, likely added over a period of decades.

2. Was secondary burial (i.e., the use of ossuaries) practiced only by the conservative religious fringe of Jewish society, as Eric Meyers (a renowned archaeologist and former professor of mine) seemed to suggest on NPR today? Here's a quote from his interview:

Secondary burial was practiced by Jews in the first century, first century BCE as well, by very, very pious--the most pious--individuals whom many identify with [an] extreme version of the Pharisees. This is an odd group for Jesus to be associated with.

3. Can we verify that a dated (and undisputed) picture of the James ossuary confirms it was in Oded Golan's collection in 1976, four years before the Talpiot tomb was opened? According to Joe Zias:

last week . . . Oded Golan the owner of the ossuary in question, who is on trial for forging objects, produced a photograph of the ossuary with a time stamp 1976, four years before the Talpiot tomb was accidentally discovered!

In one post Ben Witherington refers to a "1970s-era picture"; in another, dated Feb 26, 2007, he is more specific:

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.

So one version of this story suggests a date-stamped picture, and another has the FBI doing tests to determine the date.

UPDATE (Mar. 8, 2007): This article in Haaretz, dated Feb. 9, 2007 (o.k. I'm slow), appears to have answers to my questions. The relevant part is this:

In the defense's photographs, dated 1976, the ossuary is shown on a shelf, apparently in Golan's home. In an enlargement, the whole inscription can be seen with great difficulty. The photo was examined by Gerald Richard, a former FBI agent and an expert for the defense. Richard testified that "Nothing was noted that would indicate or suggest that they were not produced in March 1976 as indicated on the stamps appearing on the reverse side of each print."

Golan's attorney, Lior Beringer, told Haaretz that the photos support the defense's position. "The prosecution claims that Golan forged the inscription after the beginning of 2000. But here is a detailed report from an FBI photo lab that states that the inscription existed at least since the 70s," Beringer said. "It is unreasonable that someone would forge an inscription like this in the 70s and suddenly decide to come out with it in 2002," he added.

The date of the photo is also significant legally because any antiquity discovered in Israel since the passage of the 1978 Antiquities Law belongs to the state.

If this withstands scrutiny it could conceivably accomplish two things simultaneously:
1. Exonerate Golan of charges that he forged the James ossuary.
2. Preclude the possibility that the James ossuary was originally found in the Talpiot tomb.
Fascinating.


On a related note, Jonathan Reed was adamant on Ted Koppel's panel last night that the archaeologists who removed all ten ossuaries would not have missed an inscription on the 10th one, as Jacobovici and Tabor are suggesting. Of course, if it were blank, the James ossuary must be eliminated from the equation.

4. Can we confirm that the James ossuary is indeed 20% different in (at least) one dimension compared to the so-called 10th ossuary from the Talpiot cave? Here's Zias once more:

an enterprising skeptic here in Jerusalem checked the dimensions of the two 'identical' ossuaries and found that the Talpiot plain white "missing" ossuary is approximately 20% longer than the James brother of Jesus ossuary.

Who was this "enterprising skeptic"? Where is this information available? This is important because James Tabor, in The Jesus Dynasty, p.32, says otherwise:

Just recently I noticed that the dimensions of the missing tenth ossuary are precisely the same, to the centimeter, to those of the James ossuary.

UPDATE (March 12, 2007): J. D. Walters points us to the relevant measurements of the "James" bone box) on his site, Theory of Everything: God.

according to the Biblical Archeology Review reportof the James ossuary, these are the dimensions given: "This ossuary is . . . 20 inches long (50.5 cm) at the base and flairs out to almost 22 inches (56 cm) at the top. . . The ossuary is 10 inches (25 cm) wide and 12 inches (30.5 cm) high.

As for the missing "10th" ossuary, its measurements are given in Amos Kloner's 1996 report, conveniently available on the Discovery Channel site, as 60 x 26 x 30 cm. Given this discrepancy--roughly 10 cm difference in length at the base, 1 cm difference in width--Walters presses Tabor to back his claim that the two ossuaries are the same size in a lively exchange (sizzling by academic standards) in the comments of Mark Goodacre's March 8 post:

Kloner 1996, based on the original notes of Yosef Gat, states the dimensions of the 10th ossuary as 60-26-30 (cm). The official report on the James Ossuary at BAR lists the dimensions of the James Ossuary as 50.5-25-30.5(cm). Yet Dr Tabor claimed in his book that the dimensions of the 10th missing ossuary match those of the James Ossuary "to the centimeter". So the question is, does he have measurements of the 10th ossuary and the James Ossuary different from those cited in the literature, and if so where did he get them from? And if not, how does he justify this claim?

In response, Tabor indicates that he isn't free or ready to give a fuller account. This seems strange but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps there are conflicting accounts of who measured what (and how carefully) during the 1980 dig. And there's always politics. In Isael, archaeology is always political.

5. What is the evidence that this tomb, or any other, was a family tomb? I don't doubt that family tombs existed, but I'm wondering how we know. Were all tombs family tombs? And how common would it be to have non-family buried in a family tomb?

6. Is there any evidence from ancient Jewish sources of Friday (pre-Sabbath) burials in tombs that were only intended to store the body until after the Sabbath? Is there any evidence at all of any body being buried with the full intention of retrieving and re-burying it in another tomb?

7. According to the Gospels (Luke 23:50-54; John 19:38-42), Jesus was buried in a new tomb near the site of execution--a tomb that presumably belonged to someone other than Jesus' family since the burial was arranged by council member Joseph from the town of Arimathea. Doesn't this story imply that Jesus' family did not have a family tomb in the Jerusalem area?

8. What do we know about the relationship of social class to burial practice? In general the literature suggests that rich people had tombs and poor people used trenches (and thus no secondary burial). Jodi Magness' recent article on the SBL Forum makes precisely this claim. (Magness' article is also now available on the Biblical Archaeology Review site.) Do we know how rich one had to be to have a family tomb? What other factors (besides wealth) might cause one to be buried in a tomb rather than a trench?

9. What do we really know about the social standing or class of Jesus' Galilean family? Were Jesus and his disciples lower class as Jodi Magness and most scholars contend or is James Tabor right that they weren't as poor as Christian tradition tends to assume?

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.

If they had different moms they must be married (?)

The Discovery Channel documentary website deserves some kind of award for the way it lays out the issues, among them the role of DNA in the investigation of the Talpiot ossuaries.

Turns out a lab up in Ontario (my home province) tested residue from two (and only two) ossuaries: the one inscribed Yeshua bar Yosef and the one inscribed Mariamene Mara. Chris Heard, religion professor at Pepperdine, does a nice job sorting out what these tests can, and cannot, show. Chris points out that:

the only DNA-based claim made by the filmmakers is that the Talpiot tomb’s Mariamne Mara was neither Yeshua bar Yehosef’s sister nor mother.

I'll wait until I see the documentary to decide whether or not they imply more than they claim. I'm betting they do.

Even with this modest claim, however, there are problems, like the apparent assumption that the DNA residue the Canadian scientists retrieved belonged to the person whose name is on the box. As Chris puts it:

Unless the DNA in question can be shown to have come from the person named in the ossuary’s inscription, the DNA evidence is absolutely meaningless for reconstructing the relationship between the parties buried in the tomb.

Chris would be correct, of course, if we were trying to solve a murder case. The jury would have reasonable doubt. Whether the same standard of proof should apply to this case is, I suppose, an interesting question.

Moving on, Chris outlines the logic of their argument as he understands it:

(1) The Talpiot tomb is a family tomb. (2) The only women buried in a family tomb would be (a) women who married into the family or (b) women born into the family who, at the time of their death, had never been married. (3) Since Yeshua and Miriamne were not related, Miriamne must have married into the family.

Oddly enough, the filmmakers apparently assume that

if Miriamne married into the family, she married Yeshua. Four of the six ossuary inscriptions name men. Why should it be assumed that Miriamne was Yeshua’s wife? Why not Yehudah’s wife, or Yose’s wife, or Matia’s wife? And, of course, the possibility would still remain that she was Yeshua’s daughter, or Yehudah’s or Yose’s or Matia’s daughter, and so on down the line. The full range of possibilities has not been explored. Rather, the filmmakers have jumped to a "sexy" conclusion that is not contravened by the available evidence, but neither is it really supported by the evidence.

Interesting stuff. For more, read Chris' full post and check back; I'm guessing he'll have more to say before long.

Early Christianity's Dirty Little Secret?

My good friend and Biblical scholar, Brian Schultz (Ph.D. Bar Ilan University), poses the following question about the Jesus-family-tomb hypothesis:

How could Christianity spread as a religion about a resurrected messiah when the entire Jerusalem community, including James, brother of Jesus and leader of the church, knew where Jesus' tomb could be found?

Good question. Brian is assuming, with good reason, that the location of any given family tomb would not be a secret. He continues:

Even discussing the possibility that this tomb could be of Jesus is an insult to the intelligence of 1st century people, both Christians who believed the message, and Jews who felt they had to fight against it without ever appealing to his existing tomb that continued to be in use for at least another generation!

The point is that as Jesus' family tomb, it would have been used and reused over the next generation, presumably up until 70 C.E. Is there any evidence anywhere that this location, or any location, was rumored to be the final resting place of Jesus? The closest we have, I suspect, are texts that hint at the possibility that the body was moved from somewhere else (Mt 28:13; Jn 20:2, 13, 15). Which isn't very close.

As Schultz reminds us, the Jesus-family-tomb hypothesis requires that this tomb be used by Jesus' family over several generations precisely when his family and others are proclaiming that Jesus' body did not stay in the grave. Personally, I find the idea that Jesus' family had a dirty little secret about as plausible as the idea that Mary Magdalene snuck off to France so her daughter could marry into the French royal bloodline.

Have we finally found the Holy Grail?

As I follow the raucous debate on the web and exchange e-mails with colleagues, a list of questions is taking shape. Here's one.

Is Mary Magdalene's name on one of the ossuaries?

It is well known that Mary is a very common name in the period. I count 6 Marys out of 16 named women in the Gospels. And, of course, Magdalene refers to her home town, Magdala, not her last name.

The filmmakers contend that one of the ossuaries from the Talpiot tomb belongs to Mary Magdalene. If they're right, the argument runs, this not only increases the likelihood that the Talpiot tomb in southern Jerusalem has ties to Jesus of Nazareth, but it also supports the idea (popularly advanced in The Da Vinci Code) that the two of them were married. So Dan Brown was right after all. Or was he?.

How solid is this link between Mary Magdalene and the Greek name on the ossuary: Mariamenou e(?) Mara ? According to NT scholar Richard Bauckham, quoted in Jim Davila's blog , not very. Bauckham, relayed by Davila, makes several salient points (emphases added):

The form of the name on the ossuary in question is Mariamenou. This is a Greek genitive case, used to indicate that the ossuary belongs to Mary (it means 'Mary's' or 'belonging to Mary'). The nominative would be Mariamenon. Mariamenon is a diminutive form, used as a form of endearment. The neuter gender is normal in diminutives used for women.

This diminutive, Mariamenon, would seem to have been formed from the name Mariamene, a name which is attested twice elsewhere (in the Babatha archive and in the Jewish catacombs at Beth She’arim). It is an unusual variant of Mariame. In the Babatha document it is spelt with a long e in the penultimate syllable, but in the Bet She’arim inscription the penultimate syllable has a short e. This latter form could readily be contracted to the form Mariamne, which is found, uniquely, in the Acts of Philip.

So we have, on the one hand, a woman known by the diminutive Mariamenon, in the ossuary, and, on the other hand, Mary Magdalen, who is always called in the Greek of the New Testament Maria but seems to be called in a much later source Mariamne. Going by the names alone they could be the same woman, but the argument for this is tenuous.

A final point about the Mariamenou inscription. The inscription also has a second name Mara. When Rahmani published this inscription in his catalogue of ossuaries he conjectured that the Greek particle ‘e’ (meaning ‘or’) should be supplied between the two names, making them alternative names for the same woman. The ‘e’ is not actually in the inscription, nor is there space for it between the two names. It is better to suppose that the bones of two women (or perhaps a woman and her child, the diminutive Mariamenon being used for the latter) were placed in the same ossuary (this would not be not unusual). The name Mara is known to have been used as an abbreviation of the name Martha. The programme makers take it to be the Aramaic word for ‘master,’ but this is implausible in the context. Beside the name Mariamenou on an ossuary, one would expect Mara to be a name, and since it is attested as a name this is the obviously correct reading."

Mark Goodacre of Duke University is equally skeptical about the Mariamne-Mary Magdalene connection (emphasis added):

For Jacobovici, it was the turning point for him to discover that Mariamne was Mary Magdalene's 'real name'. The bad news for him is that it is only her real name if one goes with a fourth century text, the Acts of Philip, that has no chance of containing first century traditions, and which itself is not explicitly talking about the Mary Magdalene we have mentioned in the Gospels. Wherever she appears in first century Christian texts, she is always 'Maria', as are the other several Marys in the New Testament.

The Documentary is (by all accounts) counting big time on this identification of Mariamne Mara as Mary Magdalene. But this identification is mired in a bog of speculation and an uncritical appeals to a source that is both late in date and unclear in meaning.

UPDATE (3-1-07): The full version of Richard Bauckham's thorough discussion of the names on the ossuaries (Mariamenou-Mara, Yehuda bar Yeshua, Matia, Yeshua bar Yehosef, Yose, Maria) is now available on Chrisendom.