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.

Stats anyone?

The key statistician used in the Talpiot documentary research was Andrey Feuerverger whose reply to critics and inquirers is now available on his website. Mark Goodacre reflects on some of his comments.

UPDATE (3-9-07): All agree that Feuerverger's statistics can only be as good as the assumptions underlying them. Chris Heard, over at Higgaion, notes problems with some of those assumptions. He links to posts by Mark Goodacre and Richard Bauckham but also offers his own insights. For example, on Feuerverger's assumption that Yose/Yosah on ossuary #4 (allegedly the Joses of Mark 6:3) is not the same person as Yehosef (father of Yeshua) on ossuary #1 (allegedly Joseph, the father of Jesus of Nazareth), Heard observes:

I’m not sure why this should be assumed. I suppose that it seems common-sensical to think that the same person wouldn’t be named in two different ways on ossuaries in the same tomb, but then again, it’s hardly a slam-dunk case. The filmmakers argue that יוסה is a diminutive form of יהוסף, but that the Talpiot יוסה is not the Talpiot יהוסף, but at the very same time, they want you to believe that the Talpiot Μαριαμήνου Μἀρα is Mary Magdalene, even though no early Christian source—not even the apocryphal Acts of Philip, on which the filmmakers apparently rely—calls Mary Magdalene by this name. This double-standard—the same man couldn’t possibly be known by his full name on one ossuary and a nickname on the other, but a woman could be known on her ossuary by an otherwise completely unattested name—undermines the entire case.

Jacobovici may be right that Yehosef and Yose are different people, but it does seem to be a case of assuming what you set out to prove.

Viewers' Guide to The Lost Tomb of Jesus

Joe Zias has posted a very useful (and highly critical) "viewers guide" to the Talpiot tomb documentary. Among many interesting comments you'll find remarks like this:

Whereas their attempt as probability looks impressive, a 600 to 1 chance that it is the 'Family', it falls flat when one realizes that the info. given to the statistician was that of a nuclear family of ca 10 people whereas the truth of the matter is that the family of 10 is an extended family of maybe 50 or more comprising 4-5 generations, as a result it simply cannot be computed. They knew this and I have the feeling that this info. was not divulged to the mathematician.

Joe Zias is a highly respected anthropologist/archaeologist known for his sound judgment and solid scholarship. Here's a nice piece by Zias on ancient crucifixion (in case you've had enough of the Talpiot tomb).

DNA Test proves Virgin Birth!

Well, no. Not yet, anyway. But as Allessandra Stanley says in today's New York Times, the same logic driving the Lost Family Tomb findings could be put to use in other ways:

forensic research could solve all kinds of mysteries. If Y-chromosome samples from Joseph and Jesus showed no genetic link between father and son, then the Discovery Channel could take credit for proving the Virgin birth.

She's kidding, of course, but still.