Another Round on the Talpiot Tomb

James Tabor continues to champion the assertion that the Talpiot Tomb could be the tomb of Jesus. He comments today on a recently published statistical analysis of the likelihood the tomb could be the real deal:

At long last, just over a year after the initial publicity over the Talpiot “Jesus Family Tomb,” the formal paper of Prof. Andrey Feuerverger of the University of Toronto has appeared in The Annals of Applied Statistics, the academic journal of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (Vol. 2, no. 1, March, 2008). Feuerverger’s paper, titled “Statistical Analysis of an Archaeological Find,” runs just over 50 pages with notes and bibliography. It is introduced by editor Stephen E. Fienberg and followed by another 50 pages of material from ten professional respondents. Feuerverger then offers a dozen page Rejoinder. Fortunately, for those not near a research library the entire issue, devoted to this subject, is available on the Web through Project Euclid.

This article should put to rest the many spurious claims that Feuerverger subsequently recanted his views on the probabilities of the Talpiot Tomb belonging to Jesus of Nazareth and his family, most recently repeated by Thomas Madden on the National Review Web site over Easter. It will also show the complete inaccuracy of the assertion made by a number of scholars following the January Princeton Seminar conference in Jerusalem that “A statistical analysis of the relatively common names engraved on the ossuaries leaves no doubt that the probability of the Talpiot tomb belonging to Jesus’ family is virtually nil if the Mariamene named on one of the ossuaries is not Mary Magdalene.”

...

Based on the calculations of Elliot and Kilty, whose paper can be downloaded from the Web, and as discussed by Camil Fuchs, who along with Andrey Feuerverger, sat on the panel at the Jerusalem conference dealing with statistics, the name cluster, even leaving Mariamene out entirely, with no assumptions regarding Mary Magdalene, show a probability factor of .48. This result is far from “virtually nil,” in fact it is very close to 1/2, meaning if we had two tombs to examine, one of them would be the Jesus tomb. Both Ingermanson and Fuchs are among the respondents to the published Feuerverger paper.

It now appears, with Feuerverger’s paper in print, that we have finally reached the point where a more responsible and accurate discussion of the Talpiot tomb name frequencies and statistics can take place. We can at least say that anyone who asserts “the names are common,” as a way of dismissing the evidence, is either completely ignorant of what we now know, or uninterested in an informed and truly academic discussion.

I look forward to reading the replies.

Talpiot Tomb Update

Last week the Jerusalem Post ran an interesting interview with James Charlesworth, who chaired the Jerusalem symposium on the tomb. Charlesworth is professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary and director of its Dead Sea Scrolls Project. Here is part of the interview:

You consider that constellation of names [inscribed on the ossuaries in the tomb] to be extraordinary?

Yes, I'd use the word extraordinary. If I'd found a 'Jesus son of Joseph,' a 'Mary' and a 'Jose,' I certainly wouldn't have tried to suppress the possibility it related to a human figure. I also wouldn't have jumped to the conclusion that we have a match.

It should have elicited a 'Wow! What have we found?'
And that's where we are now. I want to get an honest inquiry going, in which you are open to every possible conclusion.

In your concluding remarks at the symposium, you rejected the idea that Jesus's bones were buried at the tomb with objections that seemed more subjective than rigorously scientific. [Charlesworth described the 'Yeshua son of Yehosef' ossuary inscription as 'graffiti, just scratching,' and the ossuary as 'lousy,' adding that he found it unthinkable that the followers of Jesus would have put 'the remains of "the messiah" in such a horrible ossuary.']

I don't rule it out. It's my explanation for why it is difficult to accept it.

If Jesus's bones were found, would that undermine Christian doctrine?

There are some who say, 'if his bones are not in heaven... then I can't be a Christian.' My response is that Christian faith is emotional, but it's based upon reflection of some very brilliant Jews who were making extraordinary claims about a man who is human and who brought God's presence into their midst.

I'm taking people back to the sources. What does it mean to accept that Jesus was fully human and fully divine? Too often the confession is reduced to one statement: Jesus is God. That is heresy.

And the legitimate formulation?

Jesus is fully human and fully divine. That's the anchor of the faith. That's what distinguishes Christianity from Greek myth...

To claim that God raised Jesus from the dead does not mean it was the transmigration of the soul or a bodiless resurrection. The confession from the beginning was that somehow, incomprehensibly, the resurrected Jesus had a body, but it wasn't a body that would decay again.

Speaking for myself, I can't imagine any archeological discovery that would hinder Jewish or Christian faith. If we found the bones of Jesus, I can still confess that I experience a resurrected Lord.

All of us are on one side of the grave, and we don't know what's on the other side of that eternal divide.

Charlesworth is in Israel until April and he is working with the authorities to obtain the permits necessary to take a team of experts into the tombs and do some further exploring. Part of the controversy around the tomb has risen because of the poor job done by the team that made the discovery. Among other mistakes they contaminated the DNA samples. So stay tuned.

More on the Lost Tomb of Jesus

A couple of days ago I posted a link to the article in Time about the recent conference in Jerusalem on the Talpiot Tomb. Inscriptions on the Tomb include Jesus son of Joseph and Mariamne (the spelling is very important), among others. Could this be the family tomb of Jesus and Mary Magdalene? The tomb and this provocative possibility were explored in the Discover Channel documentary, also linked to in that post.

It appears that some of the scholars who attended the Jerusalem conference were not happy with the media coverage it generated. They have posted a letter on the Duke University Religion Department blog. Here is part of it:

A statistical analysis of the relatively common names engraved on the ossuaries leaves no doubt that the probability of the Talpiot tomb belonging to Jesus’ family is virtually nil if the Mariamene named on one of the ossuaries is not Mary Magdalene. In fact, epigraphers at the conference contested the reading of the inscription as “Mariamene.” Furthermore, Mary Magdalene is not referred to by the Greek name Mariamene in any literary sources before the late second-third century AD. An expert panel of scholars on the subject of Mary in the early church dismissed out of hand the suggestion that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus, and no traditions suggest that Jesus had a son named Judah (another person named on an ossuary from this tomb). Moreover, the DNA evidence used to suggest that Jesus had a wife was dismissed by the Hebrew University team that devised such procedures and who have conducted such research all over the world. Even the ossuary inscribed with the name “Jesus son of Joseph” is paralleled by a find from another Jerusalem tomb, and at least one speaker said the reading of the name “Jesus” on the Talpiot tomb ossuary was not certain. Testimony from archaeologists who were involved in the excavation of the Talpiot tomb left no doubt that the “missing” tenth ossuary was plain and uninscribed, eliminating any possibility that it is the so-called “James ossuary.”

The identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus’ family flies in the face the canonical Gospel accounts, which are the earliest traditions describing Jesus’ death and burial. According to these accounts Jesus was placed in the tomb of a prominent follower named Joseph of Arimathea. Since at least the early fourth century Christians have venerated the site of Jesus’ burial at the spot marked by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In contrast, not a single tradition, Christian or otherwise, preserves any reference to or recollection of a family tomb of Jesus anywhere in Jerusalem.

As you can see, a key piece of contentious evidence revolves around the translation and meaning of the inscription Mariamne. Could this be translated in any conceivable way as Mary Magdalene? These scholars say not. Rice University Professor April DeConick, who was also at the conference, has more to say about this on her blog. She too is skeptical, although she also lays out her reasons for not signing the letter.

But what is most interesting in this letter, as DeConick also notes, is the way it uncritically assumes the historicity of the gospel accounts of Jesus tomb. DeConick says:

I found the Duke letter arresting because it takes at historical face value the canonical stories, with little appreciation for critical textual methods. The proof that the Talpiot Tomb can't be Jesus' tomb is because the canonical stories relate that Joseph buried him in a new cut tomb of his own?

It's a surprisingly definitive statement coming from biblical scholars. It almost sounds as if theology is getting in the way of scholarship.

I am just beginning to get caught up to speed on what has been written about this tomb. I don't know enough about it to comment in any intelligent way. I have always assumed that Jesus was buried somewhere and his remains were lost. Although if you read Crossan's books he suggests it is quite possible Jesus was never buried in any formal way because it was standard practice, according to Crossan, for the Romans to keep the bodies on the cross until they were devoured by carrion. How unsettling is that thought? It is.

Many Christians, of course, reading the gospel accounts, believe that Jesus was raised in bodily form from the dead. I don't believe in any kind of bodily resurrection from the dead, past or present. There are just places my skeptical mind won't go. So I assume something happened to the remains of Jesus; I'd like to believe he got a respectful burial. But if so, then it does raise the interesting question of what happened to his remains.

The Tomb of Jesus?

The Discovery Channel caused something of an uproar in Christian circles when it aired its story on the "tomb" of Jesus. I didn't see it at the time, but will watch it now. However sensationalized the story might have been in its telling, there was apparently enough interest among archaeologists and some biblical scholars to hold a conference, just concluded, in Jerusalem and look at the evidence. Here is the story from Time:

Still, even after the furor over the film faded, the questions it raised about the tomb unearthed in 1980 continued to make waves among archeologists and Biblical scholars. A leading New Testament expert from Princeton Theological Seminary, Prof. James Charlesworth, was intrigued enough to organize a conference in Jerusalem this week, bringing together over 50 archeologists, statisticians and experts in DNA, ceramics and ancient languages, to give evidence as to whether or not the crypt of Christ had been found. Their task was complicated by the fact that since the tomb was opened in 1980, the bones of the various ossuaries had gone missing through a mishap of Israeli bureaucracy. Also gone were diagrams made by excavators that showed where each stone sarcophagus lay inside the tomb, and what the family relationships might have been, say, between Jesus and Mary Magdelene, who some speculate may have been his wife.

After three days of fierce debate, the experts remained deeply divided. Opinion among a panel of five experts ranged from "no way" to "very possible". Charlesworth told TIME: "I have reservations, but I can't dismiss the possibility that this tomb was related to the Jesus clan." Weighing the evidence, says Charlesworth, "we can tell that this was the tomb of a Jewish family from the time of Jesus. And we know that the names on the ossuaries are expressed the correct way as 'Jesus, son of Joseph.'" But the professor has a few doubts. "The name on Jesus's ossuary was scrawled on, like graffiti. There was no ornamentation. And there should have been. After all, his followers believed he was the Son of God."

James Tabor covers this issue extensively in his blog.