Posted 3/21/2007


Compiled by Dr. Randall Price

What's Going On?

1.. On March 28, 1980 in the neighborhood of Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb, construction workers accidentally uncovered a first-century burial cave containing ten ossuaries. An ossuary is a burial box used to store bones. Six of the ten ossuaries had names on them: "Jesus, son of Joseph; Maria; Mariamene; Matthew; Judas, son of Jesus; and Jose, a diminutive of Joseph. The excavators published a report of the find, archaeological magazines and journals wrote articles about it, the cave was closed, the bones were re-buried according to Jewish law, and the ossuaries were stored in a warehouse run by the Israeli Antiquities Authority. .....

What is the Case Against This Claim?

1.. The Israeli archaeologist who excavated the site (Amos Kloner) and the anthropologist (Joe Zias) who examined the ossuary remains in 1980 have stated categorically that this tomb has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth and that the claims the authors and producers are making is nonsense.

2.. Jesus (or Joshua) was one of the most popular names among Jews of the first-century. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary says he has a first-century letter "written by someone named Jesus, addressed to someone else named Jesus and witnessed by a third party named Jesus." The New Testament also mentions a "Bar-Jesus" (Acts 13:6). In fact, all of these names on the ossuaries make the top ten lists of popular first-century names. First century names in top ten lists = 2,625 males and/or ossuaries: Joseph 218/45, Judah (Judas) 164/44, Jesus 99/22, Mathew 62/17. Of 328 occurrences: Mary/Mariamne 70/42 (21% of Jewish women were called Mariamne/Mary), Martha 20/17. The chance of the people in the ossuaries being the same individuals mentioned in Gospels is very slight.

3.. The statistical analysis is untrustworthy. The statistical analysis is only as good as the numbers that were provided to the statistician. He couldn't run numbers he did not have. To get the high numbers given in the book and on the program, all the assumptions that have been made about the identifications and relationships of these names have to be put into the numbers pot, including Matthew, a name simply called "consistent with the family." There is no sound basis for doing this (see below).

4.. Matthew was not a family member, and a "Judas son of Jesus" is nowhere mentioned in the New Testament or extra-biblical writings. In fact, there is no historical evidence that Jesus was married or had a child. Therefore, this can't be Jesus' family tomb if Matthew is there, and can't be the Jesus of the Gospels if son named Judas is there!

5.. The ossuaries are inscribed in different languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek (Jesus, James, Judah is inscribed in Aramaic, Yose/Jose/Joseph, Maria, and Matthew is in Hebrew and Marianmene e Mara in Greek). If the tomb is of Jesus' family why are the inscriptions in different languages? If Marianmene e Mara is really Mary Magdalene and she is Jesus' wife, why isn't her ossuary also in Hebrew? This evidence suggests that different individuals, perhaps of different backgrounds, were buried in the tomb.

6.. There is no DNA evidence that this is the historical Jesus of Nazareth. We would also need an independent control sample from some member of Jesus' family to confirm that these were members of Jesus' family. We do not have that at all. Moreover, because only two boxes were tested and they show no relationship we do not have enough information to even conclude this was a family tomb. In addition mitochondrial DNA does not reveal genetic coding of XY chromosome make up anyway. They would need nuclear DNA for that in any case. The only evidence is that the DNA of the Mariamne and Jesus in the tomb do not match. This evidence does not prove she is a wife. It simply says that this Jesus and this Mary are not biologically related. If it is a family tomb, then she could just as easily have been the wife of any one of the other males in the tomb. In other words, the DNA could prove the exact opposite of what is being claimed.

7.. The earliest followers of Jesus never called him "Jesus, son of Joseph." According to the New Testament Jesus was the legal son of Joseph, but not his biological son. From a study of names in first-century Israel, it is known that there were regional designations for ossuary inscriptions. If from Judea they would have been designated by their fathers name: "Jesus ben (son of) Joseph;" if from the Galilee (which Jesus was from), then by the name of the town: "Jesus of Nazareth" (as Jesus is consistently called in the New Testament, and which was written as a legal designation by the Romans on the inscription attached to his cross during His crucifixion - Matthew 27:37; Mark 15:26, Luke 23:38; John 19:19).

8.. It is highly unlikely that Joseph, who died earlier in Galilee, was buried in Jerusalem, since the historical record connects him only to his adult hometown of Nazareth or his ancestral home of Bethlehem. Moreover, the traditional tomb of Mary (the mother of Jesus) is in Ephesus, where Christian tradition says she lived with John after he was released from exile on Patmos.

9.. The ornamentation on the ossuaries in the Talipot tomb indicates they would have belonged to a rich family, which does not match the historical record for Jesus' family. According to Gospels, Jesus was buried in a rich man's tomb (Mark 15:43), but it did not belong to his family, but to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin. However, the ossuary for Jesus is of inferior quality, the name merely scratched on the limestone surface like graffiti. If the family could afford a rich man's tomb and had an entire year prepare to an ossuary (the time it takes for the flesh to decay from the bones) why would they choose a graffiti-like script to name their dead hero? Surely they would have honored Jesus more than this. By contrast, the ossuary for Mary is ornate and the name is beautifully chiseled. Was Mary more important than Jesus in the New Testament? Would Jesus' family have deliberately made His ossuary less ornate; why?

10.. The two Mary ossuaries do not mention anyone from Migdal, but simply has the name Mary. The name "Mara" in this context does not mean "Master" as is claimed, but is an abbreviated form of Martha. Most likely the ossuary contained the remains of two women named Mary and Martha
(Mariamne and Mara), again common names of the time. Moreover, to get Mariamne to match Mary Magdalene and not a host of any other Mary's, one has to appeal to an apocryphal Acts of Philip, a fourth century Gnostic (heretical) manuscript. Without this, there is not even a possibility of a connection. The Acts of Philip and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene also state that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene (the basis for the claim in Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code). Again, these are fictional accounts written by a religion that opposed orthodox Christianity and was branded as heretical. Therefore, we do not know Mary/Mariamne - Mary Magdalene, the key point that has to be true for the claim of the authors and producers of "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" to have any merit.

11.. By all ancient accounts, the tomb of Jesus was empty. This conflicts with the idea presented in the book and program that Jesus' body was moved to another tomb, decayed for on year's time, and then His bones put in an ossuary. Hostile Jewish and Roman sources such as Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny all say that it was believed that Jesus was raised from the dead and that He was worshipped as a god by the early Christians. If Jesus' family had a tomb it would have been a matter of public record. In this case, both the Jewish authorities and the Roman government who wanted to stamp out the Jesus movement would have exposed Jesus' bones and ended Christianity in the first-century. On the other hand, if the tomb was kept a secret, are we really to believe that Jesus disciples, who knew He didn't rise bodily from the dead and were perpetrating a cover-up and a fraudulent religion, would die for it as martyrs? Suppose even the disciples didn't know? Who, then, removed the body? At least James, who became the head of the church in Jerusalem, was Jesus' brother and certainly would have known about his own family tomb!

12.. Soil sample from inside James ossuary links it with Kidron Valley area, not Talpiyot. This matches the testimony of Oded Golan (the owner of the James Ossuary) who says the ossuary came from Silwan (in the Kidron Valley). According to the fourth-century church historian Eusebius, the body of James, the brother of Jesus, was buried alone near the Temple Mount (where he was executed) and that his tomb was visited in the early centuries. Two years ago Joe Zias discovered the fourth-century Byzantine inscription on the "Tomb of Zacharias," the father of John the Baptist. Church tradition says that James was buried in this same tomb. Moreover, Oded Golan is on trial for forging the words "brother of Jesus" on the James ossuary. According to Joe Zias, who used to inspect antiquities dealers on behalf of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, he saw the James ossuary in an antiquity shop without these added words in the early 1990s. However, during the forgery trial of Oded Golan, 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 the tests done by the FBI photo lab. If the ossuary was in Golan's home in the 1970s it could not have been discovered in the Talpiyot tomb in 1980. Remember, in order for the case to be made for this being the Family Tomb of Jesus, this James ossuary has to be proven to have originally said "brother of Jesus" and to have come from the Talpiyot tomb. Closing Quote:

"In light of all the incredible number of problems with the recent claim that Jesus' grave has been found, the time-honored, multi-faceted evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus is more convincing than ever. Even the early opponents of the Christian message acknowledged that Jesus' tomb was empty. And the evidence for Jesus' bodily resurrection appearances has never been refuted." - Dr. Gary Habermas (expert on the resurrection of Jesus and author of The Case for the Resurrection).

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