Jesus Family Tomb: Research Team

[Darb]

Re-posted with permission:

[quote="Archeologist James Tabor"]Heat and Light: The Talpiot Tomb

Filed under: Tabor’s BLog — James Tabor @ 6:33 pm, March 3, 2007

I have had a front row side-line seat for the past seven days on the news, commentary, and Blogs regarding the Talpiot tomb and the claim that it can be identified with Jesus of Nazareth and his family. Over 5000 e-mails, dozens of interiews, a couple of death threats, and my own communications with colleagues, has helped me to take the pulse on this story. I wanted to make a few observations from this vantage point.

The hostile, often ugly (even antisemitic), and hysterical reactions of the fundamentalist Christian community was of course no surprise. After all, if one believes the corpse of Jesus came alive and that he ascended to heaven, bones, flesh, inner organs, and all, with no body left behind, then finding his tomb is surely a problem. Then there is the issue of Jesus being married and having a child. From my own reading of theology I do not think that these, or for that matter any other historical findings, are a fundamental threat to Christianity. In every religion so much has to do with interpretation of language, and surely there are ways of affirming such things in a less literalistic and perhaps more significant way. Also, Paul, our earliest witness to resurrection, speaks of a “physical bodyâ€

[Darb]

Dr. Tabor has an excellent website, that includes a detailed BLog commentary on the Jesus Family Tomb project.

Interested readers are referred to his site for some very interesting and cogent commentary.

[Darb]

Dr. Tabor's book: The Jesus Dynasty is available for purchase on Amazon.

[Darb]

The Jesus Family Tomb: Dr. Andrey Feuerverger {Statistician}

Reposted, per Charlie Pellegrino's request:

Dear Statistical Colleague(s)

I have been overwhelmed with E-mail messages regarding a certain calculation that has been widely reported in the media and am unable to send individual replies at the present time.

Instead I have prepared a statement intended for the statistical community which hopefully addresses some of these questions.

This information now appears on my Home Web Page; please hit the button marked `The Tomb Computation'.

With best,
Andrey Feuerverger

LINKS:

The Tomb Computation

Dr. Andrew Feuerverger’s Homepage

[Darb]

Interview in Scientific American:

Q&A With the Statistician Who Calculated the Odds That This Tomb Belonged to Jesus

[voralfred]

I am not sure this is exactly the correct sub-topic for what I want to contribute to this discussion. But it has to do with archeology, not statistics or DNA.
I don't have yet any opinion on the Talpiot tomb.
I do have a definite opinion, though, about what is usually called "The Holy Sepulchre".
It is most certainly not the burial place of anyone.
It was absolutely forbidden by Jewish Law at that time to bury anyone within the city limits of Jerusalem.
Granted, the city limits then need not coincide with the present wall which has been built by the Ottomans.
But there are remains from the Herodian wall. This wall is not complete, a lots of pieces are missing, but there are quite a few. Now there are quite enough to draw an approximate line even where pieces are missing. And "The Holy Sepulchre" lies well within this line. Of course, if Herod had built his cities the way Vauban did, with a lot of outlying defensive corners providing protection to one another, one could marginally suppose that the line did not go in a more or less convex form, but came in suddenly (just where one remaining part of the wall ends), made an indent, then went out again to meet the next remnant. But no fortress of that time was built this way. I just cannot believe that the city limit happened to be indented precisely there. All the more so that at no other place do the remains of the Herodian wall suggest anything except a more or less convex shape.
Of course this argument does not make a difference between the Talpiot tomb and any another candidate, for instance the one I have visited, on a hill just outside what is now Damascus Gate. Both are possible (they may be many more candidates I have not heard of) but "The Holy Sepulchre" is clearly an impossibility.

[Charlie P.]

I have not personally explored the underground passages and excavations honeycombing the foundations of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. However, it is my understanding from the specialists who have, that the location of the church is consistent with the tombs having been outside the city walls till about AD 30. Somewhere between then and the burning of Jerusalem in AD 70, the city had grown, the walls expended outside the burial sites, and because it would have been ritually impure to build homes over extant graves, all the ossuaries within had to be moved outside the city limits. James and Peter, and (according to "The Discourse of St John") Maria, continued the Jesus ministry in Jerusalem - so, if there was a family tomb, maintained into AD 70, we would expect it to be located in the hills outside and above the city and facing the Temple. If indeed the Talpiot Tomb is a Jesus Family tomb maintained under the ministry of James, this does not in any way contradict the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in present day Jerusalem, as being the location where, according to scripture, Jesus defeated death, and turned a symbol of Roman torture, humiliation, and execution, into a symbol of triumph. - - C.R.P.

[voralfred]

Well, I was told the walls I'm referring to dated from Herod the Great. That was well before 30AD. If these walls have been mislabelled....

[Darb]

[Mod note: Threads for Dr. Tabor & Dr. Feuerverger were merged by Mr. Titanic, to reduce forum clutter. -- Brad 9-Mar-2007]

[Mr. Titanic]

Here is an exchange between Dr. Pellegrino, Simcha and a letter from Dr. James Tabor regarding the criticisms proposed by Mr. Pfann as well as the press.

Dear Simcha: {Snip} What's his agenda - with this new reading; and why did he not suggest this to you when being filmed only a year ago?

I'm not an epigrapher; but I have some experience in handwriting analysis - and I know a thing or two about rocks (ossuaries, in this case). With a pen or a stylus, the pressure with which one writes or inscribes is as consistent as any other part of a person's signature.

Fortunately, this evidence is memorialized in every copy of the book - one need only look to the two page spread showing the "Jesus" and "Mariamne" ossuaries. In trying to explain them away, I looked for signs that someone (suspecting the terra rossa intruders) had added something to either of these two inscriptions. For "Jesus," from the "cross" (or Taw) to the very last stroke on the left, the ossuary was inscribed by the same lightly stroking hand. The "Mariamne" inscriber used a heavier hand, applying more pressure to the soft limestone - indeed the same pressure to the same strokes of each letter (note the two "M"s), all the way across. Just as you or I would draw an "M" in our own unique way, and be distinguishable from each other - the two key "M"s in the Mariamne-Mara inscription are, both of them, executed to the same depth and with the same strokes: First with a deeper, stronger up-stroke (each to the same depth), followed by a loop-around off-stone, and a relatively softer doen-stroke (each to the same depth), with a curved bottom on the "u" that completes the letter M. Note also the strong down-stroke on the "A" that follows the M (again, each to the same depth), with a lifting of the stylus from the stone for completion of the letter at the top. Note that in the first instance, the hand misses the top, slightly, not quite properly finishing the letter. This same sloppyness is replicated in the third letter of the "Mara" part of the inscription.

Aside from that, I don't know what Pfan is talking about. The letters are pretty readable, even to a beginning student of Greek - and they are as stylistically consistent as the Matthew inscription, shown on the next page - with each letter clearly drawn deeply, in the same style, by the same hand.

See you later,
- - Charlie P.

I've seen that a popular snipe against both me and Jim is that we have both written Science Fiction (a field of literature that we both happen to love). Almost every great scientist or engineer I have known, also happens to have a SF novel at least sitting in a drawer somewhere. Until this Tomb, I have never before heard the argument that because someone writes Science Fiction, anything they have to say should be regarded with doubt. I've never heard it said that because Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote SF, we should forget about the communications satellite. If such a standard existed, we should have tossed the United Nations Charter on Human Rights, becase it was one of the last things penned by H.G. Wells - who, after all, wrote The First Men In the Moon, an SF novel with an interesting thought experiment embedded - which young Albert Einstein was inspired to carry to its more mathematically correct next step: the special and general theories of relativity. Add to this list, George Gaylord Simpson, Harold Clayton Urey, and Francis Crick... And Stephen Hawking, who (sin of sins), not only helped to write a Star Trek episode, but actually appeared in it. Jim is best known as a film-maker, but you know as well as I, that he's really an engineer-explorer at heart. He designs deep-ocean equipment and space probes, and can talk about the paleobiology and evolution of cephlepods or nuclear space probe design on the highest level - often raising questions that everyone else (including myself - RE ice age stresses on primate and cephlapod brain development) has asked before. I notice that you do that, too: look at what everyone else has been seeing for the past decade or two, and asking what none of them have asked before. I think that's why some of them hate you.

By the way, Urey, Crick, and Clarke were mentors of mine (and Hawking made his own contribution to my so-called, "Valhalla theory") - and, for the record, among the top twenty minds I have known, Jim and Arthur (Clarke) are still in a photo finish for first place - with Francis Crick coming up right behind, nipping at their tails, and Stephen Jay Gould (another SF fan whose best friend became Stephen King), Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, James Powell, Hawking and Urey trailing not very far behind. Bob Ballard does not make the list (talented within a very narrow field) - but you are in with the twenty somewhere (and a perpetual enigma, too). That's why, of all the people with ideas who have asked for an introduction to Jim (and you never even asked), you are the only one I introduced - - but then, this may be something like what a NASA-Grumman engineer said about Al Munier, when he introduced me and James Powell: "He's the sort of man who would crack the Earth open, just to see what happens." (At Brookhaven, Powell and I became known as the Pablo Picasso and Salvadore Dali of nuclear propulsion and destruction.)

See you later,
- - Charlie P.

Dr. James Tabor's letter:

*Credit: jesusdynasty.com/blog

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Is Mariamene Mara one person or two? A New Proposal
Filed under: Tabor's Blog — James Tabor

One positive result of the controversy over the Simcha Jacobovici
film “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,â€

[Mr. Titanic]

Follow-up Message:

When Stephan Pfann announced his "corrected reading" of the Talpiot inscription (IAA 80.500) as published by L. H. Rahmani (#701) just four days ago, insisting the veteran epigrapher had missed a word (kai/and), and misread the name Mariamne, I must admit it gave me pause. I am no epigrapher but I had studied the inscription carefully over the course of two years and nothing that Pfann was proposing rang true to me. It looked to me like a clear and lovely inscription of one hand with the use of the signum indicating a double name. I also had a tremendous respect for Rahmani having worked through his Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries quite carefully over the years. I posted my reservations on my Blog.

I was amazed at how quickly Pfann's reading was picked up by the media and flashed around the world with headlines such as: "Expert Shows Fatal Flaw in Tomb Theory." I even watched Dr. Pfann on CNN two nights ago and I think he made the rounds on a few other national TV programs. I just did a Google search and that story has now become the "truth," since it has been printed in over 12,000 sources, including multiple Christian Blogs that welcome anything that seems to contradict the "Mary Magdalene" hypothesis. I was also surprised to see Pfann's paper this morning up on the SBL Web site and I posted a caveat to Forum editor Leo Greenspoon suggesting that maybe the Pfann reading might bear a bit of "peer review" by a Greek epigrapher, since it would surely be taken by the public as a new breakthrough in the discussion if posted on an academic site without comment. As of this evening that post has not appeared but I know the SBL folk have been swamped.

Immediately after reading Pfann's paper I met with Prof. Michael Stone, who is our distinguished visiting professor of ancient Judaism here at UNC Charlotte this year, and who happens to have been Pfann's teacher. I asked him for his opinion, and quite modestly he said, I have no expertise in ancient Greek epigraphy so I would not dare to say, but if you check with Leah Di Segni you will get a view that should settle things for all of us. I was impressed with Michael's modesty since those of us who know him know that his Greek is as good as it gets, as are all his languages, but he still knows that technical training in epigraphy is quite different from one of us who reads Greek texts taking a turn at such things.

I contacted Dr. Di Segni, hesitant to impose on her time, but she graciously said she would take a look. I just heard from her today. She contextualized her view with a statement of how highly she regards Rahmani and expressed surprise that anyone proposing to "correct" him would not ask him, his "eye" being as good today as it ever was. Dr. Di Segni recalls that she was consulted by Rahmani when he prepared the Greek inscriptions and she writes: "I well remember that, while here and there I had some suggestions about interpretation of a particular form (for instance, Mariamenon being an hypochoristic form of Mariam), I could not but confirm all his readings. I have not changed my mind now."

Di Segni's conclusion then and today: She reads the inscription as a double name, Mariamenou/Mara, both being personal names, as indicated by the use of the signum (ho kai or he kai so-and-so), thus one woman with a double name. She is not of the view that Mara is an epithet, "Mistress Mariamenon": if so, it would precede the name of the lady. She notes that this use of the signum became common only in the late first century, so this would be a rather early occurrence, if one accepts the reasonable surmise that secondary burial in ossuaries in Jerusalem ended with the destruction of the city in 70 CE.

I pass this on to readers here and colleagues and I hope it will get posted on the SBL site and on some of the more responsible Blogs, to offer some context to Dr. Pfann's paper. How one might contact the hundreds of papers or the TV programs that have carried the Rahmani "correction" around the world I have no idea.

In the meantime, back to the discussion of this ancient lady, Mariamne also know as Mara.
James
http://www.jesusdynasty.com/blog

Dr. James D. Tabor
Chair, Dept. of Religious Studies

[Mod note: this post also appears in the ossuary symbology thread in this forum. -- Brad, 21-Mar-2007]

[Mr. Titanic]

An update on the tomb math statistics from Dr. James Tabor:

[quote="Dr. Tabor"]There has been a lot of confusion on the Web and in the media regarding the statistical probabilities cited in the Discovery Documentary as 600/1 that the Talpiot tomb is the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. This conclusion, ultimately, but not directly, was based on the calculations of Prof. Andrey Feuerverger of the University of Toronto. I offer a few observations that I hope might clarify things in this regard.

As I see it, the basic calculations of the statistician, standing alone, do not in and of themselves establish whether or not the Talpiot tomb is, or is not, the likely tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. That determination, if it can be made, makes use of the math, but in the end takes one beyond simple probability calculations. What the statistician is asked to do is to determine the probability of the cluster of names, with their specific relationships and configurations, based on name frequency data in late 2nd Temple Jewish Jerusalem as well as other implicit factors.

Accordingly, a statistician, as statistician, is not primarily focusing on prosopography, that is, matching ancient names to known historical characters. That is the task of the historian who then seeks to determine if there is any potential “fitâ€

[voralfred]

Since I have not read the book itself, I post in this thread rather than the book discussion one.
I have tried to follow the discussions, here, in the official Talpiot Tomb website and various other blogs, and I have a rather confused vision of the DNA results.

As I understand it, there are no bones in the "Yeshua bar Yehoseph" ossuary, but there is some DNA consistent with the presence of a blood-stained cloth. But there are bones (or at least, bone decomposition fragments) in the other ossuaries associated to the tomb.

But the only DNA result I have seen mentioned (I may have missed something, the amount of material is huge and I could prefectly have missed crucial results in my search) is the negative result that the mitochondrial (therefore, "maternal line only") DNA in the "Yeshua bar Yehoseph" ossuary and the "Mariamnenou" one are different, indicating no common matrilinear line. That the latter was in the same tomb was taken as an indication that she was a spouse, rather than a descendent, of someone else belonging to the family the tomb belonged to.

But what about other connections?

If the theory proposed is correct then

- there should be mitochondial evidence of a matrilinear line between the "Maria" ossuary and both the "Yeshua bar Yehoseph" and the "Yosah" one (not to mention the "James" one but it was not found in the same tomb, so a lack of connection in that latter case would just prove that this latter ossuary is uncorrelated to the Talpiot tomb)
- there should be mitochondial evidence of no matrilinear line between the "Mariamnenou" ossuary and either the "Yosah" or the "Maria" one.
- and there should be mitochondial evidence of a matrilinear line between the "Mariamnenou" ossuary and the "Yehuda bar Yeshua" one, to complete the theory that the latter is the son of Mary Magdelene.


Now maybe at this stage of decomposition only mitochondial DNA can be used, and not "nuclear" DNA, that could establish the non-matrilinear line, I am not an expert, I would not know. If this is the case, then nothing more can be checked.
But if "nuclear" DNA can be used, then again one should look for evidence of no connection between the "Mariamnenou" ossuary and any of the "Yeshua bar Yehoseph", "Yosah" nor "Maria" ossuaries (and also the "Matya" one since the latter is supposed to belong to "Maria"'s family, but on the father's line so mitochondrial DNA connection between Matya and Maria would be unconclusive, one way or the other: marriages between more or less distant cousins could easily lead to the same matrilinear line between people on the same patrilinear one but you would not expect an "outsider" to have any connection at all) while there should be a connection between the "Yeshua bar Yehoseph" and the "Yehuda bar Yeshua" one.

Has any of these many tests been tried?
What are the results?

[voralfred]

Professor Pellegrino informed me that, in his opinion James was Joseph's son but not biologically Mary's (though she adopted him later). He did not make it clear if the same applies to Josah, but I assume it does. It is not completely clear whether both have the same mother, though it sounds from the context (he said Joseph was widowed, and without indication of the contrary, that seems to mean only once)

Anyway restricting oneself to positive, rather than negative correlations, and with the restriction that nuclear DNA being probably too fragmented to be usable only mitochondrial DNA would provide resultts, then the theory advanced in the book would imply:

- definitely, positive mitochondrial connection between the Maria ossuary and the Yeshua bar Yehoseph one

- definitely, positive mitochondrial connection between the Mariamenou e Mara ossuary and the Yehuda bar Yeshua one


- presumably, positive mitochondrial connection between the Yosah ossuary and the James one; though an absence, in that case, could be explained if Joseph married twice before marrying Mary and had Yosah and James from two different wives.

Has any of these tests been performed?