A Thought From Scripture.

What About the So-Called Lost Tomb of Jesus
Paul Maier, well-known religion scholar, wrote a book entitled A Skeleton in God’s Closet in 1994. It was about an archeologist who discovered a skeleton and a manuscript in the Holy Land and the possibility that it might be the remains of Jesus. Was it a hoax or was it the discovery that would shake Christianity down to its foundations? Little did he know or think that such a claim would be made in little over a decade and that he and other religion scholars would be called upon to respond.

What is being claimed and what are the theological implications?
Here is a verbatim quote from the official web site: "An incredible archaeological discovery in Israel changes history and shocks the world. Tombs with the names The Virgin Mary, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene and Judah, their son, are found and an investigation begins."
As we will see later, there is no name "Virgin" Mary, just Mary. And no Jesus "of Nazareth". Just "Jesus." And no Mary "Magdalene", just Mary. Etc.
These are the claims being made.
Theological implications:
Resurrection:
Official web site says: "Our documentary does not address this issue."
However, the traditional Christian or biblical doctrine of a bodily resurrection of Jesus would seem to be challenged by their claims.
Ascension:
Official web site says: "If Jesus’ mortal remains have indeed been found, this would contradict the idea of a physical ascension. However, it says nothing against the possibility of a spiritual ascension."
Again, traditional Christian or biblical doctrine is contradicted by their claims.
Furthermore, there is nothing in Christian history about Jesus being married and having a son. They even try to identify this son of Jesus as the beloved disciple in the Gospel of John, claiming that was a code term used to protect the son of Jesus from his enemies.
The official web sites make cross references to the Da Vinci Code and also to late Gnostic texts, as did the Da Vinci Code with the Mary Magdalene theme. The same sort of "what if" thriller spy novel type of thinking is present here. It isn’t good archeology and it isn’t good historical analysis.
Implications.
1 Cor. 15:14, 17, 19 – "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."
Rom. 1:4 – "was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.
What was actually discovered and when?
A tomb was discovered in Jerusalem during construction work in 1980. Work immediately stopped and archeologists were called in from the antiquities department. Ten ossuaries were removed and cataloged. The bones were reburied as is customary.
The inscriptions on the ossuaries have been known by scholars since 1980 and no one has thought anything unusual about this for 26 years.
The tomb was clearly from a wealthy, elite family and the stone work on the outer façade was well-done.
What about the names and statistics? What do they prove?
Ten ossuaries from the Talpiot Tomb.
Ossuaries are small bone boxes. Many Jews from around the time of Jesus practiced secondary burial. They buried someone and then after the flesh had decomposed, they removed the bones and placed them in a small bone box or ossuary.
One went missing; three were plain.
Six has inscriptions.
The six names – filmmakers’ claims on translations.
Mariamene e Mara – Miriamne, the teacher.
Yehuda bar Yeshua – Judah, son of Jesus
Matia – Matthew
Yeshua bar Yosef – Jesus, son of Joseph
Yose or Yosa – nickname of Joseph
Maria – Latinized for Miriam.
Statistics
We know the most common names based on the inscriptions of a few thousands ossuaries found from this era.
Top ten male names: (from Richard Bauckham)
Simon/Simeon
Joseph
Eleazar
Judah
John/Yohanan
Jesus
Hananiah
Jonathan
Matthew
Manaean/Menahem
Top female names:
Mary/Mariamne 21%
Salome
Shelamzion
Martha
The makers of this documentary had a statistician calculate the statistical probability of this collection of names being found in one family together.
They then use an analogy to a group of people in a football field to try to sell their statistics.
Put 1000 people in a football field. Have everyone stand. Then have everyone sit down who is not named Jesus.
Then have everyone sit down who does not have a son named Joseph.
Then have everyone sit down who does not have a wife named Mary.
Etc., etc.
The filmmakers are estimating that there is only a 1 in 600 chance that this is NOT the tomb of Jesus Christ. That is the worst case scenario they give.
Another likelihood, possibly involving their suggestion (will have to wait for the movie tonight) that the missing ossuary was James, Jesus' brother, the probability is 1 in 2,400,000.
Problems with these statistics.
These are very common names. Like finding graves here with Smiths, Jones, Williams and Johnsons in them. So what. And it is like their first names being Steve, George, Johnny, and Bill.
In 1926 a "Jesus, son of Joseph’ ossuary was found in the basement of what is now the Rockefeller Museum. It is now in the Israel Museum.
One news report tells of an ancient document of a business deal between a man named Jesus and another man named Jesus witnessed by another Jesus.
They are including names in the calculations which one cannot include. We have no historical record anywhere that there was a Matthew in the family of Jesus. You cannot.
They make much of "Jose" a shortened form of Joseph, about how rare it is. It is rare in the ossuaries, but not as rare among names. One of the brothers of Jesus bore that name, Mark 6:3. However, one of the sons of Mary the mother of James the younger bore that name too, according to Mark 15:40, and he was not Jesus’ brother. And it was a name of Barnabas, according to Acts 4:36.
For their theory to have a chance to work, Jose needs to be the brother of Jesus. Jose is a shortened form of Joseph. The Jesus in this tomb is the son of Joseph. So, it is certainly possible that the Jose in this tomb is the father of the Jesus in this tomb, not his brother.
Filmmakers say that Mariamne e Mara on one ossuary means Mary the teacher. They then go to 3rd and 4th century Gnostic sources and Da Vinci Code type theories saying that Mary Magdalene was known as a great teacher in the early church. Richard Bauckham, a great English NT scholar, suggests that Mara here "does not mean Master [teacher]. It is an abbreviated form of Martha. Probably the ossuary contained two women called Mary and Martha (Mariamne and Mara)."
Mariamene – That form of the name for Mary Magdalene comes from 300 years later from Gnostic writings, not from 1st century sources. More Da Vinci Code type theorizing.
Mary – Latinized form of the name. They are trying to make something of early church history in order to claim that this is Mary, the mother of Jesus, and what was supposedly going on in Jerusalem. It is all fiction just to spin their theory.
One person looked at the statistics and tried to be generous to the filmmakers but posed two alternatives:
This tomb could belong to 228 other Herodian Jerusalem citizens named Jesus son of Joseph, or
If Jesus was buried in Jerusalem in this tomb, it didn’t include 70% of his family and the New Testament forgot to tell us that Jesus was married, had a son, and that there was a Matthew and Martha in his family. Which is most likely?
While there are several coincidences with the family of Jesus due to very common names, there are several things which statistically go very strongly against the possibility of this being the family tomb of Jesus. There are 5 assumptions in the theory propounded in this documentary. One skeptic of this documentary calculated that the theory of this documentary had a 1 in 60 million chance of being true. He was a biased skeptic, I must admit. So he did adjust for it on several points but still came up with 1 in 15,000 chances.
Occam’s razor is the idea that the simplest explanation is likely the correct one. Some have suggested that the simplest way to explain the family lines in this tomb would exclude the family of Jesus for several reasons, which we have noted.
What about the DNA evidence? What does it prove?
The bones were removed and buried by Israeli custom.
DNA tests were done on human residue taken from the "Jesus son of Jose" ossuary and "Mariamne" ossuary.
They were only able to do mitochondrial DNA testing which is only able to test the mother line. Able to prove that these two individuals were not maternally related.
Makers of this documentary are suggesting that this Jesus and Mary, then, were married and that it was Mary Magdalene.
It is possible that these two were married. But they might not be. Might have been in-laws or another relationship.
What about other evidence? Does it support or conflict?
The ancestral home of Joseph was Bethlehem. Then they lived in Nazareth. Joseph likely died in Nazareth. Why would the family have a major tomb in Jerusalem?
We have no evidence or hint of Jesus being married and having a son.
Where was Mary, the mother of Jesus, buried?
One traditional location is another place in Jerusalem.
Much more likely, though, is Ephesus, according to Eusebius and other ancient church tradition, which has much more credibility, since Mary was committed to the care of the apostle John and John spent his last years in Ephesus.
The movie makers are going to try to tie the James ossuary to this tomb. James ossuary was found a few years ago. However, the man who produced it said it came from a different part of Jerusalem and the dirt on it matched soil from a different part of Jerusalem. Also, some ongoing intrigue related to the James ossuary which involves a trial in Israel and a former FBI agent, Gerald Richard, has brought to light some photographs of the James ossuary that may have been taken in the 1970s—before the so-called Lost Tomb of Jesus was even discovered!
Eusebius, an early church historian, tells us about where James was buried and of a stele erected over his tomb. It is not in the location where this tomb was found.
This Talpiot tomb was quite expensive. The family of Jesus was not wealthy. For them to afford this type of burial, it would have taken the support of the Jerusalem church community. What are the implications of that?
The church would have known where Jesus was buried. The early church would have gone to his grave to show him honor. But the church didn't go to any tomb for many centuries, because they didn’t know where his garden burial tomb was, which was used only temporarily until the resurrection.
If the early church and apostles knew where Jesus was buried, why would they have gone out and preached that he was resurrected and ascended and why would they have died for that message????
What do the scholars say?
You can find a scholar on whatever side of the issue to say whatever you want said. Most, though, are critical of this documentary even before it airs, because there is enough information available on the web so that they can dismiss it.
Some more liberally minded theologians are saying, "Maybe there is something to it, but it doesn’t harm our faith." Those who are saying this are those who didn’t really believe in a literal, bodily resurrection anyway.
Quotes from theologians, Bible scholars, archeologists, and historians.
Ben Witherington, NT historian of Jesus studies, "It is a story full of holes, conjectures, and problems. It will make good TV and involves a bad critical reading of history. Basically this is old news with a new interpretation. We have known about this tomb since it was discovered in 1980. There are all sorts of reasons to see this as much ado about nothing much."
Joe Zias, curator for anthropology and archeology at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem from 1972 to 1997 who personally numbered the Talpiot ossuaries said: "Simcha [Jacobovici, TV director] has no credibility whatsoever. He’s pimping off the Bible…He got this guy Cameron, who made ‘Titanic’ or something like that—what does this guy know about archeology? I am an archeologist, but if I were to write a book about brain surgery, you would say, ‘Who is this guy?'…Projects like this make a mockery of the archeological profession."
Amos Kloner, the first archeologist to examine the site back in 1980, said the TV documentary fails to hold up to archeological standards, but it makes for profitable television. He has called it nonsense. "They just want to get money for it."
Paul Maier, NT scholar and historian, professor at Western Michigan University, "Alas, this whole affair is just the latest in the long-running media attack on the historical Jesus, which – we thought – had culminated in that book of lies, The Da Vinci Code. But no: the caricatures of Christ continue. Please, lose no sleep over the Talpiot "discoveries".
How solid is the ground of our faith?
One positive aspect of this is that if you claim to find anyone else’s bones in a grave, there would only be a little excitement. But claim to find’s Christ’s bones, and the whole world gets excited. It shows that Jesus Christ commands attention even today and he makes claims like no other in the world.
The fact that even Jewish archeologists and scholars who took part in this discovery from 1980 yet they didn’t jump on the bandwagon and proclaim this a great find tells us something. We have nothing to worry about here.
The arguments for the resurrection and the evidence for the resurrection come from so many different angles that we stand on firm ground. Our faith is a reasonable faith.
1 Cor. 15:4-7 – "He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8and last of all he appeared to me also."