The Jesus Discovery

by James D. Tabor

  What is called paleo-DNA or ancient DNA (abbreviated aDNA) is a relatively new and developing science that has only recently been able to meet the challenge of extracting DNA from degraded materials. What can be done today is quite amazing and the techniques are improving continually.10

  43. Bone samples from the Talpiot Jesus tomb prepared for DNA testing.

  We were able to order DNA tests on bone materials from the Jesus and the Mariamene ossuaries. In these ossuaries we found only tiny bone chips. As we have explained, the other ossuaries had been cleaned. We would have gladly had tests run on any remains we could have obtained. The DNA samples we had tested were collected in a proper manner and the risk of modern contamination, as with all aDNA tests, is a part of the procedure. DNA control samples are taken of anyone who had any contact with the materials, outside or inside the lab, even if the containers remained closed, to ensure that no modern DNA is sequenced with the ancient DNA.

  The small bone chips we found contained no marrow. We shipped them to the Paleo-DNA Laboratory at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, on March 26, 2004. The lab had great difficulty getting any kind of useful results. The samples went through several extractions, as attempts were made to “amplify” the DNA sequences, then further clone the results. The lab attempted to gather everything it could, including mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) as well as genomic DNA (gDNA), also known as nuclear DNA. The mtDNA is found in every cell of the body. Humans with the same mother share the same mtDNA, so it can be very useful for determining sibling relationships. Nuclear or gDNA is much more difficult to work with unless one can extract undamaged material that has not been desiccated. It is the gDNA that can determine paternity.

  We received our first results in July 2006. The tests, though exceedingly difficult, were successful beyond our expectations. Even though there was no possibility of nuclear or gDNA with these samples due to their degradation, there were readable DNA results for both samples—the bone fragments in the Yeshua ossuary and those in the Mariamene one. The DNA tests map out the mutations in the mitDNA strands that differ from the norm, thus allowing one to match up a mother and any of her children since those specific mutations are shared between them. Two children from the same mother would accordingly carry these identical mutations from their mother.

  Our Lakehead University tests gave us three clear mutations from each sample, and the differences established that the Mariamene in the tomb was neither the mother nor the sister of Yeshua—they had no blood relationship. This would not, of course, prove that she was a wife of Yeshua and the mother of his child Judah, but it would leave open that possibility. Had she been either his mother or his sister, our interpretation of her identification based on the unique name Mariamene and the designation Mara as Mary Magdalene would have been disproven.

  More recently, in May 2011, we decided to retest the bone samples that we had saved for future analysis at the ancient DNA laboratory at the University of California at Davis. Their results, using an even more sophisticated battery of tests, confirmed our previous results but also added several new mutations to the three we already had. Not only does that give us a more complete DNA profile for both Yeshua and Mariamene, it establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that they have no family blood link to one another. Here for the first time we are publishing the mutations that offer the unique DNA identification of both the Yeshua and the Mariamene found in the Jesus family tomb:

  mitDNA Base position

  16051

  16172

  16223

  16255

  16278

  16292

  16519

  Standard sequences

  A

  T

  C

  G

  C

  C

  T

  80.503/Jesus

  No result

  C

  T

  A

  T

  T

  No result

  80.500/Mariamene

  G

  T

  T

  G

  C

  T

  C

  The top line gives the base position number with the standard sequences of A C T G that most human beings share.11 The rows labeled “Jesus” and “Mariamene” then give the distinctive mutations that each of them share. Note the differences between them. If Mariamene was either the mother or sister of Yeshua, these mutations or variations from the standard sequence would match, which they do not.

  It is unfortunate that we were not able to conduct full DNA tests of all the bones found in all the ossuaries from the Jesus tomb. Ideally that would have allowed one to construct a kind of provisional “family tree,” at least in terms of the familial genetic relationships between those individuals buried therein. Since the bones themselves were never examined scientifically and no one is even sure what happened to them, that opportunity is forever lost. There is much more we would like to know from such tests, but even to be able to say that the Jesus son of Joseph in the tomb was not a brother or son of the woman called Mariamene Mara does nonetheless contribute to our understanding. It also correlates with the evidence that we have presented in this book that she is very possibly Mary Magdalene, the mother of Judah, the son of Jesus.

  Finally, if this tomb is indeed that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family then to have even a limited DNA sequence from the skeletal remains of Jesus himself is an amazing historical discovery. It is not that the DNA information tells us much we can make much use of in terms of scientific information, but the literal connection those bone fragments make between us and the historical figure of Jesus is profoundly moving, however one might understand the earliest faith in his resurrection. What we have presented in this chapter is what we are convinced was the earliest resurrection faith of his first followers, now witnessed to so clearly in the discoveries of both tombs. Taken with all the other evidence, those tiny bone fragments serve as a silent witness to the faith of those who buried their Teacher and continued to live their lives in hope of the kingdom of God.

  CONCLUSION

  * * *

  THE FIRST CHRISTIANS AND CHRISTIANITY TODAY

  The greatest story ever told is still being discovered. This book describes the earliest example of Christian art ever discovered, pushing back the date of any pictorial image related to Jesus by at least 150 years. Adjacent to the Jonah image, just inches away, we have also documented the earliest inscription related to faith in resurrection of the dead. Both discoveries date to the lifetimes of the generation of Jews who heard Jesus preach and witnessed his death. These finds constitute what historians call primary evidence, unfiltered by the complexity of traditions that developed around Jesus during the first hundred years after his death. This first archaeological evidence of a teaching of Jesus—the cryptic saying, attributed to him by Matthew, regarding the “sign of Jonah,”—is revolutionary. These discoveries offer us a glimpse into the very birth of Christianity.

  These extraordinary finds in the Patio tomb, near a tomb that is likely the family burial chamber of Jesus and his family, provide us a glimpse of earliest Christianity. These discourses can inform Christian faith by bringing us closer to understanding Jesus and his first followers than we have ever been before. These discoveries allow us to bypass the accumulated traditions that have obscured Jesus and the earliest beliefs about him for so long. They allow us to see him with new eyes, as he truly was in his time and place. The collective evidence found in the two Talpiot tombs should be good news for all who can look beyond theological dogma and interpretation and recognize the value in recovering this significant glimpse into the faith of Jesus’ first followers. It is rare for any archaeological discovery, short of a written text, to tell so much. Prior to our discoveries the only direct archaeological link to Jesus was the “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus” ossuary. That artifact, which we believe also came from one of the Talpiot tombs, has advanced our evidence by light years. We ca
n now reconsider all the other ossuaries that scholars have dismissed as having anything to do with the Jewish followers of Jesus. We can say with assurance that followers of Jesus were expressing evidence of their faith in the various ways they inscribed their ossuaries. This is a major advance in the field of biblical archaeology.

  We truly live in a privileged time as witnesses to these archaeological discoveries from Jerusalem, the place of Christianity’s birth. These are not collective communal interpretations, but singular testimonies of specific individuals who lived and died in Jesus’ own time. This gives them a special value beyond even a formally written text. Historians covet evidence of this sort—whether epitaphs, personal letters written on papyri, even receipts or graffiti. They represent the forgotten voices of individuals who left testimony of their thoughts, activities, practices, or beliefs. In the case of the Jonah ossuary a picture is worth much more than a thousand words. Taken in its wider context it requires us to reread the gospels, in light of these finds, and not the other way around.

  THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS

  For the past 175 years scholars have been trying to learn more about Jesus based on the accepted methods of historical critical inquiry.1 Prior to the 19th century few had distinguished between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. The theology of the Christian church, as defined in the major Christian creeds, had treated faith in Christ as the preexistent divine Son of God who had died and been resurrected from the dead to bring salvation to the world as if it were historical fact. The quest for the historical Jesus represented a new approach to the gospels that involved reading them critically and trying to separate theological belief in Christ from the story of Jesus the human being—a 1st century Jew in his own culture and time.2 What those pioneers of the 19th century quest for the historical Jesus lacked was the textual and archaeological discoveries of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is hard to imagine writing about the historical Jesus without the Dead Sea Scrolls, the many “lost” gospels that have been found, and most important, the emerging archaeological record of Galilee and Judea that continually informs our own historical quests.

  Scholars have long recognized that the four New Testament gospels are theological portrayals of Jesus rather than historical accounts. This is not to say that they contain no history. It is rather recognition that each of the gospel writers portrays a theological interpretation of Jesus with specific agendas and points of view relative to the times in which he wrote—fifty to a hundred years after Jesus’ death. Even the names associated with the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are attributions that were added later. The original texts do not name their authors. They are anonymous works written to promote diverse theological visions of Jesus, his teachings, and the significance of his death and resurrection.

  As we have seen, Mark, our earliest gospel, mentions no appearances of Jesus after his death. The oldest copies of Mark end at chapter 16, verse 8: the women flee from the empty tomb and say nothing to anyone. The implications are enormous. Mark could write a gospel in the 70s CE, more than forty years after Jesus’ death, and it could circulate without anyone saying, “Wait, I thought Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, or to the women at the tomb, or to a gathering of disciples in Jerusalem that same day, or to the disciples who had returned home to Galilee.” Mark believed that his story was the gospel—as he say clearly in his opening line: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ” (Mark 1:1). At least according to Mark, the story of Jesus did not involve resurrection appearances of the type found in Matthew, and especially in Luke and John, who move closer toward the idea of the resuscitation of a corpse—misunderstanding the “empty tomb” and why it was found empty that Sunday morning.

  In Matthew Jesus does not appear to the eleven male disciples in Jerusalem at all, but only much later in Galilee, and even then some of them doubted (Matthew 28:16–20). The latest gospels, Luke and John, further expand the traditions, with Jesus appearing in physical form—eating fish and showing his wounds in his hands, feet, and side. He invites the disciples to touch him, saying that he is not a ghost, but flesh and bones (Luke 24:39–43; John 20:26–29). These appearances take place both in Jerusalem and Galilee. This is a vastly expanded tradition over that of Mark, who better represents the original faith of Jesus’ followers. These writers have lost the original view of resurrection, defended by Paul much earlier, in the 50s CE, in which the flesh and bones were left behind, but the spirit was “lifted up” to God. It was only decades later that people found Mark’s abrupt ending unacceptable and attempted to amend it to conform to these later accounts (Mark 16:9–20).

  In contrast, the 2nd century CE gospel of Peter, discovered in Egypt in the 1890s, supports Mark’s earlier tradition. Unfortunately we only have fragments but the text ends abruptly with the disciples weeping and mourning for seven days, being grieved at Jesus’ death and the discovery of the empty tomb. They return to their homes in Galilee and resume their normal lives. Peter and his brother Andrew go back to their fishing (Gospel of Peter 15:58–60). It is possible the text ended with them seeing Jesus; we don’t know, since it breaks off, but either way, this tradition that they wept and mourned the whole week of Passover and then returned home, contrasts sharply with the accounts in Luke and John. There is no way to reconcile these views from a historical point of view. They show a theological development away from the evidence in the Talpiot tomb, in which the flesh and bones of “Jesus son of Joseph” are put in the cave, and subsequently in the ossuary, but his followers maintained faith in his resurrection—his being lifted up to the “holy place.”

  Mary Magdalene is another example of the necessity of separating theology, myth, and tradition from history. Mark mysteriously mentions Mary Magdalene, like a character who appears out of nowhere, at the cross and then at Jesus’ tomb, but she plays no role in terms of witnessing to Jesus’ resurrection. The Gospel of Peter does the same. Mary visits the tomb, finds it empty, but then flees in fear, saying nothing to anyone. Luke seems reluctant even to mention her name, although she is clearly identified in Mark, who is his main source. Luke says only that “the women who had followed him from Galilee” saw his death and his temporary burial—leaving them unnamed (Luke 24:49, 55). When he finally does name them, it is to dismiss them as witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection in favor of Peter and the male disciples (Luke 24:10–11). In contrast, John names Mary Magdalene as the intimate “first witness” of Jesus’ resurrection (John 20:1–18). In half a dozen later gospels, as we have seen, Mary Magdalene is the most prominent of the disciples of Jesus, even ahead of the twelve, causing Peter to be jealous of her intimacy with Jesus. The archaeological findings of the Talpiot tombs put in perspective the theology and tradition that began to marginalize her and, in the gospel of Luke, even damn her as a fallen woman. The Jesus tomb speaks volumes, even through its six simple inscriptions. Here we find Mariamene Mara buried side-by-side next to Jesus and what we believe to be their child Judah—together in death as in life. These archaeological facts are quite touching and moving in terms of their implications once one can clear away the theological dogma and mythological notions of bodies—bones, flesh, and all—being taken up to heaven. To find oneself in the presence of the historical Jesus and the tomb of his family takes one beyond issues of faith or religious orientation. For us it was experiencing history, the history of the man who was one of the most influential human beings who ever lived.

  It is the same with the brothers of Jesus. Mark names all four brothers, including Joses, the nickname of Jesus’ second brother, whereas Luke, recording the same scene, omits the brothers as well as Jesus’ mother (compare Mark 6:1–3 and Luke 4:22–23). John presents the brothers of Jesus as hostile to him (John 7:3–5). Not one of the four gospels records the fact that James the brother of Jesus assumed leadership of the twelve after Jesus’ death, yet, as we have seen, multiple sources confirm that this was the case.

  The case of Joses is particularly fascinating to con
sider. He is the second brother of Jesus, born after James, but other than his name listed in Mark’s gospel, and nowhere else, his very existence has been muted—until now. We don’t know how he died but that he is interred in an ossuary before 70 CE means that his life was likely somehow cut short. Perhaps he too, like Jesus and James to follow, went up against the corrupt religious establishment and was killed. We will never know his story but his ossuary is an amazing testimony to his life. Had he lived he would likely have succeeded James in leading the Jesus movement. Instead the third brother, Simon, took over.3

  These differences, and there are many more, are not a matter of minor details. Although some scholars have tried to reconcile these diverse traditions, it is impossible. The gospel writers are not recording history but a series of competing traditions and emphases that developed fifty to a hundred years after Jesus’ death.

  The letters of Paul were written earlier than the gospels (50s–60s CE) and in some ways they bring us closer to Jesus’ first followers—certainly in terms of chronology. In other ways, because Paul never met Jesus and insisted that his visions of the heavenly “Christ” were superior to the physical contact that James, Peter, and John had with Jesus before his death, they too can be much more theological than historical. Paul never mentions Mary Magdalene, and his denigrating insistence that women be silent and submissive to men shows he would not have accepted her status as Jesus’ intimate and most trusted follower. Alternatively, he is our best witness for the leadership of James over the Jesus movement, and since he directly encountered James, Peter, John, and the rest of the apostles, even if in conflict, we can take James’s prominence as an established historical fact. This correlates well with the other sources we have, outside the New Testament gospels, which give James this leadership role as “successor” to Jesus.