The Jesus Discovery

by James D. Tabor

  4. See Rahmani, CJO, pp. 15–16.

  5. Even today in Israel, if one fills out a legal document (visa application, court forms, contracts, etc.) the name of one’s father is given. The custom also prevails in Jewish prayers and liturgy, where individuals are identified as “so-and-so, the son-of or daughter-of so-and-so.”

  6. See Rahmani, CJO, pp. 16–17.

  7. See chapter 1, note 33.

  8. In later rabbinic texts the nickname Yosi becomes quite popular but it never occurs on any ossuary in this period and it is decidedly different from Yoseh. See the comprehensive study of Eldad Keynan, “A Critical Evaluation of the Occurrences of Common Names, Rare Names, and Nicknames: The Name YOSEH () from the Talpiot tomb as a Test Case,” in The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls: The Fourth Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, eds. James H. Charlesworth and Arthur C. Boulet (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming, 2011).

  9. Cotton, et. al., CIIJ no. 116 suggests a reading of “Maria Yoseh” for one additional ossuary but this is unlikely, see Rahmani, COJO, no. 8. According to Tal Ilan, Joseph is represented as 217 out of a total of 2,538 named males. Yoseh in Aramaic does show up in two other non-ossuary sources, making a total of three known occurrences.

  10. See James Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 243–304 for a survey of what is known about James the brother of Jesus.

  11. Several manuscripts of Mark have Yoseh (Ιωση), which is much closer to the Aramaic, but Joses (Ιωσης) is the preferred reading.

  12. See S. J. Pfann, “Mary Magdalene Has Left the Room. A Suggested New Reading of Ossuary CJO 701,” Near Eastern Archaeology 69: 3–4 (2006): 130–31. Pfann’s reading is accepted by Jonathan Price and others, see Cotton, et. al., CIIP, no. 447.

  13. Even though we do not accept the reading “Mariam and Martha” it is worth pointing out that those two names come up in the gospels for two sisters who live in Bethany, near Jerusalem, along with their brother Lazarus (John 11:1). According to our records Jesus is quite close to this family, so ironically, the names “Mary and Martha” are not alien to the Jesus tradition of intimates. Some have even suggested that Mary of Bethany is Mary Magdalene.

  14. See Rahmani, CJO, no. 701 as well as his introductory comments, p. 14. The Greek is in the genitive case in a diminutive form of Μαριαμημη. This form of the name is rare and is found also on one other ossuary, Rahmani #108. Di Segni supports Rahmani’s reading (as per private e-mail correspondence with the author in 2007).

  15. See Rahmani, CJO, no. 108. It is interesting to note that Jonathan Price, who disputes Rahmani’s reading of the Talpiot tomb as Mariamene, accepts tentatively his reading of this second ossuary as Mariamene—and yet the inscriptions are almost identical, see Cotton, et. al., CIIP, no. 133, as well as the representations in Rahmani of the inscriptions themselves.

  16. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.1.

  17. See Cotton, et al., CIIP, no. 97.

  18. Cotton, et al., CIIP, nos. 97, 200, 262, 517 and 563. We do not accept that no. 543 is using Mara for a male named Joseph. A close examination shows a line break that would indicate this man is being called Mar—the son of Benaya, son of Yehuda. See the limited examples of the use of Mar/Mara in Aramaic and Greek in Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in late Antiquity, pp. 422–23.

  19. See Cotton, et. al., CIIP, no. 262 where Jonathan Price writes that although Mara is short for Martha it can be a title.

  20. Mara, which comes from the Aramaic masculine word Mar, is the absolute feminine, whereas Marta (Martha) is the emphatic feminine. They both come from the same masculine noun and mean the same thing, but Martha evolved into a name and is common (eighteen examples on ossuaries), whereas Mara functions more as a title and is rare.

  21. Paul translates the Aramaic into Greek as maranatha.

  22. Andrey Feuerverger, “Statistical Analysis of an Archaeological Find,” Annals of Applied Statistics 2 (2008): 3–54, followed by six discussion papers in response and a final rejoinder by Feuerverger, pp. 66–73, 99–112.

  23. Since Feuerverger’s publication the statistical discussion and its variables have been considerably advanced by Kevin Kilty and Mark Elliott, “Probability, Statistics, and the Talpiot tomb,” http://www.lccc.wy.edu/Media/Website%20Resources/documents/Education%20Natural%20and%20Social%20Sciences/tomb.pdf and “Inside the Numbers on the Talpiot tombs,” http://www.lccc.wy.edu/Media/Website%20Resources/documents/Education%20Natural%20and%20Social%20Sciences/tombNumbers.pdf.

  24. “The Talpiot Tomb: What Are the Odds?” http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/tomb357926.shtml and http://talpiottomb.com/common_names_v4.3b.doc.

  25. The assumption that Joseph owned this tomb is based on a theological interpolation of Matthew, who adds two words to his source Mark, “he laid it in his own new tomb” (Matthew 27:60), to make Jesus’ burial fit the prophecy Isaiah 53:9, that the grave of God’s “Servant” would be “with a rich man.”

  26. Amos Kloner, “Did a Rolling Stone Close Jesus’ Tomb?,” Biblical Archaeology Review 22:5 (1999): 23–29, 26. Kloner cites several rabbinic texts to support his assertion. Compare his fuller academic treatment, “Reconstruction of the Tomb in the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre According to Archaeological Finds and Jewish Burial Customs of the First century CE,” in The Beginnings of Christianity: A Collection of Articles (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2005), pp. 269–78.

  27. See Jeffrey Bütz, The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2005), pp. 95–99, for a survey of a growing scholarly consensus that James, the brother of Jesus, had likely already taken up residence in Jerusalem prior to Jesus’ crucifixion.

  28. See Eldad Keynan, “The Holy Sepulcher, the Court Tombs, and the Talpiot Tomb in the Light of Jewish Law,” in The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls: The Fourth Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, ed. James H. Charlesworth and Arthur C. Boulet (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming, 2011).

  29. See Rahmani, CJO, p. 23; Cotton, CIIP, pp. 10–17.

  30. For the historical records of what happened to Jesus’ brothers and the disastrous impact of the 70 CE Roman destruction of Jerusalem see Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 284–304.

  31. On Jewish law and burial customs see Keynan, “The Holy Sepulcher, the Court Tombs, and the Talpiot tomb in the Light of Jewish Law.” There is a very late, 16th century CE rabbinic tradition from the Kabbalistic Rabbi Isaac ben Luria that the grave of Jesus is in the north, in Galilee, outside the city of Tsfat (Safed); Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 238–40.

  32. See Jodi Magness, “Has the Tomb of Jesus Been Discovered?” SBL Forum, n.p. (cited February 2007), http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=640, as well as the response of James D. Tabor, “Two Burials of Jesus of Nazareth and the Talpiot Yeshua Tomb,” SBL Forum, http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=651.

  33. See Luke 8:2–3; 23:55–56.

  34. Antiquities 20.200–1.

  35. See Syriac, Recognitions 1.43.3 as reconstructed by Robert E. Van Voorst, The Ascents of James: History and Theology of a Jewish-Christian Community, SBL Dissertation Series 112 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).

  36. Amos Kloner and Boaz Zissu, The Necropolis of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period, Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 8 (Leuven, Belgium; and Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2007).

  37. Hadashot Arkheologiyot 76 (1981).

  38. Luke’s source is Mark and his explanation that it is a city might be his own expansion. His gospel is not geographically accurate.

  CHAPTER FIVE: JESUS AND MARY MAGDALENE

  1. According to early Christian tradition the names of Jesus’ two sisters, not given in the New Testament gospels (see Mark 6:3), were Mary and Salome. See Epiphanius, Panarion 78.8–9 and compare Gospel of Phillip 59:6–11 with Protoevangelium of James 19–20.

  2. For the arguments for identifying
this second Mary as Jesus’ mother see Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 73–82.

  3. Salome is likely Jesus’ sister, or perhaps the mother of the sons of Zebedee, the fishermen James and John (Matthew 27:56). Luke adds that Joanna, the wife of Herod’s assistant, was with them. Even though the verb used for “lifted up” can just mean to pick up or carry, in this context it seems to refer to being lifted up from the dead—in other words, resurrected.

  4. See Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 223–41. The main appended ending (Mark 16:9–20) does not appear in our two oldest manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, dating to the early 4th century AD. It is also absent from about one hundred Armenian manuscripts, the Old Latin version, and the Sinaitic Syriac. Even copies of Mark that contain the ending often include notes from the scribe pointing out that it is not in the oldest manuscripts.

  5. We have translated “Lord” here as Master, which has fewer theological connotations and fits with what follows in the story where Mary Magdalene addresses Jesus as Rabboni—my Master.

  6. See Jane Schaberg, Mary Magdalene Understood (New York: Continuum Press, 2006), pp. 122–26. Schaberg’s full study is The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (New York: Continuum, 2004).

  7. Contra Celsum 1.65. Celsus’s critique is preserved by the church father Origen, who wrote a defense against him around 248 CE. He apparently knows the passage in Luke 8:1–3 that mentions Joanna. There is a summary of his critique in his own words at http://www.bluffton.edu/~humanities/1/celsus.htm.

  8. Contra Celsum, 2.55.

  9. Contra Celsum 2.70.

  10. See the study of Margaret Y. MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  11. See Ann Graham Brock, Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority, Harvard Theological Studies 51 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

  12. Although the New Testament letters of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are attributed to Paul, scholars are universally agreed that they are “deutero-Pauline,” written by some of his followers in the generation after his death. See Ehrman, The New Testament, pp. 395–407.

  13. Matthew 27:56, 61; 28:1; Mark 15:40, 47; 16:1; Luke 8:2; 24:10; John 19:25; 20:1, 18.

  14. Josephus, Wars 3:462ff.

  15. Ibid., 3:462–505, 532–42.

  16. Rami Arav and John J. Rousseau, Jesus and His World: An Archaeological and Cultural Dictionary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1995), p. 189.

  17. See http://www.antiquities.org.il/article_Item_eng.asp?sec_id=25&subj_id=240&id=1601&module_id=#as and http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/09/11/jerusalem.synagogue/index.html.

  18. b. Chagiga 4b. In another story in the Talmud, Jesus’ mother is referred to as the “hairdresser” who was seduced by a Gentile named “Pandeira” (b. Shabbat 104b). There is a play on words here, likely referring to two Miriams, one who “grows” the hair, the other who “grows” the child. In the story the angel of death strikes the wrong Mary—in this case Miriam the Megdala, getting the names confused. See Burton L. Visotzky, “Mary Maudlin Among the Rabbis,” in Fathers of the World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1995), pp. 85–92.

  19. See Peter Schaeffer’s comprehensive study of all the major passages, Jesus in the Talmud, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

  20. For a typical defense of the idea that Jesus was not married by an evangelical Christian writer see http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2003/11/Was-Jesus-Married.aspx.

  21. Josephus mentions a similar story about his own precociousness at age fourteen, see Life 9.

  22. See Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocken Books, 1995).

  23. Josephus, Wars 2.121.

  24. Philo, Hypothetica 11.14.

  25. Pliny the Elder, Natural History 5.73.

  26. See the excerpt on celibacy among the Essenes by Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1995), pp. 127–44, available at http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Celibacy_of_the_Essenes,_Lawrence_H._Schiffman,_Reclaiming_the_Dead_Sea_Scrolls,_Jewish_Publication_Society,_Philadelphia.

  27. Like Jesus, Paul forbids divorce, reflecting a primordial ideal, but his assertion that a Christian abandoned by an “unbelieving” mate was free from the bonds of marriage might well reflect his own experience (1 Corinthians 7: 12–16).

  28. See Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkely: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 158–79.

  29. Tertullian, On the Dress of Women 1.1.

  30. Elizabeth Clark, Women in the Early Church (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1983).

  31. Matthew 26:6–13 has the same story, based on his source Mark, but he specifies that the objection to the waste came from “the disciples.”

  32. See Paul’s insistence on covering the hair in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16.

  33. Tertullian, Against Marcion 4:18.9, 16–17.

  34. See Gregory of Nyssa, a 4th century bishop, who equated Mary Magdalene with Eve, Against Eunomius 3.10.16.

  35. Homily 33 on Luke 7.

  36. Schaberg, Mary Magdalene Understood, pp. 71–97.

  37. Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2003) is the most thorough study of this text with a full introduction and translation. Since the discovery of the Coptic manuscript two additional fragments in Greek have turned up. King includes them as well in her analysis.

  38. Translations of these Mary Magdalene–related texts are those of Marvin Meyer, The Gospels of Mary: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene the Companion of Jesus (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004).

  39. It is generally agreed that the term gnostic with a small g is more appropriate. See Schaberg’s observations in Mary Magdalene Understood, pp. 68–71.

  40. See April D. DeConick, “The Great Mystery of Marriage: Sex and Conception in Ancient Valentinian Traditions,” Vigiliae Christianae 57 (2003): 307–42.

  CHAPTER SIX: THE MYSTERY OF THE JAMES OSSUARY

  1. André Lemaire, “Burial Box of James, the Brother of Jesus: Earliest Archaeological Evidence of Jesus Found in Jerusalem,” Biblical Archaeology Review 28:6 (2002): 24–33, 70. The geological analysis conducted by Amnon Rosenfeld and Shimon Ilani was also summarized in this issue, p. 29.

  2. James: Brother of Jesus. It was shown over the course of the next month in more than eighty additional countries.

  3. See the observations of Yuval Goren at http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Goren_Jerusalem_Syndrome.shtml.

  4. The other inscription, the Joash tablet, was a stone artifact with a Hebrew text that was purported to come from the 9th century BCE (see 1 Kings 12). See Uzi Dahari, ed., Final Report of the Examining Committee for the Yehoash Inscription and James Ossuary (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2003) for the results of the IAA investigation. The reports are conveniently posted at http://bibleinterp.com/articles/Final_Reports.shtml. A summary of this report with comments also appears in the revised edition of Shanks and Witherington’s The Brother of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), pp. 227–37.

  5. Correspondent Matthew Kalman serially reported on the entire trial for Time magazine and his articles are archived on his website: http://jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.com/. Oded Golan has recently released his own account of the trial proceedings titled “The Authenticity of the James Ossuary and the Jehoash Tablet Inscriptions—Summary of Expert Trial Witness,” available at http://bibleinterp.com/articles/authjam358012.shtml. His summary appears to provide convincing evidence that he was falsely accused and that both artifacts and their inscriptions are authentic.

  6. Neil Asher Silberman and Yuval Goren, “Faking Biblical History,” Archaeology 56:5 (2003): 20–29; David Samuels, “Written in S
tone,” New Yorker, April 12, 2004, pp. 48–59.

  7. Nina Burleigh, Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), and Ryan Byrne and Bernadette McNary-Zak, eds., Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

  8. Byron R. McCane, “Archaeological Context and Controversy,” in Byrne and McNary-Zak, eds., Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus, p. 20; http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/West_reply.shtml; http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Ossuary_Again.shtml.

  9. See the comments of Craig Evans at http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Evans_Thoughts.shtml.

  10. See Goren’s report at http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Goren_report.shtml.

  11. See Oded Golan’s summary of the trial testimony cited above.

  12. Camil Fuchs: “Demograph, Literacy and Names Distribution in Ancient Jerusalem: How Many James/Jacob Son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus Were There?” Polish Journal of Biblical Research 4:1 (2005): 3–30.

  13. Gath published this short preliminary report in Hebrew in 1981, but before the ossuary inscriptions had been deciphered; Hadashot Arkheologiyot 76 (1981): 24–26. Translation is by Noam Kuzar. The Jesus tomb has two ledges or “primary burial shelves” (arcosolia) on the northern and eastern walls, upon which corpses were laid out for the first year so they would decompose.

  14. See Rahmani, CJO, p. 222.

  15. It should also be noted that Rahmani’s catalogue often gives two differing measurements for individual ossuaries, recording initial measurements as well as subsequent lab measurements that were more precise. It is also possible, since the James ossuary was broken and restored in November 2002 when it was flown to Canada to be put on display, that its measurements today might tend to be slightly less than when it was first measured.