As some of you know who have followed the story, the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit that was earlier at Discovery Times Square in NYC has now moved on to Philadelphia. Few seem to realize that included in this very comprehensive exhibit which was put together by the every talented James Sanna, are not only the Dead Sea scrolls but a trove of other archaeological artifacts from the IAA State of Israel collection, including–you guessed it–four of the ossuaries from the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb: namely Yeshua bar Yehosef, Mariamene Mara, Yose, and Matya. We filmed the ABC Nightline special (link here is you missed it) on the new Talpiot Tomb discoveries back in April in the Discovery Times Square exhibit and it was interesting to watch the droves of visitors in the exhibit hall walking obliviously past the display of the ossuaries, tucked behind a glass window.

Unfortunately, Jude son of Jesus had to stay home as he is on special display in the Israel Museum and Maria is stored in the basement of the museum so far as I know. Other cities are to follow, I think Chicago is next, and it looks like it might be just in time for the SBL/AAR/ASOR/Bible Fest meeting, which could be most interesting. Maybe some of us might end up organizing something around this as there already are some things planned on the various programs dealing with the new Talpiot “patio” Tomb discoveries. I am doing a paper for SBL on both the Jonah image and the Greek inscription, also a lecture with the BAS Bible Fest, and Simcha Jacobovici and I are part of a forum on archaeology and the media hosted by Mark Goodacre, Robert Cargill, and Christian Brady, also for SBL. What would be nice would be some kind of forum/debate on the Talpiots tombs more generally but so far I don’t think anything like that has been included in the program. With the latest publications of the trial evidence on the James ossuary, which few of its naysayers seem to have noticed (see the comprehensive report “Implications of the “Forgery Trial” Verdict on the Authenticity of the James Ossuary” by Rosenfelt, et al. here), and all the other new evidence available for discussion, most of it posted now at bibleinterp.com (search “talpiot”), it would certainly be a topic of great interest. At the same time the comprehensive volume of papers from the January, 2008 Jerusalem conference titled: The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls, eds. James H. Charlesworth and Arthur C. Boulet (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012) will be published and available at the annual meetings in Chicago.

Professor James H. Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary has officially weighed in with comments and analysis on various aspects of the new discoveries in the Talpiot “patio” tomb with particular attention to the Jonah image and the Hebrew inscription of the name YONAH that appears to be written across the mouth of the fish. The complete article is here.

Prof. Charlesworth and I respectfully disagree on the identification of the nearby “garden” tomb as most likely that of Jesus of Nazareth and his intimate family but we are both convinced that the Talpiot tombs as a whole most likely relate to the earliest followers of Jesus and their faith in Jesus’ resurrection (see my post on why people are confused on the early Christian view of resurrection here).

So far as the YONAH inscription goes I find Prof. Charlesworth’s interpretation quite persuasive. I think what some who disagree have missed is the highly informal nature of fully half of ossuary inscriptions from this period, as anyone looking through Rahmani’s Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries, or the more complete and updated Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palesaestinae, eds. Cotton, et al. realizes. Many graffito-style inscriptions, whether in Greek or in Hebrew/Aramaic, exhibit letter forms that are highly irregular with no linear baseline in contrast to the formal hands we find in professional inscriptions or on handwritten materials of the period.  Often only a trained eye can decipher what the writer intended, see, for example, Rahmani’s nos. 17, 53, 68, 95, 108, 150, 151, 571 for just a few examples, and some can not be read at all, e.g. Rahmani no. 130. In contrast, this YONAH inscription is incredibly clear and can be easily read at a glance, with a minimum of ambiguity, as Charlesworth discusses below. Also, as Charlesworth points out, those who read these markings as intentional Hebrew letters do not claim that all the marks in the mouth of the fish are part of the letters, some are related to the fish itself (i.e., the straight line of the mouth), whereas others seem to form the eye of the fish as well as the arms and legs of a stick-like figure, attached to the large head. What does seem to be the case is that all of the inscribed markings (not the scratches or imperfections in the stone) are intentional.

It is also not the case that someone who is considered “important” is given a more formally inscribed name, as we have learned from the “Joseph son of Caiaphus” ossuary inscription (CIIP no. 461). For that reason I have to disagree with Prof. Charlesworth who argues that the inscription “Jesus son of Joseph” in the nearby tomb can not be that of Jesus of Nazareth as the ossuary is too plain and the inscription too graffiti-like.

Here is Prof. Charlesworth formal and technical analysis of the YONAH inscription with his notes included:

The first etching on the left has the unmistakable form of a he. The letter is written in three strokes. First, the person drew the horizontal line (the “roof”), and then added the leg to the right and then a shorter, slanted leg to the left. The left leg is well within the end stoke of the horizontal roof. The form of the he is typical of pre-70 scripts well known from Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts; examples are plentiful, see e.g. 4QDanb that dates between 20 and 50 CE. The he is similar to many inscriptions on ossuaries.11 Hebrew he represents the English “H.” Anyone who has worked on early manuscripts or pre-70 lapidary scripts should immediately see the he.

The meaning of the mark to the right of the he is not prima facie obvious. It is one connected stroke as the following image presented here shows (below). Conceivably, it can be a lamed [= L], but the upper portion of the stroke is too slanted to the left and the lower one appears too long (but the lamed appears in various ways prior to 70 CE). The one continuous stroke reminds me of a nun; one should be able to discern the turn to the left at the bottom of the stroke. The form is far from clear because the upper portion seems too long; but a lapidary nun is not to be confused with the Herodian Formal Book Hand inscribed upon lined leather. For example, in Ossuary 571 in Rahmani, the nun has a very long bottom stroke and it intrudes underneath two following letters. Perhaps this was caused by the need to inscribe stone with a chisel and the absence of a scribal horizontal line to guide the inscriber for hanging the Hebrew letters. Plus a stick figure and the alleged “mouth of a fish” may be intruding within or causing the elongated nun. The form of this nun is somewhat similar to the forms in hundreds of Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts; for example, it appears in 4QDeutj that dates from about 50 CE (also, in contrast, the Deut ms. represents the Formal Book Hand on leather). The nun becomes more likely when one studies that letter on ossuaries.12 Hebrew nun represents the English “N.”

The slightly curved scratch to the right of the nun is inelegant and some imagination is required (and speculation is frequently the case when studying lapidary scripts).13 It seems somewhat similar to the zain in 4QNumb that dates from the early first century CE. Most likely the form represents a waw. The top of this “letter” may have a “loop” as in the “Loop Mode” of the Herodian Ossuary Script.14 The form appears similar to the right-curved waw in Murabba‘ât 18 that has been dated to 55 or 56 CE. The curved backward waw of COJO no 38 is similar.15 This Hebrew letter equals the English “W,” “U,” or “O.”

On first viewing, the next stroke to the right looks like a zain. The top slants downward past the horizontal stroke. On examination, one can clearly see an upper loop to the left of the vertical stroke. The letter may well be yod as in the “Loop Mode” form, 16 but the extension to the upper right is problematic. Perhaps the inscriber meant to denote a yod. Similar forms with a looped yod appear in COJO, 82, 380, 411, 414, 421, 430 [bis], 435, 559, 603, 705, and 706. This Hebrew letter represents the English “Y,” “I,” or “J.”

Thus from left to right, which is the direction English is read today, we may discern: HNOJ. Since Hebrew is written right to left, we may recognize: JONH. The “a” vowel did not appear in Hebrew manuscripts until after the seventh century CE. Most likely, therefore, we may comprehend the inscription: “JONAH.”

The following image is not altered or enhanced. Notice that the nun is connected and appears to be one angular stroke. Obviously, I never intimated that all the lines in “the head of the fish” are letters; anyone who imagined that I did make such a claim or that I ignored some lines simply was dependent on a journalist’s summary of my comments.17

I am open to the suggestion that the “artist” intended an oblate circle to symbolize an eye of the fish and the long as a closed mouth; conceivably he also seemed to depict a stick-figured Jonah (which I will discuss later).

Finally, no assurance is provided for any reading. I am bothered by the mixing of scripts. The inscriber began with the looped lapidary script and then continued with forms known from leather manuscripts. Had he been trained as a scribe? Did he begin with the well-known lapidary script and shifted to forms with which he was more familiar? The lack of precision in this inscription is due perhaps to the need to chisel on stone. Were the forms twisted by the shape of the circular mouth of the alleged fish? Did the inscriber wish to meld the inscription with a stick figure within the mouth? The Hebrew letters, the imagined image of the stick figure, and the drawing seem to me to be the same depth and style.

This reading represents my present speculation and on-going research. I and all others need to see the ossuary or at least an image that is not possibly distorted by a flexible camera. I offer my reading for other epigraphers to discuss. As with many inscriptions, my reading can neither be proved nor disproved.

I am pleased to learn that one of the finest epigraphers in Israel, Robert Deutsch, has no doubt that the inscription clearly reads “YONAH.” Deutsch sent me this question: “What are statistically the chances for a so- called decoration to look like these four letters?” He answered: “One in over 1 billion.” I have been informed that Professor Haggai Misgav says definitely there are letters, but he prefers maybe zayin and lamed, thus “ZILA” or “ZEILA.”

Notes:

10 Hebrew letters on ossuaries are notoriously difficult to discern and can be idiosyncratic. For examples, in COJO the aleph has no left foot, in 483 the aleph has two left slanted vertical strokes, and in 803, the aleph looks like an inverted ‘ayin. In 559 the shin has only two arms. In 571 the “Bar Naum” becomes possible if we allow the final mem to be two disconnected strokes.
11 For examples, see COJO, 8, 16, 107, 222, 414 and 730.
12 For examples, see COJO, 12, 68, 107, 270 and esp. 76 and 571.
13 Notice the odd nun in COJO no. 465, it has a long horizontal base that extends way past the next consonant, supplying “Kynoros.” “Aninas” in no. 475 is really “Aniinias.”
14 See the example in A.Yardeni, The Book of Hebrew Script (Jerusalem: Carta,) 1997, pp. 178-79.
15 I am also impressed that this waw looks like the zain on ossuaries 74, 75, 82 and 88.
16 See Yardeni, The Book of Hebrew Script, pp. 178-79.
17 My reading was announced in the Globe and Mail on April 11, 2012. Graffiti on ossuaries are often just scratches; some cannot be deciphered (Rahmani, COJO, 83, 89, 130). Some inscriptions are curved as in Ossuary Six. Some graffiti are extremely sloppy (e.g., COJO, 191, 582, 610, 651, 682, 694, 718, 773). As I have said before, in 704 (the famous ossuary from East Talpiot), the name “Yeshua, son of Yehosef” is a guess. Debates are focused on the meaning of some inscriptions (e.g., see COJO, 15 and the suggestions of Mayer, Sukenik, Rahmani, Savignac, and Klein). Do the markings on Ossuary 33 in COJO have meanings?

 

 

I mentioned the breaking story in the Toronto Globe and Mail last week that reported Prof. James H. Charlesworth’s discovery of the inscription “YONH: (Yod, Vav, Nun, Heh) on the controversial Jonah and the fish image on the ossuary in the Talpiot “Patio” tomb (also known as Talpiot Tomb B). Below is an untouched photo from our HiDef camera with natural color that shows very clearly the lines of the inscription, including the “Nun” that some have questioned as two broken lines. Here one can see the lines are clearly connected. One has to compare several photos in contrasting light to see what is apparently intended in this engraving. Bruce Zuckerman and others have demonstrated this with scripts and it is particularly true with artifacts such as ossuaries, that are engraved. However, I should point out that even in the photos originally posted, here below, with the Hebrew letters highlighted, the nun is unbroken, despite some claims to the contrary. What has confused some is that there is a splotch or imperfection in the stone, right below the vertical juncture of the letter Nun, that some have mistaken for a continued line. It simply is not there. In fact our CGI representation has the lines of this Nun unconnected, despite claims to the contrary. Those who have charged that one can only see these clear Hebrew letters by ignoring lines that are clearly present or joining together lines that are clearly not conjoined are mistaken. Some have even objected that the letters need to be linearly aligned, which is obviously incorrect as even a glance at the 600 or so ossuary inscriptions we have will quickly demonstrate. Inscribed names are written in all sorts of configurations–even vertically and zig-zaged.

In this engraving, which is complex and very carefully executed, some lines are part of the mouth of the fish, the eye, and the stick figure, and thus overlap or intersect with the inscribed name YONAH. The large “eye” of the fish has been added by extra lines, not part of the letters Yod and Vav, but barely touching. In the same way the “mouth” of the fish, with its straight line, serves also as the line of the stick figure. Finally, the curve that encloses the whole, similar to other engraved fish images, giving the effect of the fish head/gills, is not part of the letters. There are also a few very faint scratches and indentations that are not part of the engraving. One who is not used to looking at ossuary inscriptions might find these letters a bit clumsy and imprecise, but just a glance through some of the parallels in Rahmani’s Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries from the period show the almost infinite variety of individual graffito styles and informal representations (see, for examples, nos. 15, 26, 35, 76, 82, 107, 456, 704, 705, 706, 783). It is interesting that some of the best parallels to these letters come from the nearby “Jesus” tomb.

Prof. Charlesworth has spent his long and amazingly productive career reading texts and manuscripts of the late 2nd Temple period and he does not need me to defend his ability to decipher such materials. In fact he has devoted much of his time in recent years to difficult readings in some of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts that have faded with age or through poor atmospheric conditions. However, anyone who spends just a bit of time with Herodian script, even just paging through the Hebrew/Aramaic inscriptions on ossuaries in Rahmani’s Calogue of Jewish Ossuaries, will see that these four letter forms on the ossuary are clear once the lines are correctly identified.

A few years ago Prof. Stephen Pfann, working on the “Shimon bar Yonah” ossuary fragment, for which he offered a re-reading (Shimon bar Zila), speculated about how an inscription reading “Jonah” from this period would look and his results were surprisingly close to what we have on our Jonah image–though in a more informal graffito lapidary script.

Prof. Charlesworth is completing a more comprehensive analysis and I bow to his expertise and offer these few observations of my own.  In the meantime it looks like his discovery is getting a wider circulation:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-04/uonc-hia041812.php

I can’t help but think that some of the initial reaction last week was a bit of the “knee-jerk” variety, only because the name Jonah in the mouth of the fish would pretty well end the six weeks of back-and-forth in the blogging world regarding this iconic image as to whether it is a funerary monument, a perfume flash, a Hellenistic krater-vase, an amphora, or–God forbid–an image of JONAH and the fish! I am hoping colleagues might calmly reconsider and allow this interesting discovery of Prof. Charlesworth to be more than scoring points tit-for-tat in some kind of “blogging war” on the internet. If we indeed have an image of Jonah and the big fish on this ossuary then it will be most useful for us to discuss what that might mean in terms of its implications within late 2nd Temple Judaism so that our discussions can move on in positive ways. Even though I have referred to this image in a kind of shorthand as a symbol of “resurrection” and connected it to the Jesus movement, more precisely it has to do with ascent to heaven, rebirth, being re-clothed in heavenly garments, and sitting/ruling/reigning in heavenly glory at the “right Hand” (Enochian materials, Dead Sea Scrolls, Hechalot and Merkabah traditions). In the case of Jesus worship it reflects the very earliest “Christology,” even predating Paul, as reflected in the hymn he quotes in Philippians 2:5-10 based on Genesis 2 and Psalm 110. It finally comes down to the “two powers in heaven” notions that Daniel Boyarin has so beautifully summarized for a non-technical audience in his latest work, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. That we have the first archaeological evidence for these ideas from the Herodian period is truly quite remarkable and it is unfortunate that the discussion has become clouded with vituperative exchanges.

NOTE ON THE PHOTOS: Since some have falsely charged that we have manipulated, altered, or otherwise “photoshopped” images related to the Talpiot tomb B findings here is an official “on record” statement by Felix Golubev, director of our technical operations, in consultation with William Tarant of General Electric Technologies, about the photos here published as well as all photos we have released related to our investigations:

Attached are two best images of “Yonah” inscription in question. One image came from the high definition camera and the other one from the fiber-optic video probe. None of these images were altered, enhanced or even colour corrected. The difference in colour is due to how these two cameras process light. In the HD image, you will notice that the subjects on left and on the right are out of focus. This is because the HD camera has a shallow depth of field and when you zoom in whatever is in front goes out of focus. On the left, we are looking at the wall of the koch, on
the right – is the edge of the ossuary with 4 line inscription. Felix Golubev, via e-mail April 21, 2012

 

There is a lot of confusion among Christians today, as well as among Jews and secularists for that matter, as to what the term resurrection of the dead means, whether as applied to Jesus and the Easter event, or more generally to humankind at the end of days. Most often the notion of resurrection of the dead is confused with a somewhat different Greek idea, the immortality of the soul–but these two ideas are quite distinct from one another as we will see below.

Christians affirm that Jesus was “raised on the third day, ascended to heaven, and sits at the right hand of God,” whereas Jews pray three times daily the Amidah, which praises God who, literally, “makes live the dead.” Understanding resurrection of the dead has everything to do with placing our claims in the new book, The Jesus Discovery, regarding the two Talpiot tombs, in a proper historical context. One of the main objections to the case we present is the objection that the notion of Jesus’ earliest followers celebrating his resurrection while knowing his bones are reverently buried in a tomb is a classic non-sequitur. I argue that such is not the case and it actually represents a misunderstanding of what the earliest followers of Jesus clearly affirmed about his resurrection, and thus about their own, which they anticipated in the immanent future. This post is long and detailed but the subject is complex and I hope it will go a long way toward clearing some of the confusion for those willing to dig a bit into the sources and the contemporary history of the time.

When one thinks about our concepts of death and the afterlife in the Western world the questions most people have are questions of individual survival—whether there is “life” after death. The nature of that life or survival can be thought of in a variety of ways, but the fundamental question is “What happens to me when I die?” Is there something or is there nothing? Those who believe in “life after death” are affirming, in some manner, the idea that some essence of the individual self, the person we sense ourselves to be, survives the death of the body. It is an extension of Descartes’s dictum: “I think therefore I am.” It is the survival of the “I,” the ego self that is in question. It is assumed that the biological self or body returns to dust or ashes, but the inner self lives on in some way. These questions come to us intuitively on the level of personal experience any time someone we love dies. The heart stops, respiration ceases, and the deceased is pronounced dead. The person becomes a “corpse” and it is easy to think of the now decaying body as merely a “house” or vehicle for the inner self or soul—but not the person we knew in life. We dispose of the body according to our cultural customs and personal choices, respectfully, but also realistically, knowing that it is irretrievable.

This view of the human person as both a mortal physical body and an immortal soul or spirit, is deeply rooted in our Western religious and philosophical past. For most, without belief in some sort of life after death, there could be no viable spiritual faith. The alternative is seen as materialism—that all we really are is a functioning biological organism made wholly of matter.

Socrates sums it up best, as he drinks the fatal hemlock, having been condemned to exile or voluntary death by the Athenian elders. He tells his disciples to weep not for him but for themselves for he is returning “home” while they will remain for a time in the house or prison of the body, until their time of release comes.[i] The Roman philosopher and statesman, Cicero, who lived in the first century BCE, explained this view more fully:

Strive on indeed, and be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure that can be pointed out by the finger. (6:24)[ii]

This Platonic body/soul dualism became the standard belief in Greco-Roman antiquity, even among some Hellenized first century Jews such as Philo and Josephus.[iii] The most celebrated early Christian theologians, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine considered Plato a kind of honorary “pre-Christian” and reshaped their exposition of the Christian faith almost wholly in Platonic categories.

As a result it is extremely difficult for people today, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other spiritual tradition to conceive of life after death other than through the lenses of Plato—the body perishes and the immortal soul passes on to an unseen realm of the spirit.

Given this perspective we must ask, what could bones possibly have to do with any idea of life after death? This gets at the heart of the concept of resurrection of the dead. It is an alternative view of the afterlife, but it differs in significant ways. Although the term “resurrection” has become rooted in our Jewish-Christian-Islamic cultures, most are confused about how the two ideas—immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body—relate to one another. If one attends a funeral and the rabbi, priest, minister, or Imam, stands before the corpse, right before lowering it into the grave, or in front of an urn of ashes, while reading words of scripture declaring that the “dead shall rise” people are confused about what is being affirmed. Are they to believe that the body, committed back to the dust or turned to ashes, is somehow to be revived or recreated? Is “resurrection” to be taken literally, or is it just a metaphorical or symbolic way of saying “We believe the essential human person survives death.” Is there such a thing as “spiritual” resurrection? And if so, what about the “bones”?

As we will see, the concept of resurrection is something quite different—or at least it was in the time of Jesus.

Resurrection of the dead is affirmed in our Western religious creeds. Jews recite the Thirteen Principles of Maimonides (the last of which says, “I believe in the resurrection of the dead.”) Christians affirm the “resurrection of the body” in the Apostles’ Creed, the oldest confession of its type. Muslims affirm that God will raise the dead for judgment on the Last Day—also called the “Day of Standing Up” (Surah 2:79).

The original core idea of “resurrection of the dead,” at least for Christians and Jews whose understanding is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, is best illustrated by Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones. The prophet Ezekiel sees a valley full of dry bones and God asks him, “Son of man, can these bones live? Ezekiel answers, “O LORD God you know.” Then God tells him to address the bones:

Thus says the Lord GOD to the bones: Behold I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 37:5-6).

Resurrection of the dead here, clearly, is a reconstitution of the physical body, a miraculous revival of the entire person, living and breathing again in this world. The fundamental question regarding afterlife in this text is not “Does the immortal soul survive the death and decay of the body,” but rather, do the dead, once death and decay have occurred, return to life? There is a vast difference between the question of survival and the question of returning to life. The latter is seen as a recreation of the whole person, body, soul, and spirit. The former is the ongoing life of the spirit without the body. The bottom line is that the concept of resurrection of the dead involves a bodily return to this world, whereas the concept of the immortal soul involves a transition from the body to a higher state in another realm.

The language of both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament bears out this core idea. In Hebrew one speaks of God, literally “making live” the dead. The Greek word for  resurrection (anastasis) mean literally “to stand up.” Thus “lifting up” or “raising up” is a way of affirming that the person represented by the bones will return to life. What kind of life—and in what kind of a body?—we will explore next.

In the Bible, when the bones are buried, the spirit or soul descends into the “world of the dead,” called Sheol in Hebrew and Hades in Greek. Sheol is described as a land of silence and forgetfulness, a region gloomy, dark, and deep (Psalm 115:17; 6:5; 88:3-12; Isaiah 38:18). All the dead go down to Sheol, and there they make their bed together–whether good or evil, rich or poor, slave or free (Job 3:11-19). The dead in Sheol are mere shadows of their former embodied selves, lacking substance they are called “shades” (Psalm 88:10).[iv] There is one “séance” story in the Hebrew Bible in which the infamous medium of Endor conjured up the “shade” of the dead prophet Samuel at the insistence of king Saul, who wanted to communicate with him. When Samuel appears, rising up out of the earth, he asks Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (1 Samuel 28:8-15). But even Samuel must then return to Sheol. Death is a one-way street; it is the land of no return:

But man dies, and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake, or be aroused out of his sleep. (Job 14:10-12)

There are three stories of the resuscitation of the dead in the Hebrew Bible. Elijah raises the son of widow, his successor Elisha raises the child of a wealthy woman, and an dead man put in the grave of Elijah, touching his bones, “lived and was raised to his feet” (1 Kings 17:17-22; 2 Kings 2:32-37; 2 Kings 13:21). Jesus raises three people from the dead in the gospels: a twelve year old girl; a young man, son of a widow; and Lazarus, brother of Mary and Martha (Mark 5:41-43; Luke 7:11-17; John 11:43-44). Matthew says that at the death of Jesus many of the dead came out of their graves and walked about in the city (Matthew 27: 52). Peter raises a widow and Paul revives a young man who fell from a window (Acts 20:9-12).

What is important to note about all these stories of “resurrection” is that these people returned from death to live again, but they then they subsequently died again. This notion of a temporary return from death, basically a revival of a corpse, is not the view of resurrection of the dead that Jews in the time of Jesus believed and that followers of Jesus were affirming about him.

The Hebrew Bible says very little about resurrection of the dead in this more extended sense. The single unambiguous passage is from Daniel, but it is a key to understanding the concept at its core:

And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And multitudes of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. (Daniel 12:1-4)

The metaphor of “sleeping in the dust of the earth” and then awakening captures precisely the core idea of resurrection of the dead. The bodies of the dead have long ago decayed and turned to dust, so this is no resuscitation of a corpse, nor is it even Ezekiel’s vision of reclothing dry bones with sinew and skin. This is an entirely new concept that has begun to develop in Jewish thought and Jews like Jesus, as well as the Pharisees, believed that on the “last day,” the dead would be raised. What people mix up is the literal idea of resuscitation or the “standing up” of a corpse, and the fully developed Jewish idea of resurrection at the end of days. The latter does not involve collecting the dust, the fragmentary decaying bones, or other remains of the body and somehow restoring their form. According to the book of Revelation, even the “sea” gives up the dead that are in it—which can hardly mean one must search for digested bodies that the fish have eaten and eliminated—as unpleasant as the thought may be (Revelation 20:11-15).

Corpse revival is not resurrection of the dead–at least in its classic sense of what happens to all humankind in the end of days. This might be the view of a child who does not yet understand the idea, or metaphorically one could speak of the dead “coming out of their tombs,” as in the famous Michael Jackson video “Thriller,” but no one thought of it literally that way in terms of what would happen at the end of days.

The fully developed view of resurrection of the dead among Jews in the time of Jesus was that at the end of days the dead would come forth from Sheol/Hades—literally the “state of being dead,” and live again in an embodied form. The question was—what kind of a body? And it was there that the debates began. The Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, poked fun at the Pharisees, who affirmed it. How could God raise the dead—what if a woman had had seven husbands in her life, each of whom died and she kept remarrying—in the resurrection whose wife would she be? Jesus was confronted with this question in the gospels (Luke 20:34-40). His answer was clear and unambiguous—when the dead come forth they will be in a transformed body, much like the angels, not the literal physical bodies that they once inhabited—there will be no “marriage or giving in marriage” as there will be no “male or female” in terms of physical sexual gender. There will be no birth, no death, but a new transformed life.

Paul is the crystal clear on this point. Some of his converts in the city of Corinth were denying the resurrection of the dead. They were most likely thinking along the lines of Plato—if the immortal soul is freed from the prison of the body at death, why would it ever return to the body? And yet that is precisely what Paul defended—a return to a body—but as he makes very clear, it is not a natural or “physical body”—the one he calls the body of “dust,” but a spiritual body—literally “wind body,” (pneumatikos), that is transformed and not subject to death (1 Corinthians 15:42-50).

Resurrection of the dead, according to both Paul and Jesus, has nothing to do with the former physical body. Paul’s objectors taunted him—“How are the dead raised? In what kind of a body will they come forth?—he called them fools—as obviously they had no clue about the concept of resurrection, mistaking it for corpse revival (1 Corinthians 15:34). Paul says that Jesus had become, what he calls, a life-giving spirit. The difference between this idea and that of the Greek notion of the immortal soul is difficult to understand, but in the Hebraic view of things the distinction was important. Simply put, in Greek thought death was a friend—that released one from the bonds of the lower, mortal, decaying, material world. In Hebrew the created world is good—even very good—and death is seen as enemy—but one that can be conquered. Paul writes that the “last enemy to be destroyed is death,” and then the creation, which is good, will be “released from its bondage to decay” (1 Corinthians 15:26; Romans 8:21).

The whole concept turns on the notion of how the created world is viewed—as something to abandon and escape, or something to be transformed and changed. That is why the Bible speaks of a “new heavens and a new earth,” rather than leaving this earth to go to heaven (Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 21:1). The kingdom of God is when the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament the ideal future is when God comes down to the renewed creation, not when we leave a hopeless world to join God in heaven (Revelation 21:3).

Paul makes clear that in Christian resurrection the body is left behind like an old change of clothing, to turn to the dust, and the spirit is “reclothed” with a new spiritual body. He compares the physical body to a temporary tent, and the new body is a permanent house (2 Corinthians 5:1-5). He even throws in a polemic against the Greek Platonic view of the “unclothed” or disembodied immortal soul—he says our desire is not to be naked, which is the state of death before resurrection, but to be clothed again!

This has everything to do with the earliest Christian view of Jesus’ resurrection, the resurrection hope his followers had, and our Talpiot tombs. That is why the presence of bones—even the bones of Jesus, next to statements of faith in resurrection, were not a contradiction. The confusion has come over the accounts in the gospels of the empty tomb of Jesus, and his “appearances” to his followers following his resurrection–all of which were written after 70 CE when the links with the faith of the Jerusalem community had been severed.

The evidence we have found in the Talpiot tombs is primary evidence of what the first Christians believed about resurrection faith. It is not theology, but it is firm archaeological testimony that allows us for the first time to reconstruct the full picture. The tomb evidence agrees completely with the teachings of both Jesus and Paul about the new spiritual body. The confusion has come in the gospels because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the empty tomb. There was an empty tomb—but it was the first tomb, the temporary one in which Joseph of Arimathea placed the corpse of Jesus until the Passover and Sabbath were past. The Talpiot Jesus tomb was not empty—the “Jesus son of Joseph” ossuary held his bones, and as we will see, we have been able to even do DNA tests on those remains. This is no threat to the original Christian resurrection faith, it is actually an affirmation of that faith. Paul knows nothing of that first empty tomb. He knows that Jesus died and was buried and on the third day he was raised up. He then appeared to his followers, not as a resuscitated corpse, but in Paul’s words, as a “life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). These words of Paul are our earliest testimony to faith in Jesus’ resurrection—until now. We now have testimony by his original followers that predates Paul, and predates the gospels by many decades. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were written between 70-100 CE. The names on the books are traditional. They are not included in the text but added later as “titles” to the manuscripts. In other words, Mark does not begin, “I Mark, having witnessed these things, do hereby write…” Nor does Matthew, Luke, or John. In that sense all four gospels are pseudonymous—we don’t know their real authors.

What is particularly telling is that if you take the gospels in order, beginning with Mark there are no appearances of Jesus—just the statement that he will “go before them to Galilee.”[v] Several scholars have seen this as a reference to his second coming. In Matthew the women at the tomb see Jesus and later the eleven apostles on a misty mountain top—but some doubted. He gives them their commission to take the gospel to the world (Matthew 28:18-19). Here we have clearly left the world of history and entered the world of theology. The “Great Commission” is Matthew’s view of the Christian mission until the end of the age. Scholars do not take these as words as those spoken by the historical Jesus. Luke expands things further and first introduces the idea that Jesus came back in a physical body—wounds and all and asking for food to eat. He includes Jesus appearing to two men on the road to Emmaus, and then to the eleven apostles and other disciples. They mistake him for a ghost, but he lets them know that he has “flesh and bones” and is not a spirit. He then eats fish in front of them (Luke 24:39). John, like Luke, promotes this same view—that Jesus shows his wounds to Thomas and later meets a group of the apostles on the Sea of Galilee and is cooking fish on the shore on a charcoal fire (John 20:24-25; 21:9-14).  See Deborah Thompson Prince “The ‘Ghost’ of Jesus: Luke 24 in Light of Ancient Narratives of Post-Mortem Apparitions,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament (March 2007) 29:3, pp. 287-301.

What Luke and John introduce here, namely that Jesus appeared in the same body that had been placed in the tomb represents a major departure from early Christian resurrection faith. This understanding of Jesus’ resurrection has led to endless confusion on the part of sincere Christians who do believe Jesus was raised from the dead. These stories are secondary and legendary. We know this because Mark, who wrote decades earlier, does not know them, and Paul, who is still earlier says plainly that the new body is not “flesh and blood” (1 Corinthians 15:50). Apologists have tried to reconcile these accounts by saying Jesus had “bones and flesh” but it was somehow “different” bones and flesh—it was “spiritual” not physical. They have compared it to stories of the appearances of angels or messengers in the Hebrew Bible, who appear, even eat, and then depart (Genesis 18:1-8). The parallel is not valid. The angelic messengers in the Hebrew Bible are often humans, spoken of a mal’akim—the normal word for messenger but mistranslated “angel.” Other times they are portrayed as beings from the other realm who appear and disappear at will, sometimes rising in a puff of smoke (Judges 6:19-22).

These accounts of Luke and John are quite different. They were written for apologetic purposes against pagan critics like Celsus who charged that the “appearances” of Jesus to his followers were merely based on hysteria and delusion. By the time Luke and John wrote, at the turn of the first century or even later, the battle the Christians were fighting was with the non-Christians and Jews who did not accept Jesus born of a virgin or raised from the dead. The pagans charged that the resurrection appearances were delusional but within Jewish tradition it was known that the body was moved. Matthew’s polemic against this view, protesting that it was a Jewish lie, actually testifies to its partial truth (Matthew 28:11-15). Matthew, in his typical anti-Semitic fashion, charges that the Jews were easily bribed for money and willing to spread a lie, saying “The disciples came and stole him away.” Part was true—they did come by night and take the body away, but they hardly stole it. Joseph of Arimathea had been given permission to take care of the burial by the Roman governor himself—Pontius Pilate. When Matthew says the “story” is spread among the Jews to this day,” that is likely also partially true. Jews who lived in Jerusalem knew that Jesus body had been moved, and reverently buried by his family and his followers. What one has to remember is that the gospel writers, removed five or six decades from the events, know nothing of the Christianity in Jerusalem that thrived and grew even before Paul came along. Jesus died in 30 CE, Paul writes in the 50s CE, and the gospels were written between 70-100 CE, or even later. They are far removed from the original followers—most of whom are dead, including Paul, Peter, James, and most other first witnesses.

The question we get asked most in this regard is how could one believe that the followers of Jesus were running around Jerusalem three days after Jesus died claiming he had been raised from the dead if his tomb was just two miles to the south of the Old City. This question assumes a fundamental misunderstanding. It takes legendary accounts written many decades after the events, and the history of the movement as narrated by Luke in the book of Acts, as if it reflects things as they were in the period 30-70 CE. For that Paul and the book of James are our only witnesses, plus the restored document Q.

The Q document and James are wholly concentrated on the ethical teachings of Jesus. They contain no Christian theology at all. James only mentions his brother Jesus twice, both times in passing. Paul, on the other hand, has begun the development of what we come to know as classic Christian teachings—Christ as the incarnate divine Son of God, his death and resurrection for sins, forgiveness through his blood, baptism as a mystical rite of union, and the Eucharist as eating the body and blood of Christ. Paul is early enough though to have the notion of resurrection of the dead straight and he says he received what he passes on in this regard—presumably from the first witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:1-8).

In an ironic sense, though we believe that Paul’s theology is far removed from that of Jesus first followers, his view of Jesus’ resurrection comes directly from them—and it did not involve bones or corpses being revived. He makes that crystal clear. Paul then becomes our best link to the Talpiot tombs.

We realize it is hard to imagine, given the confusion the later gospel accounts have introduced, that early followers of Jesus would have visited the Jesus family tomb and declared their resurrection faith, while honoring and remembering their revered Teacher, the one they believed was the messiah. When one understands the Jewish culture and context that is precisely what one would expect. Within Judaism the tombs of the zadikim—the righteous ones, are honored, remembered, and considered holy. We envision a time in the future when the Talpiot tombs will be seen not as a threat to early Christian faith, but as a vehicle for recovering the Jewishness of Jesus and his first followers. The evidence discovered on these simple ossuaries can serve as a bridge between these two great religions—Christianity and Judaism, as their common roots are better understood.

N.b. There is an review and interesting discussion of this article initiated by Michael Heiser on his blog, see: http://michaelsheiser.com/TheNakedBible/2012/04/james-tabors-essay-early-christianitys-view-resurrection-review/

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Mark Goodacre, my good colleague down the road at Duke University, who appeared on our ABC Nightline segment this week, has provided his readers with a most convenient list of what he calls the “Top Ten” problems with our research related to the new Talpiot tomb discoveries in particular and our book, The Jesus Discovery more generally. Mark has said quite clearly that he does not see a shred of evidence that connects either of the two Talpiot tombs to Jesus and his earliest followers, so, to put it mildly, we disagree–but I think always respectively so, which seems rare in our business.

I love Top Ten lists and I thank Mark for compiling this summary. I know he has many more objections than these ten but this is a start and I appreciate the fact that unlike so many of our critics, Prof. Goodacre has actually read and studied the material carefully! Prof. Goodacre does not include his views on the new claim from Prof. James Charlesworth that the name YONAH (Jonah) is encrypted in Hebrew letters on the nose of the fish image, using the “stick figure” as its letters. I look forward to hearing from him on that once he has a chance to access this new evidence that was only revealed last night.

I had intended to write an overview blog post today anyway, prior to the Discovery film’s broadcast tonight, so this gives me a convenient entré. Here are his objections with my responses:

(1) Weak circumstantial evidence alone. There is nothing in this tomb that offers a clear and explicit link to the early Christian movement.  The case is based on circumstantial evidence alone, and weak circumstantial evidence at that.

This objection should really be #10 since it begs the question of the whole. If in fact we have a Jonah image, and a Greek inscription that echoes precisely the language of Jonah 2: 7-8, then surely there is a high probability of a link to Jesus’ earliest followers–but more on that below, since Goodacre’s #10 is also related hereto.

(2) Handles on a fish?  The claim that one of the ossuaries depicts the tale of Jonah and the fish is weak.  The image is of some kind of vase or vessel.  The vessel features matching handles at the top and in the middle of the image.  And when is a fish not a fish?  When it has handles.

This claim sounds very catchy and cute (When is a fish not a fish?). It has been made repeatedly by Goodacre and Robert Cargill, and a chorus of “biblioblog” critics–now picked up by the media. The problem is that it has no basis whatsoever. In addition, Cargill at least, though not Goodacre so far as I know, has added the charge that we purposely have withheld photos that show his imagined “handles” on the Jonah image, even though we provided him with the very photos he tauts and have posted clear photos at our web site: thejesusdiscovery.org for anyone to download and study. The simple fact is that there are no handles as anyone examining the series of photos can easily see.

When Cargill first identified his handles he actually posted his marked up photos with his red arrows and lines showing the imagined handles including the clear vertical border of the ossuary design–the vertical line running down the side next to the fish. I think he has given that up but he still insists that there is some kind of “blurb” he highlights in his version of the photos, plus the little stray line, clearly unconnected and out of proportion to the huge tail, that he, and I assume Goodacre, think is some kind of a strange loop handle. He also charges that we leave that off our museum replica which is untrue–it is clearly represented. And he thinks he sees the same kind of “handle” on the right side of the tail as well, as illustrated here, in the photo that he says repeatedly we don’t want anyone to see:

There does seem to be some kind of curved mark to the right of the fish tail but it is unclear what it is. It does not match the stray mark to the left, and it appears to be unconnected to the fish tail itself. Unfortunately this is the best we can do because the other ossuary, the one with the Greek inscription, being butted up against the image with only a few centimeters between.

When one looks at the images here themselves, without Cargill’s distracting red arrows and highlights, there simply are no handles, neither at the top or on the sides, where the clear “fins” of the fish, drawn quite nicely and a bit different on each side, are visible.

As for the image itself, and especially the tail, Goodacre says it is “some kind of a “vase or vessel,” so I assume he is not sure what kind. So far an amphora, a perfume flask, and an ancient painted Greek krater-vase have been suggested–and none of these resemble one another, so it is clear those proposing alternatives, who assert their views are so clear, are floundering (to use a bad pun!). Cargill seems to favor the krater-vase but his examples are far removed from this time and place and look little like this image.  Despite his points about “perspective” regarding the head of the stick figure, the vessels he posts simply do not match this image–handles, body, flared top, or ball-bottom.The perfume flask proposal seems to have been abandoned by most, though initially there was a rush for that one until someone pointed out that the flasks that had been pictured were nothing like the unguentaria we know from Jerusalem in this period–plus what about the ball at the bottom, which Joan Taylor suggested was congealed myrrh dripping out of a broken end! What no one has done is provide any parallel image on any ossuary of the period, or for that matter any parallel vessel that resembles this one. The extremely flared tail, thin and with wide wings, as seen in the photo above, is unlike the mouth of any vessel of the period, as is the balled bottom with its design and orientation–and this is not to mention the stick figure–and yes, the name YONAH now identified as well.

It is worth nothing that the only two art historians (Cargill and Goodacre are trained in New Testament texts, as I am) who have disputed our interpretation of the fish have suggested the image is a nephesh or funerary tower–not a vessel, and Eric Meyers, who wrote the “book” on ossuaries of this period, agreed. So all the assertions about how the image is clearly not a fish, but a vessel, seem to be not so clear after all to these expert eyes who have spent their career studying ancient Jewish and early Christian art.

This underlines my point in a previous blog post–anything but a fish. It really seems to me, after reading all the proposals for this image, that it does not matter what one suggests, so long as one does not agree with me and Jacobovici about the Jonah image. In fact, of the four art historians we consulted in 2011, after this was discovered, three agreed it was a fish, and two thought it was a Jonah image.

The best explanation for the entire ossuary and its decorations is the narrative of Jonah 2:1-7. There you find all the key elements represented on the ossuary: entering the bars or gates of death (left end), being taken under by the fish (right end), the Jonah figure, with head matted with seaweed, being spat out of the great fish (front left panel), and the Temple (left front panel). This also parallels precisely the Greek inscription which affirms that God Yehovah has raised up/lifted up from death, with ascent to heaven implied:

(5) The waters closed in over me to take my life;
        the deep surrounded me;
     weeds were wrapped about my head
(6) at the roots of the mountains.
     I went down to the land
        whose bars closed upon me forever;
     yet you brought up my life from the pit,
        O YHVH my God.
    (7) When my life was fainting away,
        I remembered the LORD,
     and my prayer came to you,
        into your holy temple. (Jonah 2:5-7)

The artist is depicting the ossuary itself as a kind of tomb/womb, from which “Jonah” (we argue as a type of Jesus, see below) is lifted up to the heavenly temple–all connected to the myth of the three days–Jonah, Jesus’s body, and the Temple itself (Mark 15:29). What is unfortunate about this entire discussion is colleagues are missing the most important aspect of this discovery which is not the “Jesus tomb” nearby, but this early affirmation of a “high Christology” in which Jesus, as Jonah, is exalted to the right hand of God–sitting in the heavnely Temple, predating any of our literary Gospels.

(3) Layered patterns of geometric shapes.  The vessel also features layered patterns of geometric shapes.  These decorations are not bizarre attempts to draw the scales of a fish — they are decorations that match the border decorations of the ossuary in question. (See Scales of a Fish on the Talpiot Ossuary?).

I am not sure how a artist of this time, with the texts of Jonah and Job in mind, would picture the “Leviathan” sea monster,  representing death and chaos, as we have no other examples but the notion of plates of armor is in the texts and might well be mimicked here. Since the righteous eat the fish in the last days, it would accordingly be “kosher.” The notion behind the idea is that “death is swallowed up,” and thus chaos and corruption is overcome–so that the one “swallowing” is “swallowed.” We find this notion in Isaiah’s “Little Apocalypse” and Paul picks up on it in 1 Corinthians 15.

(4) The Composite Computer-Generated Image. The project works with a computer-enhanced, composite, re-oriented CGI image of the vessel in all of its publicity materials.  The clever use of this image, which differs in important ways from the actual photographs, achieves a kind of “cognitive priming”.  (See If the Evidence Doesn’t Fit, Photoshop It).

When one has hundreds of images taken from moving cameras at all angles of an image but no single photo that shows the complete image then generating such a CGI prepresentation, a composite of the whole offers one a chance to imagine it all. It is not true that in our promotional materials we suppress the actual photos. They are in our book, in my academic article, and on our web site for all to see. If someone wants to take those photos and generate a more accurate image, and we have continually improved our initial one, as seen in the latest ossuary reproduction done in Jerusalem, we welcome their input. Show us an image, “handles” and all, and if it seems accurate we can all make use of it. Again, the implication that we are trying to spin things, suppress the reality, and falsify things for a pet theory is insulting and untrue. We have offered our interpretation, let others provide theirs.

(5) The original excavators did not see a fish.  The tomb was first excavated in 1981. In a write-up in DAVAR in May that year, Zvi Ilan reported that the excavators, who actually saw the ossuary, interpreted the image in question as an amphora (a vessel).  (See “Jonah” Ossuary Discussed in Print in 1981).

I should point out that the tomb was never excavated. If you read my latest comments at the ASOR post where I provide a proper translation of the Hebrew article, it is not even clear that Ilan is talking about the Jonah image. It is also unclear as to whether Ilan was in the tomb or is reporting second hard what he was told by Kloner. What is really strange here is that anyone would consider this some kind of major revelation.

First of all, even if Kloner was talking about the Jonah/fish image and he thought it was an amphora–that does not make it an amphora. It only tells us his opinion after what he claims was 15 minutes inside the tomb in the dark. Also, it is pretty clear from the shifting flow of opinions about this image that the amphora option, much like the nephesh, had been basically abandoned for the Cargill sanctioned krater “vase,” albeit, 3rd century BCE. So why would it matter if someone, presumably Kloner, incorrectly thought it was an amphora? Are Chris Rollston and Eric Meyers now saying that is their view? Is anyone willing to defend the “amphora” option it with parallels from the other ossuaries with amphora? I have looked at them all and they simply have no correspondence to this image. Besides, the amphora possibility was cited in my article, with illustrations, and is in our press kit. If Ilan, or Kloner, identified it as such it is not as though some bolt from heaven has now stuck. It has always been in play as a possibility, though we think, and most of our critics seem to agree, a weak one.

(6) Fish in the margins. Tabor and Jacobovici claim that there are little fish in the margins of the ossuary in question.  They suggest that these interpret the larger “fish”.  However, on closer inspection, these do not appear to be fish.  They are simple decorative ovals.

This is not the case. There are definitely fish in those margins, see all the photos we have provided. I have no idea what “decorative ovals” are and don’t recall such images as part of the standard reprotoire of ossuary designs, see Rahmani’s introductory material in his Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries.

(7) The handled half-fish. The image that gets all the attention is on the front facade of the ossuary.  But on its side there is another image, an image of a vase with clear, obvious handles on each side.  This vase helps one to interpret the other image as a vessel.  Tabor and Jacobovici suggest that this is a “half-fish”, pointing downwards, but the handles are problematic for this interpretation.

There simply are no handles on the “half fish” on the side of the ossuary. One of the so called handles is at a 45 degree sharp angle, and unconnected to the image, and the other is curved–not even matching. They are most likely just surface scratches of some type. And why would anyone picture a “half-vessel,” with unconnected, unmatched handles? It makes no sense. When ossuary images are incomplete they are not normally “half-drawn,” but rather outlined, as the rosette on our MARA ossuary in this tomb, but just not finished out.

(8) The Inscription Does Not Clearly Refer to Resurrection.  Although Tabor and Jacobovici are confident that the four line Greek inscription refers to resurrection, the evidence for this is now looking increasingly weak.  It requires time to examine these things, but the sight-reading shown in the documentary and reported in the book is shaky. In particular, it needs to be stressed that the inscription does not mention Jesus.

I think this is a great overstatement of where we are on the inscription but Bauckham’s latest summary is helpful. I won’t make this already too-long-post any longer here but will post something on the inscription in a subsequent blog post and try to offer some definitive input on some of the unresolved issues. The inscription clearly has to do with “lifting up” or heavenly exaltation, and coupled with the Jonah image, and the text of Jonah 2, see above–we can connect it to Jesus.

(9) The Tomb Does Not Clearly Date to the time of Jesus. In order for this tomb to be connected to Jesus’ disciples, and specifically Joseph of Arimathea, it would need to be dated to the narrow period from the 30s to 70 CE.  However, the dating evidence suggests that the tomb may have been in use much earlier in the early Roman period, perhaps as early as the first century BCE

This is a clear misreading of Kloner. There was nothing in the tomb dating it to the 1st century BCE. If one reads Necropolis carefully it is clear that this broad dating of 30BCE to 70CE represents general parameters of the Jerusalem “necropoplis,” i.e.. “Late Second Temple period,” or “Herodian period,” not dates for this particular tomb. It is unclear what “dating evidence” is referred to here. There is nothing in any of the published literature and Gat’s original survey of the land with these three tombs, a mikveh, and an oil press that dated it to the 1st century BCE.

(10) Witnessing to Resurrection Does Not Make the Tomb Christian.  Even if, for the sake  of argument, we were to grant Tabor and Jacobovici’s claims about the tomb’s inscription and iconography, this would witness only to early Jewish belief in resurrection.  We already know from many texts that many Jews believed in resurrection in the Second Temple period.  Belief in resurrection from the dead is not distinctive of the early followers of Jesus.

First,  if we are right in these claims then the unique contents of this tome are not just about resurrection but ascent to heaven and enthronement. The whole understanding of the Jonah story in early Christianity, and by extension it passed to Islam, was of rebirth into the heavenly world–thus the fish becomes death, but also the womb, and one is “born from the dead” (see Paul and John, and the discussion in Goodenough, Jewish Symbols). In some texts Jonah is naked, in others he is even an embryo. This is decidedly not the case in any Jewish texts of the period. Jonah is not used in this way, nor is he represented in ancient Jewish art of the period. We have no examples on any other Jewish ossuaries of this kind of use of either Jonah or statements about resurrection or heavenly exaltation. It would be unprecedented and represent one of the most important finds of the period–and less than 200 feet away from the tomb of the “Jesus son of Joseph.”