I find it somewhat amazing that so many freely expressing opinions on the controversial Talpiot “Jesus” tomb and/or the “James ossuary” have not kept up with even the most minimum of the latest research on the topic. I find this is the case even with all too many of my academic colleagues, not to mention a host of others, most with an evangelical Christian bias, who regularly “trash” the idea that this tomb might arguably be that of Jesus of Nazareth. It seems everything but the facts are brought into play here.

I was reminded of this today with the publication of the excellent article by Prof. Kevin Kilty and Mark Elliot of the University of Wyoming, reviewing the latest published views of my colleague Jodi Magness. In her latest book, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, Prof. Magness offers a spirited argument that there is little to no likelihood that the Talpiot tomb, or the James ossuary, have any connection with the Jesus movement. The problem is, as Kilty and Elliot so clearly demonstrate, is her argument and even her information is as flawed as it is outdated.

Most of what Prof. Magness argues has been addressed previously, see for example my exchange with her now archived at the SBL Web site: http://sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=651.

No one can keep up with everything in our rich and ever complex field of biblical/archaeological studies but on a subject as controversial and as potentially important as this, it seems a minimum expectation for those wanting to engage in discussion would be to be up to speed on at least the basic research. Lamentably, such is not the case.

Here are a few of the basic articles, all readily available at the Web site bibleinterp.com, that are fundamental to any informed discussion of these subjects. If one is not willing to spend an hour or so reading through these I have to honestly question to what degree such a person is interested in a high level and informed discussion based on facts. As I say to my students on any topic we cover–read, read, please read–then express your views!

M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “Inside the Numbers of the Talpiot Tomb.”  http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/tomb2.pdf

M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “Probability, Statistics, and the Talpiot Tomb.” http://www.lccc.wy.edu/Media/Website%20Resources/documents/Education%20Natural%20and%20Social%20Sciences/tomb.pdf

Jerry Lutgen, “The Talpiot Tomb: What Are the Odds?”http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/tomb357926.shtml

M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “Talpiot Dethroned.” http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/talpiot357921.shtml

Eldad Keynan, “Jewish Burials.” http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/burial357907.shtml

Oded Golan, “The Authenticity of the James Ossuary and the Jehoash Tablet Inscriptions.” http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Authenticity_Letter.pdf

A. Rosenfeld, C.Pellegrino, H. R. Feldman, and W.E. Krumbein, “The Connection of the James Ossuary to the Talpiot (Jesus Family Tomb) Ossuaries.” http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/JOTalpiot3.pdf

M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “The James Ossuary in Talpiot,”  http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/kilell358029.shtml

Eldad Keynan, “Obscurities Around the Tomb of the Holy Sepulcher” http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/tombs358017.shtml

Sometime in Spring, 2006 I was browsing one of the local bookstores here in Charlotte and came across a title that seemed to jump of the shelves–The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity by Jeffrey Bütz. In thumbing through the book I immediately realized that the brother in question was none other than James the Just, head of the Jerusalem Nazarene movement following the death of Jesus. I was aware, of course, of Robert Eisenman’s well known book, James the Brother of Jesus and John Painter’s valuable study, Just James, as well as several edited volumes on James by Craig Evans, Bruce Chilton, and Jacob Neusner. In fact, in our field of Christian Origins it seems that James, marginalized and forgotten for centuries, was having a bit of a renaissance. I had never heard of Jeffrey Bütz but decided to get the book anyway and see what it might offer. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. My own book, The Jesus Dynasty had just been published and dealt substantially with James the brother of Jesus. I quickly realized that Bütz and I had independently come to many of the same conclusions and we began to exchange e-mails, eventually met, and even spent time together in the Jerusalem, digging at Mt. Zion and hanging in the Old City where Bütz was doing research on his next book, just out, with the provocative title The Secret Legacy of Jesus: The Judaic Teachings That Passed from James the Just to the Founding Fathers.

I read the manuscript in draft form and found this latest work by Bütz both fascinating and provocative. On the face of it the thesis of Reverend Jeffrey Bütz’s new book might strike one as far-fetched if not downright absurd, namely that the “true teachings” of Jesus were passed in some underground fashion, down through the ages, and ended up shaping the vision of the Founding Fathers as they forged the principles and ideals of the United States of America. Over the past decade the bookstores have been full of new titles claiming to reveal at last some lost, forgotten, suppressed, hidden, “underground” stream of Christianity, with connections to various esoteric traditions within Western history. The titles speak for themselves: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The DaVinci Code, The Hiram Key, The Templar Revelation. Few of these works have received the attention, much less the academic endorsement, of mainstream historians, and probably for good reason. They are often long on speculation and short on hard evidence. It would be a mistake for readers to classify Bütz’s latest work in this genre. In contrast, it is a serious work, in touch with mainstream scholarship, and characterized by full references to original source materials.

Admittedly the trail Bütz follows, from Jesus to Jefferson, is a faint one, with many dead ends, twists, and turns. After all, groups such as the Ebionites, the Desposyni, the Elkesaits, and the Cathars are hardly household names. Bütz’s imaginative but careful consideration of evidence pays off and results in a fascinating thesis that informs the very roots of our American culture.

The book is divided into three parts. Parts I and II, making up about two-thirds of the whole, deals with the roots and history of what Bütz calls “Jewish Christianity.” The term refers to those original Jewish followers of Jesus, led by James the brother of Jesus, who continued in their Jewish beliefs and practices, rejected Paul and the Nicean Church, and according to most scholars continued into the late 4^th century, particularly in areas east of Palestine. These followers of Jesus valued the royal “bloodline” of the Jesus family, whether that of Jesus himself, if he was married with children, or that of his brothers and immediate family. Indeed, Bütz argues that these successors of Jesus and his brother James can properly be viewed as a type of “Caliphate,” in many ways similar to the Shiite branch of Islam. Bütz further argues that these “Nazarenes” set up a provisional government with their own Sanhedrin led by James as high priest, and the Twelve apostles as a kind of inner ruling cabinet. Bütz further locates the operations of this sectarian “government,” on the southwest hill called Mt Zion where both Armenian and Catholic traditions place the “throne” of James, the “Upper Room,” and the house of Mary and the Jesus family.

By far the majority of scholars who have dealt with this branch of “Jewish Christianity” have tended to trail things off in the late 4^th century where most of our records seem to terminate. Bütz take things much farther, and herein lays the special value and contribution of his work. Not only does he pick up on the “Ebionite” trail through an obscure sect of southern Mesopotamia known to us as the Elkasites, but in Part III of his treatment he convincingly traces the key characteristics of this original “Jewish Christian” perspective into early Islam as well. Although the chapter on Islam is somewhat of an excursus, Bütz returns to his more linear story line as he moves from the Elkasites through the Cathars, and thus to the Templars and earliest roots of Freemasonry. It is these last one hundred pages of his book that Bütz truly offers the reader, and in my estimation, the academic world as well, the skeletal framework of a wholly new perspective on the ideas that were most influential upon our Founding Fathers. Here I have in mind specifically the ways in which they imagined America as a sort of New Jerusalem/Promised Land. Other historians have touched on this sort of biblically based idealism, but I think Bütz might be the first to suggest there is an actual current or stream of influence running back into antiquity. I for one find it rather convincing. The history of ideas always remains a tenuous enterprise with no definable terminia post/ad quem, but as Jonathan Z. Smith, the most eminent history of religions used to put things—even an exaggeration in the direction of the truth is progress. I believe that Reverend Bütz has provided us with new perspectives waiting to be tested with subsequent review and consideration. I for one am grateful to him for the opportunity to consider this innovative approach to understanding the roots of our American founding and its ideals.