UPDATED:

I am adding here a link to a most moving and personal tribute to Jane by our friend Prof. April DeConick of Rice University in the form of a letter:

http://forbiddengospels.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/memorial-service-for-jane-schaberg.html

I was terribly saddened to read that Jane Schaberg, a beloved friend and colleague, has died of cancer. Jane was an amazingly brilliant, gifted, poetic, sharp-tongued, humorous, and wonderful human being. There is a moving tribute by Kathy Schiffer here. Jane and I became quite close via e-mail, various rendezvous at the annual SBL meetings, and a most wonderful time at the Princeton Talpiot Tomb conference in Jerusalem in 2008. We hung out with Alan Segal, April DeConick, Ann Graham Brock, Val Hemingway, and a slew of other cool people the whole four days. It was marvelous. She was very excited about the new excavations at Midgal and we always planned to go together.  I was there this past October and missed her terribly as she was not up to travel. Here are some of the main links to posts I have done on Jane and her work over the years, including a review of her book on Mary Magdalene and a paper I gave on a panel devoted to her work at the SBL in San Diego in 2007 when she was too sick to come to respond. In one of her last e-mail to me she wrote: “Dear James, long time no hear. I thought I had offended you by saying “f**k” over the microphone at my paper.” It was a private joke, since Jane did regularly say “f**k” but she surely knew I was not one of those offended, and coming from her thought it was rather effective–usually aimed at various historical suppressions of justice and human dignity.

Here are some posts on this blog that deal specifically with Jane’s work on Mary Magdalene. I highly recommend her book, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, as well as The Illegitimacy of Jesus. They are both classics to any library on Christian Origins.

http://jamestabor.com/2007/03/30/the-resurrection-of-mary-magdalene/

http://jamestabor.com/2007/05/20/sifting-traditions-mark-and-john-jesus-son-of-mary/

http://jamestabor.com/2007/11/21/san-diego-and-resurrecting-mary-magdalene/

http://jamestabor.com/2007/11/24/mary-magdalene-as-first-witness/

 

 

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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In a recent interview with two Duke University professors, Mark Goodacre and Eric Meyers, just put on-line in the campus newspaper, The Chronicle, there is a most interesting quotation attributed to Eric Meyers:

When asked “What is the Talpiot tomb” Eric wrote the following (emphasis mine):

“It’s Talpiot Tomb B. The first one is the one in which the James Ossuary was discovered. Those are approximately 100 feet apart and the story about each of them is interconnected in this way. I don’t know any serious scholars who have followed [Jacobovici and Tabor] in this, but they believe that the previous Talpiot Tomb A where the James Ossuary was found provided the earliest evidence of the family of Jesus…. Moreover, they say they have found the powders of the bones that have Jesus’ DNA…. The two tombs constitute the historic burial of Jesus—not the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which 95 percent of all Christians and all serious architects (sic) agree is the burial place of Jesus…. It is a preposterous, unfounded view taking advantage of the gullibility of the public and its insatiable appetite for sensational stories…. It undermines the modern study of the New Testament and is an inappropriate misunderstanding of ancient Judaism as well.”

The intemperate language about personal motivations in the last two sentences is unfortunate in that I have offered a solid academic treatment of my position on the Talpiot tombs both in my published papers and in the book, The Jesus Discovery, which, though written for the non-specialist, is fully documented and carefully argued. If Prof. Meyers wants to offer substantive counter arguments he should do so but this sort of language is in my view out of place and unfortunate among colleagues. But leaving that aside there are three things that I find quite surprising in Prof. Meyer’s statement:

First, does Prof. Meyers actually think that the James ossuary was discovered in Talpiot tomb A? I know he thinks the inscription is likely a forgery, in part or in whole, but as for its provenance I have never heard him say he thought it was from Talpiot. If such be the case then it would seem he would agree that the statistics on the names on this tomb will go off the roof in favor of identification with the Jesus family.

Second, so far as the assertion that no “serious scholars” have supported the possible-to-probable identification of the Talpiot “Jesus tomb” with Jesus of Nazareth Prof. Meyers has apparently not done much reading over the past few years on this topic. Just the articles up on the web site Bible & Interpretation alone, would demonstrate that such is not the case. See for example, the small sampling I cite in a recent post on this blog, urging my colleagues to “keep up with the latest” on Talpiot rather than repeating mantras such as “the names are common” which have been completely refuted by qualified “serious” scholars. There are also a number of papers coming out in the Princeton volume edited by James Charlesworth (Eerdmans, 2012) by a dozen or so “serious scholars,” who also support, to one degree or another, the possible-to-probable identification of the  site with that of Jesus and his family. In the area of historical research we always end up dealing with probabilities. I would say the Talpiot Jesus tomb has a high probability of being that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. Regardless of whether one says “possible,” “likely,” or “highly probably,” it is surely not the case that this identification is just a crazy sensationalist idea concocted to make money–or that it does violence to the proper academic study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity?

Finally, since Prof. Meyers is convinced that Jesus was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which we can surely grant for arguments sake, he certainly knows that his body did not stay there but according to all our accounts that tomb was empty and remains empty to this day. So what happened to the body? I assume, as Eric is both a Jew and a historian, that he does not take literally mythological tales of the recessitation of corpses or mortals ascending to heaven–a common motif in the hellenistic world for many such “divine men.” In other words, surely he does not believe the corpse of the historical Jesus returned to life, walked out of the tomb, and ascended to heaven. That would leave the option that after an initial burial before Passover, as the gospels say, in an unused and unfinished tomb that happened to be near the place of crucifixion, in terms of history–not theology, his body would have been buried elsewhere. So it follows that the idea of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as this initial place of burial would not preclude a tomb of Jesus and his family being found elsewhere in Jerusalem, likely in the Necropolis of 3000 tombs that surround the Old City from this time.  Since all of our sources, inside and outside the New Testament, have Joseph of Arimathea taking responsibility for Jesus’ legal and proper burial it is not unlikely that he would have taken charge. I am unclear as to how this very historical possibility–and really is there any other than that Jesus’ body was buried elsewhere–undermines the serious study of Judaism and early Christianity?

Prof. Meyers says he is offended that the bones of Jesus might still be on earth? This represents a misunderstanding of the ancient Jewish and early Christian view of resurrection where Paul likens the physical body to old clothes, cast off, as dust of the earth, and even the “sea” gives up the dead in it–surely not its bones or consumed body parts. And even Jesus, when challenged about resurrection by the Sadducees, said that in the world to come the physical (“male and female”) body is no longer a factor. In other words, no flesh and bones, but a new spiritual body. Paul calls Jesus’ a “life-giving spirit” and contrasts it explicitly to the body of flesh and blood, i.e., the “man of dust” as he puts it. Bones can be left behind, shuffled off, and yet Jesus followers nonetheless proclaimed he had ascended to heaven and sat at the right hand of God. This was the earliest Christian faith and it fits perfectly with Talpiot tomb A as well as the images and inscription in Talpiot tomb B.

The interview has quite a bit more that is inaccurate. We did not do DNA testing on “bone powders” but full and visible bones that were split open to get at the untouched marrow. And yes, they were from the “Jesus son of Joseph” ossuary, whether one identifies such with Jesus of Nazareth or not. Prof. Meyer’s account of how and why the documentary ended up with the Discovery Channel and not with National Geographic is also badly misstated and in error.

One thing that is surely correct is that Eric and I had a pleasant and informative meeting and exchange at Duke last summer followed by a nice lunch. What is not clear is whether Eric, who maintained our Jonah image was a nephesh or funerary tower–albeit upside-down, still holds that view. As recently as February 28 of this year, on the ASOR blog, he and five of his colleagues take this “funerary monument” view in opposition to the Jonah/fish identification. Since that time most seem to have moved to other possibilities–a perfume flask, an amphora, nor now, most in vogue–a krater-vase of the style one finds in 2-3 century BCE Greek contexts. It would be interesting to hear if Eric still holds the “tower” view, since he seemed so certain in his post and has said nothing to the contrary since in any direct way. The reason I wonder is that just yesterday he posted another blog on the ASOR site, with Chris Rollston, that might indicate he has moved from tower to amphora–I am just not sure.

 

 

For a discussion of this important new finding see the academic web site: bibleinterp.com:

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/tab368011.shtml

Breaking News:

Prof. James H. Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary has just announced a rather startling observation regarding the “Jonah and the Fish” ossuary that has been the subject of such controversy since the publication of the book, The Jesus Discovery  (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). His announcement was made today from Princeton and is the subject of an article written by Michael Posner in the Toronto Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ancient-ossuary-hints-at-earliest-reference-to-jesus/article2399269/

According to Prof. Charlesworth the tiny little “stick figure” that has been interpreted as a “Jonah” image by some, appears to be ingeniously formed so that its lines spell out the name YONAH in Hebrew—Yod, Vav, Nun, Hey—as illustrated here in this series of photos on the following pages. First, the unmarked image; second the lines of the stick figure of “Jonah” with arms body, and legs, and the “eye” of the fish; and finally, the clear Hebrew letters spelling out “YONAH.”

Since the publication of the photographs of this image in late February, 2012, scholars have debated its significance with suggestions of a nephesh, or funerary monument, a perfume flask, an amphora, or a krater-vase  being suggested as alternatives to the “Jonah and the fish” interpretation.

Since the name YONAH appears to be quite clearly written in Hebrew letters in a style common on ossuaries from this period this new observation by Prof. Charlesworth promises to significantly advance our discussion of this important find. Although it might be possible the engraver would write “Jonah” on a vase, amphora, perfume flask, or pillar, it seems more likely his or her intent was to represent the image of resurrection through Jonah and the fish, a symbol known in this period only in the gospel of Matthew.

Thirty-two years ago today, on “Maundy Thursday,” before Passover/Easter an ear-piercing dynamite blast shattered the morning’s peace, ripping through the rugged hills of Armon HaNatziv (i.e., the “place of the High Comissioner”) just south of the Old City of Jerusalem–today known as East Talpiot. Exposed on that day was the striking facade of what has now become known by many as “the Talpiot Jesus tomb.” This simple facade so caught the eye of archaeologists Amos Kloner, who supervised the tomb’s excavation in April, 1980, and co-author Boaz Zissu, that they chose a color photo of the tomb as the cover of the Hebrew version of their masterful survey, The Necropolis of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period.

In the year 30 CE, also on this Thursday before Passover/Easter, the Galilean messianic claimant known as “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” was crucified by the Romans just outside the Old City and put in a hastily chosen temporary rock hewn tomb that just happened to be near the place of crucifixion just as the time for the evening Passover Seder drew near. By sunset Thursday evening Jesus’ bloodied and mutilated corpse was sealed away in this unfinished tomb, safe from predators and segregated from the living who were “ritually pure” for the Seder meal until permanent burial preparations could be carried out by Joseph of Arimathea after the back-to-back Sabbaths–Friday (Passover) and Saturday (the weekly Sabbath).

Later Christian tradition put Jesus’ last meal with his disciples on Thursday evening and his crucifixion on Friday. We now know that is one day off. Jesus’ last meal was Wednesday night, and he was crucified on Thursday, the 14^th of the Hebrew month Nisan. The Passover meal itself was eaten Thursday night, at sundown, as the 15^th of Nisan began. Jesus never ate that Passover meal. He had died at 3pm on Thursday afternoon.

The confusion arose because all the gospels say that there was a rush to get his body off the cross and buried before sundown because the “Sabbath” was near. Everyone assumed the reference to “the Sabbath” had to be Saturday—so the crucifixion must have been on a Friday. However, the day of Passover itself is also a “Sabbath” or rest day—no matter what weekday it falls on. In the year 30 AD Friday, the 15^th of the Jewish month Nisan was also a Sabbath—so two Sabbaths occurred back to back—Friday and Saturday. Matthew seems to know this as he says that the women who visited Jesus’ tomb came early Sunday morning “after the Sabbaths” (Matthew 28:1).

As is often the case, the gospel of John preserves a more accurate chronology of what went on (See John A. T. Robinson, The Priority of John, 147-156). John specifies that the Wednesday night “last supper” was “before the festival of Passover.” He also notes that when Jesus’ accusers delivered him to be crucified on Thursday morning they would not enter Pilate’s courtyard because they would be defiled and would not be able to eat the Passover that evening (John 18:28). John knows that the Jews would be eating their tradition Seder meal Thursday evening.

Reading Mark, Matthew, and Luke one can get the impression that the “last supper” was the Passover meal. Some have even argued that Jesus might have eaten the Passover meal a day early—knowing ahead of time that he would be dead. But the fact is, Jesus ate no Passover meal in 30 AD. When the Passover meal began at sundown on Thursday Jesus was dead, hastily put in the nearby tomb until after the festival.

There are some hints outside of John’s gospel that such was the case. In Luke for example, Jesus tells his followers at that last meal: “I earnestly wanted to eat this Passover with you before I suffer but I won’t eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:14). A later copyist of the manuscript inserted the word “again” to make it say “I won’t eat it again,” since the tradition had developed that Jesus did observe Passover that night and changed its observance to the Christian Eucharist or Mass. Another indication that this is not a Passover meal is that all of our records report that Jesus shared “a loaf of bread” with his disciples, using the Greek word (artos) that refers to an ordinary loaf—not to the unleavened flatbread or matzos that Jews eat with their Passover meals. Also, when Paul refers to the “last supper” significantly he does not say “on the night of Passover,” but rather “on the night Jesus was betrayed,” and he also mentions the “loaf of bread” (1 Corinthians 11:23). If this meal had been the Passover Paul would have surely wanted to say that but he does not. For Paul, as the authors of John, Jesus did not “eat” that last Passover–he was the Passover in a powerfully mystical and symbolic way (1 Corinthians 5:7-8; John 19:36).

As late as Wednesday morning Jesus had still intended to eat the Passover on Thursday night. When he sent his two disciples into the city he instructed them to begin to make the preparations. His enemies had determined not to try to arrest him during the feast “lest there be a riot of the people” (Mark 14:2). That meant he was likely “safe” for the next week, since the “feast” included the seven days of Unleavened Bread that followed the Passover meal. Passover is the most family oriented festival in Jewish tradition. As head of his household Jesus would have gathered with his mother, his sisters, the women that had come with him from Galilee, perhaps some of his close supporters in Jerusalem, and his Council of Twelve. It is inconceivable that a Jewish head of a household would eat the Passover segregated from his family with twelve male disciples. This was no Passover meal. Something had gone terribly wrong so that all his Passover plans were changed.

Jesus had planned a meal Wednesday evening alone with his Council of Twelve in the upper room of the guesthouse in the lower city. The events of the past few days had brought things to a crisis and he knew the confrontation with the authorities was unavoidable. In the coming days he expected to be arrested, delivered to the Romans, and possibly crucified. He had intentionally chosen the time and the place—Passover in Jerusalem—to confront the powers that be. There was much of a private nature to discuss with those upon whom he most depended in the critical days ahead. He firmly believed that if he and his followers offered themselves up, placing their fate in God’s hands, that the Kingdom of God would manifest itself. He had intentionally fulfilled two of Zechariah’s prophecies—riding into the city as King on the foal, and symbolically removing the “traders” from the “house of God.”

At some point that day Jesus had learned that Judas Iscariot, one of his trusted Council of Twelve, had struck a deal with his enemies to have him arrested whenever there was an opportunity to get him alone, away from the crowds. How Jesus knew of the plot we are not told but during the meal he said openly “One of you who is eating with me will betray me” (Mark 14:18). His life seemed to be unfolding according to some scriptural plan. Had not David written in the Psalms, “Even my bosom friend, in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted the heel against me” (Psalm 41:9). History has a strange way of repeating itself. Over a hundred years earlier, the Teacher of Righteousness who lead the Dead Sea Scroll community, had quoted that very Psalm when one of his inner “Council” had betrayed him (Thanksgiving Hymns 9. 23-24)

When Judas realized the plan for the evening included a retreat for prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane after the meal, he abruptly left the group. This secluded spot, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, just across the Kidron Valley from the Old City, offered just the setting he had promised to deliver.

Thursday morning, 6am, April 5, 2012 Jerusalem