Headline: James D. Tabor joins the New Anti-Christ camp…almost

Anything goes in the blogging world and one of the more bizarre contributions is this rambling post from 2008, “The New Anti-Christ Advocates” by Church of God in Christ Pastor, “Supt. Harvey Burnett.” I had never noticed it until someone pointed it out to me this past week. I guess I was in pretty good company here, listed with other notable “anti-Christs” such as Richard Dawkins, Bart Ehrman, and John Dominick Crossan, though it would have been nice if the late Christopher Hitchens had been included for at least honorable mention as well. I suppose Pastor Burnett’s most memorable line in his post has to be his charge that these careful historians are guilty of continuing “to postulate ridiculous fantasies with no basis in actual events, facts, or history.”

I do worry that the kind of thinking behind this sort post can be dangerous as such groups are clearly politically active, “locked and loaded” to use Michelle Bachmann’s memorial words, and often serve to flame up the passions of unstable religious zealots. Notice such a rabid and hateful approach is drawn right from some of the vindictive N.T. texts that have delighted those who have had the power to eliminate “heretics” for the past fifteen hundred years–including my own Czech ancestors and their leader the courageous John Huss. Indeed, Burnett closes with a veiled reference to the final “defeat” of all heretics since he has read the “end of the book,” clearly referring to the time when the whole lot of us get thrown into the Lake of Fire as described in Revelation 20:14-15.

But here is the irony. Pastor Burnett has another more recent post in which he seems to actually take my side in terms of the new discoveries at the Talpiot “Patio” tomb, as chronicled in my recent book with Simcha Jacobovici, The Jesus Discovery. He is so taken with the discoveries of what we argue to be early faith in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead–namely the Jonah image and the Greek inscription about God raising up the dead–that he can do nothing but celebrate this new breakthrough while censoring the critics who, as he sees things, only want to squelch any evidence of faith in Jesus’ resurrection. His ambiguity is understandable. My status as one of the “anti-Christs” seems intact, since I have denied the “physical, bodily” resurrection of Jesus (not to mention the virgin birth and other Christian mytholodgy), but then Simcha and I have brought to the archaeological table what is arguably the earliest evidence related to faith in Jesus’ resurrection–but less than 200 feet from the “Jesus” tomb–so what does one do with that? Pastor Burnett, commendably, struggles with the contradiction implied by that juxtaposition but in the end, unfortunately, fails to consider what we argue quite extensively in our book, that “resurrection of the dead” in our earliest sources did not refer to corpse resuscitation, but rather exaltation to heaven in a new spiritual body. For more on this see my recent post “Why People Are Confused About the Earliest Christian View of Resurrection of the Dead.”

It is worth noting that there have been a number of other responses from Christian circles that, like Pastor Burnett, find the new discoveries quite important as new evidence for the resurrection faith of Jesus’ first followers. Michael Swan, writing for the Catholic Register,  has embraced the discoveries as possible evidence of the “spiritual” nature of early Christian resurrection faith, writing:

The idea that this tomb may contain the bones of Jesus is presented as something perhaps scandalous to Christians. The film makers concede there’s no way to prove that any particular bones buried in first century Jerusalem belong to any particular person. But even if they could, how scandalous is it? Catholics have always known the resurrection does not refer to a resuscitated corpse. Jesus was resurrected in a spiritual body, just as all of us will be resurrected at the end of history regardless of the decay of our flesh and bones. And of course Jesus spiritual body is no less real than the body Mary bore in her womb. . . Here is another grain of evidence in the mountain of archeological proof which has come to light in our lifetimes that says the first Christians believed what the Church still believes — Christ rose from the dead, and we shall rise with him on the last day.

Another Christian blogger, Nathan Sass, argues that the Jesus tomb is that of followers who named their children after Jesus–but not of Jesus himself. This is somewhat similar to the view of Prof. James Charlesworth, that Talpiot represents “the Jesus clan,” but that the ossuary inscribed “Jesus son of Joseph” could not be that of Jesus of Nazareth because it is too plain and crudely inscribed.

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.

Jesus Family Tomb Ossuaries at Dead Sea Scroll Exhibit

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).

Untouched Photo from HiDef Camera

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?

 

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/

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.

Untouched Photo from HiDef Camera

Untouched Photo Showing Different Contrast

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.

Yonah in Modern and Ancient Script

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