Keith Akers, author of The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity, has written a thoughtful post titled “Implications of the Jesus Family Tomb at Talpiot” at his Website. I really appreciated Akers’s book on Jesus and learned a lot from him. I have found anything he writes to be well thought through and valuable to read. In his essay on the Talpiot Tomb he raises the issue of how diverse groups of early Christians began to formulate their understanding of what was essentially affirmed in the teaching of “resurrection of the dead,” whether that of Jesus, or the raising of the dead more generally at the end of the age.

The discussion of the important differences between the Greek affirmation of the “immortality of the soul,” and the Jewish concept of “resurrection of the dead,” is an essential part of this discussion. Most students of Christian Origins are introduced at some point to Oscar Cullmann’s classic Ingersoll lecture at Harvard in 1955, “Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?: The Witness of the New Testament,” subsequently published with other essays in an edited volume, Immortality and Resurrection (Macmillan) by Krister Stendahl, now out of print. Fortunately, there is a version of the substance of lecture on the Web. What Cullmann showed so clearly is that one must not gloss over the important differences in these two classic Western ways of viewing death and afterlife. However, a half century of research subsequently has shown that the theological differences Cullmann pinpoints are not as airtight as they might appear, when viewed through the lens of the critical historian of ideas. The magisterial study of Alan Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion changes the entire landscape of the discussion in this regard. Its rich content and analysis is essential to any informed discussion. If anything one finds that there is a blurring between the sharp distinctions that Cullmann posited, with Jews affirming “resurrection of the dead,” or even “resurrection of the body,” in complex and nuanced ways, often parallel to so-called “Greek” views of immortality. One result is that the literal physical remains of the dead play little to no part, other than in a metaphorical way, in the more sophisticated affirmations that the “dead” experience ongoing existence either in another realm, or in an age to come. Thus in the book of Revelation (20:11-13), the “sea gave up the dead that were in it,” and those resurrected dead “stand” before the throne of God in judgment, but the writer obviously has no interest in affirming a literal recovery of “bones and flesh,” or reanimated corpses, long ago “returned to dust.”
Akers’s reminds us that Jews and early Christians were quite aware of the complex nuances of their affirmation of “resurrection of the dead,” and that a literal view of restored “bones and flesh” was not their central concern nor their most fundamental challenge. There was something much more profound at stake that had to do with an “anthropological” view of the whole human person–thus Paul’s category of a “new body,” but a spiritual one, not one of flesh and blood. This was in contrast to the “naked” state of death, before the spirit is “reclothed.” We are essentially dealing with metaphors here but the clothing analogy seems to be a good one, as Paul develops it in 2 Corinthians 5. He apparently likens the body of flesh and bones to old clothing, and one’s immediate “death” as a naked state of the disembodied “spirit,” (i.e., Greek “immortal soul”). Accordingly, putting on a “new spiritual body” is akin to putting on new clothing, with the old shed or left behind. In that system of understanding resurrection literal “tombs” are irrelevant, whether literally in the ground, or symbolically “in the sea.”

At the invitation of Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici has issued a formal statement in reply to the various stories that appeared in the press, and in particularly to the Meyers/Magness declaration that he had manipulated the media covering the Princeton Talpiot tomb conference. His reply is now archived on the Biblical Archaeology Society Web site as part of a new feature section titled “Airing Differences: ‘Jesus Tomb’ Controversy Erupts–Again.” As one who has been often misquoted, misrepresented, or had statements poorly contextualized in news stories, even by conscientious journalists, I applaud Shanks for trying to air all sides of this contentious topic.

I continue to think the Jerusalem conference was a most positive development, despite some of the rancor and heated moments. Charlesworth is to be commended for his hard work and his willingness to bring together all sides of the issues, even with the resulting sparks and emotions. The volumes of papers and proceedings will demonstrate, I think, the high academic quality of most of the presentations. I have corresponded by e-mail with a majority of the attendees, those who did not sign the Meyers/Magness, and quite a few of those who did. My sense is that most of us found the conference to have been a valuable contribution to the discussion of both the Talpiot tomb and broader questions of Jewish burial in Jerusalem in late 2nd Temple times.

There was a very informative and balanced interview with Princeton Theological Seminar Professor, James Charlesworth, in the Jerusalem Post yesterday. Charlesworth sits down with editor David Horovitz and talks about the aftermath of the Jewish Burial/Talpiot Tomb conference held in Jerusalem, January 13-16th, as well as potential ideas for the future.

On Monday, January 21, 2008, Eric Meyers of Duke University and Jodi Magness of UNC-Chapel Hill issued a public statement signed by eleven other scholars who had attended the recent Princeton Theological Seminary Symposium on “Jewish Views of the Afterlife and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism: Evaluating the Talpiot Tomb in Context,” held in Jerusalem, January 13-17th. Readers can find the original statement on Mark Goodacre’s Weblog, NTGateway, and an updated version with a few significant changes, at the Dept. of Religion Blog at Duke [Mark Goodacre just wrote me that he has replaced the original with the updated version as of 1/25/08, so I have saved a copy of the original here: OriginalStatement, so readers can properly follow this post] The main purpose of the declaration was to strongly deny any media reports that most of the scholars attending the conference had concluded that the Talpiot tomb might possible be the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. To the contrary, the signatories affirmed that they “either reject the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to Jesus’ family or find this claim highly unlikely.” Although the three main stories published on this subject, in the Jerusalem Post, TIME, and in the HaAretz, all recorded that attendees at the conference were divided, those who signed onto the Meyers/Magness statement charged that a “spin” had been put on the whole conference by filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, through a press release, and an orchestrated ending involving a statement by Ruth Gat, widow of the late Joseph Gat, excavator of the tomb in 1980.

My own report on the conference, published on my Blog on January 20st, and now posted also on the Biblical Archaeology Society site, echoed a similar assessment of the results, namely, that most of the participants remained unconvinced that the identification case had been made.

However, quite signifcantly, the Meyers/Magness statement contains much more than this corrective caveat regarding the media. It goes on, in the body, to outline in summary form the reasons that the signatories in fact reject the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to the Jesus family.

As one who has given considerable thought and effort to all the arguments involved, pro and con, regarding the potential identification of the tomb with Jesus, I was quite surprised to see that the statement, so far as I can judge, contained some significant errors that serve to undermine its force. I have been assured by Meyers and Magness that all those signing the statement agree with it wholly, which puzzled me even more, since I have talked to three or four of those who signed on and unless the statement reflects a change of mind, it is not reflective of their views. It is possible that people signed on in order to support the general point of the statement, knowing that details can always be sorted out in various ways, but it is unfortunate, I think, that readers of the statement will have the impression that since these experts have signed on, everything that follows is agreed upon as established.

Without debating all the complex issues upon which this comprehensive summary statement touches upon, let me focus on just four points that I think are questionable. Here I will quote the statement verbatim, and follow with some observations.

1. A statistical analysis of the relatively common names engraved on the ossuaries leaves no doubt that the probability of the Talpiot tomb belonging to Jesus’ family is virtually nil if the Mariamene named on one of the ossuaries is not Mary Magdalene.

This is decidedly not the case, as has now been pointed out by several statisticians who have already commented on the Duke University and Goodacre Web sites. Based on the calculations of Elliot and Kilty, whose paper is up on the Web, and as discussed by Camil Fuchs, who along with Andrey Feuerverger, sat on the panel dealing with statistics. The name cluster, even leaving Mariamene out entirely, with no assumptions regarding Mary Magdalene, show a probability factor of .48. This result is far from “virtually nil,” in fact it is very close to 1/2, meaning if we had two tombs to examine, one of them would be the Jesus tomb. My understanding is that Fuchs will clarify this in his published paper.

A bit of forgotten history here: It is interesting to note that when the 1996 story broke on the Talpiot tomb by the BBC TV special and a front page story in the London Sunday Times, there was a brief discussion on the Orion Dead Sea Scrolls discussion list (archived still at the Orion site and worth reading through the thread) and Asia Lerner, doing some quick calculations on name frequencies, came up with 1/10, commenting at the time, “The point that I wanted to show with my little computation is that the chance is far from being nil-because even if the names themselves are frequently encountered, the chance of encountering them in a particular configuration diminishes exponentially.” If 1/10 is not considered “nil,” then surely 1/2 would be far less so. What happened I think is that non-statisticians, listening to Feuerverger’s presentation, misunderstood the probability language. What can not be proved by statistics (say with a figure of .90 or .80) is not thus made “nil” by a number close to .50. Virtually “nil” would be something close to .1, given the estimated number of tombs we are dealing with in this period and region.

All this is not to say that Elliot and Kilty are correct, but just to say, as Randy Ingermanson has pointed out, the “virtually nil” conclusion represents a fundamental misunderstanding of their results that Fuchs discussed at the conference.

2. In fact, epigraphers at the conference contested the reading of the inscription as “Mariamene.” Furthermore, Mary Magdalene is not referred to by the Greek name Mariamene in any literary sources before the late second-third century AD.

It is the case that two epigraphers at the conference disagreed with L. Rahmani’s reading of Mariamene, but it should be pointed out that those two, Stephen Pfann and Jonathan Price, also disagree with one another in significant ways. Before one discounts Rahmani, who is supported by Leah Di Segni, who recently reexamined the inscription, perhaps those of us who are not experts should acknowledge that the verdict is still out, and arguments are still to be made. Rahmani in no way agrees with any kind of Mary Magdalene interpretation, to put it mildly, but he has told Charlesworth and others that he stands firmly by his reading. If indeed, the Rahmani reading holds, the question is not how late Mary Magdalene might be referred to by this unusual form of the name, but rather, who else, in all of our records, has this form of the name, other than Mary Magdalene, and this ossuary of the Talpiot tomb.

In other words, we have lots of examples of the Greek forms Mariam, Mariame, and Mariames, and but only this single reference to Mariamene–with the letter “nun,” and it is in the special neuter diminutive form–showing endearment. So far as I know, the only other example of this form of the name in all of our ancient records is in reference to Mary Magdalene–in Hippolytus and the Acts of Philip. One must admit that is a rather strange linguistic correspondence. How likely is it that a random ossuary from a 1st century tomb, with a “Jesus son of Joseph” inscription, would also have a rare form of the name Mariam that is linked to only one identifiable “Mary” in the ancient Jewish world, namely Mary Magdalene. This is not proof that the ossuary inscription refers to Mary Magdalene, but what it does indicate, it seems to me, is that Rahmani’s reading should not be excluded from the discussion in a summary statement based on two experts who read it differently.

3. The identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus’ family flies in the face the canonical Gospel accounts, which are the earliest traditions describing Jesus’ death and burial. According to these accounts Jesus was placed in the tomb of a prominent follower named Joseph of Arimathea. Since at least the early fourth century Christians have venerated the site of Jesus’ burial at the spot marked by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

This statement hits home with me since I presented a summary of my paper on this very subject. I attempted to show that a redaction critical reading of our sources indicates that the idea of Joseph of Arimathea owning the tomb is a Matthean theological gloss, and not supported by our two independent core sources. I realize that most of those who signed the initial statement do not specialize in historical-critical readings of gospel materials. This sort of face-value reading ignores 200 years of insights into the heavily theological nature of our gospel sources. April DeConick sites this as one of the reasons she could not sign onto the Meyer/Magness statement. Further, as Kloner and others have shown, this tomb (whether the site of the 4th century Church of the Holy Sepulcher or not) was a temporary burial. Since neither historian nor believer maintains Jesus’ body remained in that initial tomb, one must hold, from an historical point of view, that he was moved to another location. So, if he was moved to another location, how can one possibly exclude the Talpiot tomb? This does not prove the Talpiot tomb was the place to which he was moved, but it fits well with the gospel accounts, read critically. Jodi Magness holds the view that he would have been reburied in a shaft tomb but the experts at the Symposium did not agree on that. That leaves open the idea that he was buried in a second rock-hewn tomb, especially since Mark and John say the tomb was chosen for emergency purposes because it happened to be nearby. So, in fact, the gospel accounts seem to support a “second tomb” theory, rather than preclude such.

4. However, Joseph Gat lacked the expertise to read the inscriptions. His supervisor and other members of the Israel Antiquities Authority believe that Gat could not have made such a statement in his lifetime since the inscriptions seem to have been deciphered only after he had passed away.

This final point in the Meyers/Magness statement I find most troubling. It implies that Ms. Ruth Gat, who reported conversations with her husband, was either deluded or lying.Either of these are very heavy charges. DeConick states on her Web site that she could not sign on to this statement for those very reasons. She did not want to get into the business of endorsing such an accusation without evidence. I was rather surprised to see a group of colleagues sign onto such a charge without further investigation. I wrote Meyers and Magness about this matter and received a reply just today that they saw no reason to change their statement. Nonetheless, in preparing to write this post tonight I went to the Duke University Web site to copy the texts upon which I wanted to comment. I found a significant sentence is missing, namely, “His supervisor and other members of the Israel Antiquities Authority believe that Gat could not have made such a statement in his lifetime since the inscriptions seem to have been deciphered only after he had passed away.” I am quite pleased to see that sort of charge is now gone, but it seems it was removed without any acknowledgment of the seriousness of the charge, or the damage it might have already done to Ms. Gat’s reputation. The original has no doubt been copied and circulated numerous times. To his credit, Stephen Pfann, on his Blog yesterday, issued an apology for such a “rush to judgment,” and one has to admire his integrity in this regard. I have not seen such an acknowledgment anywhere else.

The point I made in my own initial report on the Talpiot tomb conference was that even if Joseph Gat did indeed think the Talpiot tomb was the Jesus tomb, it would not serve as “evidence” in the sense of proving anything. He was not a historian, and I doubt if he had delved into the complexity of evaluating these names in literary sources. What it would tell us is one more bit of the puzzle in terms of how the tomb and its names first came to light and was discussed and evaluated among certain circles in Jerusalem before 1993. And that is of interest in the overall story, more and more of which was emerging even last week.

Language is as tricky and misleading as it is vital and essential. This is so much more the case when it comes to controversial topics such as evaluating the Talpiot tomb with regard to its possible identification as the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. As pointed out at the Princeton Jerusalem Symposium last week, if we were talking about the tomb of a Hillel or a Socrates that had been potentially discovered in Jerusalem or Athens, much of the discussion, and thus the language, would dramatically shift to neutral.

A helpful analogue is the 1990 discovery of a tomb just south of the Old City with ossuaries and inscriptions that some excavators and scholars identified as the family tomb of Caiaphus, including the bones of a Joseph Caiaphus, the same name as the high priest who presided over the trial of Jesus according to the gospels. Is it possible, or even likely, that this tomb is that of the Caiaphus of the New Testament? Is the evidence compelling? What are the objections and problems with such an identification? Most of that has now been sorted out, but no one maintains that it “can’t be” the tomb of Caiaphus for theological reasons–that he was taken bodily to heaven. There are in fact a few scholars who have questioned the identification with the N.T. Caiaphus. They have argued that the evidence is not sufficiently compelling to draw that conclusion, and would hold it is “a Caiaphus” family but not necessarily the Caiaphus family. I am aware of no one who has argued that it “can not be” the Caiaphus family tomb.

With the Talpiot Jesus tomb things are dramatically different–and understandably so. Because the topic is so potentially “hot” various sides have much invested in the outcome. For many, even among the scholars who have weighed in on the topic, their declared belief that Jesus rose bodily to heaven, precludes from the outset, even before any examination of evidence, that this tomb belonged to Jesus of Nazareth. Most of the academics in this category would affirm that such beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with their position that this “could not be” the Talpiot tomb. There are other sensitive issues such as a potential backlash of antisemitism, since this tomb is part of an official excavation of the Israel Antiquities Authority (Dept of Antiquities in 1980). Is holding custody of a “tomb of Jesus,” and dealing with bones of the Holy Family, really something that the Jewish State of Israel needs to be involved in? There is also a tendency among scholars to avoid sensational topics, particularly those vetted in the media (“Ark of the Covenant” “Gold of the Exodus” “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” “The Davinci Code”), so that to suggest serious consideration of this ultimate “sensational” site, a family tomb of Jesus, is bound to generate lots of scoffing and outright dismissal. The Academy is accustomed to consider far more standard subjects. And then there are the skeptics and anti-Christian folk who would dearly love it if the tomb of Jesus were found, as a way of poking the eye of evangelical and orthodox Christian believers. Finally, in a matter this sensitive, where there are no in situ photos of the excavation with the ossuaries intact, no bone reports, no official DNA tests, and no correlation record of where in the tomb a given cataloged ossuary was found, those responsible have been put on the defensive to explain the hows and whys, with resulting emotions and tensions.

At the Princeton Jerusalem symposium I tried to take notes and pay special attention to language, particularly that used when people stated their conclusions. What became obvious to me is that a given position could be stated in any number of ways, but with varying results, depending on the language. Consider the following three statements, from one single prominent member of the Symposium:

• “I think we have to remain open to the possibility that this tomb is that of Jesus but so far we are lacking compelling evidence and many of the assertions of the film have been shown to be questionable.”

• “There is a near universal scholarly consensus that the Talpiot tomb could not be the Tomb of Jesus”

• “My conclusion is that in no way can we say that the lost tomb of Jesus is the same as the one in East Talpiot”

Another prominent expert has recently said “There is no evidence to support the view that the Talpiot tomb is the family tomb of Jesus.” Is this to say then such an identification is possible but not compelling, or “impossible.” The language is not clear. Others, weighing in since the Symposium, have said the identification thesis is “possibly but not likely,” “very improbable,” or “unlikely.”

Always in the background, and often in the foreground, is the Cameron-Jacobovici film with its various assertions and claims. It is entirely possible to question any number of the theses or assertions in the film but nonetheless to conclude that a scientific evaluation of the tomb itself does yield evidence in favor of the Jesus family identification. It might be beneficial to try and move the film from the center of the academic discussion, whether one views it as good, bad, or ugly. The heated emotions, provoked by the film, have seemed to shift the agenda to the filmmakers rather than an evaluation of the site.

All this aside it seems to me that we have the following range of language that might help shed some light on “Evaluating the Talpiot tomb in context,” one of the themes of the Symposium.

Given the question: “Can the Talpiot tomb arguably be identified with a family tomb of Jesus?” one might propose the following grid of responses, beyond “Definitely not.” After all, one might hold that such an identification is “definitely not” supported by the evidence, yet still consider it possible but just not proved. Or, another might totally reject the identification for compelling negative reasons.

Impossible: strong negative evidence to the contrary
Improbable: weight of the evidence does not support the thesis with some negatives weighing against

Possible but not compelling: evidence in favor is there but just not enough data and information to so conclude
Possible and compelling: bulk of the evidence fits with no serious negatives

One of the clearest ways of approaching this questing is just to list the positives and the negatives, much as Israel Knohl did on the final “Summing Up” panel. If indeed, as some have argued, Jesus could not have been buried in a rock hewn tomb, or in Jerusalem itself, then clearly this “could not be” the tomb. However, there is a wide range between “could not be” and “not enough positive evidence.”

I want to point out that I am using “possible” in the scientific/academic sense, not in the unrestricted sense, “Well, anything is possible.” One might say, for example, it is “possible” that atoms move because they are pushed by invisible demon forces,” and there is no way to “falsify” such an assertion. But in the world of science, such a “hypothesis” can not be taken seriously. In terms of the Talpiot tomb, the notion that this “could not be” the Jesus’ tomb because he was taken bodily to heaven is not on the academic table, so that the “anything is possible” refrain does not apply.

The Encyclopedia Britannica offers the following on the all-important “Principle of Falsification,” which is the bedrock of science. Those of us who are historians, working in the “soft sciences,” utilize this principle as an ideal, though often we have no methods for testing:

“Being unrestricted, scientific theories cannot be verified by any possible accumulation of observational evidence. The formation of hypothesis is a creative process of the imagination and is not a passive reaction to observed regularities. A scientific test consists in a persevering search for negative, falsifying instances. If a hypothesis survives continuing and serious attempts to falsify it, then it has “proved its mettle” and can be provisionally accepted, but it can never be established conclusively.”

What I have suggested is that we begin with a “hypothetical pre-70 CE tomb of the Jesus family,” and then compare it to the Talpiot tomb. This is the method I pursue in my article published in Near Eastern Archaeology. Such an approach does not mean that the results are merely “hypothetical,” in some reduced sense of the term, since all scientific and historical conclusions are by definition hypothetical. Just to pose the question: Can we identify this tomb with that of Jesus?” already presupposes we are considering something “hypothetical.” One has to have a method, otherwise one’s conclusions can tend to be impressionistic and unsystematic.

The use of the principle of falsification, so much as the evidence allows, offers a way to bring some clarity into our deliberations. Working with the historically constructed model of a hypothetical “Jesus family tomb” does not mean that one begins with the assumption that the Talpiot tomb is that tomb, thus “stacking the deck” in favor, as some have argued. This is simply the way that science proceeds, never with certainty, but one hopes, as my teacher Jonathan Z. Smith used to say, “in the direction of the truth.”

What this means, in the case of the Talpiot tomb, is that falsifying or negative instances, of sufficient force and certainty, would make impossible or highly improbable the identification with Jesus. What one must then do is “test” all possible “falsifications” against the evidence we have, as best we can.
A few of the proposed falsifications I heard last week at the symposium were the following:

• Jesus could not be buried in Jerusalem at all, his family tomb would be in Nazareth

• Jesus would have been put in a trench grave, not a rock hewn tomb

• The ossuary inscription Frank Cross reads as “Yeshua bar Yehosef” does not read “Yeshua” at all

• Yose is a very common form of Yehosef and thus carries no statistical weight

• Jesus of Nazareth could not have had a son named Judah

• Jesus was buried in the location in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher so could not be in a tomb in Talpiot

If any of these could be established and be of sufficient weight to falsify the hypothesis being tested then one would have to conclude, depending on the certainty of the falsification, that the Talpiot tomb either “can not be” or “is highly unlikely to be” that of Jesus. So the question is, are these “falsifications” sufficient and valid?

Unfortunately, in the case of the Talpiot tomb there are any number of “falsification” possibilities that are not available to us–full DNA testing, examination of the bones in the tomb, and documented evidence of the positioning of the ossuaries in situ. If these avenues remain out of the realm of possibility then the inclusion of new evidence remains slight and we have to go with what we have. The tomb adjacent to the Talpiot tomb, if it could be explored (not excavated), might be one way of bringing in new evidence, that might either supplement or falsify the hypothesis or question, “Is this the family tomb of Jesus.”

As a follow up to the Princeton Jerusalem Symposium and all the many topics we covered I want to begin posting, as time permits, an analysis of the evidence and a positing of basic facts, including a testing of some of the major “falsifications” that have been proposed. Just today, Prof. Eric Meyers, of Duke University has posted, in behalf of a number of leading colleagues who attended the Symposium, a Blog entry on the Religion Department site (and elsewhere) that surveys the reasons they reject the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to Jesus’ family or find this claim highly unlikely. What is needed at this point is an evaluation of the strength of these “falsifications.” I hope I can contribute something helpful to that process.