There is a new scientific paper published just this week by a distinguished team of international geologists, chemists, and earth scientists, titled “The Geochemistry of Intrusive Sediment Sampled from the 1st Century CE Inscribed Ossuaries of James and the Talpiot Tomb,” that is now available on-line. Based on extensive soil…
In this photo is represented the past 30 years of my life, including 67 trips to Israel since 1990, tracking Jesus, with most of my work related to this panorama of the City…
In March, 2007, when all the publicity on the Talpiot Jesus tomb broke, I wrote a blog post that summarized what we knew at the time regarding the 1980 discovery and excavation of the “Jesus tomb,” and perhaps more important, what we did not know. It is still worth reading for…
The east Talpiot tomb, exposed to view by demolition by the the Solel Boneh construction crew, was reported by engineer A. Shochat to the Israel Department of Antiquities on March 27, 1980. That was a Thursday. Neighbors, including local children, visited the tomb that afternoon and also called the Department…
I have written several posts recently on the different Jesus traditions reflected in Mark, our earliest gospel, and John, our latest, namely on The Last Days of Jesus, A Wedding at Cana, The First Burial of Jesus, and Comparing our Earliest and Latest Sources. If you missed any of these and…
This summer will mark my 68th trip to the Holy Land since my first visit with my family in the summer of 1962 at age 16. All but two of these trips have been since 1990. I find the number astounding looking back. By far most of these trips have…
Since all the publicity about the Talpiot “Jesus Family” tomb broke back in 2007 it seems that the hypothesis of a 13th century CE Templar connection to this tomb has fascinated the public. After all, almost anything about the mysterious Templars is guaranteed to raise popular interest–hence the half dozen…
In the meantime, it is indeed interesting to note that this very practice of patronymy/paponymy/metronymy, by its repetitive nature, leaves the sample of names quite narrow and refutes in essence the argument of “very common names” put forward by a number scholars that the Talpiot tomb was not that of…
Since I began writing about the “Jesus Family tomb” discovered in East Talpiot, Jerusalem around Easter 1981, by far the most common response by colleagues and media reports alike has been the inaccurate generalization that the names found in the tomb were “extremely common.” The obvious intention of this assertion…
I never thought much about it until looking at this lovely painting by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio c. 1500), where Jesus is ever so discretely clothed–though barely so–as his companion Mary Magdalene tries to “touch” him (John 20:11-18). The baby Jesus is regularly portrayed nude in Middle Age and Renaissance paintings,…