What do DU's Christians think of the Talpiot Tomb?

My own take is that it's intriguing, and reasonably likely to be the actual tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. Here's part of why I think so--an excerpt from a "not-for-publication" email by the chair of one of the better Religious Studies program here in the U.S., which makes the following point, among others:

"Although the names are "common" as everyone points out constantly to the press, it does indeed seem to be the case that the statistical grouping of these particular names in this particular tomb is far from common, in fact the combination is such that case that this “Jesus son of Joseph” can be identified with Jesus of Nazareth appears to have reasonable mathematical probability. In other words, to dismiss this out of hand is not scientific. It is worth noting that back in 1996 when the BBC released their story on this tomb everyone said the same thing, that the names were common, except Joe Zias, who had looked at hundreds of ossuaries over the years as curator at the Rockefeller. His comment at the time was: “Had these names not been found in a single tomb that was professionally excavated I would have said, 100 percent, that what we are looking at are simple forgeries. I find it very interesting that we have this completely unique combination of names. This thing definitely, I think, is worth some further research.” I agreed with him at the time and I still do. Even if the probabilities were 50/50 the tomb might be of interest and worth examining in this regard. As it stands they are surely much higher than that. Statisticians often point out that “common sense” when it comes to probability theory, is often quite misleading. What we have to ask is what are the probabilities of these six names occurring together in a 1st century Jewish family tomb, namely: Mary, a second Mary, Jesus son of Joseph, Jude son of Jesus, Joseph, and Matthew. Experts I am working with tell me that assuming a family size of six, the probability of these six names in these relationships occurring together in one family is: 1/253,403.Therefore, out of 253,403 families (a population of 1,520,418), this particular combination of names would occur only once. Obviously the population of late 2nd Temple Jerusalem was nothing of that sort, but perhaps only 25,000 (Jeremias) to 50,000. Further, two of the names, particularly, Mariamene and Jose, appear to be rare forms of names we know associated with Mary Magdalene and with Jesus' brother Joseph, which further indicates a significant statistical uniqueness, and a correlation with what we know of the Jesus family. A third name, Maria, is that form known to us in the New Testament for Jesus’ mother Miriam, and perhaps his sister Mary as well. It is a relatively rare form of the name. My statistical consultant gave me a very simple analogy: Imagine a football stadium filled with 50,000 people—men, women, and children. This is an average estimate of the population of ancient Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. If we ask all the males named Jesus to stand, based on the frequency of that name, we would expect 2,796 to rise. If we then ask all those with a father named Joseph to remain standing there would only be 351 left. If we further reduce this group by asking only those with a mother named Mary to remain standing we would get down to only 173. If we then ask only those of this group with a brother named Joseph only 23 are left. And finally, only of these the ones with a brother named James, there’s less than a 3/4 chance that even 1 person remains standing. Prof. Andre Feuerverger, of the University of Toronto, a highly regarded senior scholar in the field did the formal statistics for the Discovery project. His figure of probability came out to 1/600. His paper will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and parts of it are available on the Discovery Web site."

****

Me talking again: of course, if this turns out to be verifiably the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, and the remains therein turn out to be his remains, it kind of shoots a hole in all of Christian theology as we currently understand it. Any thoughts?

Considering that Christianity has held, from the beginning, the resurrection of Jesus; and considering that there were some Christians who did NOT abide by that doctrine; and considering that the ones who believed in the resurrection firmly and soundly defeated the ones who didn't; and considering that much of Jesus' family was part of the early Christian movement - I can't imagine that ANYONE, assuming that the resurrection was a lie that they all knew it was a lie and that they were intentionally preaching that lie (that is, that they had the bones in their hands), they would in no way have allowed them to be buried with the family.

I think the probability of anyone allowing the family to bury Jesus' bones in the family ossuary far outweighs the probability of there being two families with those names.

1) This tomb was in Jerusalem, although Jesus's family did not live in Jerusalem, but in Galilee. Any "family tomb" would be located in or around Nazareth, not in Jerusalem.

2) Even without that problem, in the years of the early Church, Jesus's brother (or half-brother) James was one of its leaders. Is it likely that members of his family would simultaneously be proclaiming his resurrection and burying him in the family tomb (wherever that might be), conveniently providing an inscription there to identify him? It would be a simple matter for those in power opposed to the new movement (and there apparently were many such opponents in Jerusalem at the time) to order the tomb opened, produce the remains, and discredit the movement.

3) This becomes even more unlikely when you consider that this would have placed alleged-wife Mary of Magdala (and now an alleged son as well!) living in Jerusalem long after Jesus's death. Most of the fanciful legends of Mary as Jesus's wife get around that problem by having her flee to France or elsewhere immedately after the crucifixion. If she had instead remained in Jerusalem, and his son likewise remained there long enough to grow to manhood, both knowing where Jesus's body was buried, wouldn't they have been prima facie evidence against the claims of the new religious movement?

4) The attempts to prove the statistical likelihood of such a group depend on adding in the whole group of names you mention, including "Jude" and "Matthew." The problem is, though, that while scripture includes figures with both those names (or they do if you make "Judas" and "Jude" equivalent; the Judas listed here, in case you were wondering, is not the same as Judas Iscariot, and also not the "Judas son of James" listed in Luke as another one of the apostles), neither figure fits in with those ossuaries found in the tomb. Matthew is clearly established as not related to Jesus at all, and the Jude/Judas mentioned there is one of his brothers -- and therefore around the same age -- rather than a possible son. If you take out those two names ("Matthew" since Jesus had no one in the family of that name, and "Jude son of Jesus" because any Jude/Judas in the family would have been indicated as "son of Joseph" instead), the probability of finding people in other families with those quite-common names becomes much greater. (And, by the way, the presence of a "Matthew" in the tomb at all would argue against it being a tomb associated with Jesus's family, since the scriptural record of that family includes no one of that name.)

As I pointed out in an earlier thread, this whole controversy is not unlike finding a family tomb somewhere in Virginia containing two women named "Martha," one man named "Thomas," and another named "George, son of Thomas" and claiming thereby this was the tomb of the Founding Fathers...and that, moreover, George Washington was Thomas Jefferson's son.

I will agree with you on one point: if these were to be proven to be the actual very-much-unresurrected remains of Jesus of Nazareth, orthodox Christianity would be dealt a blow from which it could not recover. Fortunately for orthodox Christianty, though, the chances of this really being the tomb and remains of Jesus range somewhere between "slim" and "none."

"I do not find it inherently unlikely or improbable that the family tomb of Jesus might be found in the Jerusalem area. Here the point I want to make is that most academics and professionals would scoff at the very possibility of such an idea as sensational and ridiculous nonsense. It is much like someone claiming to have found the "ark of the covenant” or any other Indiana Jones type nonsense. I think that sort of knee-jerk scoffing is unprofessional and we should hear out the evidence. I do indeed hold the view that Jesus' body was taken from its temporary tomb and moved to a permanent place of burial, very possibly in Jerusalem, and likely kept private and within the inner circles of the family. Accordingly, it is unscientific to dismiss out of hand such a possibility with smirking and scoffing. I also respectfully disagree with those who have made the point that the Jesus family would have been too poor to have been buried in such a manner, with rock hewn tomb and ossuaries. I have been in this tomb. It is small and very modest, quite plain, as are most of the ossuaries. My own understanding of the Nazarene movement as it began to thrive in the 40s through 60s CE is that one would expect, rather than doubt, that the inner family would receive such an honored and traditional burial. Also, the records we have indicate that the inner family lived in Jerusalem after 30 CE."

I think you may be misinformed a bit about the names on the ossuaries. Again, from the same guy:

"Finally, this is a small and very modest pre-70 CE family tomb with ten folks and the individuals and relationships represented, as far as we can know them at this point, seem to fit Jesus and his inner family in several important ways. Here are the names in their transliterated Aramaic and Greek forms:

1. Yeshua bar Yehosef
2. Maria
3. Mariemene
4. Yose
5. Matya
6. Yehuda bar Yeshua
7, 8, 9 no names
<10. Yaaqov bar Yosef (brother of Yeshua)>

Note the following hypothetical "fit":

1. The father Joseph is not buried in this tomb as he would have died earlier and been buried perhaps in Galilee, so the Yose is likely not the father of the Yeshua bar Yehosef.

2. We have then three brothers, Yeshua, Yaaqov, and Jose--all of whom died before 70 CE, so we would expect them to be in this tomb. Jose is the "missing brother," of the Jesus family in that we know that when James died in 62, Shimon took over, not Yose, and yet Yose was "second" in age after James, indicating he has probably died and could not serve as leader of the community after James. The form of the name Yose is also rare, only here on an ossuary, and a few more examples in literary sources, as far as I can determine, and it matches the nickname Mark knows for Jesus' brother Yoses (in Greek).

3. Since we have three sons, who had a mother named Miriam, the one with the rare form of the name Maria might well be their mother, and we might expect her to be there with her children if this is indeed an intimate, small, family tomb, which it is.

4. Based on DNA tests we know that Mariamene is not related to Yeshua as mother or sister through his mother. Since Yehuda is son of Yeshua, it is possible she could be his mother, and a possible identification, if this is a tomb related to Jesus of Nazareth’s inner family is that she is Mary Magdalene. There were two intimate woman in Jesus’ life who attended to his burial, his mother Mary and Mary Magdalene, and the inscription: Mariamene he Mara is arguably a name later associated with her (Origen, etc.) and perhaps a title as well (taking Mara as "lord" "master" as Tal Ilan suggests).

5. Whether Matya is somehow related to the family through marriage or blood we can not say. Like the names of Jesus's brothers it is a common "Maccabean" name that we know from both genealogies in the gospels.

I want to stress here that the statistics I mention in point #2 above have nothing to do with my speculations here of the "fit" with Jesus of Nazareth and his inner family. The statistics stand independently and are based on just the simple question of how common would the six/seven name/relationship cluster be. The second question then follows--does this cluster make sense to us historically in relationship to what we know of the Jesus family?

I have entertained the possibility that even with the James ossuary added that the "Jesus son of Joseph" could perhaps be the son of Jesus' brother Jose, who might have named his child in honor of his dead brother, however, since there is also a "Jude son of Jesus" in that tomb as well it would probably indicate a tighter time span making the likelihood of a three generational father, son, and grandson very unlikely. The most "natural" interpretation would be that the "Jesus son of Joseph" is the father of the "Jude son of Jesus," and the brother of "James son of Joseph.""

Still convinced it's a coincidence?

On edit: Here's a comment from my friend who's the chair of Religious Studies here at our local U. He makes an interesting point:

"The possibility that the family might have removed Jesus' body and inadvertently given impetus to the whole Christian eccleciastic/theologic/political mess that has dominated the West for 1800 years is pretty intriguing. You can just imagine them watching the movement spread and thinking, "Holy shit, what do we do now?""

n/t