Responding to the Lost Tomb Claims
The Claims
The Lost Tomb of Jesus which aired on the Discovery Channel, March 4, 2007, is the work of Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron (of Titanic fame) and Simcha Jacobovici, an Israeli-born film director.
The tomb in question was discovered in 1980 in Jerusalem’s suburban Talpiot neighborhood. It would have been outside the city in the first century A.D. It was covered by a BBC documentary in 1996. It is hardly news. The filmmakers assert that it is the tomb of Jesus’ family and that it contained the bones of Jesus, his wife Mary Magdalene, his son Judah, his mother Mary, his brother Jude, a person of unknown connection named Matthew and four others. The bones are in stone boxes called ossuaries. One of the ten ossuaries has turned up missing, and the filmmakers try to link it to the controversial ossuary that showed up a few years back, labeled as the ossuary of James, the brother of Jesus. That ossuary is now involved in a court case charging its promoters with fraud. There is some evidence that all or part of the identifying marks on the ossuary have been added in recent times.
The Significance of the Claims
The question of whether Jesus was married and had a child—as unsupported, improbable, and irresponsible as that claim in fact is--is a relatively frivolous distraction from the most significant issue.
Most significantly, if the claims are true, then the Bible’s message that Jesus was physically resurrected and physically ascended cannot be true. If this were found to be the case, then the Apostle Paul rightly offers this conclusion: “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised…. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (ESV, 1 Corinthians 15:14-15, 17-19).
In other words, if the claims are true, then the divine authority of the scriptures and particularly of the testimony of the apostles stand disproved. In that case, all that the Bible teaches about the goodness of creation, the seriousness of sin, the wonder of transforming grace, and the hope of an eternal new creation must be tossed out. In its place, the promoters of this movie leave us with the unsupported possibility of spiritual immortality and the greater likelihood that we simply must make what we choose to make and can make of our earthly lives as long as we can hold onto them. End of story.
This is a mighty poor substitute for the Christian proclamation, rooted deeply in Jewish faith in the goodness of creation, that our bodies and what we do with them have eternal significance in the eyes of a holy and loving God whose sovereign power will not be turned back from bringing creation to fulfillment and faithful human children to salvation.
The moviemakers, knowingly or unknowingly, have taken on a great burden in putting forth their claims. Have they a factual basis for what they claim?
The Tomb
The tomb is large, rock-hewn, expensive, and outside old Jerusalem.
The expense of the tomb poses a problem. Jesus’ family was poor. Such a tomb could only have come from a wealthy donor. The tomb in the Gospel accounts came from the wealthy Pharisaic Sanhedrin member, Joseph of Arimathea. The identity of the tomb owner was available to all of Jesus’ opponents and supporters. The owners of prosperous tombs were known in their time. Could such a tomb have been provided for Jesus’ family without the public finding out? If the public found out whose body the filmmakers claim was in such a prominent tomb, how would the message of a physical resurrection have continued to prevail and to win converts?
The location of the tomb poses a problem. Although Jesus’ ancestral family came from Bethlehem in Judea, they had lived most of their adult lives in Galilee, specifically in Nazareth and Capernaum. Why would they establish an extended family tomb in a Jerusalem suburb and not in Galilee?
The suburban location poses a further difficulty for the filmmakers claim that the tenth ossuary was that of James, the brother of Jesus. After the resurrection, James did indeed live in Jerusalem where he was martyred, and his burial place was known to be solo and near the temple mount. Eusebius, in the fourth century, claims to have seen James’ burial plot near the temple, already a well-marked point of pilgrimage in his day.
The Names on the Ossuaries
First, let it be said that some of the names are quite hard to read and that those who have attempted to read them are not unanimous in what they say. One Bible scholar is not sure that the key name Yeshua (Jesus) is being correctly read. He thinks that the name might be Hanun.
But let us assume the accuracy of the readings that have been given to us. The names are:
1. YESHUA BAR YOSEF (Jesus, son of Joseph). Based on the records we have, Jesus was the sixth most common male name in the first century Holy Land. Joseph was the second most common name. In Judea, Yeshua bar Yosef is not a unique ossuary inscription; there is at least one other that one of the filmmakers saw, and another scholar claims that 3 or 4 have been found.
___________, son of ___________ was the form characteristic of Judean naming. In Galilee, it was more common to say ___________ of ___________ (town name). That is why we speak of Jesus of Nazareth.
2. MARIA (Mary; although written in Aramaic characters, the spelling is shortened from the Greek Mariam, based on the Hebrew Miriam).Mary was the most common women’s name. Something like 20-30% of women were named Mary. Almost every large family had a Mary.
3. MATIA (a variant of Matthew). There is no known use of this name in Jesus’ immediate family.
4. YOSE (Jose, a variant of Joseph). Jesus of Nazareth had a brother named Joses, another variant of Joseph. It is common for younger family members bearing the same name as an older family member to use a variation of the name, like “little Joe.”
5. MARIAMENOU/MARA (probably “Mary’s/Martha”). This is the only ossuary in the tomb combining Greek spelling and characters. The ossuary clearly reads Mariamenou which is the possessive form of Mariamenon which is in turn a diminutive of Mariamene, a variant of Mary. The program reports the name as Mariamene because their case rests on identifying the name with Mariamne (which they take as an abbreviated form of Mariamene). Mariamne was used in a fourth century Gnostic work to refer to Mary Magdalene, and that is the filmmaker’s only way to get Mary Magdalene into the story. Mariamne is more likely a corruption of Mariamme.
Following Mariamenou is a partial slash mark of undetermined meaning followed by Mara. The filmmakers note that in Aramaic mara means master, as in the phrase maranatha (Lord, come). So they translate it as Mary the Master. This is an extremely unlikely way to refer to a woman in the first century A.D. Mara is also known as a variant on Martha. It was common in the Holy Land among Hellenized Jews to have a Greek name and an Aramaic name. So this would read: Mary’s (with the possessive referring to her ossuary) a.k.a. Martha.
The Greek lettering probably identifies her as a Hellenized Jew of an elite Jerusalem family, not Mary of Magdala in Galilee, and not associated with Jesus of Nazareth.
6. YEHUDA BAR YESHUA (Judah, son of Jesus). Jesus of Nazareth had a brother named Judas (or Jude), variants of Judah. There is no evidence that Jesus of Nazareth married or had children. There is some evidence that he did not. Judah is the fourth most common male name.
The Odds
Leaving out Matia because he adds nothing to the case, the filmmakers multiply the one shot odds of finding a Yeshua son of Yosef, the odds of finding a Mariamne, the odds of finding a Yose, and the odds of finding a Maria. Their numbers look like 1/190 x 1/160 x 1/20 x 1/4 = 1/2,400,000 rounded. They divide that by 4 for unintentional biases in the historical sources = 1/600,000. They divide that by 1,000 (the number of tombs available for consideration) = 1/600. They therefore claim that the odds are 600 to 1 that they have found Jesus of Nazareth’s family. They consider this a conservative number.
Based on what we have studied above, they need to leave out Mariamne (Mariamenou/Mara) because it is extremely unlikely that she is Mary Magdalene and therefore contributes no more than does the unidentified Matia to their claim that they have found the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth’s family. Removing the Mariamne figure makes an immense difference in the odds. I’m not an expert in statistics, but it appears to me that it immediately reduces their odds dramatically from 600 to 1 down to 3.8 to 1.
But that is not all. Now we must consider that, as happy as the filmmakers were to find a Jose who could be the same as Jesus of Nazareth’s brother Joses (I am here switching to English spellings for simplicity’s sake), they would have been just as happy to find the names of any other of Jesus of Nazareth’s brothers: Simon, Judas (also known as Jude), or James. Simon is the very most common name, Jose and Joses are variants of the second most common name Joseph, Judas and Jude are variants of the fourth most common name Judah, and James (Ya’akov or Jacob), while not in the top ten, is surely not far from it. The only appropriate way to figure these odds would be to calculate the odds not for Jose alone, but for Jose OR Simon OR Jude OR James (or any reasonable variant of each) being in one of the tombs. I figure that those names are so common that a single shot has about a 1 in 4 chance of turning up one of those names. It appears to me that the odds are now down to 0.75 to 1, less than even.
We have not yet taken into account that when we have multiple ossuaries, we get more than a single shot per tomb at finding each name. In the tomb under question, we find the bones of four men, the names of two of their fathers, and the names of two women. That’s six shots at the men’s names and two at the women’s names in this particular tomb. The number of shots would vary with each tomb. But surely by now we can see that it is more likely than not that in a thousand tombs with multiple ossuaries we would simply by chance find a combination containing a Jesus son of Joseph, a Mary, and one of the names of Jesus of Nazareth’s four brothers. In fact, we should find that combination more than once.
For a different approach by a more competent statistician, consider Jack Poirier’s work reported on Darrell Bock’s blog.
Miscellaneous and Concluding Remarks
We have not discussed all the problems with the claims of the program. For instance, the filmmakers interviewed many experts, showing their evaluation of minute bits of evidence that were for the most part not controversial. You do not see those experts weighing in on the major claims that the program makes precisely because they do not agree with the conclusions being pushed by the filmmakers, but the clever use of the experts lends an aura of authority to the whole thing for anyone who is not paying close attention.
The filmmakers did DNA testing on the remains of Yeshua bar Yosef and Mariamenou/Mara. The results are purported to show that they do not have the same mother. It is a huge leap to go from that to the conclusion that they were probably married. Some Jesus and some Mary in the same large tomb did not have the same mother. The possible explanations are endless. The filmmakers appear to have imported their conclusion from The DaVinci Code not from any serious evidence.
Unfortunately, many people inside and outside our churches are not prepared to cope with the claims of this program. I urge you to get the facts and to be prepared to explain them in a reasonable, objective, respectful manner so that people will not be needlessly confused.
Web Resources
Here are some sources for further information:
To check out the claims of the program itself, go to The Discovery Channel pages on the subject.
The name information I used in the article above is reported in a guest blog by Richard Bauckham.
Also try Bible scholars Darrell Bock and Ben Witherington.
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