The Lost Tomb of Jesus
Posted on March 12, 2007
Filed Under archaeology, fraud, religion, tomb, jesus |
Did James Cameron really find the tomb of Jesus?
Or, more accurately, did Simcha Jacobovici find it?
Now, I rather like Jacobovici. He’s an entertaining television presenter, although I wonder what his academic qualifications are (I’ve googled, and can’t find them).
I looked forward to watching the television special (on VisionTV in Canada - I believe it was on the Discovery Channel in the US).
I have to say I was disappointed.
No, not disappointed…repulsed.
This was not archaeology.
What we got was a Holy Blood/Holy Grail/DaVinci Code mishmash of factoids, misapplication of statistics, garbage DNA analysis, suspect chemical analysis and something very close to looting of an archaeological site.
To summarize briefly:
In 1980 a tomb was found in the suburbs of Jerusalem at an apartment building construction site (Talpiot Apartments). In this tomb were ten ossuaries of various sizes, some decorated and some plain, some with inscriptions and some without. They were catalogued and stored by the Israeli Antiquities Authority and quickly forgotten. In 1996 Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who excavated the site, published his research. That same year the BBC produced a documentary linking the Talpiot tomb with Jesus. Why?
One of the ossuaries - one of the smallest and plainest - bore an extremely crude inscription - Yeshua bar Yusoheph - Jesus, son of Joseph. Another bore the name of Mary, Yose (the name of one of Jesus’s brothers, but also a nickname for Joseph), a Matthew, another Mary and, sensationally, a Judah son of Jesus - these inscriptions were much less crude than the Jesus inscription. The other four had no inscriptions.
All of these names were exceedingly common in 1st century Judea and have been found on other ossuaries from the same period (roughly 1,000 ossuaries have been catalogued). For example, it is estimated that nearly 25% of the women of the time were named Mary (that’s right, folks - in his day, Jesus was equivalent to Bob the Messiah).
The second Mary inscription was in Greek (Miriamne e Mara). Jacobovici’s entire hypothesis depends on this inscription really meaning Mary Magdalene. Migdal was a Greek-speaking town. Mara could be interpreted as Master. In the Acts of Philip (a non-canonical scripture most likely written in the 4th century), Philip has a sister called Miriamne, who Jacobovici asserts was Mary Magdalene. On this foundation is his house of cards built. Because if the name on the ossuary were Mary Magdalene, then Jacobovici would almost certainly have identified the tomb of Jesus. Unfortunately for Jacobovici, it is not.
I won’t go into all of the sordid details. Suffice to say that the DNA evidence was completely worthless and misleading to the point of mendacity. The chemical evidence, oddly, was examined by an American police laboratory. The categorically faked James ossuary was asserted to have come from the same tomb, without mentioning photographic evidence that proves it to have been known before 1980.
To me, the worst thing about the “documentary” was that it encourages unauthorized entry to archaeological sites and has publicized to the world the location of an unexcavated tomb. Given the difficulty worldwide of keeping sites from being looted this is almost criminally irresponsible.
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haven’t seen it myself (no real desire to), but i’m guessing it’s another example of dumbing down the science (or psuedoscience, as the case may be), as well as following in the strange trend of biblical themed shows that’s been on discovery of late.
More an outright case of fraud and mendacity, I’m afraid. Given the filmmakers and the resources at their disposal, really unforgiveable.