Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

I want to continue my responses to the review of my book, The Jesus Dynasty, by my friend and colleague Prof. James F. Strange published in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (November/December, 2006, pp. 72-76).

In the Introduction to my book titled “A Tale of Two Tombs” I explore the question of the possible provenance of the controversial ossuary that surfaced to public attention in October, 2002 with the inscription “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” I remain convinced that the evidence for the authenticity of the inscription is strong and I would urge readers to carefully work through the materials, pro and con, archived at the Biblical Archaeology Society Web site rather than accepting the widespread perception that experts have “proven the ossuary inscription a forgery.” I should also point out that even the Israel Antiquities Authority committee concluded only that the words “brother of Jesus” were added by the owner, Oded Golan, not that the ossuary itself, nor the inscription “James son of Joseph,” were forged. Anyway, Dr. Strange writes the following in his review:

In his introduction, Tabor relates an exciting story of how he and his students, working with Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson in 2000, discovered a looted tomb with smashed ossuaries (bones boxes) and a burial shroud in Jerusalem’s Hinnon Valley. . . Tabor thinks there is reason to believe that the famous James ossuary… was looted from the Tomb. Furthermore, Tabor links this tomb with the tomb found in Jerusalem’s East Talpiot neighborhood in 1980, because certain names found on ossuaries form the Tomb of the Shroud also occur on ossuaries from the Talpiot tomb…Tabor then asks a sizzling hot question: “Was it possible that we had unknowingly stumbled upon the Jesus family tomb?” This reveals the rather sensational tone of the book.

Now, I have to put on my scholar’s hat and ask why anyone would think that the Jesus family tomb was in Judea and not in Galilee, though I do not mean to imply that this was impossible. Furthermore, why two tombs? (There are three, if we count the 1926 Talpiot tomb found by Eliezar Sukenik, which also featured the name Jesus son of Joseph on an ossuary.) Tabor gives no clear answer, just a simple assertion. This pattern–asserting a proposition, not establishing the truth of the proposition–repeats itself throughout the book (p. 72).

I regret that Prof. Strange has misunderstood the point of my discussion in that chapter on the Two Tombs, so let me clarify things a bit here. The chapter is based on my own view that the James ossuary inscription is authentic and likely held the bones of James brother of Jesus. Since much of my book is about the “Jesus Dynasty,” that is how James and subsequent family members took over the leadership of the Messianic Movement, for his ossuary to have surfaced after nearly 2000 years is truly a remarkable thing, and adds the kind of “material evidence” to the textual evidence for James as the brother of Jesus of which we normally can only dream. Accordingly, the main focus of this introductory chapter was to raise a further question–where did this ossuary come from? It was obviously looted from a tomb somewhere in Jerusalem, but can we know when, and if so, which tomb might it likely have come from?

The Tomb of the Shroud, which we discovered in 2000, and the Talpiot tomb, that was excavated by archaeologists in 1980 are not connected in any way as far as I know, nor are the names found in either tomb linked to one another. Here Dr. Strange has misread what I intended to say. The reason I bring in these two tombs has to do with the matter of the date that the owner of the ossuary, Oded Golan, acquired it–in other words, when did it first surface on the antiquities market? Golan has given a number of dates, but he has consistently maintained he had it in his possession for 15-20 years. On the other hand, the indictment against Mr. Golan claims that he acquired it rather recently, not too long before it came to public view in 2002. The government claims to have good evidence in this regard. What I try to present in my introduction is the circumstantial evidence for either the Tomb of the Shroud (2000) or the Talpiot tomb (1980) being the tomb from which the James ossuary was looted. There is no connection I see between the two, but evidence in both cases, depending on when Golan acquired the ossuary, that points to one or the other.

Strange mentions a “third tomb,” but as far as I know the ossuary published by Sukenik inscribed “Jesus son of Joseph,” he found stored in the basement warehouse of what is now the Rockefeller Museum and it has no known provenance. Since it was discovered sometime before 1926 it is most unlikely that it came from the same tomb as the James ossuary acquired by Golan, and thus no reason, other than a similarity of common names, to connect it to Jesus or anyone in his family.

Now, as to the matter of possibly “stumbling upon the Jesus family tomb,” it would all depend on whether or not the Tomb of the Shroud was the tomb from which the James ossuary was looted. The government’s evidence for Golan acquiring the ossuary rather recently has not yet been revealed, but Gibson and I became aware of other evidence, which was subsequently published in Biblical Archaeology Review (November/December, 2004), that pointed rather strongly to our Shroud Tomb as the home of the James ossuary. On the other hand, if Golan is telling the truth, and he did have the James ossuary, intact with its full inscription going back to the 1980s, and he claims to have a photograph proving that, then there is some interesting circumstantial evidence that points to the East Talpiot tomb as its home. What I do in my introduction is survey the evidence for both and in the end I am not able to reach any firm conclusion, since we have not been permitted to carry out DNA tests on the remains in the James ossuary compared to individuals in either of the two tombs. Maybe there is a “third tomb,” but as far as I know there is no evidence linking the James ossuary to any but the two I mention, so those are the ones I consider and discuss.

As for the Jesus family tomb being in Galilee or Jerusalem, unlike Dr. Strange, I would favor Jerusalem. We seem to have pretty firm traditions that James was buried in Jerusalem in 62 A.D., not carried to Galilee. This would seem to indicate that the family has relocated itself by this time in the Holy City, which is the HQ for the growing movement worldwide. I don’t find it at all unlikely that Mary, her other sons, and her daughters, as well as extended relatives, might be put in the same tomb or tombs. Why assume that James was buried in isolation when family burial is the normal practice? There are, of course, several locations for “tombs of Mary” in Jerusalem today, and I think one also in Ephesus as well. Given the burial of James, and now the James ossuary, plus the family exercising its leadership over the movement from Jerusalem, not Galilee, I am convinced that Jerusalem is more likely the place for the family burials.

My intention in my introduction was not to be sensational, but to bring to the public attention the potential implications of an authentic ossuary holding the bones of James the brother of Jesus, and the location of the tomb from which it was looted, as a vivid reminder of the family of Jesus, together in death as in life–and what that can mean for recovering the message of James. Admittedly, if either of the two possibilities I suggest are valid, and I am not aware of any others that have been proposed with any supporting evidence, one can not help but feel a bit of excitement in the discovery. I hope that further research and tests will determine some of these matters to the satisfaction of all of us who care about history and archaeology.

For months I have been wanting to write about the newest research at Qumran, the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that Israel anthropologist Joe Zias and I have completed but I have kept my silence. We wanted first to have our work accepted for publication in an academic peer reviewed journal, then to release it properly to the media. Our media person here at UNC Charlotte issued an “embargoed” story two weeks ago and as of 5pm today the story is out at last!

It has to do with the latrines or toilets at Qumran, whether they can be located, and what surprising results the scientific tests of the soil samples indicated regarding the health of the community. As some of you know, major stories in the NYTimes, Biblical Archaeology Review, and the Chicago Tribune have recently drawn worldwide attention setting forth the thesis that the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls did not in fact live at the site of Qumran, and further that the “Essenes” of classical sources had nothing to do with the Scrolls.

Ironically, the new “toilet” evidence addresses both questions in that we have some unmistakable evidence that whoever lived at Qumran followed with precise and exactitude the prescriptions in the Dead Sea Scrolls for latrine location and functions, and further, that the description of these matters that Josephus gives to the Essenes also matches precisely our material evidence at the site.

This story has already been picked up by MSNBC on their Web page. The prestigious magazine Nature has also released a very scientifically oriented story on their Web page about the results of the tests Zias did on soil samples more specifically. The prestigious magazine Science is also planning a story. We are expecting more stories tomorrow, November 14th from several major papers, including the New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, and The Los Angeles Times, as well as a sample of European and UK media sources. Zias spoke tonight on the topic to a packed audience on our campus and I will give a similar, but more textually based lecture on the same topic at the forthcoming Biblical Archaeology Bible Fest this coming Sunday in Washington, D. C.

A basic summary of our research is contained in the following embargoed Press Release from UNC Charlotte and an academic article on the subject will appear in the forthcoming issue of the scholarly journal, Revue de Qumran.

Remote latrine reconfirms the presence of Essene sect at Qumran

Ancient parasites show that cleanliness may have been next to sickliness

The Essenes, a strict ancient Jewish sect devoted to religious purity and linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls, are one of the most interesting and mysterious religious elements in Judaea around the time of Jesus. Recent articles and news stories have questioned long-established scholarship about the Essenes and their relationship to the scrolls, arguing in particular that the inhabitants of the ancient settlement of Qumran, located in the Dead Sea area where the scrolls were found, had no relationship to the religious sect.

Now, new scientific findings from the settlement connect Qumran to details in the scrolls, and give direct evidence of Essene culture at the site. The discovery may also provide a window into dynamic relationships between the sect’s rigorous religious practices and the community’s health.

A forthcoming report presenting new bioarchaeological evidence from Qumran reconfirms the “Essene hypothesis” by showing the presence of unusual and extreme toiletry and hygiene practices in the ancient community. The evidence points to the Qumran inhabitants’ detailed obedience to unique, rigorously demanding precepts that are specified in Dead Sea Scrolls texts and also documented in a Roman-era descriptions of the Essenes.

In an article forthcoming in the next issue (winter 2006/2007) of Revue de Qumran, an international research team reports the results of an investigation of a suspected remote latrine site. Located by following clues in the ancient sources that specify the remote placement of latrines, the team positively identified the site as a latrine area through analysis of sub-surface soil samples.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte biblical scholar James Tabor suggested the investigation at a site outside the ruins of Qumran, noting instructions in two of the Dead Sea Scrolls (the “War Scroll” and the “Temple Scroll”) specifically requiring latrines to be located at a significant distance “north-west of the city,” and also to be “not visible from the city.” Tabor had also noted that the first century Jewish historian Josephus described very similar exotic toilet practices among the religiously strict sect known as the Essenes.

Analysis of the site by Israeli paleopathologist Joe Zias and soil analysis by Stephainie Harter-Lailheugue, a French parasitologist from the Centre National de la Recerche Scientifique, confirmed the area as an ancient latrine site through the presence of desiccated eggs from three distinct human-specific intestinal parasite species. The findings have further implications regarding community health in the ancient settlement.

Visiting Qumran, Tabor noted an area approximately 500 meters to the northwest of the settlement which seemed likely because it was sheltered from view by a bluff. Tabor also noted that the soil in the area appeared to have a significantly different coloration from other soils in the Qumran environs, a fact which was subsequently confirmed by Zias using high-resolution aerial photographs.

“I started thinking that in the scrolls they have these very explicit descriptions of where the latrines have to be,” Tabor explained. “It has to do with religious ritual purity — the latrines have to be located in a place that the ancient texts designate as ‘outside the camp’. That’s a phrase used in the Torah, where Moses tells the ancient Israelites ‘build your latrines outside the camp.’ When you go to the toilet, take a paddle or a shovel with you and use the toilet and then cover it up,” he said, explaining that the ancient practice appears to have been revived at Qumran.

“This group is very strict and they observe this practice rigorously — in one text it says go 1000 cubits, and in another text, 2000 cubits — and they specifically state ‘northwest’ in the scrolls. Josephus, in talking about the Essenes, mentions it as a point of admiration or piety – he says that these people are so holy, that on the Sabbath day they won’t even use the toilet, because on the Sabbath one can’t go outside the settlement,” he said.

“It turns out, if you go northwest from Qumran you get to this bluff – a large natural plateau separated from further cliffs – and if you go around it, it hides you from the camp. One of the things Josephus says is that they also believe that their latrines should shield them from view of the camp, so I thought ‘this is getting really good, if I can just find some evidence for toilet practices.’”

Tabor suggested investigating the area to Zias, who took four random soil samples at the site (Area A below) as well as six other samples for control — 4 from surrounding desert areas, one from an area that was known to be Qumran’s stable (to test for animal parasites), and one from an area on the opposite side of the city, essentially covering other outside-the-settlement areas that could have been used as latrines.

On the basis of earlier research that has shown that intestinal parasites can be preserved in arid, sub-surface conditions, Zias sent the samples to Harter-Lailheugue at CNRS for analysis. Three of the four samples from the suspected latrine area yielded four species of preserved worm eggs and embryophores that were all identified as human intestinal parasites – Ascaris sp. (human roundworm), Taenia sp. (a human tapeworm), Trichuris sp. (a human whipworm) and a human pinworm, Enterobius vermicularis, that had not previously been reported in the ancient Near East. The soil sample from the stable contained the eggs of Dricrocoelium sp., a common parasites of ungulates. The control samples from the surrounding desert areas contained no parasites, human or animal.

“Frankly, I was surprised,” said Zias. “A parasitologist I talked to told me that my chances of finding something were just about nil. Finding evidence of parasites would be easy in a latrine, but in the middle of the desert… But small things like parasite eggs in feces can hang around for thousands of years. At the Dead Sea, we have hair and hair combs with desiccated lice in them because of the dryness.”

“The evidence shows conclusively that the area was a toilet,” Zias noted. “The samples contained eggs from intestinal worms that are specific to humans. These things had to come from human feces. The presence of eggs in three out of four 100-gram samples indicates heavy and continual use of the specific site suggested by Tabor.”

Since the other sites did not yield human parasites, the team concluded that the latrine site was most likely the area specified in the Scroll passages. Because of the remoteness of the Qumran environs, they concluded that the latrine could only be associated with Qumran, the only settlement in the area.

“One possible concern was that the latrine area could have been used by Bedouins, who are known to have been near Qumran,” said Zias. “However, according to Bedouin anthropologist Professor Aref Abu-Rabia, Bedouins are generally not known to bury their human waste, and fecal matter left on the surface quickly dries up and is broken down by sun and wind. This stuff was certainly buried, as the ancient documents say it should be.”

Zias noted that the heavy daily digging by the Essenes left its mark on the desert in a way that is still noticeable more than 2000 years later.

“I went there and the entire area looked like somebody had plowed it, the earth was so nice and soft, while the rest of the desert was very hard,” he said. “In fact, I broke my pick collecting control samples from the other areas.”

Zias and Tabor also note that the settlement’s unusual latrine practices may be clues in solving some of Qumran’s other archaeological puzzles — in particular, questions raised by the 1,100 graves found at the site, which are almost exclusively male.

“The graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group that I have ever studied in over 30 years and this is readily apparent,” said Zias, who has done previous work on the Qumran burials. “For example, 2,000 years ago in Jericho, 14 kilometers to the north, the chances of an adult male dying after 40 were 49 percent. But when you go to Qumran, the figure for people surviving to 40 falls to six percent — the chances of making to 40 differ by a factor of eight!

“And yet we are told that these men arrived very healthy – they had physical examinations coming in. The people at Qumran thought that you could look at body types and tell what kind of person you were. Josephus tells us that the Essenes were selective — you had to be 20 years old, and you had to be healthy,” Zias noted.

The puzzle comes together for Zias when he combines the community’s latrine practices with its near-obsessive use of pools for ritual cleansing and bathing.

“Burying your feces in the outdoors makes a lot of sense until you live in Qumran,” Zias said. “What happened was that 20 to 40 people went out there every day over a period of 100 years. By burying their fecal matter, they actually preserved the microorganisms and parasites. In the sunlight, the bacteria and parasites get zapped within a fairly short amount of time, but buried, the parasites can live in the soil for up to a year. Then people pick up things by walking through fecally contaminated soil — it’s like a toxic waste dump, and if you have any cuts on your feet…”

Well-defined community bathing practices, combined with a lack of running water, complicated the problem of daily exposure to contaminated soil. A cleansing pool was located at the settlement entrance on the return route from the latrine area and is likely to have been a fertile breeding ground for pathogens picked up from the human waste-enriched soil.

“Here is where things really get bad,” Zias explained. “After they went to the latrines they were required to enter one of the immersion cisterns (Miqvot) before they came back into the settlement. Hygienically, that sounds like a good idea, if you have fresh running water, but there is no running water at Qumran, only runoff which was collected during the three months of winter rains. They enter the cisterns where everyone else has been, with all the bacteria they’ve brought in with them, floating around. The bacterium, which usually doesn’t last long in the air and sunlight, stays active for a longer period in the sediments and is continually re-suspended in the water by people disturbing the pool.”

There were other immersion pools at Qumran as well, and Zias and Tabor point out that the Essenes’ rigorous ritual purification practices seem likely to have insured that they too were contaminated by cross-infection.

“People who have cleansed themselves in the outside pool also have to go into the Miqwah twice a day. The water there may looked clean, but hygienically, it was rarely changed and must have been very dirty with the potentially fatal pathogens shared by everyone who was entering it for ritual purification. And Miqwah cleansing is a total immersion, which means that it gets in your ears, in your eyes and in your mouth. It is not hard to imagine how sick everyone must have been,” Zias said.

Ironically, both the rigorous latrine and purification practices, combined with the lack of running water appear to be the most likely causes for the extreme differences in early mortality between Qumran and the contemporary Jericho.

“The people in Jericho were not religious extremists who went into the Miqwah twice a day and they also had clean, running water from the natural springs surrounding the desert oasis. The men in Qumran lived and bathed religiously in contaminated water that had been standing for up to nine months at a time,” Zias said.

According to Tabor, however, poor health might have had its own place in the cultural thinking of Qumran.

“As a group the men of Qumran were very unhealthy, but I think this would have been likely to have actually fed the Essenes’ religious enthusiasm,” said Tabor. “They would have seen their infirmities as punishment from God for their lack of purity and then have tried even harder to purify themselves further.”

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I had planned to write short reports along the way this week while I have been in Europe but unfortunately I had problems with my laptop the third day of my visit here and have just now gotten it running again. It is good to be back on line. It is strange how our computer “worlds” have become so essential to us. I just downloaded about 600 e-mails that had built up over the week, many from readers of the new editions of my book in Dutch, German, and Portuguese. I am now in Vienna for three days after having visited Holland, Belgium, and Germany. So much has happened it will be impossible to relate it all, but here are a few random notes and observations from my trip as related to the reception of The Jesus Dynasty in Dutch and German.

• My first evening in Amsterdam I was able to watch live on cable from Germany the national TV show Aspekte that ran a feature story on my book. Aspekte, which runs every Friday night in Europe, is something like 20/20 or Dateline in the U.S. I had filmed in Charlotte and in Jerusalem with the producer, Frank Vorpahl, earlier this year and this was the second segment they had aired on my book. If you read German there is a summary on their Web site of the show and both programs are archived. Most interesting was the inclusion of reactions and critiques of my work with professors and students from the Catholic University at Eichstatt. As an indication of the power and influence of the media an hour or so after the broadcast the book had climbed into the top 100 ranking on Amazon.de, the German site, where it stayed most of the weekend.

• A definite highlight of this trip was the Belgium Book Fair in Antwerp, my first visit to that historic city. Unlike the world famous Frankfurt Book Fair, which is more for publishers and professionals in the book business, this fair is for the people. Only Dutch books are on display with authors who either write in Dutch or are published in Dutch in attendance. I was one of thirty authors featured. De Jezus Dynastie in Belgium is published by Manteau. Over 175 thousand people crowd into the event. It was quite amazing to see the energy and excitement evident all around. I think the Dutch, along with the Swedes and Israelis, buy more books per person than any country in the world. Authors are interviewed by professional journalists in public sessions. I had the good fortune to be assigned to Joel de Ceulaer, a writer for the weekly magazine Knack, which is something like Time or Newsweek in Belgium. The room was packed and the interview was conducted in English, a third language after French in northern Belgium. Mr. Ceulaer had carefully read my book and his questions were probing but fair and intelligent. The audience seemed quite rapt with attention and I had a chance to carry on conversations afterward. Belgium is a traditionally Catholic country but these nortern Dutch speaking citizens of Belgium are educated and enlightened, and apparently quite interested in my topic–the historical quest for Jesus. The interest in the press was extensive and I did a full day of one hour interviews with various papers. I also had time to squeeze in a visit to the world-famous Cathedral of our Lady, where three of Rubens’s most famous paintings are magnificantly displayed, including the “Assumption of Maria.” I stood a long time in front of it, awed by the obvious power of artistic expression in the service of religious imagination. In Antwerp one sees shrines to Mary on corners of buildings all over town. I could not help feeling the irony of my attempts to bring back to our historical memory an understanding of Jesus’ mother Miriam as a Jewish mother of seven children.

• In Germany and Austria The Jesus Dynasty continues to draw lots of attention and varied reactions, heralded by the extraordinary TV and press coverage. Whereever I have spoken I have emphasized the connection of my own approach to Jesus with the pioneering work of Albert Schweitzer, to whom I dedicated my book. There is an serious and thorough Blog review by Gerhard Beckmann at Die Welt website that picks up on this point. While in Munich I did a long and in depth interview with a correspondent with Die Zeit, which is arguably the most serious weekly newspaper in Germany. Here in Vienna I spent half a day with a feature writer Gerhard Hertenberger for the national magazine Profil, which is like Time in the US or Der Spiegel in Germany. Their plan is to run a nine-page cover story on Die Jesus Dynastie the first week of December. Mr. Hertenberger read me the formal responses to the book by two scholars, one Catholic, the other Protestant, that he had solicited to evaluate my book. I am honored and pleased at the serious consideration.

• Yesterday I visited the Roman ruins here in Vienna under the present street level. Here, at what is now the center of the city, was a full Roman military camp, the settlement known as Vindobona, the northern border of the Roman empire on the Danube for several centuries. The Romans under Augustus and Tiberius had finally managed to conquer the German tribes of the area. I could not help think about how Abdes Pantera had come with his cohort from Roman Syria-Palestine to Dalmatia (Croatia), not far from here, in 6 A.D. This was the height of the fighting on the German frontier. It is surley likely that during his 40 years of service he would have been at Vindobona at one time or another. He ended up in the north, on the Nahe river in Germany where he died and was buried. Among the ruins here at Vindobona were found several gravestones that reminded me of Pantera’s.

More later…

I am in Europe this week giving lectures and interviews in Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Austria. I just arrived in Amsterdam a couple of hours ago. I have not been here since 1962 when I was in H.S. in France and I came here over Easter vacation with my roommate. Amsterdam is lovely, a city of parks, museums, and deep history. The Dutch version of my book came out this week, published by Spectrum Publishers and it seems to be attracting lots of attention. It is very satisfying to me to see the book come out in Dutch, given the rich history in this country for free thinking, scientific and cultural advancement, and Enlightenment thinking. The German version continues to do well and seems to be attracting major attention. Tonight a second segment airs on the German program Aspekte, which I filmed in Israel back in June. This program is something like 60 Minutes over here and it gets carried via cable all over Europe. In fact I will be able to watch it live here in the hotel room this evening. The Austrian magazine Profil, which is like Newsweek over here, is planning a nine page story on Die Jesus Dynastie. I will be meeting their writers while in Vienna. I will be writing further reports on my trip all through next week, so stay tuned. I also plan on continuing my reponses to Dr. Jame Strange’s review of my book in Biblical Archaeology Review.