Several serious and responsible scholars have posted Blog material at several sites dealing with three topics quite vital to an evaluation of the Talpiot tomb–namely the matter of statistics, the understanding of the names inscribed on the ossuaries, and the matter of the missing 10th ossuary. See the posts below for explanations on these.

Over the weekend I hope to have time to offer some constructive response to these welcome contributions to the discussion. In the meantime I want to make a few preliminary points.

First, I think I need to clarify something regarding the “statistics” that I think has confused lots of people who have read my Blog or listened to some of my statements at the press conference on Monday. When it comes to statistics regarding name frequencies and the matter of the probability of the cluster of names found in the Talpiot tomb, the figures I have been using are not about the probability of the Tomb being that of the Jesus family. So if I write 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, this is not a claim that this tomb has a 1/253,403 chance of being the Jesus of Nazareth family tomb. The matter of identifying the individuals in this tomb with the family of Jesus is kind of “next step.” It builds upon the statistics, in that one can show the cluster is not “common” and can thus be dismissed, but the identification per se is based on historical correlations of the names, the probable relationships, DNA, whether the James ossuary was from this tomb, and so forth. In other words it is a complex of integrated information of which the statistics on probability of the names is one part. I will clarify this and comment on the other topics, the reading of the names and the question of the missing 10th ossuary soon. Right now I am on the road and need to weekend to write up what I have in mind.

So stay tuned, there will be light rather than heat once this can all be discussed. Also, there will be a complete airing of many of these issues from a diverse panel of commentators on a show taped tomorrow with Ted Koppel that will air just after the showing of The Lost Tomb of Jesus on Discovery channel on Sunday at 9pm EST.

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