The Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

I normally do not like to focus my comments on this Blog on individuals and their views. However, I did want to say something this morning that picks up on Ben Witherington’s Blog, as well as statements he has also made in today’s edition of our local paper, The Charlotte Observer, about the “Jesus Tomb” and about me personally. I am not so interested in Ben per se, but what he reflects in terms of what I consider to be a questionable but ubiquitous approach toward evaluating the evidence related to the Talpiot tomb and its ossuaries.

If one looks around the Web a bit it is clear that Witherington has become the St. George of what he considers a great battle for Christian orthodoxy. He has gone out and in less than a week, slain the dragon before it even got out of its cave, or “sunk the Titanic” before it even set sail, to use his own metaphor. Countless evangelical Christian posts on the Web refer to the ways in which Ben has been able to ably refute all possible evidence that this tomb held the ossuary of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. It is clear that in Ben countless thousands have found a champion. In fact Ben himself writes that we can all relax now, there is not threat to faith, it was all hype and much ado about nothing and Easter can go on as usual.

He also has advice for me that he has delivered both privately and publicly. Today he is quoted in our paper saying, “James needs to distance himself from this just as rapidly as he possibly can.” I find this really bizarre. First, Ben and others who share his approach are not objectively examining evidence, but they are engaged in apologetic refutation. After all, this tomb could not have the ossuary of Jesus because Jesus ascended to heaven, bones, flesh, organs, and all. Ben has also told me that he believes the Shroud of Turin is likely authentic and that blood tests have shown, amazingly, blood without both x and y chromosomes and yet still a man’s blood, showing that Jesus had no human parent. He also says on his Blog that he has witnessed a genuine case of a man being raised from the dead. My intent is not to poke fun at Ben here, but just to say that he and many others who follow his points with celebration, share presuppositions that make objective historical inquiry a moot point. All results are determined before the investigation. But beyond that, there is a tone and style that Ben and others have adopted that has little to do with dispassionate and objective scholarly exchange. It is characterized by debate and defamation, much like one hears on TV between political rivals, or even on negative adds. For example, Ben writes that I have “flip-flopped” on my previous position that Jesus’ father was Pantira, since I now read on the ossuary “Jesus son of Joseph.” Which is it he asks? Ben knows well that I never say Pantira was the father, but I survey the various views, virgin birth, Pantira, and Joseph, discussing each, and in the end I say explicitly that in filling out Jesus’ birth certificate one would have to write “father unknown.” I mention this just as one example of the flavor of a debate and a discussion in which I have no interest.

Ben is not alone of course. Ed Cook writes that refuting this wacky theory of the tomb is “fun” and likens it to shooting fish in a barrel. Todd Bolen runs a poll in which he lists scholars, “Christian” and “non-Christian” who are “for” the Jesus tomb idea, and of course he comes up with me as the one “scholar” on the planet that has anything positive to say in favor of the tomb’s identification with Jesus of Nazareth. Strangely, I get listed as “non-Christian.” In fact there are quite a few scholars who have told me they lean positively toward this identification but they have chosen not to express their views based on two or three days of news reports. I will leave it to them to speak when they wish, but several, such as Crossan and Charlesworth, have given positive comments “on the record.”

Fortunately there are some alternative and saner voices out on the Web. Mark Goodacre is always trustworthy, civil, and balanced in his discussions, as is James Davila. Richard Bauckham has provided a very helpful preliminary study on the names on the ossuaries. Stephan Goranson has begun to apply his admirably keen sense of historical judgment and scrutiny to the matter. Before and after the Koppel taping I was able to talk face to face with Bill Dever, Jonathan Reed, and Darryl Bock, and though they seem quite opposed initially to the film and book, I have no doubt in time, as they consider more of the evidence, that they will see why some of us consider it credible.

I had no part in the production of the film, nor the choices Discovery made for its release. I do appear in the film, as do quite a few others, as a commentator in areas I consider myself able to judge. I have been involved for over three years in an intense investigation of this tomb and have been able to talk to all the principal people involved, to gather all the available data of which I am aware, including the original IAA excavation files of Joseph Gath. I am confident that in time, as with the initial flurry of publicity over the Dead Sea Scrolls (remember Wilson’s articles in The New Yorker), the evidence will be sifted and evaluated with scholarly methods devoid of both hidden and explicit theological agendas. I look forward to that time and may it be soon and in our day.

I have had a front row side-line seat for the past seven days on the news, commentary, and Blogs regarding the Talpiot tomb and the claim that it can be identified with Jesus of Nazareth and his family. Over 5000 e-mails, dozens of interiews, a couple of death threats, and my own communications with colleagues, has helped me to take the pulse on this story. I wanted to make a few observations from this vantage point.

The hostile, often ugly (even antisemitic), and hysterical reactions of the fundamentalist Christian community was of course no surprise. After all, if one believes the corpse of Jesus came alive and that he ascended to heaven, bones, flesh, inner organs, and all, with no body left behind, then finding his tomb is surely a problem. Then there is the issue of Jesus being married and having a child. From my own reading of theology I do not think that these, or for that matter any other historical findings, are a fundamental threat to Christianity. In every religion so much has to do with interpretation of language, and surely there are ways of affirming such things in a less literalistic and perhaps more significant way. Also, Paul, our earliest witness to resurrection, speaks of a “physical body” and a “spiritual body,” and though it is a body, he clearly presents both the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead at the end of the age, as putting off the flesh like a garment and being transformed into a higher spirit life. I hold none of these views myself but the point I am making here is that I understand why people are upset but wonder, should the evidence end up turning more toward this being Jesus’ tomb, whether it might be a good thing–even for faith?

In contrast, the evangelical Christian academic community has also reacted quite negatively, but with some notable exceptions, the tone of that discussion has been civil and enlightening. The BiblioBlog world has been quite busy to the point one can not keep up with it all. What bothers me however, within these circles, is the unstated operative assumption that Jesus’ ossuary can not be found, by definition, so that what we really have in the end is not an open examination of the evidence but an apologetic attempt to destroy a thesis no matter what. There is nothing wrong with critical probes, that is what scholarship is all about, but one does have to be open to where evidence might lead, and I fear that with the matter of the Jesus tomb, such is not the case. The “end” or result is determined beforehand and is absolutely set. One begins to wonder, are we having an open discussion of evidence or are we conducting a holy battle against the “unbelievers”? I have seen quite a few stories and Blogs today that triumphantly declare that the case for the “Tomb of Jesus” is dead before it even set sail, with all the obvious “It’s Greek to me” kind of trite quips (you know, the “sinking the Titanic lines). In some cases there is an almost breathless glee, and a sign of relief, at the latest “report” out in the Blogosphere. Just today, in about ten minutes, I learned the following:

The dimensions of the 10th ossuary do not match that of James ossuary!

The ossuary in question actually has the name of a guy named “Hanun,” not Jesus!

A “smoking gun,” has been found, the 10th missing ossuary is in the yard behind the Rockefeller!

No responsible academic (thank you) supports this case of Talpiot being the Jesus tomb!

The stats are flawed! The patina tests are bogus!

Jesus followers were poor and they would have just buried him in a ditch!

One concerned colleague wrote that he feared I was ruining my reputation. Another wrote in a Blog that my credibility was taking some major hits. But why would one’s credibility be effected by honestly pursuing evidence? I have researched the Talpiot tomb for three years, consulting with those who were there, gathering all the original files from the IAA, and I have followed the facts wherever they lead me. If we were dealing with a tomb containing the ossuary of Gamaliel and his family it is obvious to me that there would be an entirely different tone to the exchanges. I understand that, but still, it does say something important about how evidence is being examined.

My academic colleagues have mostly remained silent, or chosen to communicate privately with me, mostly positively and in an encouraging way. There are exceptions. I have been amazed at the few who are prepared to give interviews on the Talpiot tomb to the press, denouncing the whole thing as a sham, without having examined any of the evidence whatsoever, and even getting some of the most basic facts wrong. In fact, I know for certain that some of the more vociferous commentators on this subject have based what they said on press reports and what they have been able to pick up since Monday. That is not a lot of lead time for something that has taken some of us three years to sort through. The charge that the Talpiot tomb case should have been “peer reviewed” first is one I want to address in a separate post, but keep in mind that basic information on the tomb was available to scholars since 1996 with Kloner’s report and the almost universal reaction was “the names are common.” It was universally declared that the site it was not worthy of further study, even though it was the only provenanced example of this cluster of names ever found, including the ossuary inscribed “Yeshua bar Yehosef.” Also, so many of the comments I have seen or heard hardly reflect a high standard of peer review, since they are mainly ad hominem reactions. It seems we have a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. If I can go on national TV and talk about something I learned two or three days ago from the press that hardly seems to reflect any commitment to serious peer review or in depth research.

Finally, the thing that has disappointed me the most are the cuttingly hostile remarks and personal slander directed against James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici. Cameron is an incredibly gifted and brilliant human being whose accomplishments, honor, and good character are unquestionable. Simcha’s record of Emmy award winning films speaks for itself, and the titles show a lifetime of dedication to shedding light on important issues. If we don’t like the film or decide its basic story thread is flawed that is one thing, but the personal slander is quite another and I think it is unethical. Cameron and Jacobovici do not deserve to be trashed in this way for faciliatating an investigation that involved so many disparate areas of expertise, locating the tomb so it can be further studied, initiating the DNA tests and the patina tests, commissioning the statistical studies, consulting with the most renowned epigraphers and prosopographers. And such would be the case even if one did not finally agree with their interpretation. After all, are there any interpretations within the entire field of Christian Origins with which everyone agrees. Again, I say it is more the “heat” factor at work here, the proverbial “raw nerve.”

What I hope is that we can all watch the program on Sunday night and maybe things can then calm down and we can have an open and extended discussion of its main theses on a level of great light and less heat.

Given all the hype and heat currently circulating regarding the Talpiot tomb, and particularly, how and whether the statistics done by Feuerverger are valid, I wanted to clarify one point that seems to be at the heart of most all the misunderstanding. I am not a statistician and contrary to anything you might read I did not “calculate” anything. I have consulted with statisticians, including Feuerverger, so here I want to say something about method rather than mathematical results. This is not a case of “garbage in, garbage out,” and yes, you can “prove anything by statistics,” depending on assumptions. But that said, it does not mean it is impossible to statistically test the assertion that this cluster of names is highly probable/common, and thus meaningless.

Just about every scholar who has commented publicly on the thesis that the names in the Talpiot have high probability of being identified with the Jesus of Nazareth family has made the dismissive point that the names are common. Indeed, this seems to be the most “common” assertion made this week by a host of non-statisticians who are stepping out of their expertise to offer views to the press. I don’t think any of us disagree with that, i.e., that the names are common. I know that Jacobovici and Cameron don’t disagree with that. However, the question is, what about the cluster of names per se, as well as their known relationships, in this particular tomb? There one’s intuition can be quite misleading. We have pretty good records of name frequencies from ossuaries (including but not limited to the Rahmani catalogue), from the broad range of sourses that Tal Ilan has been surveying, and from Rachel Hachlili. The remarkable thing is that the basic sorts of percentage and ratio figures for name frequencies in Palestine in the 2nd Temple period, such as those Camil Fuchs calculated, seem to hold fairly steady with the various bodies of data (i.e. literary, papyri, ossuaries, ostracon, inscriptions).

The first step, as I see things, if we are going to have a clean and consistent method, is to run the statistics on the names themselves, in this case the Talpiot tomb, without any reference at all to Jesus of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene or anyone else–just the names. What are the probabilities that these names, in the relationships specified (Yeshua bar Yehosef, Judah bar Yeshua)? There one has to decide whether to handle the names generically (count a special form Yosa as just Joseph, etc.), or include the aspect of “rarity.” I think it is best, as a preliminary step, to take the names generically, i.e., a Jesus son of Joseph, two Marys, a Jude son of Jesus, a Matthew, and a Joseph. The question then becomes what is the probability of this cluster of names and the specified relationships based on frequency ratios. This addresses the question of whether or not the cluster is common, i.e., probable. It has nothing at all to do with Jesus of Nazareth.

A second step is entirely separate as I see it. That is the matter of whether or not the specific names as we have them in the tomb, and whatever we can know of the relationships (two instances of father/son and a mDNA result that shows no maternal relationship between the Yeshua and one of the Marys), exhibit any probable relationship to anything we know or can say about the family of Jesus. This is not a statistical question, but one for the historian and biblical scholar. My own view is yes, but demonstrating that here is not the point of this post. I will write something up soon in that regard that I find highly persuasive.

Now it is possible, given some potential “fit” between what we know of Jesus of Nazareth and his family and this cluster of names, to factor in a greater rarity for some of the names, thus Joseph is not just any old 14% Joseph, it is a rare form Jose, so you give it a different number, and it is also associated with a name we know for Jesus’ second brother, etc. That is not necessary but that is what Feuerverger means when he says I took what I was given by the historians. It is not his field or his specialty to decide such thing–i.e., Yose is rare, Mariamene is rare, and they seem to fit the Jesus family, and can potentially provide a “fit” with Jesus’ brother and possibly Mary Magdalene, but at that point he is not responsible for the identification, only the numbers.

I have read initial draft versions of Feuerverger’s paper, which he will publish in good time, and I am perfectly comfortable with his 600/1 conclusion, which is actually quite low in that he added in all sorts of compensations for possible errors in the assumptions. What is important to clarify is that Andrey should not be made foolish as if he is saying “in all probability this is the holy family” as if the conclusion is based on his numbers alone. The “fit” with the Jesus family has to be based on other grounds, namely the historical records we have. He has done his work well.

P.S. Several of my colleagues, including Mark Goodacre on his Blog, have asked whether one would need to “discount” the statistical numbers for names in the Talpiot tomb that do not seem in any way to fit the family of Jesus, namely Matthew and Jude son of Jesus. The two are different cases in that Jude is said to be the son of Jesus, while Matthew we know nothing about, but the answer is no, in that this is not a statistical matter but one for the historian. In other words, the statistician could do that, if the historian said there is something about that name we could give a negative factor to–i.e, Jesus could not possibly have had a child so let’s substract some probability value. But that closes the possibility that if by other means we can say with probability that Jesus had a son, we could learn then from this archaeological find that he did. Feuerverger did not include Matthew or Jude because he was working on what we know to get the numbers, namely, names we could identify in the historical record. BTW, he also factored in for names not there, that might be expected. He was really quite careful and thorough. As for Matthew, clearly, any family tomb of this type, whether that of Jesus or anyone else, can have individuals not related by blood to the main clan, and in that sense any name could be there, and not affect the core calculations.

One might wonder how the Jesus Family Tomb story is playing over in Israel. This weekend’s Yediot Achranot, the major newspaper in Israel has a very extensive story (equivalent to Israelis to the Sunday NY Times) titled “Jesus is Dead and Buried in Jerusalem.” Unlike much of the coverage over here this long article does give the reader a sense of what the film actually contains and what the main issues are all about in terms of its accuracy and validity.

Michael Stone is mentioned in this article as having had a positive impression of the film in that it has uncovered certain data and brought to our attention areas that had been overlooked, but he called for the “hard work” of peer reviewed scholarly work on the subject to now begin. Dr. Stone is here at UNC Charlotte this year as our Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ancient Judaism and I have been able to discuss with him most of the evidence on the Talpiot tomb that is behind the production of the film. He has had some very insightful suggestions as to how research might procede. He has also encouraged me to publish a comprehensive academic article on the whole matter as soon as possible, which I do plan to do with Dr. Shimon Gibson.

I am in D.C. today filming a show with Ted Koppel as moderator that is scheduled to air Sunday night on Discovery after the showing of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus Film.” It is called: The Lost Tomb of Jesus: A Critique.

The program is divided into two segments, with the filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and I involved in both. The first was with two archaeologists:

William Dever, professor emeritus of Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Arizona
Jonathan Reed, professor of Religion, University of La VerneP
The second was with three theologians:

Darrell Bock, Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological
Seminary, past president of the Evangelical Theological Society
The Very Rev. David O’Connell, C.M., President, The Catholic University
of America
Professor Judy Fentress-Williams from Virginia Theological seminary

It was an honor to be with such a distinguished group of scholars and have someone of the stature of Ted Koppel moderating things. I think the show turned out very well though I was the only guest who was positive overall about the film other than than its producer, Simcha Jacobovici, of course. Koppel asked some tough questions, and exhibited the skillful style he is known for in covering a complex and sensitive subject. I think all of us felt we did not have time to really adequately discuss things but that is the nature of TV and we only had one hour.

Dever and I are old friends from days in Israel and Jonathan Reed is one of the excavators at Sepphoris, so I was pleased to see them again and in time I hope more of the data and evidence regarding the Talpiot site will get factored into their opinions and conclusions. I was particularly pleased to meet Darrell Bock. He is a “conservative evangelical” so our views are poles apart, but he is a bright and decent fellow who offers reasoned input. I anticipate lots of good exchanges with him in the future and maybe I can post some of that here on this Blog. Rev. O’Connel was very gracious, kind, and a real gentleman, and Professor Fentress-Williams was sharp and highly perceptive, particularly on cultural impact issues.

I look forward to seeing the “real thing” when it airs.

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.