Here is a summary of my views of the Talpiot/Yeshua tomb and its possible connection to a hypothesized family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth:

The Historical Context: I do not find it unlikely or improbable that the family tomb of Jesus might be found in the Jerusalem area. I have argued elsewhere that neither the social status of Jesus and his family, nor their Galilean origins, stand contrary to the idea. All our evidence points to Jerusalem as the center of the Jesus movement after his death, with James and the family taking up permanent residence there. The tomb itself is small and very modest, quite plain, as are most of the ossuaries, and it is away from the city on the road to Bethlehem. My understanding of the Nazarene movement, as it began to thrive in the 40s through 60s CE, is that one would expect, rather than doubt, that the inner family wouldreceive such an honored and traditional burial somewhere in Jerusalem. If, as seems likely, Jesus’ body was taken from the temporary rock hewn tomb used for emergency purposes the Passover weekend he died, and he was subsequently moved to a permanent place of honorable burial, a tomb like this one in east Talpiot makes sense. One would expect then, as other intimate family members died, they would have likewise been placed in the same small tomb. Our earliest Gospel, Mark, knows of no “resurrection appearances,” and many scholars see his proclamation that the disciples will “see him in Galilee” as a reference to a “second coming” or Parousia. Some have scoffed at the very possibility of “finding the tomb of Jesus” as sensational and ridiculous nonsense. It is much like someone claiming to have found the “ark of the covenant” or any other Indiana Jones type nonsense. My view is that regardless of films, books, or hype, the tomb is a material reality that is worthy of full academic discusison.

Statistics: Although the names are “common” as is so often pointed out by so many, it does indeed seem to be the case that the statistical grouping of these particular names in this particular tomb is far from common. This is confirmed by the mathematical probabilities based on name frequencies, or more directly, by looking at the names in tomb after tomb of which we have record. Nothing like this occurs anywhere else. This is, after all, the only tomb known with a “Yeshua son of Joseph.” Even if the probabilities were 50/50 the tomb would be of great interest and worth examining in this regard. As it stands they are surely much higher than that. Statisticians often point out that “common sense” when it comes to probability theory, is often quite misleading. What we have to ask is what are the probabilities of these six names occurring together in a 1st century Jewish family tomb, namely: Mary, a second Mary, Jesus son of Joseph, Jude son of Jesus, Joseph, and Matthew. I have independently consulted with several statisticians who work with demographics and probability theory with the following results.

Assuming a family size of six the probability of these six names in these relationships occurring together in one family is 1/253,403.Therefore, out of 253,403 families (a population of 1,520,418), this particular combination of names would occur only once. Obviously the population of late 2nd Temple Jerusalem was nothing of that sort, but perhaps only 25,000 (Jeremias) to 75,000 (high estimate). These numbers are based on good data of name frequencies from inscriptional and literary sources of the period. They are also conservative, in that I asked my consultants to use the generic form of the names (Mary, Joseph, Jesus, etc.), not the much more rare specific forms on the ossuaries themselves: Mariamene, Maria, Jose, and Yeshua. To further illustrate the ways in which a cluster of “common” names ends up being rare or unique, here is an example. Imagine a football stadium filled with 50,000 people—men, women, and children. This is an average estimate of the population of ancient Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. If we ask all the males named Jesus to stand, based on the frequency of that name, we would expect 2,796 to rise. If we then ask all those with a father named Joseph to remain standing there would only be 351 left. If we further reduce this group by asking only those with a mother named Mary to remain standing we would get down to only 173. If we then ask those of this group with a brother named Joseph to remain standing only 23 are left. And finally, if we add the condition of just one brother named James, there’s less than a 3/4 chance that even 1 person remains standing.

The Inscriptions: There were ten ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb with six inscribed. This is actually a rather high percentage, as normally only about 20% of ossuaries have names on them. It is not the case, as has been reported, that the remains of up to 35 additional individuals were found in this tomb. The only records we have regarding bones found outside the ossuaries are the official reports of the excavator, the late Joseph Gath, who indicates two or perhaps three other individuals at the most. The Talpiot tomb is a small, modest pre-70 CE family burial cave with a dozen or so individuals buried inside, six of whom we can know by name. Here are the ten ossuaries with their inscriptions in their transliterated Aramaic and Greek forms:

1. Yeshua bar Yehosef (Aramaic)
2. Maria (Aramaic)
3. Mariemene [also known as] Mara (Greek & decorated)
4. Yose (Aramaic)
5. Matya (Aramaic)
6. Yehuda bar Yeshua (Aramaic & decorated)
7. 8. 9. No names & decorated
10. Missing, described as “plain”

What I find particularly striking about this cluster, beyond the mathematical probabilities that I note above, is that four of these names, including that of Jesus himself, correspond to individuals named in our New Testament records as part of Jesus’ most intimate family circle, all of whom we might assume to have died before 70 CE when this tomb went out of use. There is new evidence that pinpoints the 70 CE war as the terminus ad quem for interments in this Talpiot tomb.

Note the following hypothetical “fit”:

1. The father Joseph would not be buried in this tomb as he would have died earlier and been buried perhaps in Galilee, so the Yose is likely not the father of the Yeshua bar Yehosef.

2. Of the four brothers of Jesus of Nazareth, namely Yaaqov, Yoses, Shimon, and Jude, James dies in 62 CE, but Shimon and Jude seem to live past 70 CE. It is Yoses who might be called the “missing brother,” of the Jesus family. Shimon takes over after the death of James, even though Yoses was “second” in birth after James, indicating he has probably died and could not serve as leader of the community. We have N.T. letters from James and Jude, but no record of Yoses. The Aramaic form of the nickname Yose is also rare, only here on an ossuary, and a few more examples in literary sources, but it is not common until later Mishnaic times. This form matches the nickname Mark knows for Jesus’ brother in Greek, “Yoses,” and many manuscripts of Mark even have the form “Yose” without the Greek suffix “s.”

In considering all possibilities one could postulate that the “Jesus son of Joseph” in this tomb could perhaps be the son of Jesus’ brother Jose, who might have named his child in honor of his dead brother. I think this is highly unlikely. Since there is also a “Jude son of Jesus” in that tomb as well, it would probably indicate a tighter time span making the likelihood of a three generational father, son, and grandson very unlikely. The simplist interpretation would be that the “Jesus son of Joseph” is the father of the “Jude son of Jesus,” and the brother of Yose.

3. We have two “Marys” one known as Maria and the other as Mariamene. Based on DNA tests we know that the Mariamene in this tomb is not related to Yeshua as mother or sister on the maternal side. That leaves open the likelihood that Maria could well be the mother, especially if we have two of her sons, Yeshua and Yose, in this tomb. It would make sense that she would be buried with her children in this intimate, small, family tomb and that her ossuary would be inscribed Maria. We think Jesus had a sister named Mary as well but we don’t know her name from the N. T. records and we don’t know anything about her death. It is much more likely, in a tomb with these two sons, we would have their mother Maria.

4. There were three women in Jesus’ life who attended to his burial, his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and his sister Salome (Mark 16:1). Family intimates carried out this important rite of washing and anointing the corpse for burial. If Mariamene is not Jesus’ mother or sister, as the DNA indicates, it seems a logical possibility then that she could be Mary Magdalene, his follower and close companion based on her inclusion as a named intimate in our earliest record. We don’t know much about Mary Magdalene in our N. T. sources, but she does seem to be a woman of means and she is associated with several other women of standing (Luke 8: 1-3). The Mariamene ossuary is decorated and the inscription is in Greek., which surely fits this data, and Migdal, according to the record of Josephus, was a large, thriving, and culturally diverse “Romanized” city with theatre, hippodrome, and a large aqueduct system. Mariamene is a diminutive form of the name Mariamne, derived from Mariamme, a name that is associated with Mary Magdalene in early Christian tradition (Hippolytus, Acts of Philip, Origen, Greek fragments of Gospel of Mary). That she is also known by the name “Mara,” which like “Martha,” means “lordess” or “honorable lady,” is all the more appropriate. Recent scholarship (Schaberg, King, Marjanen, Bovon, Brock) on Mary Magdalene has gone a long way toward rehabilitating her important place in earliest history of the Jesus movement. In a diverse collection of early Christian sources dating from the late 1st century through the 4th, she is a prominent leader and voice among the apostles and an intimate companion of Jesus, holding her place over against better known male disciples.

We have no way of knowing whether Mariamene is the mother of the “Judas son of Jesus,” whose ossuary is also in this tomb. If Jesus did have a son it seems she is surely a likely candidate, and the ossuary of Judas in this tomb, like that of Mariamene, is also decorated, unlike those of Yeshua, Yose, and Maria. I do not agree that the presence of a “Judah son of Jesus” in this tomb is an argument against it being that of Jesus of Nazareth. I think if we look to our ancient sources more carefully, if such a son did indeed exist, we might find things that we have overlooked.

5. Whether Matya is somehow related to the family through marriage or blood we cannot say. Like the names of Jesus’s brothers it is a common “Maccabean” name that is known in both the genealogies of Jesus found in our gospels (Matt 1, Luke 3). The Matthew or Levi, part of Jesus’ Twelve, is in fact identified with the “Alphaeus” family clan (Mark 2:14), and I have argued elsewhere that Alphaeaus=Clophas, the brother of Joseph, legal father of Jesus. I think the best we can say is that it is a name “in the family” but how to identify him further, whether a son-in-law, a cousin, or otherwise, is impossible.

I find this hypothetical “fit” between the intimate pre-70 CE family of Jesus and Nazareth and the names found in this tomb quite impressive and it argues strongly against the out of hand dismissal of the tomb as possibly associated with Jesus. Coupled with the statistical data on the cluster of names, I think we can say the Talpiot tomb is possibly-to-likely that of Jesus of Nazareth. But can we prove it?

One thing that would settle the question finally for me would be in inclusion of the ossuary inscribed, “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” in this tomb. My reading of the evidence is that the inscription on this controversial ossuary, that surfaced in 2002, is authentic. So if we indeed had Jesus and his two brothers, James and Jose, both of whom died before 70 CE, in a tomb with these two Marys and a son of Jesus, the identification in my mind would be close to certain. The question is, when did the owner of the James ossuary, Oded Golan, acquire it, and can we trace it back to any specific tomb from around the period 1980? Beyond certain circumstantial evidence that might support the argument that the James ossuary came from the Talpiot tomb, namely its possible correspondence with the 10th missing ossuary, the recent preliminary patina tests point strongly in this direction. Tests of over a dozen randomly sampled ossuaries from various tombs in the Jerusalem area showed greatly differing chemical signatures while the patina of the James ossuary closely correlated with those ossuaries from the Talpiot tomb, with dramatic differences from any in the control group.

There is more to learn and more that will come out soon on this whole subject but right now this is a summary of the evidence as I see it.

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