While I was in Jerusalem last week a story appeared in the Jerusalem Post headlined “Jesus Tomb Film Scholars Backtrack” by Etgar Lefkovits. Its essential claim was that several prominent scholars interviewed in the controversial film, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” had now revised their conclusions two months after the screening of the film. These “dramatic clarifications” reported by Lefkovits were based on a Web site article by “epigrapher Stephen Pfann of the University of the Holy Land.” Of the thousands of stories that have appeared on the subject of the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb since February 26th this one by Lefkovits has to be ranked, from a journalistic standpoint, as one of the worst of the worst, and given the multiple contenders, this ranking is not an easy one to earn.

Unfortunately, the Lefkovits story (try Google: “Lefkovits tomb backtrack” for a small sample) was flashed around the world, picked up by media that understandably found such a headline irresistible and a host of Christian bloggers eager to feed on any scrap of major media coverage that might cast into doubt the claims of the film–that the Talpiot tomb likely once held the bones of Jesus of Nazareth. After all, once the story is published it is no longer “Lefkovits says that Stephen Pfann says that Prof.X says,” as reported on a Web site that has the word “New” flashing on-and-off over its “Tomb” discussions, but it is now “The Jerusalem Post reports this or that.”

Lefkovits mentions five scholars who have “backtracked” from their positions in the film–Andrey Feuerverger the statistician, Shimon Gibson, the archaeologist involved in the original excavation, Frank Cross, the renowned Harvard epigrapher, Carney Matheson who did the DNA tests, and Francois Bovon, another Harvard professor who works on Mary Magdalene traditions. Lefkovits ends his story with a naively formulated theological affirmation that seems strangely out of place in a news story: “According to the New Testament, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion, and an ossuary containing Jesus’ bones–the explanations of the movie director notwithstanding–would contradict the core Christian belief that he was resurrected and then ascended into heaven.”

The problem is none of these five scholars have backtracked or repudiated what they presented in the film and Lefkovits did not bother to talk to any of them.

As it happens, the day the Jerusalem Post story appeared I was sitting with Shimon Gibson in the lobby of the American Colony hotel and we read the piece through together. He was quite upset at how he had been partially quoted as saying “I’m skeptical that this is the tomb of Jesus” as if this was a new position he was taking reflecting his “backtracking.” His full statement, even as produced on Pfann’s Web site, Lefkovits’s one source for his story, plainly says the filmmakers did a good job, carrying out their work with integrity and vision, and that he was keeping an “open mind” about the possibilities. One of my purposes in being in Jerusalem was to work with Gibson on our ongoing research on the Talpiot tomb which we have carried out for two years now in complete and cooperative harmony.

I am also in very close touch with Prof. Feuerverger, the renowned statistician at the University of Toronto. Over the past few weeks we have spoken at length on the phone and exchanged dozens of e-mail. I am thoroughly familiar with his work and his conclusions and he told me this week that his major academic paper on the statistics related to the Talpiot Tomb is very close to final completion. According to the Lefkovits story Feuerverger’s is the “most startling change of opinion” of all the “backtracking” experts, but he then goes on to quote his “new” position which is identical to the one he expressed at the initial New York press conference on February 26th, and one he has held all along–namely that his 600 to 1 figure refers to the rarity of the cluster of names found in the Talpiot tomb. I have offered an extensive discussion of this in earlier blog posts so I won’t repeat it all again here, but even better are Dr. Feuerverger’s own words on the subject that I just received today: “I would like to make it clear that I stand by the statements I had made in my probability calculations. I have retracted nothing. My website makes clear the assumptions of my calculations. Subject to these assumptions, my estimates have not changed.”

Prof. Frank Cross of Harvard, a renowned epigrapher of Hebrew and Aramaic of this period, provided readings for the ossuary inscriptions including “Jesus son of Joseph.” He has not in the slightest way changed his views on these readings so to cast him as one of a group of scholars who have revised their views as stated in the film is totally irresponsible. Cross said in the film that the names were common, indicating his own view that connecting this particular “Jesus son of Joseph” to the one in the New Testament is not a self-evident task. I have discussed this with him and he is rightly skeptical of statistical claims in any field, but he would be the first to admit that he is not a statistician and anyone who knows Frank Cross knows that he keeps an open mind. His official position is that he stands by the readings and what he says in the film and that his business is not to draw conclusions about whether this is or is not a tomb connected to Jesus of Nazareth.

Dr. Carney Matheson, who supervised the DNA tests on the bone fragments in the Yeshua and Mariamene ossuaries, has not backed off in the least from the results achieved by his laboratory. I have been involved in the whole thing from start to finish and I was present when his results were presented. I have also since been in touch with Dr. Matheson, to be sure he is okay with what I write here. When Dr. Carney Matheson first broke the news of the DNA test results live on camera in his laboratory he offered the passing observation that given the small grouping in that tomb, with only two women named, it was possible the two were “husband and wife.” He did not intend to be understood to say that was the only possibility, and he would be the first to make clear that DNA tests often eliminate relationships as well as establish them. Some times, in that sense “no match” can be as informative as a “match.” The DNA results did not tell us what the relationship between the two was, but what it was not—the female sample was neither the mother nor the maternal sister of the male. At that time I am not sure if he even knew anything about the possible identity of the samples. Had the two turned out to be related then we would have been able to add another “relationship” to our statistics. As it stands two relations were eliminated making the husband and wife one of the possibilities, but certainly not the only possibility. However, as I have often pointed out, since Jesus had three “intimate” Marys in his life, his mother, his sister, and Mary Magdalene, in this case, getting “absolutely nothing” in terms of a maternal match between Yeshua and Mariamene does indeed turn out to be quite significant for overall possibilities of interpretation.

Finally, Professor Francois Bovon has not in any way backed off from what he said in the film regarding the use of the name Mariamne as an appropriate name for Mary Magdalene in later Christian sources. His article is on the SBL Web site for anyone to read. What Bovon has clarified is that he is dealing with literary sources and traditions, and in his work in that regard he does not intend to claim that the historical Mary Magdalene was called by this name in her own lifetime. But he has reiterated his view that Mariamne, besides Maria or Mariam, is a Greek equivalent, attested by Josephus, Origen, and the Acts of Philip, for the Semitic Myriam, and that the portrayal of Mariamne in the Acts of Philip fits very well with the portrayal of Mary of Magdala in the Manichean Psalms, the Gospel of Mary, and Pistis Sophia. Professor Bovon does not accept the overall thesis of the film, either that Jesus was reburied in a second tomb or that he was married to Mary Magdalene and had a child with her.

There is no doubt that Jacobovici’s film has a point of view and that it seeks to present a case, namely that the Yeshua of the Talpiot tomb is indeed Jesus of Nazareth, and that based on evidence in this tomb he had a child, most likely with the one we know as Mary Magdalene in the N.T. gospels. How well he makes that case is subject to debate and discussion. However, it is ludicrous to fault Jacobovici, who is neither archaeologist, epigrapher, statistician, DNA expert, nor historian for consulting with those experts considered among the best in each of these areas, presenting the results of their work, and then making use of that data in formulating his own presentation. In the same way, if I consult a lexicon or translation of an ancient work from a language in which I am not trained, even as a scholar and a historian, by using such a source, I am not implying the editors of these works somehow agree with some historically reconstructed model that I might construct, based on such linguistic evidence.

Comments are closed.