Archive for November, 2007

Carefully re-reading Jane Schaberg’s book, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, has set me to thinking and working through all the texts related to her once again, particularly those in our New Testament gospels. I wanted to do a bit of “thinking aloud” here, covering various thoughts and ideas that have come to me of late.

I begin with Mark, whose references to Mary Magdalene form the core of the Synoptic gospels account of her. He mentions her three times, at the crucifixion, at Jesus’ burial, and at the empty tomb on Sunday morning (Mk 15:40-41; 15:47; 16:1). She is named first among two other women from Galilee, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome, but according to Mark they are part of a larger contingent of “many other women” who had followed Jesus from Galilee where they had provided (Greek: diakoneo) for him. This reference to a large group of Galilean women who form a base of support, presumably financial and otherwise, is something Luke picks up on and elaborates (8:1-3), but it fundamentally comes to us from Mark. I presented arguments in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, that this second Mary of Mark’s group, is Jesus’ mother, with Salome most likely his sister. At any rate, it is these three, led by Mary Magdalene, who make preparations to attend to the intimate task of preparing the corpse of Jesus for burial, buying spices on Saturday evening with the intention of anointing his body early Sunday morning. Thus they come to discover the empty tomb early Sunday morning.

Matthew, clearly relying on Mark as his source, has the same three references to Mary Magdalene, at the crucifixion, the burial, and early Sunday morning at the tomb. She is paired with the “other Mary,” and he does not name Salome, though he implies she might be the “mother of the sons of Zebedee. Regardless, it is the two Marys who witness the burial and visit the tomb Sunday morning (Matt 27:55-56, 27:61; 28:1).

Luke, also following Mark, makes some significant changes to Mark’s basic structure. He too has women from Galilee standing at the cross but he names none of them (Luke 23:49). Likewise, at the burial, these women from Galilee remain unnamed (Luke 23:55-56). Finally at the empty tomb he says the women who came to complete the rites of burial were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and “the other women with them” (Luke 24:10). This means that Luke only names Mary Magdalene once in the three scenes that Mark has introduced her. As we will see, this is absolutely deliberate and calculated. What he does is introduce her much earlier, back in Galilee, among this group of many women who had provided for Jesus, picking up on Mark’s reference. But there he adds that she was part of a group of women who had been cured of “evil spirits and infirmities” naming Joanna and another woman, Susanna, but adding that Mary Magdalene herself was positively deranged beyond description, in that she had been possessed by seven demons! (Luke 8:1-3). Luke is keen to make the point that the presence of these women, who do not need to be even named, is of no credible importance, since they come from such shady backgrounds, epitomizing the hysterical “female” whose testimony would be considered an “idle tale,” thus preparing the way for the true and reliable male witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection (Luke 24:11). All he really has to go on is Mark, but he skillfully recasts Mark’s material in this way, thus marginalizing Mary Magdalene, and “demonizing” her, quite literally, cured or not, lest anyone might think the resurrection faith was first proclaimed by such a witness. But there is more. Just before Luke introduces the deranged woman in chapter 8, as followers of Jesus from Galilee, he constructs a scene, in Galilee, of an unnamed woman of an unnamed city, a “sinner,” who comes to Jesus at a dinner with an ointment, who then weeps uncontrollably, bathes his feet with her tears, wiping them with her hair, and anointing them (Luke 7:36-50). Jesus forgives her many sins, and she presumably becomes his follower. And thus Mary Magdalene is introduced in the next passage. The juxtaposition is deliberate. Although Luke is not bold enough to say that Mary Magdalene herself is this forgiven harlot, the contextualizing is enough, coupled with her deranged mental past. Interestingly enough, Mark also has a story of an anonymous woman anointing Jesus, but it is a few days before Jesus’ death, in Jerusalem, and she is honored not as a forgiven sinner, but one whose anointing prepared him “beforehand” for his burial (Mark 14:3-9).

What Mark fundamentally tells us then about Mary Magdalene is that she is first among a group of women from Galilee who provided for Jesus, that she is involved (with his mother) in the intimate rites of preparing Jesus’ body for burial, and that she, Mary, and Salome, are the “first witnesses” to Jesus’ resurrection. Mark knows nothing of appearances of Jesus to these women, but they hear the proclamation, “He has been raised, he is not here.” The disciples, led by Peter, are to “see him in Galilee,” though the scene is never reported by Mark. Matthew elaborates Mark’s disturbingly sparse account, with Jesus subsequently encountering the women who linger at the tomb, and a mysterious “foggy mountain” appearance to the Eleven somewhere in Galilee (with some doubting!). Luke feels compelled to go further. There is no disputing the women were involved, at the cross, the burial, and the empty tomb–but as a group they are unnamed, and even when named, identified as “formerly” deranged and contextualized with the unnamed “harlot” whom Jesus forgives for her many sins. Luke wants nothing of appearances in Galilee, nor of the deranged women who might have proclaimed such as “first witnesses.” For him the resurrection of Jesus rests solidly on his Jerusalem based appearances to reliable male witnesses, including to Peter and the Eleven.

And then there is the gospel of John. John also has Mary Magdalene at the cross, and he clearly identifies Jesus’ mother there as well. He does not mention the women at the burial but his account of what happened early Sunday morning is significantly different from that of Mark. Rather than the group of women arriving together, John relates that Mary Magdalene came alone, very early, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb (John 20:1-10). She runs to tell Peter, and he, and an unnamed disciple rush to the tomb, confirming her story, but not yet coming to the conclusion Jesus was raised. There are no messengers, angelic or otherwise, as in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, to tell the women Jesus is raised–it is simple a case of someone having “taken the master out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (20:2).

I find this account in John strangely compelling. Mark’s young man in white linen, proclaiming Jesus is risen, seems wholly theological, not to mention Matthews fantastic expansion where we have a dazzling angel who comes like lightening from heaven, heralded by an earthquake, who rolls back the stone and proclaims Jesus is risen. Luke’s two men in dazzling clothing is cut from the same cloth. In contrast, John’s core account has nothing fantastic or even theological. It deserves our careful attention, and at the heart of this account is the singular experience of a woman–namely Mary Magdalene.

According to John the tomb is found empty very early Sunday morning, even at dark. The logical conclusion is that someone has removed the body and placed it elsewhere, perhaps the gardener, or as the rumor in Matthew has it, some of his disciples. Schaberg effectively argues, in my judgment, that what happens next in John’s gospel (20:11-18), namely Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene, still in the garden near the tomb where he was missing, is our earliest and most fundamental witness to Jesus’ resurrection, and that further, the form and structure by which John narrates this encounter, implies an Elijah-Elisha like succession story, of Jesus passing on this witness to his chosen and intimate follower, Mary Magdalene. In this extraordinary account we have dialogue between Jesus and Mary. She is Maria in the narrative but Jesus calls her name directly, “Miriam,” and she replies with the affectionate diminutive “Rabbouni,” my dear/little Master. What she is told is that she must not grasp him for he is ascending to the Father.

Like Matthew and Luke, John includes other appearance stories, both to the disciples in Jerusalem, and in Galilee. But this core account, found now in John 20:1-18, is perhaps our best window for reconstructing what might have happened that early Sunday morning. Based on the Mary Magdalene account, found only in John, I am convinced that the discovery of the empty tomb should be given historical weight. It is what John’s account does not say that makes it compelling. With no angelic messengers proclaiming the resurrection, and Mary not even told to go tell the rest that they too would see Jesus, it seems to me we should give the Mary Magdalene story priority. The subsequent accounts of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and even the supplemental accounts in John, all seem to be accretions to this core account.

Mark does not dispute that Mary Magdalene and the other women first discovered the tomb, but his account is clearly a generalized expansion of an earlier core story, much elaborated by Matthew, and radically re-contextualized by Luke. But they do not venture to remove the Magdalene. Only Paul does that, in his roll call of appearances of the heavenly Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. There Mary Magdalene is completely eliminated. In effect, that has already begun to happen in Mark, since the women “say nothing to anyone” and are mainly pointers to the male Eleven who will see Jesus in Galilee. In Matthew the main point of resurrection is the “commission,” and that would not be given to women, but only to the male Eleven. Likewise in Luke, who has Jesus appear to the Eleven, telling them to take his message to all the nations.

In my view John 20:1-18 stands separate and isolated from all these subsequently embellished traditions. John is able to contextualize it with subsequent appearances to the male leaders, but read as “first testimony” it has a most compelling ring to it. I find it the only account that lends itself to some measure of credible historical reconstruction. It essentially is what I make most use of in my own reconstruction in The Jesus Dynasty:

Jesus is hastily buried in a temporary tomb that happened to be nearby in a garden at the place of crucifixion. The intent was to move his body to a permanent place after the festival/Sabbath was past. Mary Magdalene arrives early Sunday morning, while it is still dark, and finds the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. She alerts Peter and the others. No one thinks Jesus has been raised, but they draw the logical conclusion, that someone has moved him. Presumably that someone would be either other family members, or more likely Joseph of Arimathea. Lingering near the tomb Mary has a visionary encounter with Jesus himself. She is told by him that he is ascending to heaven and that is what she reports to the others. Mary then becomes first witness, and as such, “successor” to the ascending Jesus. She alone is given the message–Jesus has ascended to the Father.

It is difficult to read this account as it stands without interjecting subsequent stories from Matthew, Luke, and John. But that Mark, writing as late as the 70s AD, has no appearances, yet he does have Mary Magdalene at the tomb, supports the essential core of John’s Mary Magdalene story. Historians have rightly judged that the series of expanded and dramatic appearances of Jesus to his various male followers are theologically cast apologetics. As such, the singular appearance to Mary Magdalene, did not fare so well. Luke begins the long history of her demise and defamation–yes, she was there, but remember, she and the others were surely less than reliable witnesses. What is important is that even in Mark she can not be eliminated. She is there at the first, and she is clearly the first, if John is to be given any weight at all.

One puzzle in John is that he, like Mark and Luke, also has a scene at which Jesus is anointed by a woman (John 12:1-8). His account is clearly parallel to that of Mark in several of its key elements, but then it departs significantly therefrom. John’s story takes place a few days earlier than Mark’s, six days before Passover. John identifies the woman as Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, whereas Mark leaves her unnamed. Rather than Jesus’ head, as in Mark, this Mary anoints his feet with a costly perfume and wipes them with her hair–which in turn reminds one of the Luke story of the “woman of the city,” that is the “sinner.” In John Jesus does not say that she has anointed him beforehand for his burial, but rather that the costly perfume was well spent and that she can store it up to use in the future on the day of his burial! One would then expect her to appear in some manner, at the burial scene, to anoint Jesus’ body, as Mark has Mary Magdalene do. I see no easy way to sort through these three anointing stories. I think behind them lies some event that took place the last week of Jesus’ life, in Jerusalem. We can surely discount Luke’s moving the story much earlier, and placing it in Galilee, as well as his implication that the woman who anoints Jesus is a “sinner.” But that Luke juxtapositions his redeemed harlot story with his own introduction of Mary Magdalene as formerly “deranged” or demon possessed, gives one pause. Does Luke fear that Mark’s story might imply that the anointing woman is none other than Mary Magdalene–who subsequently comes to the tomb to complete her prophetic/proleptic act of devotion? The intimacy implied in John’s story, namely the wiping of the feet with the hair, given Jewish custom, is also present in Luke but not in Mark. It is all more than confusing but one is tempted to say at the core of these accounts is a story of involving intimacy, anointing, and burial. I do not think it makes sense to identify Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene, as some have suggested. However, it might make sense that final editors of John wanted to distance Mary Magdalene from such an intimate act by some substitution of names, whereas Mark simply leaves her anonymous.

I just returned from the thickly packed cluster of academic conferences held in San Diego, November 16th-20th–this included the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Schools of Oriental Research (ancient Near Eastern/Mediterranean archaeology), and the Biblical Archeology Society. Besides seeing many friends, hearing some interesting papers, and browsing the massive displays of new books by hundreds of publishers, I read a paper on Mary Magdalene in a joint meeting of the Early Jewish & Christian Mysticism section with the Religious Experience in Early Judaism & Christianity consultation. My assigned task was to offer a reflective review of Jane Schaberg’s important and provocative book, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (Continuum, 2004). As my readers know, I have quite a positive evaluation of this book and its importance and I had posted a blurb at this site back in March. I thought some might be interested in what I said, so I will paste in my remarks here:

My brief review is organized around three main points: The Women, the Problem, and the Ending. By “the Women,” I mean not only Mary Magdalene, but the author, Jane Schaberg as well, and a third, Virginia Woolf, who is brought along by Jane as a kind of meditative conversation partner throughout the book. Although this book is a thoroughly academic and scholarly historical investigation of Mary Magdalene, it is at the same time a sharply challenging and engaging personal narrative of Jane’s own journey in her search for the historical Mary Magdalene. She departs from the formal and structured categories common among us and bares her soul along the way. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene is a thickly multifaceted work that resists easy characterization. It is at once carefully documented historical scholarship, meditative personal memoir, and cutting feminist critique. As such, one is hard pressed to review it with any sort of standard academic detachment. I was deeply drawn into the book at each of its many levels. I have to confess, my “heart burned within me” as I worked my way though the structured stages of her presentation. Jane has devoted a good bit of her career to the exposure of the multiple strategies of suppression of the memory of the two most important Marys in Jesus’ life—that of his mother and his companion Mary Magdalene. If you have read her courageous and important work, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives, published twenty years ago, I recommend a revisiting. It is now out (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006) in an expanded paperback version that includes her personal reflections on the hostile reactions that work elicited from the small and the great in our field. As an illustration of this personal side of this book on Mary Magdalene I offer here two extended quotations, one on Woolf, the other about Schaberg herself:

“Woolf’s influence has been felt in many disciplines; but to my knowledge not yet much in Religious studies. In my own case, she functions something like the mentor I never had. ‘Consulting’ her, reading her avidly in the course of writing this book, is part of the feminist methodology I use here, infusing and refreshing the conventional methodologies of my discipline, oxygenating the masculinist atmosphere. Woolf puts me in the mood to think and write; she somehow keeps me going. She teaches the writer’s life of concentration and commitment, and makes it happier by repudiating the sacrifice of friendship, love, and simple social pleasures, for the needs of others. Scorning ‘adultery of the brain’ or ‘intellectual harlotry’ (writing what one does not want to write, for the sake of money rather than in the interests of culture and intellectual liberation), she urges connected thinking, and political savvy” (p. 32).

In this second quotation Jane reflects on the hostile reaction she received from the publication of her book, The Illegitimacy of Jesus and how her teaching in Detroit, and her surviving cancer have all had their part in the way her writing on Mary Magdalene unfolded:

“Yes I was ‘victimized’ a bit, and yes it set me back. But backlash also had the unintended effect of making me more personally and intensely interested in the process of censorship and silencing. It gave me reserves of anger and energy to draw on. I know in my bones how serious the opposition is to women’s insight, women’s revisioning. I know a little more about strategies of suppression . . . Reading from Detroit in this time is reading embedded in experiences of the deep and tangled structures of racism, sexism, poverty, classism, colonialism, and of the despair and courage displayed by those whom these structures have enmeshed. Despite my early efforts to get a ‘better’ job, I am lucky to teach in a non-elite, richly diverse classroom Virginia Woolf would approve of, where some—many—of our students are the poor (or the nearly poor, the recently poor) with whom I try to be a co-learner in the effort to demystify strategies of oppression like ‘whiteness,’ and to recognize powers of resistance . . . I belong to a group of survivors ‘privileged’ to experience my mortality: first as a young child with a heart valve problem, then in my forties with Stage 3 breast cancer. But all I remember about the latter experience is the terror of death, the striving to beat death, the will to live, the love of life. Having had to face the fear brought me no closer to an articulated faith, but only sometimes to the grasping of mantra-like phrases (‘now and at the hour of our death’ and ‘Shema’ Yisrael’) and to the presence and support of good friends. Nothing more. Nothing less” (pp. 14-16).

The essential historical problem the book addresses is captured in the subtitle: “Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament.” How does one move from, or otherwise account for or connect, the sparse accounts of Mary Magdalene in our canonical gospels with the plethora of later Mary Magdalene traditions and materials? Let’s begin with the beginning.

“And they all forsook him and fled.” This shortest line in the gospel of Mark (14:50) is as poignant as it is tragic. In five Greek words Mark dismisses the male apostles, the Twelve. Judas hands Jesus over to his enemies with a kiss, while the remaining “Eleven,” as Matthew later labels them; flee in fear, forsaking all, not to loose but to save their lives. In Mark Jesus is left utterly alone, abandoned and forsaken by all, and at the end, even by God—but not quite.

And there were also women, looking from afar; among whom were both Maria the Magdalene, and Maria, the mother of Jacob the less and Joses, and Salome; who when he was in Galilee, followed him, and served (dihko/noun) him; and many other women that came up with him to Jerusalem (Mk 15:40-41)

And so Mary Magdalene enters our history, in this earliest and most significant reference to her and the many other women who stood by the cross. These two Marys witness the burial of Jesus, according to Mark, and they, along with Salome, show up at the tomb very early Sunday morning to anoint the body with spices, only to find it missing. They are commissioned by a mysterious young man wearing a white robe to tell the male disciples and Peter that Jesus has been raised up and will meet them in Galilee. “And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mk 16:8). Thus Mark closes his account, with the exit of these three women as mysterious as their entrance. In Mark these women fail to fulfill their mission of proclamation, presumably that will be left to Peter and the other male disciples, who will see him in Galilee.

Nonetheless, this Markan tradition that Mary Magdalene and her Galilean women companions stood at the cross and were first witnesses that Jesus was raised is incorporated in modified ways in both Matthew and Luke. This sparse Markan tradition regarding Mary Magdalene is as limited as it is mysterious. Was it another Mary, or perhaps the same, who had anointed the head of Jesus with an expensive oil of nard two days earlier at Bethany—her deed celebrated as her perpetual memorial but her name lost or left out? Luke has an earlier scene of an unnamed woman, “a sinner,” anointing Jesus in Galilee (Luke 7:36-50). Immediately following that story he inserts Mark’s reference to the women followers of Jesus in Galilee, but he adds these women had been healed of evil spirits and disabilities, naming Mary Magdalene as one of them “from whom seven demons had gone out.” Such juxtaposition can hardly be without intention. Luke also includes these women; though he seems reluctant to even name them, as first witnesses to Jesus being raised. He makes it clear, however, that their testimony, delivered to the male Eleven, is judged as the idle talk of hysterical females. Even Celsus, a hundred and fifty years later, knows that a deluded “hysterical female,” aka Mary Magdalene, first delivered the story of Jesus’ resurrection. Mark insists on muting the first witness status of Mary Magdalene and her female companions, but that he includes it at all is quite telling. Luke lays the foundation for portraying Mary Magdalene as a sinner, hysterical and sexually threatening, the madwoman in Christianity’s attic.

Finally, I turn to the Ending. Schaberg’s final chapter, “Mary Magdalene as Successor to Jesus” is in my judgment one of the most impressive pieces of textual reading I have ever encountered. What she attempts to show is that the singular account in John 20:1-18, where Mary Magdalene encounters and speaks to Jesus in the garden tomb, preserves fragments of a tradition of Mary Magdalene as successor to Jesus—and thus, “first founder” of Christianity, in the sense of authoritative witness to resurrection faith. Whether this early tradition can be connected or not to later Christian texts that present Mary as a leading intellectual and spiritual guide, a beloved companion of Jesus and transmitter of his teachings, is a separate issue. What Schaberg shows, successfully in my view, is that the narrative structure of John 20 reflects an imaginative reuse of 2 Kings 2:1-18 where Elijah the prophet ascends to heaven, leaving his disciple Elisha as his designated witness and successor. This intimate personal appearance to Mary Magdalene, which focuses on ascent to heaven rather than resurrection of the dead per se, is parallel to, but sharply distinguished from, the more generic Synoptic accounts of angelic proclamations to the group of women.

Upon this foundation Schaberg offers a preliminary sketch of what she rather boldly labels “Magdalene Christianity,” both suppressed and lost in the Synoptic tradition, and particularly in Acts, much like the history of James and the Jerusalem community from 30-50 CE, Crossan’s “dark ages.” For some , such as Crossan, Schaberg’s reconstruction of John 20, as well as that of Schüssler Fiorenza and others, is “too optimistic” in terms of reconstructing what happened after Jesus’ death. His own reconstruction erases not only the empty tomb, but the memory of the women as first witnesses, and Mary Magdalene as his possible successor. Crossan once told Schaberg, as she recounts in her book, “Jane, if I could give you the empty tomb I would” (p. 252). Her response captures a characteristic of her wonderfully self-reflective style throughout her work: “I was stunned into silence by Crossan’s wish to ‘give’ me the narrative of the tomb; by the fact that it even occurred to him that he might. I wondered if I had to ‘take’ it. No, I knew I did.” And by that she meant she was obligated to offer her own reconstruction, attempting to be as clear about method as Crossan demands, and in particular to examine the assumptions behind his own reconstruction.

Schaberg’s academic contribution is much more than this ending. She applies her considerable analytical skills in taking the reader through the thick mass of archaeological and textual evidence related to Mary Magdalene. Her extended “profile” of Mary Magdalene in chapter four, drawn from a careful combing through all the apocryphal Magdalene materials (Nag Hammadi texts as well as the Gospel of Mary, Pistis Sophia, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Peter, and fragmented sources), is one of the most sustained and thorough treatments available.

My main suggestion is that Schaberg, in considering the notion of Mary Magdalene as “companion” of Jesus, might find less dichotomy between the “intimate/erotic” and the “sexual/romantic.” Despite the desire to make Mary Magdalene the “wife” of Jesus in popular circles, as witnessed by the extraordinarily positive reception of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code among the masses, I do not think the possibility should be precluded or dismissed. Indeed, I think there are some compelling arguments that Jesus may well have been married, and if such were the case, then Mary Magdalene does indeed seem to be our best candidate. I think the recent discussion of the Talpiot “Jesus Family tomb” has opened a new set of issues in this regard, at least for me.

Schaberg has caused me to seriously rethink and supplement my own reconstruction of Jesus and his earliest followers, but most particularly, the place of the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene’s role as visionary successor of Jesus. I have begun to explore how this might relate to my reconstruction of the prominence of James and the brothers of Jesus in the early movement, and what role such a mystical/visionary understanding of Jesus earlier and separate from that of Paul and his communities, might have played in the whole.

Dr. April DeConick of Rice University has posted more details on her popular Blog, Forbidden Gospels, regarding the upcoming international conference in Jerusalem dealing with the Talpiot Tomb in historical and archaeological context. She is obviously impressed with both the agenda and the participants. This conference, organized by Prof. James Charlesworth, of Princeton Theological Seminary, is precisely what various leading scholars called for months ago–among them Michael Stone of Hebrew University and Eric Meyers of Duke University, namely a sane, sober, academic consideration of all aspects of the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb in its wider context. This is in contrast to the near hysteria and dearth of accurate factual information on the subject that flooded the print, TV, and Internet media back in the Spring. I post here Dr. DeConick’s comments:

In case you haven’t heard yet, Professor Charlesworth, for the Third Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, is holding a three-day conference in Jerusalem called “Evaluating the Talpiot Tomb in Context.” Dates are Jan 13-16, 2008. The provisional agenda that I was sent looks outstanding in terms of coverage and folks involved. Actually amazing might be closer to the mark.

Topics to be covered in special sessions:
Ancient Beliefs about the Afterlife and Burial Customs
Tombs, Ossuaries, and Burial Practices: The Archaeological Evidence
Burial Beliefs and Practices: The Textual Evidence
Onomastics and Prosopography in Second Temple Judaism
The Talpiot Ossuaries and their Epigraphy
Paleo-DNA and its Archaeological Applications
Patina Testing and its Archaeological Applications
The Talpiot Tomb in March 1980
Mary Magdalene in Early Christian Tradition
Relating Tomb Archaeology with Historical Figures: Possibilities and Problem Discoveries
The Palestinian Jesus Movement: Correlating Textual and Archaeological Evidence for Jewish Christianity
The Burial of Jesus, the Empty Tomb, and the Jesus Family
Statistics and the Talpiot Tomb

This is exactly the kind of academic forum that I suggested (on this blog) was needed when all the media hoopla engaged the Talpiot Tomb. I am looking forward to participating in the Jerusalem conference, and want to thank Professor Charlesworth for organizing it.

The program is still being finalized but most of the leading scholars involved in these topics have been invited and many have already confirmed their participation. I echo Dr. DeConick’s thanks to Prof. Charlesworth for putting together such a timely conference. When full details become available I will post them here.

I wanted to mention three items of news related to the ongoing academic discussion and evaluation of the Talpiot “Jesus” family tomb.

The latest issue of Near Eastern Archaeology (Vol 69:3-4 September-December 2006) has a special Forum feature on the Tomb with the following essays:

Eric M Meyers, “The Jesus tomb controversy: an overview”
Shimon Gibson, “Is the Talpiot Tomb Really the family tomb of Jesus?”
Sandra Scham, “Trial by statistics”
Christopher A. Rollston, “Inscribed Ossuaries: Personal names, statistics, and laboratory tests”
Stephen J. Pfann, “Mary Magdalene has left the room: A suggested new reading of ossuary CJO 701″
James D. Tabor, “Testing a hypothesis”

This set of essays, fully illustrated with photos and drawings, is quite comprehensive, offering a nice summary of the various issues and approaches represented by this mix of scholars. For information on subscriptions or purchasing this particular issue see the ASOR Web site. Copies of this latest issue will be available at the upcoming annual meeting of ASOR in San Diego, November 14-17th, as well as at the ASOR booth at the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion which meet in San Diego that weekend.

The Talpiot tomb is one featured topic at the 9th annual Batcheler Biblical Archaeology Conference at the University of Nebraska, November 8-10th, hosted by Rami Arav and Richard Freund. Prof. Dan Bahat and I will be discussing the pros and cons of identifying the Tomb with Jesus of Nazareth and I will deliver a plenary lecture on the “Jesus Family Tomb.” Sessions are open to the public. For details contact Rami Arav.

Prof. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary has just announced that the third Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, to be held January 13-16, 2008 in Jerusalem, will consider the topic “Jewish Views of the After Life and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism Evaluating the Talpiot Tomb in Context.” The preliminary program lists an impressive international roster of scholars in the various fields related to the subject, including biblical and historical studies, archeology, DNA, statistics, prosopography and onomastics, and epigraphy. Charlesworth’s previous Jerusalem Symposia on “Jesus and Hillel” and “Jesus and Archaeology,” both resulted in the publication of impressive volumes collecting together the various papers. Apparently he has such a volume planned for this conference as well. It is good to learn that the Talpiot tomb will be evaluated in such an academic setting, moving things beyond sensational press reports and Internet discussion.