The Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

Well late last night the Associated Press sent out a new version of the Qumran “Latrine” theory that Joe Zias and I released in November based on our forthcoming article on the subject in Revue de Qumran (an academic periodical devoted to Qumran/DSS matters). One the AP gets hold of something and puts it out on the wire it moves fast so I woke up this morning to hundreds of “Latrine” stories worldwide, from USAToday to the WashingtonPost, and yes, the phone is ringing off the hook (as we said in the days when our phones had hooks).

Why is this important? Mainly because it offers a strong link, despite the views of Golb, Magen and others, that the site of Qumran was indeed the spiritual center and HQ of the pre-Christian sectarian apocalyptic/messianic group that wrote the Scrolls, and further, that this group is one known to us in classical sources (Josephus, Pliny, Philo) by the name “Essene.” The connections between John the Baptist, Jesus, and James, to this movement is explored extensively in my book, and has been well set forth by James Charlesworth, John J. Collins, Peter Flint, James Vanderkam, and yes, even the oft ignored Robert Eisenman, particularly in terms of central core ideas and vocabulary and parallel traditions.

Anyway, here is the AP story as it appeared in the Washington Post and thanks to Zias for taking the reporter around the site and responding to questions:

Ancient Latrine Fuels Debate at Qumran
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, January 2, 2007; 11:23 PM

QUMRAN, West Bank — Researchers say their discovery of a 2,000-year-old toilet at one of the world’s most important archaeological sites sheds new light on whether the ancient Essene community was home to the authors of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In a new study, three researchers say they have discovered the outdoor latrine used by the ancient residents of Qumran, on the barren banks of the Dead Sea. They say the find proves the people living here two millennia ago were Essenes, an ascetic Jewish sect that left Jerusalem to seek proximity to God in the desert.

Qumran and its environs have already yielded many treasures: the remains of a settlement with an aqueduct and ritual baths, ancient sandals and pottery, and the Dead Sea Scrolls _ perhaps the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century.

The scrolls, which include fragments of the books of the Old Testament and treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war, have shed important light on Judaism and the origins of Christianity.

Thanks to an Israeli anthropologist, an American textual scholar and a French paleo-parasitologist, researchers can now add another find: human excrement.

The discovery is more significant than it may seem. The nature of the settlement at Qumran is the subject of a lively academic debate.

The traditional view, supported by a majority of scholars since the site was first excavated in the 1950s, is that the settlement was inhabited by Essene monks who observed strict rules of ritual purity and celibacy and who wrote many of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The second school says the people living at Qumran were farmers, potters or soldiers, and had nothing to do with the Essenes. The scrolls, according to this view, were written in Jerusalem and stashed in caves at Qumran by Jewish refugees fleeing the Roman conquest of the city in the first century.

The researchers behind the latrine finding, which is being published in the scholarly journal “Revue de Qumran,” say it supports the traditional view linking the residents of Qumran with the Essenes.

A description of Essene practice by the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius in the first century notes that Essene rules required them to distance themselves from inhabited areas to defecate and “dig a trench a foot deep” which was to then be covered with soil.

Joe Zias, a Jerusalem-based anthropologist, and James Tabor, a Dead Sea Scrolls expert from the University of North Carolina, decided to look for the Qumran latrine. If it was far from the settlement ruins and if the excrement was buried, it would offer evidence the people living at the site were Essenes.

Zias and Tabor identified an area behind a rock outcropping, took soil samples and sent them to Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue, a French scientist specializing in ancient parasites. The samples tested positive for pinworms and two other intestinal parasites found only in human feces. Samples from locations nearer the settlement tested negative.

The excrement traces were found underground _ meaning the feces had been buried, as required by Essene law _ a nine-minute walk uphill from the settlement.

“A lot of people were concerned with what went into the body, but the Essenes were perhaps the only group in antiquity concerned with what came out,” Zias said. “No one else would have gone to the trouble of walking this far.”

Still, there is no way to date the fecal parasites, which could have been left by Bedouin who are known to have inhabited the area. To counter this, the paper quotes a Bedouin scholar as saying the nomadic tribespeople do not bury their feces.

Another problem is that archaeologists have already identified a toilet at Qumran _ inside the settlement. But Zias believes it was for emergencies: In some cases, divine commandments notwithstanding, nine minutes outside the camp was too far to go.

Norman Golb, a history professor at the University of Chicago and a critic of the link between Qumran and the Essenes, called the new paper “an outrageous claim.”

“There’s no plausible connection between what they found and the conclusion that the Essenes lived at Qumran,” Golb said. “Anyone living at the site would have done the same.”

Golb maintains that Qumran’s residents had nothing to do with the Essenes or the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those who claim a connection do so because “they’re committed in their writings to it,” Golb said.

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Stephen Pfann, of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said questions about the parasites’ age have to be cleared up, but the find is potentially significant.

Qumran, he says, could have been inhabited at different times by different groups: first by Jews of the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century, then by a monastic group of Essenes who left after an earthquake and were replaced by a lay group of Essene date farmers, then again by Essene ascetics, before being finally taken over by Jewish rebels fighting the Roman legions and abandoned when Judea fell.

“Qumran isn’t one thing, it’s many things,” Pfann said. “This makes it more exciting, but also more complicated to understand.”

© 2007 The Associated Press

In November, 2005 the news spread quickly around the world:

Oldest “church” ever found has been discovered near the biblical site of Armageddon!

The site was uncovered on the grounds of a modern Israeli prison near Megiddo. It gives us a precious glimpse into early Christian worship and devotion before the time of Constantine (325 AD), for it is only after Constantine that structures we can definitely identify as “Churches” began to spread throughout the Mediterranean world.

Yet this site can not properly be called a church. So what is it? Scholars are just beginning to try and access the impact of this precious discovery. What we appear to have here is what the authors have called a “Christian prayer hall.” It is a room, complete with mosaics containing art work and inscriptions, dedicated to “the god Jesus Christ,” with obvious ritual functions and symbols, but quite different from later Christian churches of the Byzantine period. The structure appears to date to the early 3rd century, making it by far the most important early Christian archaeological site of its kind ever discovered in the Holy Land. In their book, excavation director Yotam Tepper, and epigraphic expert Leah Di Segni, throughly explore the textual evidence for “sacred meals” from sources such as the Didache, the fascinating early Christian document discovered in 1873 that I discuss in The Jesus Dynasty. Our evidence for pre-Constantinian “Christianity” is almost wholly textual. It is rare to find any kind of material evidence that might shed light on the practices of early followers of Jesus, particularly in the Holy Land. To have found at Megiddo this evidence for liturgical activities that seem to link to rites and practices we read about in ancient texts is something of which we normally can only dream. But there is more. One of the three inscriptions mentions four women, singled out as having special importance to the community. This is clear evidence, echoing what we find in our earliest gospel sources, of the vital importance of woman as leaders and even patrons in the earliest days of the movement.

Now that the dust has cleared a bit, literally, the story of this most extraordinary archaeological find has just become available in an attractive, lavishly illustrated, full-color booklet published by the Israel Antiquities Authority titled, A Christian Prayer Hall of the 3rd Century. The authors, have provided us with a fascinating but authoritative, account of the excavation and its significance narrated in an accessible style for the non-specialist. I recently heard both Tepper and Segni lecture on the discovery at the annual meeting in D.C. of the American Schools of Oriential Research, the preeminent gathering of archaeologists working in areas related to the Bible and the Ancient Near East. Their presentations were riveting and thought provoking and the substance of those lectures, plus much more, is provided in this richly illustrated volume.

This little book is a model for publications in the field of archaeology. It is beautifully done, reasonably priced, and as readable as it is informative. It is a must for anyone interested in the earliest archaeological records of the spread of Christianity in the Holy Land. The IAA has printed a limited but reasonable number of copies. It can be conveniently ordered in the U.S.A. from from the Web bookstore: Centuryone.com. I urge anyone interested in the material evidence related to earliest Christianity to get a copy of this book while they are still available.

For months I have been wanting to write about the newest research at Qumran, the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that Israel anthropologist Joe Zias and I have completed but I have kept my silence. We wanted first to have our work accepted for publication in an academic peer reviewed journal, then to release it properly to the media. Our media person here at UNC Charlotte issued an “embargoed” story two weeks ago and as of 5pm today the story is out at last!

It has to do with the latrines or toilets at Qumran, whether they can be located, and what surprising results the scientific tests of the soil samples indicated regarding the health of the community. As some of you know, major stories in the NYTimes, Biblical Archaeology Review, and the Chicago Tribune have recently drawn worldwide attention setting forth the thesis that the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls did not in fact live at the site of Qumran, and further that the “Essenes” of classical sources had nothing to do with the Scrolls.

Ironically, the new “toilet” evidence addresses both questions in that we have some unmistakable evidence that whoever lived at Qumran followed with precise and exactitude the prescriptions in the Dead Sea Scrolls for latrine location and functions, and further, that the description of these matters that Josephus gives to the Essenes also matches precisely our material evidence at the site.

This story has already been picked up by MSNBC on their Web page. The prestigious magazine Nature has also released a very scientifically oriented story on their Web page about the results of the tests Zias did on soil samples more specifically. The prestigious magazine Science is also planning a story. We are expecting more stories tomorrow, November 14th from several major papers, including the New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, and The Los Angeles Times, as well as a sample of European and UK media sources. Zias spoke tonight on the topic to a packed audience on our campus and I will give a similar, but more textually based lecture on the same topic at the forthcoming Biblical Archaeology Bible Fest this coming Sunday in Washington, D. C.

A basic summary of our research is contained in the following embargoed Press Release from UNC Charlotte and an academic article on the subject will appear in the forthcoming issue of the scholarly journal, Revue de Qumran.

Remote latrine reconfirms the presence of Essene sect at Qumran

Ancient parasites show that cleanliness may have been next to sickliness

The Essenes, a strict ancient Jewish sect devoted to religious purity and linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls, are one of the most interesting and mysterious religious elements in Judaea around the time of Jesus. Recent articles and news stories have questioned long-established scholarship about the Essenes and their relationship to the scrolls, arguing in particular that the inhabitants of the ancient settlement of Qumran, located in the Dead Sea area where the scrolls were found, had no relationship to the religious sect.

Now, new scientific findings from the settlement connect Qumran to details in the scrolls, and give direct evidence of Essene culture at the site. The discovery may also provide a window into dynamic relationships between the sect’s rigorous religious practices and the community’s health.

A forthcoming report presenting new bioarchaeological evidence from Qumran reconfirms the “Essene hypothesis” by showing the presence of unusual and extreme toiletry and hygiene practices in the ancient community. The evidence points to the Qumran inhabitants’ detailed obedience to unique, rigorously demanding precepts that are specified in Dead Sea Scrolls texts and also documented in a Roman-era descriptions of the Essenes.

In an article forthcoming in the next issue (winter 2006/2007) of Revue de Qumran, an international research team reports the results of an investigation of a suspected remote latrine site. Located by following clues in the ancient sources that specify the remote placement of latrines, the team positively identified the site as a latrine area through analysis of sub-surface soil samples.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte biblical scholar James Tabor suggested the investigation at a site outside the ruins of Qumran, noting instructions in two of the Dead Sea Scrolls (the “War Scroll” and the “Temple Scroll”) specifically requiring latrines to be located at a significant distance “north-west of the city,” and also to be “not visible from the city.” Tabor had also noted that the first century Jewish historian Josephus described very similar exotic toilet practices among the religiously strict sect known as the Essenes.

Analysis of the site by Israeli paleopathologist Joe Zias and soil analysis by Stephainie Harter-Lailheugue, a French parasitologist from the Centre National de la Recerche Scientifique, confirmed the area as an ancient latrine site through the presence of desiccated eggs from three distinct human-specific intestinal parasite species. The findings have further implications regarding community health in the ancient settlement.

Visiting Qumran, Tabor noted an area approximately 500 meters to the northwest of the settlement which seemed likely because it was sheltered from view by a bluff. Tabor also noted that the soil in the area appeared to have a significantly different coloration from other soils in the Qumran environs, a fact which was subsequently confirmed by Zias using high-resolution aerial photographs.

“I started thinking that in the scrolls they have these very explicit descriptions of where the latrines have to be,” Tabor explained. “It has to do with religious ritual purity — the latrines have to be located in a place that the ancient texts designate as ‘outside the camp’. That’s a phrase used in the Torah, where Moses tells the ancient Israelites ‘build your latrines outside the camp.’ When you go to the toilet, take a paddle or a shovel with you and use the toilet and then cover it up,” he said, explaining that the ancient practice appears to have been revived at Qumran.

“This group is very strict and they observe this practice rigorously — in one text it says go 1000 cubits, and in another text, 2000 cubits — and they specifically state ‘northwest’ in the scrolls. Josephus, in talking about the Essenes, mentions it as a point of admiration or piety – he says that these people are so holy, that on the Sabbath day they won’t even use the toilet, because on the Sabbath one can’t go outside the settlement,” he said.

“It turns out, if you go northwest from Qumran you get to this bluff – a large natural plateau separated from further cliffs – and if you go around it, it hides you from the camp. One of the things Josephus says is that they also believe that their latrines should shield them from view of the camp, so I thought ‘this is getting really good, if I can just find some evidence for toilet practices.’”

Tabor suggested investigating the area to Zias, who took four random soil samples at the site (Area A below) as well as six other samples for control — 4 from surrounding desert areas, one from an area that was known to be Qumran’s stable (to test for animal parasites), and one from an area on the opposite side of the city, essentially covering other outside-the-settlement areas that could have been used as latrines.

On the basis of earlier research that has shown that intestinal parasites can be preserved in arid, sub-surface conditions, Zias sent the samples to Harter-Lailheugue at CNRS for analysis. Three of the four samples from the suspected latrine area yielded four species of preserved worm eggs and embryophores that were all identified as human intestinal parasites – Ascaris sp. (human roundworm), Taenia sp. (a human tapeworm), Trichuris sp. (a human whipworm) and a human pinworm, Enterobius vermicularis, that had not previously been reported in the ancient Near East. The soil sample from the stable contained the eggs of Dricrocoelium sp., a common parasites of ungulates. The control samples from the surrounding desert areas contained no parasites, human or animal.

“Frankly, I was surprised,” said Zias. “A parasitologist I talked to told me that my chances of finding something were just about nil. Finding evidence of parasites would be easy in a latrine, but in the middle of the desert… But small things like parasite eggs in feces can hang around for thousands of years. At the Dead Sea, we have hair and hair combs with desiccated lice in them because of the dryness.”

“The evidence shows conclusively that the area was a toilet,” Zias noted. “The samples contained eggs from intestinal worms that are specific to humans. These things had to come from human feces. The presence of eggs in three out of four 100-gram samples indicates heavy and continual use of the specific site suggested by Tabor.”

Since the other sites did not yield human parasites, the team concluded that the latrine site was most likely the area specified in the Scroll passages. Because of the remoteness of the Qumran environs, they concluded that the latrine could only be associated with Qumran, the only settlement in the area.

“One possible concern was that the latrine area could have been used by Bedouins, who are known to have been near Qumran,” said Zias. “However, according to Bedouin anthropologist Professor Aref Abu-Rabia, Bedouins are generally not known to bury their human waste, and fecal matter left on the surface quickly dries up and is broken down by sun and wind. This stuff was certainly buried, as the ancient documents say it should be.”

Zias noted that the heavy daily digging by the Essenes left its mark on the desert in a way that is still noticeable more than 2000 years later.

“I went there and the entire area looked like somebody had plowed it, the earth was so nice and soft, while the rest of the desert was very hard,” he said. “In fact, I broke my pick collecting control samples from the other areas.”

Zias and Tabor also note that the settlement’s unusual latrine practices may be clues in solving some of Qumran’s other archaeological puzzles — in particular, questions raised by the 1,100 graves found at the site, which are almost exclusively male.

“The graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group that I have ever studied in over 30 years and this is readily apparent,” said Zias, who has done previous work on the Qumran burials. “For example, 2,000 years ago in Jericho, 14 kilometers to the north, the chances of an adult male dying after 40 were 49 percent. But when you go to Qumran, the figure for people surviving to 40 falls to six percent — the chances of making to 40 differ by a factor of eight!

“And yet we are told that these men arrived very healthy – they had physical examinations coming in. The people at Qumran thought that you could look at body types and tell what kind of person you were. Josephus tells us that the Essenes were selective — you had to be 20 years old, and you had to be healthy,” Zias noted.

The puzzle comes together for Zias when he combines the community’s latrine practices with its near-obsessive use of pools for ritual cleansing and bathing.

“Burying your feces in the outdoors makes a lot of sense until you live in Qumran,” Zias said. “What happened was that 20 to 40 people went out there every day over a period of 100 years. By burying their fecal matter, they actually preserved the microorganisms and parasites. In the sunlight, the bacteria and parasites get zapped within a fairly short amount of time, but buried, the parasites can live in the soil for up to a year. Then people pick up things by walking through fecally contaminated soil — it’s like a toxic waste dump, and if you have any cuts on your feet…”

Well-defined community bathing practices, combined with a lack of running water, complicated the problem of daily exposure to contaminated soil. A cleansing pool was located at the settlement entrance on the return route from the latrine area and is likely to have been a fertile breeding ground for pathogens picked up from the human waste-enriched soil.

“Here is where things really get bad,” Zias explained. “After they went to the latrines they were required to enter one of the immersion cisterns (Miqvot) before they came back into the settlement. Hygienically, that sounds like a good idea, if you have fresh running water, but there is no running water at Qumran, only runoff which was collected during the three months of winter rains. They enter the cisterns where everyone else has been, with all the bacteria they’ve brought in with them, floating around. The bacterium, which usually doesn’t last long in the air and sunlight, stays active for a longer period in the sediments and is continually re-suspended in the water by people disturbing the pool.”

There were other immersion pools at Qumran as well, and Zias and Tabor point out that the Essenes’ rigorous ritual purification practices seem likely to have insured that they too were contaminated by cross-infection.

“People who have cleansed themselves in the outside pool also have to go into the Miqwah twice a day. The water there may looked clean, but hygienically, it was rarely changed and must have been very dirty with the potentially fatal pathogens shared by everyone who was entering it for ritual purification. And Miqwah cleansing is a total immersion, which means that it gets in your ears, in your eyes and in your mouth. It is not hard to imagine how sick everyone must have been,” Zias said.

Ironically, both the rigorous latrine and purification practices, combined with the lack of running water appear to be the most likely causes for the extreme differences in early mortality between Qumran and the contemporary Jericho.

“The people in Jericho were not religious extremists who went into the Miqwah twice a day and they also had clean, running water from the natural springs surrounding the desert oasis. The men in Qumran lived and bathed religiously in contaminated water that had been standing for up to nine months at a time,” Zias said.

According to Tabor, however, poor health might have had its own place in the cultural thinking of Qumran.

“As a group the men of Qumran were very unhealthy, but I think this would have been likely to have actually fed the Essenes’ religious enthusiasm,” said Tabor. “They would have seen their infirmities as punishment from God for their lack of purity and then have tried even harder to purify themselves further.”

###

As readers of The Jesus Dynasty know Shimon Gibson and I have been excavating the cave outside of Ein Kerem at ancient Suba since March, 2000. We have loosely referred to it as the “John the Baptist Cave” both because of its location in an area where John grew up and is revered even today, but even more so due to the early Byzantine art work on the walls depicting scenes from John’s life. Shimon Gibson’s popular book, The Cave of John the Baptist (Random House, 2004) surveys the basic evidence. I highly recommend this book not only for its information about our excavation up through 2004, but for the wealth of information it contains on John the Baptist. I have also included in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, photos, drawings, and a summary interpretation of the Suba cave, as it might relate to the time of Jesus and John the Baptist.

The past two years we have begun to concentrate more on the origins of the installation, which we can now date to the Iron Age (time of Isaiah and even earlier). We had previously discovered a series of filtering pools outside the main entrance. We also discovered a corridor running along the top of the Cave, lined with seven standing Pillars which most scholars who have examined it think have some kind of ritual function. Our current working hypothesis is that the installation originally had some kind of “industrial” function, possibly involving the production of clay for ceremic vessels. Here is an arial shot of the site showing things as they looked in March of this year. You can clearly see the excavated corridor running north into the face of the ridge, the pools outside, and the main entrance:

When we finished our work in March we were hoping to totally wrap things up and complete our offical excavation report which we are preparing for publication with the Israel Exploration Society for 2007. We felt we had done about all that could and should be done at the site at this time. As is often the case in archaeology, what one most expects is often upset by a sudden new turn of events. As Gibson and his team were cleaning up things at the north end of the corridor, right where an Iron Age jug had been found in situ at the end of our Spring season, they discovered a new opening–what appeared to be a new cave! It runs above our main chamber, cut into bedrock. We quickly realized we had more work ahead of us. We simply could not leave things as they were. Here is how things appeared on the day of the discovery. You can barely see the top of the opening right at the feet of these diggers:

Over the past two months Gibson and local volunteers have been diligently clearing out this new cave. It is an amazing site, running up into the bedrock and with two small corridor like alcoves running left and right at the end of the passage. On my trip to Israel this past week I was able to see the results of their labor. The entire chamber has now been cleared. We will soon have a firm date from sediment tests but right now we are thinking the stucture as a whole could possible date back to the early Iron Age–a hundred years or even more before Isaiah’s time. The cultic aspects of the site have taken on a new fascination for us. Here is a shot taken just three days ago looking out from the chamber, completely cleared down to the bedrock:

The main chamber is just below this floor, so we have basically two levels–the main cave with entrance, steps, alcove, and a water reservoir gong back 70 feet cut out of solid bedrock, and then this corridor and new chamber up above it. Our speculation at this point is that the new upper corridor was designed to be an aquifying “spring” drawing water from the bedrock and feeding it down into the chamber below. We are going to have the deposits on the sides of the chamber dated but just judging from the design Dr. Gibson is thinking this whole facility was constructed much earlier than we had once thought, perhaps a hundred years or more before the time of Isaiah. What we know from our archaeological evidence is that the facility went out of use fairly early on, within a couple of hundred years, perhaps because of any earthquake. The outside pools began to fill up and the channels were purposely blocked. This left the lower chamber inside, with the steps, as a huge water reservoir. The ceramic evidence inside, along with the floors and stata buildup suggest that sometime in the early Roman period the cave inside began to be used for ritual purposes, as we have described previously, and as Gibson and I cover in our books. Stay turned for more, but this is a preliminary report on what is new and breaking at the Suba cave. Right now we are cautiously assuming we can consider our excavation “finished,” but then again, one never knows. We are in the process of preparing our excavation report volume for publication and sifting through all the evidence. We have yet to issue our “final report” in terms of an overall interpretation of this fascinating site–in use for over 1000 years.

Tomorrow I return to Israel for a short visit. I will be filming with the British film company CTVC with whom I have worked before on several documentary specials. They are the ones who produced “The Mystery of the Shroud” that aired on The Learning Channel in August, 2003. It was not about the Shroud of Turin, but the only authenticated 1st century Jewish burial shroud ever found–the one tomb I discuss in the Introduction to my book. Producer and program director Ray Bruce was behind that one, and he was also part of the CTVC team that first broke the story about the Talpiot tomb with its ossuaries in 1996, through a BBC documentary, “The Body in Question,” which was shown on Easter Sunday, heraled by a front page story in the London Sunday Times “The Tomb that Dare Not Speak Its Name.”

This time CTVC program director Ray Bruce and his team, including award winning producer/director David Batty, and noted UK presenter, Prof. Robert Beckford, are doing a special for Channel Four in the UK on, you guessed it, “The Jesus Family.” Beckford is recently known for his role in the Channel 4 controversial program “Who Wrote the Bible?” This latest production is to air Christmas Eve in the UK on Channel 4 and I suspect it will also run in the USA but I don’t think the details have been worked out on that as of yet. The filming will be done on location and will explore various aspects of the Jesus family idea. I will be talking about John the Baptist and James, the brother of Jesus.

While in Jerusalem I will also be consulting with Dr. Shimon Gibson about several of our projects, including the full academic publication of our “Tomb of the Shroud” which we expect to come out in 2007, mostly likely through the Israel Exploration Society.

I am hoping I will be able to comment on two other bits of news while on that trip, after consulting further with Dr. Gibson. First, a new “hidden chamber,” dating to the Iron Age, recently discovered at the Suba cave. And second, details of our plans to excavate in the Old City of Jerusalem, just off the slopes of Mt. Zion, east of the Zion Gate, in the Spring of 2007. This will be a dig open to volunteers and I anticipate that some the readers of this Blog will be interested in participating. We will be uncovering the Herodian city as it was left after the 70 AD destruction by the Romans. It promises to be pretty spectacular. I will publish preliminary information here, but also a full report in the January/February issue of Biblical Archaeology Review that catalogues each year excavations all around the Holy Land related to biblical sites and topics.

I also hope to see some of you in Austin next week. I return from Israel next Wednesday and turn around and fly to Austin for the Biblical Archaeology Seminar early Thursday morning. You can scroll back to August 27th to get further details.

I hope to write several posts from Jerusalem, so stay tuned…

The Debate Continues…Jacobovici has offered a lengthy and passionate reply on the BAS Web site to Prof. Ron Hendel’s sarcastic and caustic review of his film which Hendel titled: “Viewer Beware”

Last week I mentioned the TV documentary “The Exodus Decoded” produced by Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici with James Cameron. The subject matter is far afield from that of this Blog, which deals with Jesus and early Christianity, as expressed in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, but since Simcha and I are working together on future productions related to my book and its subject matter I thought it worthwhile to mention his Exodus production.

There is a most interesting and fascinating debate about “The Exodus Decoded” between Jacobovici and Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review archived at the BAS Web site. Shanks is not convinced of the merits of the case Jacobovici sought to make on any number of points and the two of them bounce ideas back and forth in some detail.

I wanted to call attention to this particular discussion of the film in that it touches on the broader matter of “faith and history” and how one might or might not go about “verifying” the Biblical text. In principle these issues are front and center in The Jesus Dynasty as well, so I thought readers of this Blog, interested in my book, might find the discussion quite informative, in substance as well as principle.

Excavated Entrance to the Suba Cave

As readers know one of the archaeological sites I discuss in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, is the Suba cave, located outside Ein Kerem, the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist, a few kilometers west of Jerusalem. My colleague, Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson and I have been digging there since early 2000. In fact, this past March we just finished our seventh season of excavations at the site. What we have uncovered is quite amazing with many questions still remaining to be answered.
Recently a reader of my book pointed out to the entire world (the World Wide Web that is, where anyone can post anything at anytime): “The Suba cave that Tabor thought was used by John the Baptist is now agreed by other scholars to date to the iron age. It was later utilized briefly in the 4th century AD. John the Baptist had nothing to do with it.”

Since Gibson and I are the ones who discovered as well as reported upon and published the evidence related to the Iron Age construction of this site, this reader’s assertion that “other scholars” have set us straight on this point borders between the amusing and the irritating.

Whether John the Baptist or Jesus ever used this site for ritual water purification ceremonies we can not be sure. What we can say are three things in that regard. 1) In the Byzantine period Christians came to this cave to remember and venerate John the Baptist, leaving behind some of the oldest Christian art associated with John ever found in the Holy Land. This should not surprise us since it is located just outside Ein Kerem, the earliest place associated with his birth. 2) In the first century A.D. scores of people were coming to this cave and carrying out some kind of ceremonies associated with water purification. 3) The Suba cave itself, as well as the entire complex (there is much we have now found outside the cave) has a much earlier history, constructed in the Iron Age for a yet undetermined purpose.

Gibson and I published a summary of our evidence in this regard in an article titled “John the Baptist’s Cave: The Cave in Favor,” in the May/June, 2005 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Dr. Gibson has also ably summarized all our relevant archaeological findings in his book, The Cave of John the Bapist (New York: Doubleday, 2004), which is now out in paperback.

Gibson and I are as interested in the Iron Age history of Suba as what went on in the 1st century. However, for those who are skeptical regarding our hypothesis that massive activity involving ritual water purification rites went on for several decades in the early 1st century, possibly involving movements such as those inaugurated by John the Baptist and Jesus, are obligated to come up with alternative explanations for what we found at those levels of the excavation. For one to say “I am not convinced that John the Baptist was associated with this cave” misses the point. What we are obligated to do is to try and come up with the most plausible evidence we can to explain the massive and unqiue material evidence. Gibson and I welcome alternative hypotheses.

In The Jesus Dynasty I suggest Suba as a possible location for the massive baptismal activities of Jesus and his disciples reported in John 3:22-24; 4:1-4. This “hill country” of Judea is a rugged area with a few springs but no significant bodies of water. The Suba cave is massive and surely was a well known and prominent feature of that area. It is removed from any significant population center. I take the “Jesus the Baptizer” tradition as historically probably since to have Jesus baptised at all by John was a problem enough for early Christians. To have him then carrying out extensive baptisms himself, in the south, in the Judean countryside, with John working in tandem in the north–is not something the author of the gospel of John would likely have concocted. That is why the “editor” of John adds the caveat: But Jesus himself did not baptize, only his disciples! When we see that sort of qualifying gloss we can be almost certain that the underlying tradition is valid–thus the protest.

P.S. There are some breaking new discoveries at Suba about which I will write as soon as Gibson and I determine how we want to initially report them.

In the Introduction to my book, The Jesus Dynasty, I offer a comprehensive discussion of the potential importance and significance of the ossuary or “bone box” inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” that came to public attention in late 2002. If authentic it offers us the first archaeological evidence ever discovered that directly links to Jesus and his family. This bone box most likely contained the skeletal remains of James the brother of Jesus.

In the summer of 2003 the Israeli Antiquities Authority declared that the inscription was a partial forgery, and that the phrase “brother of Jesus” had been added by the owner, Oded Golan, to enhance the potential value of the artifact. Without the phrase “brother of Jesus” the inscription “James son of Joseph” alone does not offer enough evidence to connect it to Jesus’ family.

Unfortunately there is an all too widespread public impression, echoed in some of the reviews and reactions to my book, that the “James ossuary” has been declared a forgery. I have encountered this repeatedly in recently touring the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Just this week someone posted a review of my book on the Amazon Web site that is typical of the ignorance surrounding this subject:

“Tabor’s “The Jesus Dynasty” starts off with some dubious archeology and that’s the high point of the book…Oded Golan, finder of the ossuary, is in jail. When the police invaded Golan’s home recently they found a large number of forgeries in various stages of completion. Even the carved pomegranate Golan sold to the Jerusalem museum is now deemed a fake. So much for the ossuary being real.”

Such is hardly the case. Mr. Golan is not in jail and his trial still in process. No one questions whether the ossuary is “real” or even the inscription, but whether the last two words are authentic or not. But more important recent scientific tests have seriously called into question the case of the Israeli government on the authenticity of the James ossuary inscription.

As is often the case, people “hear” or “read” something in a press report, then repeat it as fact without either checking for accuracy or keeping up with the outcome of a given story. Ignorance is bliss, as the old saying goes, but it seems to also give rise to a level of dogmatic ignorance that never ceases to amaze me.

The best overall source for the up-to-date facts regarding the matter of the authenticity of the “James ossuary” are the materials on the Web site of the Biblical Archaeology Society. All of the relevant sources are archived there, both those questioning authenticity as well as those supporting it. A quite balanced and comprehensive summary of the current state of the debate was recently published by Hershel Shanks in a Jerusalem Post editorial. Even though Shanks is cautiously supportive of the potential authenticity of the James ossuary inscription he has admirably included on this BAS Web site all points of view, pro and con.

It is regretable that self-declared experts feel free to pontificate about the “James ossuary” having been shown to be a forgery, apparently without having bothered to inform themselves on even the most basic elements of the discussion.

I have given permission for The Introduction to my book to be available free on the Web (but without the photos and illustrations). It offers a comprehensive overview of the information regarding the James ossuary that was available when I went to press last year. Since that time other facts have come to light, including the latest new scientific tests, with much more to come.

So, the next time you hear someone say, “Hey, don’t you know that the ‘James ossuary’ was shown to be a forgery and its owner Oded Golan a crook” you can set them straight and challenge them to educate themselves a bit before they speak and further perpetuate inaccurate information.

One of the best ways to keep up with all the discussion related to the so-called James ossuary, which I treat extensively in the Introduction to my book, The Jesus Dynasty is to check regularly the Biblical Archaeology Society Web site where one can find archived materials as well as coverage of breaking news.

Yesterday a comprehensive update article on the whole matter was published in the Toronto Star by feature writer Stuart Laidlaw.

Posted by permission…The Toronto Star
Bone box on trial
James ossuary is at the centre of a Jerusalem court battle
where the seamy side of the trade in ancient artifacts is exposed
Jul. 1, 2006. 01:00 AM
STUART LAIDLAW
FAITH AND ETHICS REPORTER

In the city where Jesus preached and was killed 2,000 years ago, a controversy is building that could shake the foundations of the religion founded in his name. The James ossuary, the purported burial box of Jesus’ brother declared a fake by Israeli authorities three years ago, is at the centre of a Jerusalem court battle over alleged forging of antiquities.

The ossuary, with the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” made a big splash when it was unveiled to the world nearly four years ago at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. The trial, on hold for more than a month due to scheduling delays that plague the Israeli court system, resumes Tuesday with the testimony of Avner Ayalon of the Geological Survey of Israel whose examinations of the ossuary helped lead to charges be laid.

With barely one-quarter of the prosecution’s 124 witnesses called since the trial began last fall, and the defence team expected to call at least as many witnesses, the case is expect to take years to make its way through the court system.
“Trials in Israel are really something special,” deadpans defence attorney Lior Bringer in a telephone interview from his office in Tel Aviv. His client is Oded Golan, an antiquities collector charged with forging part of the inscription on the ossuary and faking two other artifacts. Experts called as witnesses have contradicted each others’ testimony — with one going so far as to say she will leave the profession if the limestone ossuary is a fake and another saying the entire controversy may be the result of an over-zealous cleaning.

One German expert even alleges that the Israeli Antiquities Authority “recently contaminated” the most contentious part of the ossuary, its inscription, in such a way that earlier tests cannot be reproduced.
Through it all, the on-again off-again trial of Golan and two of his colleagues has exposed the seamy underbelly of trade in ancient artifacts — a world of deception, forgery and secret deals that Golan says is becoming even more secretive thanks to efforts to crack down on dealers.

That puts the archaeological heritage of the country at risk, he says, as artifacts are taken out of the country with little or no documentation of their origins rather than risk trouble with authorities. “The less important (antiquities) are sold to tourists and the most important are taken out of Israel,” Golan says in a telephone interview from his home in Tel Aviv, where he is under house arrest.

The exact origins of the ossuary are not known. Golan, one of the largest collectors in Israel, says he purchased it from an Arab antiquities dealer in the mid-1970s for a bout $200. He was still in university at the time, studying industrial engineering. The ossuary spent the next 15 years in his parent’s apartment, including a stint on the balcony. At one point, it may have even been used as a planter, though no one can remember for sure. Golan then took it to his apartment for several years, before putting it in storage along with about 3,000 other items in his collection. Only the most beautiful of his antiquities are kept in his apartment, he says, and the plain box now known as the James Ossuary did not qualify.
It was not until a French scholar, André Lemaire, stumbled across it in Golan’s storage shed in 2002 that Golan began to realize how significant it might be. Within months it was on display at the ROM, and within a year the subject of a police investigation.

Its route from tomb to trial is mapped by rumour, hearsay and speculation. Golan says the dealer he bought it from told him it came from Silwan, a village south of the Old City of Jerusalem. Others suggest it came from a tomb uncovered in the 1980s, or from one raided by thieves in June 2000. The uncertainties of its origin, however, have only added to the intrigue and scientific debate over its authenticity. At the centre of the debate is a report by the Israeli Antiquities Authority, a government body that stores and authenticates ancient objects for scholarly research, that declared in June 2003 that the ossuary was authentic, but that part of the inscription was forged.

Both the ossuary and the inscription, “James, son of Joseph,” date to the time of Jesus, the authority declared. But the second part of the inscription, “brother of Jesus,” was a modern forgery. A crude attempt to apply artificial patina under high temperatures was made to hide the forgery, the authority said. “The patina was not created under natural conditions,” report contributor Yuval Goren says in a telephone interview from Israel, where he is an archaeology professor at Tel Aviv University. The report relies on what is known as an isotopic test, meant to compare the composition of patina on the ossuary to others of a similar age.

If the patina of two ossuaries are the same, they are about the same age. If the patina inside an inscription matches the patina outside, the inscription was made when the ossuary was new. Patina is a darkening that come with age.
The results, Goran says, show that the ossuary itself dates from the time of Jesus, but that parts of the inscription do not.
“The patina on the rest of the ossuary was created in normal cave conditions,” he says, adding that the patina inside the inscriptions did not match that on the face of the ossuary. That means the inscription was made later, with a fake patina added, possibly by dissolving in water patina taken from the rest of the ossuary and then spreading the resulting paste into the inscription and baking it on. “I don’t know about the motive and I don’t know who did it,” he says. “The bottom line is that the patina in the inscription is not natural.”

His conclusions have come under severe attack, however, with the criticisms mounting since the Golan trial began last fall.
In one court exchange with Bringer, noted Israeli palaeographer Ada Yardeni said she would resign as an expert on ancient inscriptions if the ossuary is fake. “Yes. I said that I would leave the profession,” Yardeni said on cross-examination, confirming a story in Biblical Archaeology Review, the first publication to report news of the ossuary four years ago,
Making the criticisms all the more visceral is the questioning in archaeological circles about the use of isotopic tests themselves.

In a report that the review’s editor Hershel Shanks called a “bombshell” in the Jerusalem Post last month, Wolfgang Krumbien articulated the growing concerns of many experts about the antiquities authority tests. An internationally recognized expert on patina from the University of Oldenburg in Germany, Krumbien declared that the tests done by the authority were “irrelevant” and should never have been conducted. Isotopic tests, he wrote in a report prepared for Golan’s defence team, can only be used when on objects stored in ideal cave conditions and at steady temperatures.
But there is plenty of evidence that the James ossuary was not kept in such conditions. In fact, Krumbien found, it is likely that wherever the ossuary spent much of the past 2,000 years, there was either a flood or a cave-in of the wall of the tomb, which damaged the ossuary. “The cave in which the James ossuary was placed, either collapsed centuries earlier, or alluvial deposits penetrated the chamber together with water and buried the ossuary, either completely or partially,” he wrote.
As well, he wrote, he was able to find microscopic bits of patina within the inscription that matched the patina on the outside of the box, indicating that the lettering dated to the origins of the ossuary itself. He attributed Goren’s failure to find the patina to aggressive cleanings that removed almost all the patina from the lettering. Goren declined to comment on the Krumbien report, saying he will do so when called to testify before the trial. He was not sure when that might be.
Ed Keall, a retired curator at the ROM responsible for the ossuary when it was in Toronto, says he saw the patina in the inscription by using powerful microscopes. He also saw evidence that the ossuary — pockmarked along its bottom edge — had been buried or immersed in water for extended periods. “It’s all eaten away, like a piece of cheese,” says Keall, who remains optimistic that both the ossuary and the inscription date to Jesus’ time. “I have yet to be given any unequivocal evidence that it’s false,” he says. He is quick to add, however, that the question of the ossuary’s authenticity may never be settled, particularly since aggressive cleanings by antiquities dealers looking to boost the value by enhancing the inscription and by the antiquities authority have made it more difficult to find patina in the inscription.

Once the trial is over, however, Keall would like to see an open forum organized to discuss the ossuary and to debate the various opinions about its authenticity. Shanks of the Biblical Archaeology Review is already working on pulling together such a forum, though he sees no need to wait until after the trial. The problem, he says, is that Goren has said he won’t discuss the matter until after he has testified, and Shanks says the forum can’t be held without him — meaning the debate will just have to wait. “It would be like staging Hamlet without Hamlet,” Shanks says from his Washington office. “It can’t be done.”