One of the most fascinating names inscribed on the ossuaries in the Talpiot “Jesus Family” tomb is the unusual and rare form of the Greek inscription for a “Mary,” as first published by the learned L. Y. Rahmani in 1994:

MARIAMNENOU (HE) MARA: of Mariamene, who is (also called) Mara

[IAA 80.500, CJO 701: L. Y. Rahmani (A Catalog of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel, Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities and Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994)]

Rahmani understood the name as a neuter genitive of the name MARIAMNENON, which is in turn a diminutive form of MARIAMENE.

Although this reading has been only lately questioned and disputed by various scholars, (Pfann, Price, Puech, et al.), who have proposed it be read as MARIAME KAI MARA or MARIAM HE KAI MARA (Mariame AND Mara OR Mariam also known as Mara), whether referring to two women or one by two names, what I find really interesting about Rahmani’s reading is the presence of the Greek letter “Nu” or “N,” in other words: MariameNe.

I for one have not been so quick to dispute the skilled and sharp eye of Rahmani, supported now after further reexamination by Prof. Leah Di Segni and incorporated into Amos Kloner’s official report on the tomb. Mary in English takes various forms in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Coptic: Miriam, Mariam, Mariame, Mariamme, and Maria, but the name spelled with an “N,” as Rahmani read this ossuary, is virtually unknown in antiquity (see E. Stanley Jones, ed., Which Mary: The Marys of Early Christian Tradition, Atlanta: SBL, 2002).

I say “virtually” unknown, for a reason, so bear with me here. Now here is where things get really interesting.

If you do a search for Mariamne, spelled with an “N,” on Wikipedia, you will read that it is a name frequently used in the Herodian Royal house for Mariame or Mariamme. If you search further on Google, again for “Mariamne” spelled with an “N,” even excluding references to the inscription in the Talpiot tomb, you will find dozens of “hits.” If you read many English or French editions of Josephus’s works you will find dozens of references to Mariamne, spelled with the “N.” And finally, even Voltaire wrote a play called “Herode et Mariamne,” yes, you guessed it, spelled with an “N.” And yet the fact remains, so far as I have been able to discover, all these sources, from Wikipeida, to Josephus in translation, and even Voltaire, have no basis in any Greek texts from Antiquity. My guess is that the root of this widespread misunderstanding comes from translations in English and French of Josephus that incorrectly put “Mariamene” for the name “Mariame.” But the original Greek has no “Nu” or “N.”

I had a colleague run a search on Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the University of California at Irvine data base that has collected and digitized all of Greek literature from Homer to the fall of Byzantium in 1453. Currently this is a collection contains 3800 authors, 12,000 texts, and about 99 million words–and it is updated quarterly. UNC Charlotte and most major universities are subscribers to the TLG Library and search engine. Non-subscribers can access a trial version, see the TLG Web site for information. We asked for all examples in extant Greek literature of the name Mariam spelled with an “Nu,” or “N.”

Our results were rather amazing. As it turns out this very unusual form of the name Mariam in Greek, namely any form containing the “N,” popped up in only two works–the Acts of Philip and Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, and in both works the reference was to the woman named Mary Magdalene in our Gospels. There are multiple references in the Acts of Philip to Mary Magdalene and her apostolic mission and travels. However, the reference in Hippolytus is of particular interest in that he mentions a Jewish-Christian group of “Naassenes” who taught that James the brother of Jesus handed on the secret tradition of Jesus to “Mariamene.” Hippolytus flourished in the late 2nd century CE and he was linked to Irenaeus, who in turn was linked to Papias. If there are other instances of any form of the name “Mariam” spelled with an “N” we missed them and would be glad to have them pointed out. But assuming this data result is correct, what if one asks the question differently? If we begin with the Talpiot tomb inscription, read as Mariamene, spelled with an “N,” that surely Rahmani and Di Segni would vehemently deny has anything to do with Mary Magadalene, and just ask two related questions:

• Where in all of Greek literature do we know this unusual form of the name?

• Is/are there any identifiable woman/women in all of antiquity who was/were known by this form of the name Mary?

So far as I can discover the answer is clear. Our only references, outside the Talpiot tomb, are to a single woman, Mary Magdalene. It seems to me that this result has great force. Rather than one having to “jump” to the 2nd century or the 4th century, to desperately find a parallel to “Mariamene” in the Jesus Tomb, is not quite the opposite the case? When one searches the linguistic evidence for this form of the name no one other than Mary Magdalene turns up. I think this fact should give us a bit of pause. Whether the Talpiot tomb can ultimately be identified with that of Jesus and his family or not, what an odd turn of events that the odd and completely rare occurrence of “Mariamne” spelled with an “N” would turn up in a 1st century tomb containing these other names–including Jesus son of Joseph. That Rahmani and Di Segni read the name in that way, and still do, without the least inclination to connect it to Jesus of Nazareth, seems to be all the more telling in terms of an honest linguistic reading. However, given this result, perhaps all the criticism that Jacobovici received for “jumping” from a 1st century tomb with the name Mariamene to a 4th century “gnostic” text like the Acts of Philip, should be reconsidered.

Some of you might remember the brief publicity just over a year ago regarding the publication of a text called “The Gabriel Vision” (Hazon Gabrile) by Israeli scholars Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elitzur (Cathedra 123 [2007]: 155-166 in Hebrew). Prof. Israel Knohl of Hebrew University wrote a fairly extensive article published in the Israeli newspaper HaAretz, that summarized his own reading and interpretation of the text. He has now published a more scholarly exposition in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and has arranged for a link to the PDF file of his article to be downloaded from the Shalom Hartman Institute Web site where he is a research fellow.

The text contains two partially preserved columns of Hebrew written on stone. It has been dated to the late 1st century BCE, or the early 1st century CE, on linguistic and paleographic grounds respectively by Profs. Bar Asher and Yardeni respectively. Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University has apparently confirmed the stone’s authenticity

Knohl finds confirmation in this new text of his position that the notion of a “slain messiah,” and more specifically, the Messiah son of Joseph figure alluded to in later Talmudic writings, dates back to the 1st century BCE, and accordingly, predates the views of a suffering messiah associated with Jesus. Knohl had argued a version of this thesis before the Gabriel text came to light, in his book, The Messiah Before Jesus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; now out in paperback), that just happened to coincide with the publication of Michael Wise, The First Messiah (HarperOne, 1999). Neither knew the other was working on his book and yet they both argued, on different grounds, from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other texts, that the notion of a “suffering messiah” was not an early Christian invention but was “around” at least as early as the 1st century BCE in certain Jewish sectarian circles. Somewhat earlier, I remember Michael Fishbane’s provocative paper at the Princeton Conference on Apocalypticism and the Millennium in 1996, “Midrash and Messianism: SomeTheologies of Suffering and Salvation,” as well as my own contribution, dealing with some of the same elements, “Patterns of the End: Textual Weaving from Qumran to Waco.” Both are now published in the volume edited by Peter Schaefer and Mark Cohen, Toward the Millennium (Leiden: Brill, 1998): pp. 70-71; 409-430, respectively. A version of my paper can be downloaded at my UNC Charlotte Web site.

Knohl’s interpretation of the new Gabriel text rests on a skillful textual reconstruction of a text that is poorly preserved and difficult to read in places. He then seeks to position his readings in the context of late 2nd Temple Jewish messianism(s) with all their complexities. Now that he has put his views forward in a scholarly article it will be most interesting to follow the discussion of other experts in the field.

I heard Prof. Knohl read a paper at the Princeton Theological Seminar on Christian Origins in Jerusalem in January, dealing with views of Jewish Burial and Afterlife in the Late 2nd Temple period. Prof. Knohl’s paper focused on one aspect of the Gabriel text, and his reading thereof, namely the nature of the concept of “resurrection of the dead” in various Jewish apocalyptic circles of the period. According to Knohl’s reading, lines 80 of the Gabriel text should be read:

By three days–live, I Gabriel command you, prince of princes, the dung of rocky crevices.”

The three day statement is surely fascinating in the light of Jewish views of the afterlife, but even more interesting is that this particular corpse, that Knohl identifies as that of the crowned Jewish rebel leader Simon, killed in Transjordan in the 4 BCE revolt following the death of Herod the Great, is spoken of as “dung” in the rocky crevices where he was slain. Knohl’s main point at the conference was that the Jewish idea of “making live the dead” did not necessarily involve the revivification of a copse, as in this case one turned to “dung,” but rather a revived life in what would be potentially a “new body.”

I have recounted previously on this Blog the remarkable story of my discovery of the late great Poet James Whitehead and his historical and literary interest in the sources that refer to Jesus of Nazareth as “Yeshua ben Pantera.” Whitehead, who died in 2003, co-founded the prestigious Creative Writing Program at the University of Arkansas with colleague and poet William Harrison. He was a wonderful poet and novelist who left many unpublished works behind due to his untimely death. Among those were his poems on “The Panther” as he called them.

Whitehead had first encountered the “Yeshua ben Pantera” references in the writings of historian Morton Smith. Whitehead ended up traveling to Germany in search of the tombstone of the 1st century Roman soldier Julius Abdes Pantera, who was from Sidon in Palestine. He ended up writing a remarkable set of poems that imagined the relationship between Jesus’ mother Mary and Pantera, who became the father of her firstborn son Jesus. As it turns out, Whitehead was not the first poet to be captured by the Panthera story. Thomas Hardy had published a long and passionately composed poem titled “Panthera.”

Just last month a lovely chapbook version of Whitehead’s Pantera poems was released by Moon City Press, edited by Michael Burns, a student of Whitehead and Professor of English at Missouri State University. It is titled simply The Panther. Prof. Burns asked me to write the Introduction, offering an historical context for Whitehead’s fascination with the Panthera story. He also shared with me a few of Whitehead’s poems. I found them profoundly moving and I was more than pleased to have a small part in the production of this wonderful project. This was one of my favorites, in which Whitehead imagined the angel Gabriel appearing to Panthera in Germany where he was stationed, just as Jesus was achieving some fame in Galilee:

GABRIEL VISITED ABDES PANTERA,
DISPLAYED HIMSELF AND SPOKE TO HIM,
BUT THERE WAS NO RESPONSE
OF ANY KIND. FIGURE WHY.

Wearing my specialty wings, the ruddy ones,
Cinquecento, I stooped through April rain
To just above the Rhine at BinKerbruck,
Shrugged, continued motioning gracefully

Toward the bowyer-archer on his shingle,
Who was done with practicing his shots
From shore to shore.
He didn’t seem to see me,
But maybe he would listen

To the four languages I knew he knew—
Sidonian Aramaic, Levantine Greek,
And of course his soldier Latin,
And finally the local whitebread German tongue.

I was so fluttering because he’s beautiful
In the sturdy way of soldier artisans—
He’s a master of composite bows,
The seven woods, sinew, bone and glue.

O I was positive he’d love the news
And the flashing bearer of it: I’m GABRIEL!
HAIL ABDES PANTERA! YOU THE MAN!
YOUR SON IN GALILEE IS MAGICAL.

I offer it here as a small taste of the wonderful talents and imagination of James Whitehead. I urge my readers to order a copy of the complete collection, it is truly an elegantly crafted work, outside and within, and reasonably priced at that. You can obtain copies for $15.00 (Missouri residents add 39¢ sales tax) plus $4.00 shipping. Checks should be made out to Missouri State University. Please order copies from the following address: Moon City Press, Department of English, Missouri State University, Springfield MO 65897. If you have had the slightest fascination with the Pantera story I know you will not be disappointed.

Of all the controversial elements in my book The Jesus Dynasty, my treatment of the Pantera traditions is perhaps the most disturbing to some Christians. I really regret that this is the case. As I have argued elsewhere, if Joseph was not Jesus’ father, and the “illegitimacy” tradition has some historical legitimacy, we can not dismiss the possibility that Jesus’ father was named Pantera. This would not have to imply something sinister or immoral, see my post “Joining the Slanders.” In fact, if Pantera were close to the age of Mary when she became pregnant he would not have even been in the Roman army at the time. We will never know the details, but as I have asked–why imagine the worse? In fact, there is some emerging evidence that Pantera was a family name and he was actually related to Mary.

I have posted quite a few other entries on this Blog related to many aspects of the Pantera discussion. Here are some of the main posts for easy reference:

Pantera as a Real Name

The Pantera Traditions

More on the German Tombstone

An Unnamed Father of Jesus

In the meantime I hope my readers will order the Whitehead book of poetry and let their imaginations have a role as we wonder about the “earthly” father of Jesus.

I want to highly, even extravagantly, recommend a book by Barrie Wilson, York University professor in Toronto, titled How Jesus Became Christian (New York: St. Martins Press, 2008; Random House in Canada). I will go so far as to say that I judge this single book to be one of the most important contributions to an understanding of Christian Origins published in many decades. Prof. Wilson’s book represents an absolute “sea change” in our understanding of how one moves from the historical Jesus (Jewish Prophet, Charismatic Healer, Teacher, Messiah figure), to the new religion called Christianity, created by the apostle Paul and given a definitive stamp of approval by what became the “standard story” of Christian Origins preserved in Luke-Acts.

Books that explore the “From Jesus to Paul” theme are quite common in the scholarly field: From Jesus to Paul (Klausner); The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (Maccoby); From Jesus to Christ (Paula Fredrikson); From Jesus to Christianity (Michael White); Paul: Founder of Christianity (Lüdemann); and Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (Segal), to name a few more recent titles. However, in my view, Wilson has advanced the discussion miles beyond any previous work with his daring hypothesis regarding the stark and uncompromising dichotomy between what he calls the “Jesus Movement” and the “Christ Movement,” created and espoused single-handedly by the apostle Paul. Wilson goes a long way to putting an end to the wishful thinking that there is somehow some kind of continuity between Paul and his “gospel” and the message of James, Peter, and John, and those early Jewish followers of Jesus commonly known as “the Jerusalem Church.”

Wilson’s writing style is clear, his documentation is impeccable, and he makes his case with a strength and a level of persuasiveness that in my judgment leaves counter proposals in the wayside. The book is already a best-seller in Canada and it is beginning to climb the charts on Amazon in the U.S. Prof. Wilson also has a Web site, with many features and additional materials including an interview and Blog. The Toronto Globe and Mail had this to say in a recent review:

Jesus the Jew and the Christian Coverup:
HOW JESUS BECAME CHRISTIAN
By Barrie A. Wilson
Reviewed by Allan Levine
March 22, 2008

Forget about Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and fictional conspiratorial machinations about whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children, Barrie Wilson has produced a significant and sensational work of scholarship. And it is truly religious dynamite.

Acknowledging Jesus’s Jewish background is nothing new, but arguing, as Wilson does, that Christianity is largely the result of a deliberate and deceptive manipulation is more intriguing and contentious. “Jesus never converted to another religion,” Wilson claims. “Nor did he start one. If he were to return, he’d probably be amazed – perhaps bewildered or possibly even angry – at what has been created in his name.” Adding for good measure that, “of all the Jewish males who ever lived, Jesus was by far the most influential.”

A professor of humanities and religious studies at York University in Toronto, Wilson has drawn on decades of his own research into the history of early Christianity and, like the superb teacher he must be, invites readers to accompany him on a wondrous journey back in time to understand Jesus’s life, the ordeal of being a Jew in a world ruled by Romans, the construction of the New Testament, and the powerful forces that have transformed Western civilization.

Admittedly this is no easy task, but he pulls it off brilliantly. He is an academic who can write for a non-specialist audience and does so exceptionally well – guiding, explaining Scripture, and even creatively integrating imaginary newspaper columns and blogs into his prose. All of which brings Jesus and his epoch alive.

Using an array of biblical sources, both Jewish and Christian, he builds his case step by step, searching for clues in the Gospels, offering concise summaries, and posing difficult questions – many of which, he concedes, cannot be answered. We do not know, for example, the precise details of Jesus’s day-to-day life – his emotional state or the real reasons he opposed Roman rule – and probably never will. But it is possible to offer reasonable and intelligent speculations based on solid research. That is what Wilson does very well, and by the last page he has convincingly made his case.

The short version of Wilson’s thesis, which he calls the “Jesus Cover-Up Thesis,” is this: The spiritual figure that billions of Christians worship worldwide as the Son of God was, in fact, a Jew, a rabbi, and a revered teacher of the early first century who obeyed and championed the Torah. Jesus (or more accurately in Hebrew, Yehoshua or Yeshu) prayed in synagogue and urged his followers to adhere strictly to Jewish law. Only in this way, he promised, would the Kingdom of God become a reality. Wilson probes the Jewish roots of the Lord’s Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper (which is more commonly recognized as a Passover seder, although there were likely many more people in attendance than the 12 disciples portrayed in Leonardo da Vinci’s celebrated painting). In Wilson’s view, Jesus wanted to improve Jewish life, not abolish it. He did not proclaim himself to be a “Christ” figure or a “Son of God.” That came later.

Living as second-class citizens in their own country and dominated by a foreign power in Rome, Jews needed hope and Jesus provided it. His growing number of followers began to think of him as a “potential Messiah.” Led by Jesus’s brother, James – whose writings until recently have been largely ignored – these Jews established the “Jesus Movement.” After Jesus was killed by the Romans, in about 30 AD, they waited for him to return to create the promised Kingdom of God.

With James’s death in the early 60s, the Jesus Movement suffered a leadership crisis, and in Wilson’s words, was eventually “upstaged” and “hijacked” by the Christ Movement launched by Paul of Tarsus, a Hellenized Jew living in the Jewish Diaspora. The two movements should have remained separate and parallel religious sects, but subsequent events changed this. Paul did not know Jesus, yet nevertheless linked him to the Christ Movement. In the process, he tore Jesus from his Jewish roots.

Wilson shows that the most significant development in this synthesis occurred 60 years after both James and Paul died and was accomplished by the unknown author of the Book of Acts (part of the Gospel of Luke). This new “take” on Jesus was so credible that, as Wilson puts it, “we tend to think of Paul’s Movement as just another form of early Christianity. It wasn’t. It was a brand-new religion entirely.” It was thus what Wilson terms “Paulinity” – “a Hellenized religion about a Gentile Christ [and] a cosmic redeemer” – rather than the Jewish-inspired religion of Jesus, which was embraced by the Gentiles of the Roman world in the period from the second to the fourth centuries.

The New Testament is not a neutral document. The Gospels and other writings are arranged in a particular order to give weight to Paul’s interpretation of the link between the Jesus and the Christ Movements. Moreover, it was not sufficient for authors of several Gospels to distance Christianity from Judaism, they had to vilify it: Jews became equated with Satan. According to Wilson, this made the cover-up complete. The devastating result was religious anti-Semitism and the perpetuation of the accusation that the Jews killed Christ.

In fact, it was only one Jewish sect, the Sadducees, who turned against Jesus. They wanted to maintain the status quo with the Romans and feared that Jesus’s preaching about a Kingdom of God and altering the world was dangerous. Once the Romans accepted Christianity, it was not possible to blame them for Jesus’s death, so the Jews were identified in the Gospels and later Church decrees as the true evil murderers of the Son of God. Centuries of persecution followed.

One major reason, Wilson notes, for the hostile reaction to The Da Vinci Code was “its suggestion that Jesus was human.” And that criticism was levelled at a novel. Wilson’s firm belief that Christianity must refocus on the human and Jewish Jesus and accept the truth of the cover-up is sure to generate an even greater controversy.

The Toronto Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading newspaper, ran a story yesterday titled “University of Toronto Scientist Puts Odds on Lost Tomb” that headlines Prof. Andrey Feuerverger’s statistical conclusions on the Talpiot Jesus tomb. Award winning writer Michael Posner, author of the piece, also offers a kind of “state of the question” update on a number of current issues related to the academic discussion of the tomb and its significance. It can be accessed on-line .

U of T scientist puts odds on lost tomb

Chance that ancient Jerusalem burial tomb did not contain bones of Jesus and family
calculated at 1 in 1,600

MICHAEL POSNER
FROM TUESDAY’S GLOBE AND MAIL
APRIL 22, 2008 AT 4:17 AM EDT

A University of Toronto mathematician is lending new support to the controversial claim that
an ancient burial tomb near Jerusalem once held the bones of Jesus of Nazareth and his
family.

In a peer-reviewed article published last month in the prestigious Annals of Applied
Statistics, Andrey Feuerverger places the odds of the 2,000-year-old tomb not belonging to
the Jesus family at 1 in 1,600.

This figure is even more bullish than the 1-in-600 figure that Dr. Feuerverger calculated a
year ago, when interviewed for The Lost Tomb of Jesus, a $4-million documentary produced
by James Cameron and directed by Toronto’s Simcha Jacobovici.

The tomb, now sealed beneath a housing development in Talpiot, east of Jerusalem, was
accidentally discovered in 1980. Its contents included 10 limestone ossuaries, six of which
were inscribed with evocative names, including “Jesus, son of Joseph, Maria, Jose [perhaps a
brother of Jesus], Mariamne, Matya and Judah, son of Jesus.”

It was Judaic custom at the time to place a deceased’s bones, a year after death, into bone
boxes stored in family tombs. Archeologists stumbling across these crypts typically turned
the remaining bone fragments over to Orthodox officials for reburial; inexplicably, there is
no report of what happened to the bones found at this site.

The film, adducing DNA evidence that suggested Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have
been married and had a son named Judah, triggered a tsunami of debate. Many orthodox
Christians viewed its claims as challenging the very foundations of the faith, which maintains
that Jesus never married, never fathered a child and, three days after he died, was resurrected
physically and ascended to heaven.

In the past year, six books and three other documentary films have been released, all
attempting to refute the thesis of The Lost Tomb of Jesus. Websites and bloggers, academic
and lay, have led a vituperative chorus denouncing the film as sensationalism and its findings
as shoddy science.

The filmmakers say orthodox Christianity has even flexed its power to suppress their
message. There’s no hard evidence of such tactics, but Britain’s Channel 4, which paid
£200,000 for British rights to the film, has yet to broadcast it. Discovery U.S., which aired
the documentary a year ago to enormous ratings, has since declined to rebroadcast it.
For years, archeologists attempted to deflect speculation about the tomb, saying that the
names inscribed on the Talpiot ossuaries were common to the period. But Dr. Feuerverger’s
analysis rejects that argument, noting that while the individual names might have been
common, this specific cluster of names so resonant of the New Testament is not. Indeed, in
January, at a symposium with about 50 academics in Jerusalem, no one made the case for
commonality.

Instead, opponents have challenged Dr. Feuerverger’s historical assumptions, notably that the
unusual Greek name Mariamne found on one of the ossuaries is an appropriate designation
for Mary Magdalene.

But even discounting the Mariamne assumptions, Dr. Feuerverger’s 51-page paper says that
the tomb has a 0.48 chance of belonging to Jesus. That means, says James Tabor, head of
religious studies at the University of North Carolina, “that if we had two tombs to examine,
one of them would be the Jesus tomb. With Feuerverger’s paper in print, a more responsible
discussion of the Talpiot tomb name frequencies and statistics can take place.”

One surprise development at the Jerusalem conference was the appearance of Ruth Gat,
widow of the Israeli archeologist who first excavated the Talpiot tomb. Presented with a
lifetime achievement award on his behalf, Mrs. Gat told the assembled academics that her
husband had died with the conviction that the tomb belonged to Jesus Christ and his family.
A Holocaust survivor, Mr. Gat had confided his views to his wife. He never went public, she
explained, because he feared doing so would produce a global backlash of anti-Semitism.

“The fact is,” maintains Mr. Jacobovici, the filmmaker, “that the conference shifted the
fulcrum of academic opinion from ‘couldn’t possibly be the Jesus tomb’ to ‘very well might
be.’ ”

Although most scholars remain deeply skeptical – 15 of those at the Jerusalem parley signed
an online manifesto rejecting the Jesus tomb arguments – cracks have formed in the academic
front.

“I don’t believe the idea can be simply dumped into the garbage heap of pseudo-science and
history,” says Israeli geologist Aryeh Shimron. “And no manifestos are going to change my
mind that easily. It deserves further, very detailed scientific study.”

University of Detroit professor Jane Schaberg, one of the world’s ranking experts on Mary
Magdalene, says it is “quite possible, even probable,” that the inscription on that ossuary
describes Magdalene and adds that the tomb “may very well belong to Jesus and his
followers, as opposed to Jesus and his family. My gut tells me it’s a movement site.”

What are the implications for orthodox Christians? “It means they should start studying what
was meant by resurrection in the first century,” Dr. Schaberg says. “Resurrection is not a
simple thing, where the body just stands up and walks out.”

“We might be dealing with the most tangible evidence ever of the existence of Jesus and his
family,” adds University of Toronto social historian Claude Cohen-Matlofsky. Even the
conference’s lead organizer, Princeton University’s James Charlesworth, a New Testament
scholar, said afterward, “I have reservations, but I can’t dismiss the possibility that this tomb
was related to the Jesus clan.”

Symposium delegates ultimately voted unanimously to reopen the investigation into the
Talpiot tomb as well as a second still unexamined crypt only nine metres away. So far, no
action has been taken.

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There is a new article on the Web by historian Mark Elliot and mathematician Kevin Kilty. It is titled “Inside the Numbers on the Talpiot Tomb,” and is available for downloading on the Web. I quote here their modest opening paragraph:

Inside the Numbers of the Talpiot Tomb
By Mark Elliott and Kevin Kilty
March 20, 2008

The Talpiot Tomb has generated controversy, scholarly debate, and analysis over the past year. It created an academic stir that shows no sign of ceasing just yet. Lately, some scholars have made comments that we view as doubtful and others have made assertions in some instances not supported
by the data at hand.

If you have not read their former contribution, that has become absolutely essential to understanding the quite technical discussion of the frequency statistics of the names, it is also available for downloading on the Web and can be read with great profit.

It is unfortunate that the work of qualified scholars such as Feuerverger, Elliot, and Kilty has not yet been factored into the mainstream discussion of “The Tomb” by the scholars. This was widely evident at the Princeton Seminary conference on the Talpiot tomb that met in Jerusalem in January. It has also become abundantly clear in subsequent Web and media comments thereafter by various Talpiot tomb “gainsayers.” I think this misunderstanding stems, in most cases, from a lack of understanding of how statistics work with regard to the Talpiot tomb names. Accordingly, Elliot & Kilty’s latest is a welcome breath of fresh air in this regard. It is written in plain language and is accessible to the non-specialist.

At long last, just over a year after the initial publicity over the Talpiot “Jesus Family Tomb,” the formal paper of Prof. Andrey Feuerverger of the University of Toronto has appeared in The Annals of Applied Statistics, the academic journal of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (Vol. 2, no. 1, March, 2008). Feuerverger’s paper, titled “Statistical Analysis of an Archaeological Find,” runs just over 50 pages with notes and bibliography. It is introduced by editor Stephen E. Fienberg and followed by another 50 pages of material from ten professional respondents. Feuerverger then offers a dozen page Rejoinder. Fortunately, for those not near a research library the entire issue, devoted to this subject, is available on the Web through Project Euclid.

This article should put to rest the many spurious claims that Feuerverger subsequently recanted his views on the probabilities of the Talpiot Tomb belonging to Jesus of Nazareth and his family, most recently repeated by Thomas Madden on the National Review Web site over Easter. It will also show the complete inaccuracy of the assertion made by a number of scholars following the January Princeton Seminar conference in Jerusalem that “A statistical analysis of the relatively common names engraved on the ossuaries leaves no doubt that the probability of the Talpiot tomb belonging to Jesus’ family is virtually nil if the Mariamene named on one of the ossuaries is not Mary Magdalene.”

This is decidedly not the case, as Randy Ingermanson quickly pointed out on the Duke Web site: “I am no fan of the Talpiot tomb, but I do not agree with this part of the statement…I have studied Andrey Feuerverger’s statistical analysis in great detail and have done several computations of my own. It is not correct to say that the probability is “virtually nil” if you get rid of the Mary Magdalene hypothesis…The fact is that if you read the Mariamenou inscription as “just another Mary,” then Feuerverger’s calculations lose “statistical significance.” But they most likely still lead to a fairly high probability for the authenticity of the tomb… ” [I should point out here that Ingermanson has his own calculations, with results significantly lower than Feuerverger, that he publishes as one of the responders to Feuerverger in this special issue of Annals, so that his comment here is not about his own views, but an admirable attempt to be fair with Feuerverger.]

Based on the calculations of Elliot and Kilty, whose paper can be downloaded from the Web, and as discussed by Camil Fuchs, who along with Andrey Feuerverger, sat on the panel at the Jerusalem conference dealing with statistics, the name cluster, even leaving Mariamene out entirely, with no assumptions regarding Mary Magdalene, shows a probability factor of .48. This result is far from “virtually nil,” in fact it is very close to 1/2, meaning if we had two tombs to examine, one of them would be the Jesus tomb. Both Ingermanson and Fuchs are among the respondents to the published Feuerverger paper.

It now appears, with Feuerverger’s paper in print, that we have finally reached the point where a more responsible and accurate discussion of the Talpiot tomb name frequencies and statistics can take place. We can at least say that anyone who asserts “the names are common,” as a way of dismissing the evidence, is either completely ignorant of what we now know, or uninterested in an informed and truly academic discussion.

I want to commend Prof. Feuerverger for his thorough work and his doggedness over the past months to remain professional and take the high road academically when so much was being published about him and his views that was so totally inaccurate and even slanderous.

Our best historical evidence, based on the computer programs that reconstruct the astronomical past, as well as various ancient calendars, including the Jewish, indicate that Jesus was crucified on a Thursday, April 4, in the year 30 AD.

That means today at sundown, April 3/4, as Thursday fades into Friday by Jewish reckoning, marks the actual day and date, 1978 years ago, that Jesus died. For those readers who are unfamiliar with the evidence that Jesus died on a Thursday, rather than on the traditional “Good Friday,” see the evaluation and discussion in my Book, The Jesus Dynasty, Chapter 12.

I append here the relevant calculations based on a highly accurate computer program developed by Eugene Faulstich:

I was rather amazed to see the number of Blogs, articles, and media treatments over Easter weekend that triumphantly declared that the issue of whether the Talpiot “Jesus tomb” might have belonged to Jesus of Nazareth and his family to be “dead and buried” forever, to use a bad metaphor. It was as if one could hear a collective sign of relief, if not celebration, over what was declared to be a universal repudiation of any basis whatsoever to the thesis presented by James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici in their Discovery Channel documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.”

Typical of this barrage was the sardonic treatment by Thomas F. Madden titled “Not Dead Yet: The Lost Tomb of Jesus–one year later,” published on the National Review Online Web site. It was predictably picked up in dozens of Blogs and Internet venues and waved like a victory flag. Indeed, Madden ends his article with the tongue-in-cheek declaration “Christians will just have to make do with the empty tomb.” The problem is, Madden’s article was absolutely riddled with factual errors and unfounded assertions, so much so that I found myself wondering if he could have possibly done even the most basic reading of the pros and cons of the discussion over the past year. It is one thing to debate evidence, and to try to come to considered judgments, but quite another for an academic historian to present such a poorly researched treatment of a subject with such obvious theological overtones. It seemed to me to be a case of predisposition and sarcasm ruling over factual deliberation and reasoned discussion.

In the interest of “getting the facts straight,” which surely has to be a prelude to any proper consideration of the topic, I will attempt in a subsequent post or two to offer a fair summary of where the discussion of the Talpiot tomb does stand “one year later.” I also want to present some new evidence that I hope will serve to advance the discussion.

In the end, for so many, theology really controls the discussion. Unfortunately, from an historical perspective, this theology is narrowly conceived and by some measure even “non-biblical.” It presupposes that the hope of “resurrection of the dead” as it developed in late 2nd Temple Judaism, involves reviving the physical body, what Paul calls the “image of dust.” Paul’s metaphor of the physical body being shed like old clothes, leaving the naked “soul,” which is then “re-clothed” with an incorruptible “heavenly” body (i.e., mode of being), goes a long way toward explaining how the “sea” can give up the “dead that are in it’–a conundrum the Greeks liked to use to poke fun at the Jews for believing in a “bodily” resurrection. Their mistake, like those who quizzed Jesus about the nature of the resurrection, was to imagine the “new body” was somehow dependent upon, or even reflective of, the old, i.e., the decayed corpse of dust. To quote Jesus to those literal minded detractors of the idea of resurrection of the dead, “You err, knowing neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Mark 12:24).

The subject heading is the title of a most famous book by Jim Bishop, The Day Christ Died, published in 1957 by Harper Collins with an official Imprimatur by the famous Archbishop of New York Francis Cardinal Spellman–guaranteeing it “free of doctrinal or moral error.” The book is still available in reprint editions. I highly recommend it for a kind of retrospective history reading. I remember devouring this book when it came out. I was eleven years old. It captivated me utterly, I could not put it down.

Fifty years later I write this post on a Thursday night, on the eve of “Good Friday,” that happens this year to also be the night of Purim as well as the Vernal Equinox–a kind of triple package of markers and observances. Today is Thursday. I have been absolutely convinced for several years now, as I explain in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, that Jesus died on Nisan 14th, which in the year A.D. 30, fell on a Thursday not a Friday. So this is indeed, the “day Christ died.” He was put in the temporary rock hewn tomb just before sunset, and Friday, the following day, was the first day of Passover. This means the Passover meal or Seder was eaten that Thursday night, just as the Gospel of John records (John 13:1; 18:28). The next day, Friday, was indeed a “Sabbath,” but not Saturday, the weekly Sabbath, but rather one of the seven “annual” Sabbaths of the Jewish festival cycle (see Leviticus 23:7). This means there were two Sabbaths, back to back, Friday and Saturday, that year. Sunday morning, when Mary Magdalene went early to the tomb and found it empty, it was indeed “three days and three nights” that Jesus had laid in that tomb (Thurs, Friday, Saturday nights), which comports with the tradition that Matthew has received (Matthew 12:40). Surely a million Sunday school kids over the years have asked, not to mention adults, how can you get three nights, from Friday to Sunday morning. It simply will not work.

Modern astronomical programs completely confirm this chronology of the Spring of A.D. 30. I have had quite a few dozens of readers write me to point out that the Jewish calendar never allows the 14th of Nisan to fall on a Thursday. But this adjustment in the calendar, based on what are called “postponements,” was not instituted until well into the 2nd century. In the time of Jesus the month of Nisan was set by the new moon, and that particular year, A.D. 30, the 14th day of the first month (14 days after the new moon) fell on a Thursday. The “last supper,” that Jesus ate with his disciples the night before, a Wednesday evening, was not the Passover Seder, but a messianic banquet or Eucharist of “bread and wine,” such as mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Didache. One way of putting it is that Jesus did not eat the Passover, he was the Passover, at least as understood by the Gospel of John and by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7). According to Josephus it was between 3pm and sundown the Passover sacrifices were made, just as the 14th of Nisan ended and the 15th, an annual Sabbath, began. Christians subsequently saw great symbolism in this chronology.