Appendix 1: The Talpiot Tomb

Appendix 1

The Talpiot Tomb

The contents of this appendix appeared in a longer form, including photographs, in Gary R. Habermas, The Secret of the Talpiot Tomb: Unraveling the Mystery of the Jesus Family Tomb (Nashville: Holman Reference, 2007). All citations in this appendix match the informal style of that earlier work.

The bodily resurrection of Jesus is and has been a core belief of Christians. This belief has been challenged almost from the beginning and will continue to be challenged. One of the boldest approaches to showing that Jesus’s bodily resurrection is a myth or a theological embellishment and not fact is the claim that came in early 2007 that the odds strongly favored that Jesus’s bones had been found in a tomb in a southeast suburb of Jerusalem. Comments such as these were strongly challenged by scholars as well (see chapter 4 for this specific discussion).

Many have criticized the sensationalism of the documentary and book that made this claim. One of the problems with the so-called Talpiot hypothesis is its clarity and boldness. It can be a faith shaker, as witnessed by the emails and telephone calls that Christian apologists started receiving after this hypothesis went public.

Much of the help these believers were seeking was already available on the internet, including my own website, which received a sharp increase in traffic in the days following the announcement. The press soon moved on to other stories as Easter came and went. But many whose faith was shaken by the discovery of the Jesus family tomb may not have come to a resolution concerning the claim that Jesus’s bones had been found.

In this short appendix, I shall expose the claim that there is a high probability that Jesus’s bones have been found and assess the evidence offered for it. Understanding how well this claim stands up to scrutiny can be important not just for evaluating this claim but for knowing the solid evidential ground on which Jesus’s bodily resurrection rests. Every believer owes it to themselves to understand the case for the resurrection of Jesus.

The Talpiot Tomb and Jewish Burial Practices

Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner notes that on March 28, 1980, the entrance to a Jewish burial tomb was discovered in the East Talpiot region of Jerusalem. At the time, there was no hint of the controversy that would arise. Actually, little was published on the subject during the next fifteen years. Then, during the Easter season of 1996, the BBC broadcasted a documentary that was titled “The Body in Question.” Even then, there was not much of a splash.

In the Talpiot Tomb, ten ossuaries (stone bone boxes) were found, six of which had names inscribed on them. According to Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, professional archaeologist Eliot Braun was the first to be dispatched to the site. Yosef Gat, an antiquities inspector, went as well. Kloner, then a PhD student, also joined this team of investigators.

Jewish Burial Practices and Jesus’s Burial

The Jews required that bodies be buried within twenty-four hours after death. Typically, two sorts of Jewish burial practices were utilized in the first-century AD. The less common but better-known technique would involve a burial cave or tomb cut out of the rock in the area that generally surrounded the city of Jerusalem. Each burial cave would include one or more chambers surrounded by rows of loculi, which were burial compartments about the length of a body cut into the rock.

Each tomb belonged to an extended family and the dead were buried there over several generations. After death, the body of the family member would be prepared and then placed in a loculus, with the opening being sealed with a stone slab. Another stone would then be placed over the outside entrance to the tomb.

Before burial, the dead body would be washed, anointed with oil, and then wrapped in a burial shroud. The body would lie in the tomb for a year or so, during which time the flesh would decay. Then, when only the person’s bones remained in the tomb, they would be gathered and placed in a stone ossuary and reburied. In a minority of circumstances—about one quarter of the time—names would then be carved on the side of the box. Complicating the issue is that more than one person was often buried in these bone boxes. These ossuaries were only used for 100 years or so.

Because cut stone tombs were very expensive, the more common method, used chiefly by poorer members of Jewish society, was to bury the dead in the ground. In this case, loved ones would be buried in “simple, individual trench graves dug into the ground, similar to the way we bury our dead today.” The dirt would then be moved back into the trench and a “crude headstone” would usually be placed at one end of the burial site to mark the spot. This was not considered dishonorable. In these cases, nothing would remain to rebury after a year.

Of these two sorts of Jewish burial, the use of the rock tomb is more widely known today, probably due to the case of Jesus’s death and burial. Jodi Magness notes that while the Gospels are not only our earliest sources, they do accurately describe the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea in a loculus of his family’s own tomb. The body had to be buried before the Sabbath began that same day at sundown. Otherwise, the burial would have had to wait until Saturday night after the Sabbath ended. However, that would exceed the twenty-four-hour maximum for burying a dead body. Thus, Joseph had to act very quickly.

So, Joseph procured Jesus’s dead body, wrapped it in linen, included spices, and made sure that it was buried hastily late Friday afternoon in his own family tomb. In this, the Gospels show familiarity with Jewish law. The Gospels explain that the women returned to see the tomb on Sunday morning. Mark (16:1) and Luke (24:1) specify that they brought spices that they had prepared, apparently to finish Friday afternoon’s hasty burial. But all four Gospels teach that when the women arrived, they found that the tomb was empty. Afterward, the women and others saw the risen Jesus.

But at least the traditional understanding of these events has been challenged by the ossuaries from the Talpiot Tomb. The news dominated the religious world for weeks, beginning days before the extended New York press conference on February 27, 2007, followed by the airing of the Discovery Channel documentary on March 4, 2007. The latter was followed by a scholarly discussion. In this appendix we will investigate many challenges, both pro and con, as to whether the claims of the Talpiot hypothesis can be upheld over against the New Testament view.

A Word about the Sources

To the chagrin of scholars, the Talpiot story has been widely aired in the popular press, from television and radio discussions to various news media and internet publications. To be sure, many of these stories and articles involve scholarly input, sometimes even doing an excellent job of finding the right specialists. Still, many other sources derive from popular news outlets as well as personal and group websites. Therefore, it is not surprising that from the beginning this has been a prevalent story, especially since the original television and book versions were largely associated with the claims of two film producers.

Therefore, as a mainstream story much of the information about the Talpiot Tomb as well as many of the best quotations and critiques have appeared in popular venues. Accordingly, the sources that are employed in this appendix will be derived from both popular and scholarly areas. We will strive to cite recognized scholars whenever we can, even if the citations are found in popular sources.

The Talpiot Tomb: Setting up the Debate

The 2007 New York news conference, the Discovery Channel documentary, and the publication of the book The Jesus Family Tomb made it very plain that James Cameron, Simcha Jacobovici, and Charles Pellegrino thought that it was very likely that the Talpiot Tomb was indeed the final burial place for the family of Jesus of Nazareth. In this section we will outline the grounds for their argument.

Incidence of Ossuary Names and DNA Testing

From the very beginning, one of the most confusing aspects of the Talpiot Tomb story was that the names on the six ossuaries looked very different. The chief reason is that the names appeared in three different languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. As listed by Kloner, the names are as follows:

Since the Talpiot Tomb, like other rock tombs in Jerusalem, is that of an extended family, DNA analysis would seem to be a natural test. But ossuaries are usually cleaned after discovery with the contents being reburied. So, most of the stone boxes did not have enough material in them to do any DNA testing. As Tabor reported, “The other four [inscribed ossuaries] had been cleaned out, even vacuumed, with nothing left that could be easily tested.” This finding was repeated during the Discovery Channel scholarly discussion, hosted by Ted Koppel, with Jacobovici and Tabor both reiterating that only two ossuaries contained enough material to test.

The two ossuaries that still contained material in them were those of Jesus son of Joseph and Mariamene. These contents were tested in a laboratory at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada, where researchers were looking for a mitochondrial DNA match that would potentially have linked these individuals through a common mother. However, the DNA test came back with negative results.

Arguing that the absence of a DNA match was significant, Jacobovici and Pellegrino concluded that “Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene, if their DNA could be read, would be two individuals who had no family ties. But what are the alternatives? People buried in the same tomb were related by either blood or marriage.” Thus, since they were not related by blood, they concluded that, most likely, they would have been married.

Mary Magdalene and Other Family Connections?

But Jacobovici and Pellegrino go much further than this. Postulating that Jesus and Mariamene were married, they also argue that the latter was really Mary Magdalene, reminiscent of Dan Brown’s hypothesis in The Da Vinci Code.

Here’s how the argument progresses:

Therefore, since “Jesus the son of Joseph” was not related by blood to “Mariamene,” then they must have been married. And since Mariamene is probably Mary Magdalene, as just indicated by the argument above, then the “Judah son of Jesus” who is also buried in another ossuary in the same tomb must be their son.

Other probable connections to the holy family were also made by Jacobovici and Pellegrino. The other Mary was probably Jesus’s mother, and the Joseph on Jesus’s tomb was his father. “Yose” (Jose) was probably the name of Jesus’s brother, which is spelled similarly in Mark 6:3, rather than a nickname for Joseph. The name Matthew is similar to some of the names of Jesus’s ancestors (Luke 3:23–25).

A last probability, according to the Talpiot hypothesis researchers, pertains to the “missing ossuary” that came out of the tomb. Although there were originally ten ossuaries in the tomb, later inventories showed that one of them was missing. So, it has been asserted that this missing box might actually be the famous “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus” ossuary. This, of course, would argue for even tighter family connections.

As Tabor remarked quite recently, “I noticed that the dimensions of the missing tenth ossuary are precisely the same, to the centimeter, to those of the James Ossuary.” Perhaps Oded Golan, the owner of the James Ossuary who went to trial on the supposition that he received the ossuary illegally, actually found the James Ossuary not in the 1970s, as he claims, but sometime around 1980, “when the Talpiot tomb was discovered.” Perhaps a little less sure than Tabor, Jacobovici and Pellegrino argue that, while not precisely the same, the James Ossuary is of similar size to the missing tenth ossuary. “So, the missing ossuary and the James ossuary may be one and the same after all.”

To examine further this possibility that the James Ossuary is the missing Talpiot bone box, in July 31, 2006, a series of tests were conducted on random ossuary samples that had been collected in Israel. These tests analyzed whether terra rosa—a rare red soil with high iron content found in the hills around Jerusalem—was present in the patinas of the ossuraries. According to the tests, “This was all consistent with the patinas on the James and Talpiot tomb ossuaries.” While most of the ossuaries tested differently, “compared to other patina samples from ossuaries found in the Jerusalem environment, the Talpiot tomb ossuaries exhibited a patina fingerprint or profile that matched the James ossuary and no other.”

Another possibility exists too. Tabor credits Shimon Gibson as first suggesting that the James Ossuary might not have been the tenth ossuary at all, but merely another one that may have been stolen from the Talpiot Tomb the first weekend when the tomb was left open.

So, the Talpiot hypothesis holds that the Talpiot Tomb is the burial site of Jesus of Nazareth’s family. Marya is Jesus’s mother and Joseph is his father. Mariamene is Mary Magdalene, Jesus’s wife, and Judah is their son. Jose is Jesus’s brother, not his father. And his brother James was probably also buried in this same tomb.

Statistical Analysis: Jesus’s Tomb?

On the surface at least, and with a couple of potential exceptions, the family names in the Talpiot Tomb seem to fit nicely with the known family members in Jesus of Nazareth’s household. Is there any way to be more specific about whether or not we could have a potential match here?

To check out their hunch, Jacobovici and Pellegrino sought the services of Andre Feuerverger, a statistician from the University of Toronto. While most of the Talpiot names are very common, what was the likelihood that this particular cluster of names would all be together?

Tabor explains that the initial statistics for the Talpiot grouping have nothing to do with whether or not they fit the family of Jesus of Nazareth. Rather, they were arrived at in a two-part process. First, the study tested the likelihood that such a cluster of names would be found in one place or in a single family. Second, these findings were then compared to Jesus’s family according to the names presented in the Gospels.

Based on the available information and the family connections mentioned above, Feuerverger arrived at the following figures for this cluster of names: there is a 1 in 190 chance of having a Jesus son of Joseph; a 1 in 160 chance for Mariamne; a 1 in 40 chance for Matia; a 1 in 20 chance for Jose (Yose); and a 1 in 4 chance for Maria. Multiplying these odds yields a likelihood of a 1 in 97,280,000 chance of getting this specific list of persons together.

Then, the second set of computations was done, comparing the family buried in the Talpiot Tomb to the Gospel listings of Jesus of Nazareth’s family members. The name Matthew was eliminated during this step, because he is not explicatively mentioned in the Gospels as a direct family member of Jesus’s family. Then other adjustments were made for unintentional biases in the historical sources as well as to allow for all possible first-century Jerusalem tombs, arriving at a final probability factor of a 1 in 600 chance that the Talpiot Tomb was not the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. So, the conclusion was that the two families were the same to a very high degree of likelihood, and thus Jesus was probably buried in this tomb. But this argument was rejected by other researchers.

Tabor’s Summary of the Argument

James Tabor recently provided a very helpful summary of the arguments in favor of what we have called the Talpiot hypothesis. I have attempted to categorize the arguments under his twofold division, as stated above, by looking first at the Talpiot data and then comparing it to the family of Jesus of Nazareth.

First are the findings from the Talpiot Tomb:

Then we compare these figures to the family of Jesus of Nazareth:

Tabor’s conclusion regarding the evidence is that it is “possible-to-likely” that the Talpiot Tomb is that of the Jesus of Nazareth family. But if the supposition is correct that the James Ossuary was also in the Talpiot Tomb, then Tabor thinks that this would make the identification “close to certain.”

Conclusion: Jesus’s Spiritual Resurrection and Ascension?

Those who hold the Talpiot hypothesis favor the conclusion that it is highly likely that this tomb is the same one that contains the bones of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. Of the group, Tabor is the most cautious, claiming that this scenario is “possible-to-likely.” But since Tabor also thinks that it is likely that the James Ossuary came from the Talpiot Tomb, it would seem that he, too, believes that the entire hypothesis is “close to certain.”

An intriguing issue is that Jacobovici is reported many times as stating that these conclusions should not bother or offend Christians! He maintains this stance because he does not deny Jesus’s resurrection or ascension to heaven, for these events could have happened spiritually. However, he does note that Christians who believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, or later ascended bodily to heaven would have issues with his conclusions.

For example, the report on the Discovery Channel, in bold print, said, “Even if Jesus’s body was moved from one tomb to another, however, that does not mean that he could not have been resurrected from the second tomb. Belief in the resurrection is based not on which tomb he was buried in, but on alleged sightings of Jesus that occurred after his burial and documented in the Gospels.” The report continues with regard to Jesus’s ascension: “Some Christians believe that this was a spiritual ascension, i.e., his mortal remains were left behind. Other Christians believe that he ascended with his body to heaven. If Jesus’ mortal remains have been found, this would contradict the idea of a physical ascension but not the idea of a spiritual ascension. The latter is consistent with Christian theology.” Tabor also stated his belief that the resurrection was not a material, bodily event, but a “spiritual resurrection.” Tabor develops this thesis, arguing chiefly that Paul held to less than bodily resurrection appearances, like the one he experienced. “God then raised Christ from the dead and transformed him back into his glorious heavenly body.” Further, Christians will also experience such a resurrection, with their bodies being “instantaneously changed from flesh to spirit.” It is only later that the Gospels portrayed Jesus’s appearances as bodily in nature.

Many scholars have reacted strongly against these ideas. The arguments on behalf of the Talpiot hypothesis will be addressed in much detail in the next two sections.

A Talpiot Tomb Critique Part 1: Family Names, Mary Magdalene, the James Ossuary, and DNA

The Talpiot hypothesis began to circulate and gain attention after being popularized by the initial news conference, the Discovery Channel documentary, the book by Jacobovici and Pellegrino, and the seemingly countless interviews, articles, and news items that followed. Most of the major news television networks and periodicals reported the pro and con arguments. Almost as quickly, the scholarly response entered the discussion at a torrid pace. Interestingly, much of the response came from non-evangelical scholars who reacted strongly to the claims of the Talpiot hypothesis.

Here we will address several of the major portions of the Talpiot hypothesis, concentrating on the issues regarding the family names, the possibility of a Mariamene or Mary Magdalene identification, and the DNA testing. Our format will be to isolate the key questions, and then provide lists of the scholarly counterarguments. Footnotes provide a wide variety of sources for these responses. The reader will hopefully then be in a position to judge the strength of each claim and response.

Incidence of Names: How Common Are the Names Found in the Talpiot Tomb?

Virtually all commentators, including those who agree with the Talpiot thesis, concur that most of the names in the tomb were very common in first-century Jerusalem.

Moveover, can we even be sure of the name “Jesus” on the Talpiot Tomb ossuary?

Mariamene and Mary Magdalene

Was Mariamene another name for Mary Magdalene? There are no good historical reasons to trace the name “Mariamene” to Mary Magdalene.

What could the ossuary name “Mariamene” indicate?

Was Jesus Married? Did He Have Children?

The Missing Tenth Ossuary

Is the missing ossuary from Talpiot the same as the James Ossuary?

Amos Kloner and Joe Zias disagree with James Tabor regarding the tenth ossuary. Kloner retrieved the tenth ossuary (now missing), and Zias catalogued it at the Rockefeller Museum while he was curator there. As the original scholars who did the work, they clarified the issue as follows:

Do the patinas match on the Talpiot Tomb ossuaries and the James Ossuary?

The DNA testing

Conclusion of Critique Part 1

We have addressed here several aspects of the Talpiot hypothesis. In particular, we have responded to the claims regarding the commonality of the Talpiot Tomb names, the identification of an ossuary believed by a few to be that of Mary Magdalene, the question of the tenth ossuary, and the DNA testing. On each count, we have discovered no basis for the claims that this is the burial tomb of Jesus of Nazareth’s family. The remainder of the claims will be addressed in the next section.

A Talpiot Critique Part 2: Statistical Argument and Other Problems

In the last section we argued that the Talpiot hypothesis falls substantially short on the issues of the incidence of family names, the identification of the Mariamene ossuary as that of Mary Magdalene, the identification of the tenth ossuary as that of James the brother of Jesus, and the DNA testing.

Our chief subject here is to evaluate the statistical argument provided by those who support the Talpiot thesis, which they think shows to a high degree of likelihood (600:1 odds) that the Talpiot Tomb is the actual burial site of Jesus’s family. Several other problems with the overall thesis also need to be mentioned, some of which are rarely discussed. Then we will view a number of scholarly conclusions to the Talpiot hypothesis.

Statistical Confirmation?

Statistics are based on the information provided. Adjustments to that information may translate into huge changes in the numbers. Mark Goodacre thinks that “the major part of the case that the Talpiot Tomb is Jesus’s family tomb is based on the statistical claim.” If so, then this may be the most crucial portion of our discussion.

The statistician used in formulating the Talpiot hypothesis, Andrey Feuerverger of the University of Toronto, has said often that his “computations depend heavily on the assumptions that go into it.” This is incredibly crucial, as he acknowledges: “Should even one of these assumptions not be satisfied then the results will not be statistically meaningful.” For example, the identification of Mariamene with Mary Magdalene “drives the outcome of the computations substantially.” Similarly, Feuerverger reportedly told Ted Koppel: “I must work from the interpretations given to me, and the strength of the calculations are based on those assumptions.” For example, regarding the Mariamene ossuary, “if for some reason one were to read it as just a regular form of the name Maria, in that case the calculation produced is not as impressive, and the statistical significance would wash out considerably.”

Accordingly, Feuerverger now realizes that statistics cannot conclude whether or not the Talpiot family is that of Jesus of Nazareth. He states, “It is not in the purview of statistics to conclude whether or not this tombsite is that of the New Testament family.” The reason for this is because “any such conclusion much more rightfully belongs to the purview of biblical historical scholars who are in a much better position to assess the assumptions entering into such computations.” He concludes the matter: “I now believe that I should not assert any conclusions connecting this tomb with any hypothetical one of the NT family.” This indicates the ultimate importance of investigating these Talpiot Tomb assumptions. Since the assumptions feed the statistics, we must be sure that they are based on correct data.

Mathematician Joe D’Mello pointed out several problems with Feuerverger’s computations and made key clarifications about what was being claimed. In particular, his chief point seems to be that slight changes in the interpretations or factual basis very quickly change the overall conclusions.

Joseph Fitzmyer is typical of many when he argues that the Talpiot hypothesis contains far too “iffy” conditionals that basically all must be true to arrive at its conclusions. Further, too many rhetorical questions are meant to be answered positively when a negative answer will change the end result. As he concludes regarding this thesis: “Speculation is rife.”

Some Questionable Assumptions: General Issues

Virtually all scholars who have responded to the issues agree that the assumptions passed on to Feuerverger must be questioned very seriously, as can be seen below. Goodacre calls these assumptions a “fatal bias” that plagues the analysis from the beginning.

Scholars have isolated several of the Talpiot hypothesis assumptions that they think need to be challenged. We will begin with four general concerns regarding the computed frequency of names, the number of persons who were often buried in the same ossuaries, the extended family nature of these rock tombs, and the several generations who buried their loved ones there. If these are not properly accounted for, as they were apparently not (see below), then the statistics will be seriously slanted.

As Tabor is very careful to point out, the first round of computations had nothing to do with the actual family of Jesus of Nazareth, but simply asked the frequency of these six or seven persons being altogether in the same family grouping. We will dispute momentarily whether all these names existed as a single family under one roof, which it now seems they assuredly did not. But here we will simply point out that the odds of any group of six or seven people being together would be very improbable.

For example, what are the odds that a particular grouping of six or seven people were at my house last night watching a football game? Like the names in the Talpiot Tomb, most of these friends could have names that are among the most common in our society, but a couple of them could go by nicknames and one could include a “son of” designation. What are the odds that precisely these six or seven people and no others would be at my home, particularly if two or three of them have fairly distinctive names? We should also expect very high odds.

So, it would appear that the first round of the computation shows virtually nothing except that this half dozen or so people would not normally be all together at once! This is especially the case when a very similar cluster of Jewish names, including Mary, Martha, Matthew, Joseph, and Jesus, have been reported from a tomb on the Mount of Olives, as mentioned earlier. Apparently the Talpiot cluster of names is not as rare as supposed.

Stephen Pfann says that the 600 to 1 probability that the Talpiot Tomb belonged to Jesus’s family “is based upon a number of fallacies and a general misuse of statistics.” To identify the family as being that of Jesus of Nazareth is “pure speculation.” Most importantly, individual ossuaries “often contained the remains of more than one individual” (for example, the Caiaphas ossuary held the remains of several people).

We have already recounted Zias’s published results of a Jewish tomb where fifteen ossuaries contained the remains of eighty-eight different people! Accordingly, Zias thinks that the Talpiot hypothesis statistics were “rigged.” That multiple persons were buried specifically in the Talpiot ossuaries seems to be more than clear. Kloner estimated that seventeen individuals were buried in the ten ossuaries!

Further, as noted by Rollston, rock tombs held the remains of extended families, including one’s uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. Witherington argues that we know that unrelated Christians were often buried together, so it is not necessary that all of the ossuaries from a particular site even be from just a single family. After all, Matthew claims that Jesus was buried in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea (Matt 27:59–60), and the clear intent of all four Gospels is that Jesus was not interred in his own family tomb! Moreover, perhaps most crucially, Zias reminds us that these Jewish tombs usually held four to five generations of extended family members, and that is why stats “simply cannot be computed.” Witherington argues that the three languages found on the ossuaries in the Talpiot Tomb indicate that it was probably multigenerational. We might add that that the large number of individuals inside the Talpiot Tomb—thirty-five people according to Kloner but only a third or so of that according to Tabor—is another indication that this tomb held far more than a single generational family. Most damaging of all, Kloner reported in his 1996 report that this was also so in the Talpiot Tomb: “This burial cave was probably used for three or four generations.”

That Tabor plainly wants to argue otherwise on these points seems to be an indication of his realization that if the Talpiot Tomb indeed did contain the remains of several people in the individual ossuaries, plus an extended family of individuals over several generations, then this counts very heavily against his argument that the named ossuaries had to contain people who were directly related to each other and lived under one roof. If they were not directly related, originating in the same household, then the probabilities of finding “the Jesus family” almost disappear. So, on these three general points, there is much to be lost from the Talpiot hypothesis, as we will see.

More Questionable Assumptions: Specific Issues

Besides these general concerns, scholars have also demarcated several more specific Talpiot hypothesis assumptions that they think are quite faulty. There is a remarkable amount of scholarly agreement here with regard to which theses are the most questionable. We will especially mention the assumptions regarding Mariamene, Jose, Matthew, Judah, and Jesus. Along with Mary and except for Judah, these are the individual persons who make up the Talpiot statistics.

With Mariamene there are at least two main issues: Was she the same person as Mary Magdalene? And was she married to Jesus? We argued earlier that there is very little chance that Mariamene was Mary Magdalene, and we won’t repeat those arguments here. There is nothing that could really be called historical (or other) evidence for this identification. The suggested sources are not only very late, far after the time of Jesus, but they are not even clear that Mary Magdalene is this same individual. This is why Pfann says that the chief source “should be considered irrelevant to the discussion, being three centuries too late for consideration.”

Was Mariamene married to the Jesus in the Talpiot Tomb? Ted Koppel asked Carney Matheson, who performed the tests, about the conclusion that DNA revealed that Jesus and Mariamene were probably married. Matheson replied: “There is a statement in the film that has been taken out of context. While marriage is a possibility, other relationships like father and daughter, paternal cousins, sister-in-law, or indeed two unrelated individuals [are also possible]. . . . My conclusion is that they are not maternally related. You cannot genetically test for marriage.” Goodacre concludes the matter as far as the vast majority of scholars are concerned: “Now given that no reputable historian of Christian origins seriously thinks that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene (or anyone else, as far as we know), the presence of a Mariamne in the tomb can in no way be allowed to be a part of the statistical calculations here.”

Was Jose the brother of the Jesus buried in the Talpiot Tomb? Since we already have one Joseph in the tomb (Jesus’s father), it is a far simpler view to hold that Jose is the familial nickname (perhaps given by his wife or other family members) for this same person rather than to suppose a second person of the same name. Further, there is also some archaeological evidence for this view. L. Y. Rahmani, in the standard scholarly work on Jewish ossuaries that was used by Jacobovici and Pellegrino, said, “The similarity of this [Jose] ossuary and its inscription with that of Marya on No. 706, both from the same tomb, may indicate that these are the ossuaries of the parents of Yeshua (No. 704) and the grandparents of Yehuda (No. 702).” But it seems that the only major reason to overlook Rahmani’s sensible suggestion is that to claim that it is Jesus’s of Nazareth’s brother fits far better with the Talpiot hypothesis.

Initially, Jacobovici and Pellegrino thought that Matthew would be close to the family of Jesus of Nazareth because the name appears more than once in Luke’s genealogy. But to their credit, Feuerverger left it out of the second computation because the name is not explicitly mentioned in the Gospels as a family member. Thus, although it did not figure in the statistical computation, most scholars thought that the Matthew ossuary shouldn’t have entered the discussion at all, except as a negative factor (see below).

Judah the son of Jesus also did not figure as part of Feuerverger’s statistics. Not only did most scholars reject the notion that this could be the son of Jesus, but also, like Matthew, many scholars still wanted to make Judah’s presence in the tomb a negative factor (also see below).

What about the ossuary of the Talpiot man named “Jesus son of Joseph”? How rare is such a name? A few considerations are behind the reason why this ossuary name was virtually ignored by the Jewish scholars who worked on the Talpiot Tomb find. There is at least one other ossuary with this designation. Kloner noted that there were three or four such ossuaries.

Using available listings of first-century names, estimates indicate that, during the time the ossuaries were used, Jerusalem would have contained approximately 1,008 men named Jesus, who also had a father named Joseph! Intriguingly, Pellegrino uses these same figures, including 7,200 men in Jerusalem named Jesus, 1,008 of whom would have had a Joseph for a father. But Ingermanson points out a mathematical error in Pellegrino’s figures, dropping his final figures from 2,500,000:1 all the way down to 31:1. But as we will see, even this reduced figure is far too high.

I think that we also need to add to this number in order to allow for other Jewish males with the same names from outside the city who could have, for whatever reason, been buried in Jerusalem. After all, Jesus was from Galilee, and the Talpiot hypothesis still places his tomb in this city. But it seems that this large number of men who were also named “Jesus son of Joseph” would change significantly the Talpiot statistics, as we will see below.

Many (if not most) researchers, however, think that there is more than these numbers alone. There are also important factors present here which should compute negatively against the computations that the Talpiot Tomb family is the same as Jesus of Nazareth’s family. Ingermanson calls this the “not-Jesus factor.” Even Jacobovici and Pellegrino are well aware of this. They point out that if other names were present in the Talpiot Tomb, such as Jonah or Daniel, this “would have led us to question the entire assemblage” because these names would not fit in Jesus of Nazareth’s family. Feuerverger, too, acknowledges this factor, stating that there are no other “negatives” beyond those names that we already know from the tomb “that would in and of themselves invalidate ‘the hypothesis’ or that would appear to lessen its likelihood.” The difference, however, is that while Jacobovici, Pellegrino, and Feuerverger acknowledge this possibility, many scholars hold that there are several “not-Jesus” factors that detract from the Talpiot statistics. For example, Goodacre thinks that this is simply crucial to the equation, since “non-matches” with Jesus of Nazareth “contradict the literary record.” When these negatives are ignored or treated as neutral, we have an “essential problem” and that is why the Talpiot case is “severely flawed.” Some of the problems have been alluded to immediately above. Here are the main ones, noted by many scholars.

There is no early historical evidence that Jesus had a son. To invent such a person (“Judah” or whomever) and read the data that way is illegitimate. True, the Talpiot hypothesis, as we have just pointed out above, does not include Judah in its statistical computations. But that is the point: they thought that it was not a positive finding that related to their conclusion. But many scholars think that this is one of the facts that show that the Talpiot Tomb is not that of Jesus’s family. In my opinion, Ingermanson places far too high the suggested chances against Jesus having a son. But the “Judah factor” still militates against this being Jesus of Nazareth.

We could say almost the same thing about Matthew. He does not fit the Jesus family. And again, while we have already said that Matthew was not counted in the second Talpiot computation, it is actually worse than that. For this is another factor that, while possible, actually detracts from the Jesus of Nazareth supposition. As Witherington states, the Matthew reference is a liability, because even though “ancestors are irrelevant. . . . It’s as simple as this: this is a family tomb and none of Jesus’s brothers are Matthew.” Tabor objects to Judah being a negative factor, but only says that “if” such a son existed, this might help in some unexplained ways, without commenting further.

Probably the case that bothers scholars the most is the comparison between Mariamene and Mary Magdalene because the case is so flimsy and is opposed by all of the early historical data. Not only must Mary Magdalene be taken out of the Talpiot computations, where she plays a very major role, but this too is seen as another negative factor that also detracts from the case that this may be Jesus of Nazareth.

Scholars conclude that this “not-Jesus factor” is very significant. Magness sums this up: “Taken individually, each of these points weakens the case for the identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus and his family. Collectively these points are devastating, since the statistical analyses presented in the film are based on certain assumptions made about these names.” Goodacre also summarizes the matter: “The greater the number of non-matches, the less impressive the cluster becomes. Or, to put it another way, it stops being a cluster of striking names when the cluster is diluted with non-matches.” Playing creatively on Jacobovici’s use of the Beatles analogy and the significance of the name “Ringo,” Goodacre illustrates the problem: “What we actually have is the equivalence of a tomb with the names John, Paul, George, Martin, Alan and Ziggy.” Regarding the misuse of Mariamene, Matthew, and Judah, Goodacre concludes: “All data must be included. You cannot cherry pick or manipulate your data before doing your statistical analysis.”

The Not-Jesus Factor

Judah, Son of Jesus

No historical evidence Jesus had a son

Matthew

The list of Jesus’s brothers does not include a Matthew

Mariamene and Mary Magdalene

No historical reasons to connect Mariamene and Mary Magdalene

Any of the three previous points damages the Talpiot hypothesis. But taken together they destroy this thesis since the statistical computations are based on the assumptions that these points militate against.

What Do the Reworked Statistics Look Like?

There is strikingly little that we can know from the Talpiot Tomb with regard to direct blood relations between the family members there. Two of the most crucial things to keep in mind about the nature of these Jewish burial tombs is that they were used for extended families, and that these families were buried there for three to five generations.

Assuming that the first name on the “son of Joseph” ossuary is indeed “Jesus,” and that there was only one man buried in the tomb with the name of Jesus (unlike the two Marys), all we can know is that Joseph, Jesus, and Judah are related as father, son, and grandson, respectively. We cannot even know if one of the Marys is one of their mothers, or what relation Jose or Matthew were to the rest of the family. The others could be grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, adopted children, stepparents, previous children of the stepparents, or the spouses of many of these persons! Or the other names in the tomb could be people who all lived and died in this extended family during an earlier generation, perhaps before the Talpiot Jesus was even born!

So, we cannot state any known conclusions concerning Maria, Mariamene, Jose, or Matthew. So, quite contrary to the second computation of the Talpiot hypothesis “Statistics Overview,” we cannot use figures for Mariamene, Maria, or Jose. We simply do not know that information.

As we just said, even Pellegrino (and apparently Jacobovici, too) acknowledges that the chances of there being a man named Jesus who also had a father named Joseph and who lived in Jerusalem during the era of the ossuaries is 1 in 79, and approximately 1,008 Jewish men living in Jerusalem probably had that relationship. Even if conceding all the other items mentioned above, there are, at best, only 1,008:1 odds that the Talpiot Tomb is the tomb of Jesus. Need we go any further on these grounds alone?

But unfortunately for the Talpiot hypothesis, to compute for the name Judah takes us even further away from the known family of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, from what we know historically, if the Talpiot Jesus had a son named Judah, that would be more than enough to argue that he is indeed one of the 1,008 other men in Jerusalem who were named Jesus with a father named Joseph. For if we gave Jesus a 20 percent chance of having a son, which is probably a much higher percentage than most would grant, this alone would lower the probability to 1 in 5,000 that this is Jesus of Nazareth!

Probably no one has done more work on the statistics of the Talpiot Tomb than Randy Ingermanson. In his initial essay on the topic, he concluded that the odds are at least 10,000 to 1 that the Talpiot Tomb Jesus is not Jesus of Nazareth. After his study, Rosebrough concluded that there was a 15,000:1 chance that all the major premises of the Talpiot hypothesis were true, from which Rosebrough derived the title of his essay “Archaeological Identity Theft”!

But Ingermanson went much further with a second study. Teaming up with Jay Cost, they used a very sophisticated application of Bayes’ Theorem, a highly recognized means of using calculus in “improving an initial probability estimate in light of new information.” They figured the problem in several ways, depending on how people answer the “fuzzy factors” where there are differences of opinion. For a typical historian, they arrived at a 1 in 19,000 chance that the Talpiot Tomb was that of Jesus. For a historian who leans toward this being Jesus’s tomb, the chances are estimated at 1 in 1,100. For the historian who leans toward it not being Jesus’s tomb, the odds drop all the way to 1 in 5,000,000!

Basically, the lesson of their study is that there are not enough realistic “fuzzy factors” to turn the odds in favor of the Talpiot Tomb being Jesus’s burial place. As Ingermanson concludes, “The article shows 5 different test cases that give estimates that would be computed by people with a wide range of different mindsets. The interesting thing is that, despite vast differences in assumptions, the final results are not terribly different.” Overall, their conclusions are absolutely devastating to the Talpiot hypothesis.

Additional Problems

In the many critiques of the Talpiot hypothesis, there are a number of additional issues that ought to be mentioned. These tend to be somewhat less substantial, and a couple simply raise questions, but they should still be considered in any treatment of the subject.

Are there dating problems? Kloner wrote in his original article that the Talpiot Tomb could be dated from the end of the first century BCE until AD 70. Of course, if the date is actually before about AD 30, this entire discussion is moot. On the other hand, Witherington argues for a post-70 date for the tomb, which is still possible because it is known that Jewish osslegium, or ossuary reburial, continued past 70 at least until 125 and the time of Bar Kokhba. Witherington finds potential indications of this conclusion in the following: (1) the tomb is not located in Old Jerusalem; (2) the appearance of three languages in the tomb, especially because early Christians and Jews usually did not speak Greek;(3) the ornamental marking outside the tomb “is meant to attract attention and draw people to the tomb,” which is arguably the opposite of pre-70 times, when Christians were “beleaguered” and would not have wanted to show off where Jesus was buried!

Many scholars have mentioned that if Jesus’s family had a family tomb, it would most likely be located in Nazareth, not Jerusalem. For example, Alan Segal asks, “Why would Jesus’s family have a tomb outside of Jerusalem if they were from Nazareth?” Magness cites Rahmani’s research and indicates that the custom was for Judean families to indicate ancestry by mentioning the father, “but in rock-cut tombs owned by non-Judean families . . . it was customary to indicate the deceased’s place of origin” instead. At the very least, Magness notes that “we could expect that at least some of the ossuary inscriptions to reflect their Galilean origins.” Further, if Jesus’s family had owned their own tomb, Joseph would never have to have intervened.

Likewise, some of these same scholars have added the point that Jesus’s family was not wealthy and stone tombs are very expensive. But Tabor countered this with the strong protest that wealthy followers of Jesus, such as Joseph of Arimathea or Lazarus (who also had a rock tomb), could have paid for the Jesus family tomb, just as Joseph did with his first burial, because of their “extraordinary devotion” to him.

Zias seemed incensed by the Talpiot hypothesis interpretation of the symbols on the tomb. For example, the mysterious “X” marking on ossuaries are not Christian symbols, but simply an indication of which way the lid fits—it will not work in the reverse! Zias concludes, “Duh.”

As Witherington points out helpfully, Jesus was not called the son of Joseph by anyone who knew him intimately. This included his family members as well as his disciples.

Although it would not necessarily refute any of the data, more than one scholar mentioned that the Talpiot Tomb claim was first voiced by the popular media instead of having the appeal made in the peer-reviewed literature. For example, Jodi Magness makes this point.

Statistical studies fail to indicate that the Talpiot Tomb is the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth. Once again, every claim has been countered by many devastating critical responses. Scarcely has a thesis regarding the historical Jesus faced such a scholarly pummeling, especially in that the complaints have issued from those of various theological persuasions across the spectrum.

It is sufficient here to recall that both sides even acknowledge that there were likely more than 1,000 Jewish men in Jerusalem alone during the time of ossuary burials who were named “Jesus” and whose father was also named “Joseph.” The auxiliary claims, along with several other problems, only move us even further away from the initial hypothesis. As Ingermanson has graphically argued above, the case against the Talpiot hypothesis is so decisive that it is almost a moot point how one answers the relevant questions. The conclusion is still the same: this is not the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Resurrection of Jesus

Now we reach a huge question in the Talpiot Tomb saga. Given the claims of those who think that this is the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, how can we account for what history says happened on the first Easter? Answering this question is one of the most difficult for those who support the Talpiot thesis.

From the beginning, we need to be very clear when we address this topic with regard to our use of the New Testament and other ancient documents. It must be emphasized that the argument definitely does not assume that the Talpiot hypothesis must be mistaken just because it disagrees with the Bible, Christian tradition, or Christian beliefs. Unless there are firm reasons for believing these sources, this would be to reject the thesis for the wrong reasons.

Rather, we will take a different approach here. Almost exclusively, we will make use only of the established historical information generally held by the vast majority of scholars who study this topic. More crucially, when there is scholarly agreement about particular historical data, it is almost always because there are strong reasons for believing this information. This is especially the case when the specialists who agree about these facts disagree concerning what they do with the rest of Christian belief. While I will not be able to argue here how this historical basis is established, I have done so elsewhere in great detail.

In other words, it is maintained here that the responses that are among the most difficult for the Talpiot claims are those that are drawn from accredited information that is approved by scholars precisely because they have strong reasons for doing so. Therefore, if these historical facts make it very difficult to accept the Talpiot hy­pothe­sis, then this will be a strong hurdle for the thesis to overcome without first dis­proving the widespread scholarly basis behind the objections.

The Empty Tomb of Jesus

In all our ancient sources, friends and foes alike acknowledged that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was found empty shortly afterward. Our earliest source (1 Cor 15:4) states that the discovery of the vacated tomb of Jesus occurred just three days after the crucifixion. All four Gospels report that the women who visited Jesus’s tomb discovered that it was open and empty. And it was reported that even the Jewish authorities thought that the tomb was empty.

Why should anyone believe that this is actually what happened? Perhaps surprisingly, scholars have provided more than twenty reasons for the historicity of the empty tomb. The most frequently mentioned is the unanimous agreement that women were the first witnesses. In the patriarchal culture of first-century Palestine, women were unlikely to be asked to give important testimony. Generally, there was an inverse relation between the importance of a particular subject and whether or not a woman would be allowed to testify in court.

Given this scenario, why are the women listed by all our sources as the first witnesses to the empty tomb, unless it were true? Even further, why would we be told that the male disciples reacted by belittling the women and accusing them of spreading tales—basically gossip (see Luke 24:11)? These are examples of what scholars call the principle of embarrassment—that it is unlikely that authors will embarrass their heroes without very good reasons. But the texts clearly report these embarrassing accounts.

On the other hand, if you want to evidence something as important as the empty tomb, and you are as free with your sources as some scholars think, why not simply make up a story that says that the men found the empty tomb, so that their testimony would more readily be received? And even if you use the women, certainly do not make the later leaders of the church, the male disciples, criticize the women. That would mean that those who took Jesus’s place were badly mistaken. But the disciples must be trusted for their wise counsel.

This is all backwards and a horrible way to establish your case—unless it is precisely what happened! These are some of the reasons why scholars take so seriously the “embarrassing” female testimony concerning finding the vacated tomb.

Another reason to accept the empty tomb is that the city of Jerusalem should have been the very last place chosen for such a report if it were not so. Why? Both because the church was born in this city and there were many enemies who opposed the message. An afternoon walk to the tomb by either friend or foe could either verify or falsify the claim. If the tomb were not empty, how often could the claim have been disproven?

Some will object that the story of the women visiting the tomb does not surface until the Gospel of Mark, about thirty-five or forty years after the events. But we must not miss something important here. The predominant view of afterlife among the Jews of this day is clearly that of bodily resurrection. So how could the disciples have gotten away with proclaiming that Jesus had risen and appeared to them after his death if the stone still remained in front of his tomb? Anyone who checked would disprove the entire enterprise in one easy step!

We will just mention one more argument for the empty tomb. Ancient historian Paul Maier reminds us, “Many facts from antiquity rest on just one ancient source, while two or three sources in agreement generally render the fact unimpeachable.” But the empty tomb is attested by between three and six independent sources, both in the Gospels and elsewhere. This is simply excellent evidence by ancient standards.

So for these and many other reasons, that Jesus’s burial tomb was empty very shortly afterwards is the best explanation for the data. How does the Talpiot hypothe­sis explain this data?

The Talpiot Tomb versus Jesus’s Traditional Burial and Empty Tomb

According to the Talpiot hypothesis, Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion and was buried initially in a tomb, for perhaps a year, waiting for his flesh to rot. Then later, his bones would have been reburied in the Talpiot family tomb in the ossuary that bears his name.

According to James Tabor, a likely scenario would involve Jesus’s original but temporary burial in a private tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, basically as the Gospels teach. But then someone, likely Joseph himself, would have moved the body quite soon afterward. This has nothing to do with “stealing” the body of Jesus. According to this view, Jesus’s body was simply moved to a different tomb in an orderly fashion. Then, after the flesh had decayed, his bones would have been placed in the Talpiot ossuary.

But this appears to involve a rather bizarre scenario that would never have been concocted unless one were trying specifically to bridge the two stories and make the Talpiot tomb the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth. It certainly does not make the best sense of what we know about Jesus’s burial.

To begin, why would Joseph rebury the body in the same sort of tomb that Jesus’s body had already been placed in? One could postulate that he simply wanted to keep the first one open for his own family or for other personal reasons, but the point we made above is that we would work with the data that are widely recognized by scholars, unless we have strong reasons for doing otherwise. But we clearly have no good reasons to think that Jesus’s body was reburied within a day or so after his death but before the third burial in the ossuary, unless the entire point is to get Jesus’s bones into the Talpiot tomb! There is simply no data that could establish this scenario.

Before moving on, one other issue needs to be mentioned. Biblical archaeologist Jodi Magness concludes that one can accept the explanation that Jesus was raised from the dead, or one can postulate that Jesus’s body was reburied the most common way that it was done in first-century Judea: in a trench grave. This would involve placing the shrouded body in a rectangular opening in the earth. But “whatever explanation one prefers . . . his bones could not have been collected in an ossuary, at least not if we follow the Gospel accounts.”

So if the most common kind of reburial was employed, this would fail to account for the decay of the body, making its reburial a year or so later impossible. Jesus’s flesh and bones would have been destroyed long before an ossuary burial would occur. There would be nothing left to rebury!

Tabor is not sure whether or not Joseph would have told others about his re­burial. But on the one scenario, would Joseph, an honorable man who was just trying to do the best thing for Jesus, never have informed anyone of his decision? At the very least, it is highly unlikely that he moved Jesus’s body by himself. So, no one witnessed the removal, especially when Joseph was not even trying to be secretive about it? And assuming that he got help, perhaps from more than one other person, what prevents them from sharing that incredibly important information? If everyone kept it hidden for some reason, especially if they never told anyone, including Jesus’s mother and family, now the hypothesis seems to have migrated into some form of conspiracy and fraud. It becomes reminiscent of the old Egyptian stories that those who buried the pharaohs had to be killed so as not to divulge the whereabouts of the tombs!

So, because of these as well as other serious problems, let’s suppose that Joseph told Jesus’s family that he had moved the body. This seems most natural, after all, or even required, since if Jesus’s bones showed up later in the family tomb, with his name clearly scratched on the outside of the ossuary, we can assume that many family members would have been quite aware of it!

It makes the most sense that Joseph would have informed them before he actually moved the body. After all, in any culture and time, would a man who appears to be virtually unknown to a family simply move their son’s or brother’s body and never tell them beforehand? This imposition would seem to be simply incredible!

But now it is very difficult to understand why the women, including Jesus’s mother Mary, would go to the vacated tomb on Sunday morning and think it is significant that Jesus’s body was no longer there! And even if Joseph straightened out the matter upon hearing of their mistake or at some time later, further serious problems would ensue, such as the rise of even their initial faith in the resurrection. But we will save some of these for the next portion of our discussion.

The empty tomb is such a problem for Tabor that when he gets to some of the sticky questions, presumably like these, he simply “punts” and says that we can say no more because of the theological nature of the Gospels. Not only is this assertion problematic in terms of the most recent New Testament studies, but by this time in the discussion Tabor has already borrowed from the Gospels whenever he wants to make the points he needs. For example, he assumes the general crucifixion and burial scenarios, the person of Joseph of Arimathea, the time of the day and the hasty nature of Jesus’s burial, the nature of the rock tomb and the stone rolled in front of it, and on and on. But when these exact same sources destroy his hypothesis, he opts out of the process!

It must be noted here that perhaps the major problem so far for the Talpiot reburial hypothesis is that the evidence for the empty tomb is so strong. Indeed, Tabor concedes it, saying that it is too difficult to make sense of the data without this truth. But as we have seen, the empty tomb alone plays havoc with the Talpiot thesis. The following problems have to be solved, without any evidence on their behalf:

The Resurrection Appearances of Jesus

We have said that whether they consider themselves liberal, moderate, or conservative, scholars often agree on a fair number of details from the life of Jesus and the beginning of the early church. For example, the vast majority of scholars today think, at the very least, that Jesus’s disciples along with others thought that they had seen appearances of the risen Jesus.

Why is this crucial fact conceded by virtually all scholars, even skeptics? There are many reasons, but here are several major ones. The starting point is almost always (1) Paul’s eyewitness testimony that he had seen the risen Jesus, converting him from a life of persecuting Christian believers (1 Cor 9:1; 15:8–10). Equally important is that (2) this is set in the context of the early creedal material that Paul had received and passed on to others (1 Cor 15:3–7). Most critical scholars think that this information dates from immediately after the crucifixion and that Paul received it in the early to mid-30s from Peter and James the brother of Jesus during Paul’s visit to Jerusalem (Gal 1:13–20).

Further (3) Paul took great care to check out his gospel message again with Peter, James the brother of Jesus, and John, and they confirmed his gospel, adding nothing (Gal 2:1–10). (4) Paul testified that the other apostles were teaching the same message that he was regarding the resurrection appearances of Jesus (1 Cor 15:11–14).

Other reasons also point to the disciples’ conviction that they had seen the risen Jesus. (5) Many other creedal texts that date from the earliest period of Christianity also confirm these conclusions. (6) James the brother of Jesus was an unbelieving skeptic until he thought that he saw an appearance of the risen Jesus (1 Cor 15:7). (7) The disciples were willing to die specifically for their message of the resurrection of Jesus, which demonstrates that they were totally convinced it was true. (8) The empty tomb, discussed above, indicates that what happened to Jesus happened to his body, so this also points in the direction of actual appearances of the risen Jesus.

These eight arguments are also accepted by most scholars, and they point quite strongly to the fact that we have been addressing: the earliest disciples were utterly convinced that they had witnessed appearances of the risen Jesus. Further, most scholars agree that alternative attempts to explain away the resurrection on natural grounds also fail. If this is so, then the disciples were correct about what they thought they had seen: appearances of the risen Jesus.

In other words, the evidence indicates that the disciples thought that Jesus was alive and that they had seen him. If natural events do not explain these experiences, then the resurrection appearances become the best explanation. So the experiences plus the absence of natural alternatives equals the resurrection appearances!

We should mention once again that we are not saying that these facts are true simply because they are reported in the New Testament. If that were the basis for these events, then skeptical scholars who reject the inspiration or even the reliability of Scripture would presumably also reject these data. But virtually all scholars think that the disciples had real experiences that they thought were Jesus’s resurrection appearances. It is rare to discover any scholars who deny this. That is because, as we said above, there are many reasons to accept these facts as historical. That is why so many scholars agree with them.

The Talpiot Tomb and the Risen Jesus

Therefore, we have to ask how the Talpiot Tomb hypothesis fares against these accredited historical data. It did not do a very good job of answering the burial data. How does it address the subject of the resurrection appearances? My contention is that it does an even poorer job here.

According to any burial scenario that we have mentioned above, Mary the mother of Jesus must have known, sooner or later, that Jesus had been reburied and later had his bones placed in an ossuary in the family tomb. Thus she would know that his body, at least, had not been raised from the dead. I argued above that it makes by far the most sense that if Joseph of Arimathea had reburied Jesus’s body, then Jesus’s family would necessarily have to have known where to find the bones in order to rebury them later in the family tomb. But it also makes the best sense that he informed them before he moved the body.

But if this was so, as we mentioned above, the women, including Mary and Mary Magdalene, would now have had no reason to go to the old tomb on Sunday morning to finish the burial, which had already been completed by Joseph. Nor would they be surprised to find the tomb empty. But now we encounter the next problem—what did the two Marys think when they and the other women saw Jesus? We might be reminded here that even very critical scholars take this claim very seriously. Needless to say, the conviction of the appearance would collide with the knowledge that Jesus’s body, at that very moment, lay dead in another tomb.

Though it is unlikely that Joseph, a fairly obscure follower of Jesus, would decide on his own to move the body without telling the family and friends of Jesus, what if he did wait until later to inform them? This still does not dissolve the problem of the appearances to the women. Not only would they in all likelihood be present in the groups to which Jesus appeared (see Luke 24:33; John 20:17–18), but they are specifically mentioned as being present at the end of the forty days of Jesus’s appearances right after the ascension (Acts 1:14). Even without these texts, to think that female disciples like the two Marys would not be present when Jesus appeared during this time is simply shortsighted.

The point is that there is absolutely no question from the texts we have that Jesus’s mother Mary and Mary Magdalene were believers, thought they had also seen the risen Jesus and supported the efforts of the early church. Yet, if within a year or so (at the very longest) Jesus’s bones would be reburied in the Talpiot Tomb, what would happen to their ongoing faith? And as we have said, it is much more likely that they knew that Jesus had been raised bodily from the dead without leaving any bones behind.

Every time they entered the family tomb in order to rebury a family member, they would be confronted with the reality of Jesus’s horrible death by crucifixion. Perhaps they would even have to periodically move or step over Jesus’s ossuary. Since the predominant Jewish view was resurrection of the body, with the ossuaries themselves being a pointer to this ongoing belief in the importance of the human bones, how could the women go on believing that Jesus had been raised from the dead? And then what becomes of their firm belief that they had seen him alive after his death?

With James the brother of Jesus we have a different twist to the problem. As the presumed head of the family after the death of Jesus, he too would have known where the family reburial tomb was located and that Jesus’s name was displayed on the outside of the box. James would almost have had to repeatedly trip over, or at least pass by, his brother’s bones to rebury additional family members during the intervening years before his own death. This is highly problematic given the critical scholarly view that James had been converted from skepticism by a resurrection appearance of Jesus, which is also a clear case of the principle of embarrassment mentioned above. He went from believing Jesus was deranged to a profound faith change.

However, as a pious Jew, James knew that Jesus’s “body” was still interred in the family tomb! How, then, could Jesus have been raised from the dead? After all, his brother’s bones were safe in the family tomb awaiting the resurrection! But there are additional problems in James’s case that were not present for the Marys.

Given Jesus’s reburial and then his interment in the ossuary, what would account for James’s conversion from skepticism? And if James did not yet know that his brother’s corpse had simply been moved, what about Jesus’s appearance to him? And even if he had become a believer because of the resurrection appearance, as held by the majority of scholars, then why did he keep believing upon discovering the truth about his brother’s body and bones? After all, a few years after Jesus’s death, James is still the pastor of the church in Jerusalem (Gal 1:18–19; 2:1; Acts 15:13–21). And if James is the author of the epistle, written years after that, the Lord Jesus Christ is still described as “glorious” (Jas 2:1), waiting to come (5:7), and preparing to judge (5:9).

One last item about James should also be mentioned. If the recently discovered James Ossuary is authentic, it might actually work against the Talpiot Tomb hypothe­sis. The ossuary designation of “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus” would arguably indicate that until his death, James was still identified with Christianity. This would confirm both the New Testament witness as well as the testimony of Josephus, who recorded James’s martyrdom in Jerusalem (Ant. 20.9.1). Further, the ossuary inscription is a hint of Jesus’s resurrection, for if James, for any reason, thought that Jesus had not been raised from the dead and was therefore less than the Lord, it would seem that he would no longer be so identified in his death. But once again, this would seem to work against the Talpiot Tomb thesis.

We must move on now to one other very serious problem that the early conviction of resurrection appearances produces for the Talpiot hypothesis. Whenever Jesus’s mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and James found out about the reburial of Jesus’s body, it would have to be no later than a year or so after the crucifixion, as occasioned by the burial of his bones in the Talpiot family tomb. But this would be only a year or so into the life of the Christian church. How could this information possibly stay hidden from the apostles and other early leaders? One would think that the effect on the faith of at least these three early leaders would be devastating!

But as soon as the secret leaked out, how would the early proclamation of the gospel—the deity, death, and resurrection of Jesus—be affected? The truth of Jesus’s reburial would hit the movement right between the eyes at its very center! How would it affect Peter? How about John? How about others?

Then of course, what do we do with Paul’s conversion, based on what he thought was a resurrection appearance of Jesus? With Jesus dead and with his body and bones already reburied by this time, does the Talpiot hypothesis reveal any new insights regarding Paul’s conversion? It would seem that this subject is not even addressed. Therefore, a different approach is needed here. But it is far from clear that there is anything new to say about what changed Paul from a fearsome persecutor to a believer in Jesus Christ. But this change must be accounted for due to the central nature of Paul’s experience and his early resurrection report. One thing to add is that, as a former Pharisee (Phil 3:5–6), it is even more clear that Paul believed in the resurrection of the body, as they did. This is further evidenced from his writings.

Of course, the response might be that this is not a thesis about Paul. But since the Talpiot scenario does propose to be a fairly comprehensive contribution to the question of Christian origins and Jesus’s resurrection in particular, we simply note that the issue of Paul’s conversion is far from being solved in this manner. And as we have said, what happened to Paul is near the center of Christianity. The point is that by not addressing this question well, and thereby emphasizing its lack of response to Paul’s conversion, the Talpiot hypothesis shows that it lacks explanatory power—a key ingredient of historical research. Therefore, it is weakened further.

However, all the evidence we have strongly opposes the Talpiot thesis here, and very firmly so. For example, during that initial meeting in Jerusalem mentioned above (Gal 1:18–20), perhaps six years after the crucifixion, Paul, Peter, and even James (who knew the truth about Jesus at least years earlier) met to discuss their shared Christian hope. Fourteen years later, they all met again, this time along with John, in order to discuss the nature of the gospel, concerning which they agreed. The result was a renewed effort to continue their missionary effort with more zeal than ever (Gal 2:1–10).

There is not the slightest sign that any of them thought that they might be mistaken or were less than totally committed to the truth of this message. Indeed, very early first-century sources tell us that James, Paul, and Peter died as martyrs for the gospel that they preached, which included the central truth of Jesus’s resurrection. This means, at the very least, that they believed their gospel message to the very end of their lives. This is simply devastating evidence against the Talpiot thesis.

We must add quickly here what we are not saying. We are not saying that those who hold to the Talpiot thesis will have nothing whatsoever to say. They will no doubt come up with some ideas that address a few of the many concerns raised in this appendix. But the key here is whether their scenarios are of the what if or could be types of “solutions,” like what Tabor presents, or if their scenarios follow the historical evidence that we know. Because as we have said, the evidence opposes them at virtually every turn. That is precisely why the almost-wholesale scholarly reaction is to reject their thesis.

One response that they have already made is to argue that Christians can still hold to a spiritual resurrection without believing that Jesus’s body was actually raised from the dead. But the problems with such a scenario are simply immense. This presupposes that the Talpiot Tomb supposals are established when they are hardly even live options after everything is said and done. Further, this was not the view of the New Testament writers, and we must account for their teachings due to the powerful evidence in favor of them.

From the beginning, the earliest proclamation was the unwavering belief that Jesus had appeared to his followers—that he was seen by them. Further, the latest indications are that the Greek words that they used always meant that it was the body that was raised, not the spirit alone. The words were used in this way by ­everyone—pagans, Jews, and Christians alike. So, the claim definitely was not that he was somehow spiritually alive. Rather, both individuals and groups claimed to have seen him, and this is hardly even questioned in the critical scholarly literature. The point is that we must account for the teachings themselves, not invent another scenario instead. Since the data we have supports this view, it simply must be addressed, not sidestepped. So, the spiritual resurrection claim fails from the outset.

Now we must summarize the issue here from this treatment above. We must add to the earlier list of burial problems for the Talpiot hypothesis, this time from the known historical facts regarding the disciples’ conviction that they had seen the risen Jesus, including their subsequent transformations and martyrdoms for the gospel message. Here is the other half of the major problems:

Conclusion

The Talpiot Tomb hypothesis fails on virtually every major claim that it makes. Scarcely has a view ever been confronted by more major refutations than this one. And seldom has the scholarly community—skeptical, liberal, moderate, and conservative alike—joined ranks and reacted with almost a single voice. In fact, a quick survey indicates that critical scholars seem to be leading the charge even more than their evangelical counterparts. “You are refuted by the known evidence” could be the clarion cry that has arisen time and again. The downright disgust with which several of these critical scholars have retorted has been surprising. In light of virtually all the facts that formulate the starting point for contemporary scholarship, there can be very little doubt that the Talpiot hypothesis was tried in the scholarly courts and found wanting!

A Final Question: A Spiritual Resurrection?

The Talpiot hypothesis does not rule out actual resurrection appearances of Jesus, except to argue that such events would not involve Jesus’s exact same body that had been crucified. We will address two issues here: Could Jesus still have been raised from the dead? And what sort of resurrection appearances do the data most support?

Was Jesus Raised from the Dead?

We addressed this question in some detail in the latest discussion. Although brief, eight lines of evidence were suggested that are accepted by the vast majority of scholars. Additionally, many more detailed arguments were referenced in the notes. These separate strands produce a tight, detailed historical argument for the resurrection. Such data have changed the contemporary critical view in the direction of this event. Truly, nothing of this nature exists in other religious literature.

Here we simply want to add an addendum to that discussion. All lines of evidence argue that Jesus’s disciples thought that they had seen the risen Jesus. Virtually nothing from this time is more readily recognized by scholars. Although it would not be the traditional Christian answer, I simply want to make the point here that if Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared to his followers, either in a transformed body or even as a glorified spiritual being, he would still actually have been raised from the dead. Thus, the Talpiot hypothesis, even if true, decisively fails to disprove Jesus’s resurrection. All the data show that Jesus was seen again after his death, and since natural theses have failed, the resurrection is strongly warranted. But unfortunately for the Talpiot view, their position fails on its own merits, for dozens of reasons.

How Did Jesus Appear?

Even by postulating the prospect of a spiritual resurrection, the Talpiot hypothesis fails. Not only have its supporters not ruled out an actual resurrection, as just mentioned, but an incredible amount of data point to Jesus being raised bodily, in the same body that was crucified, although there were definitely some incredibly wonderful changes.

Here we will be able only to list some of these arguments. It is crucial to bear in mind that we are only asking about the mode of Jesus’s appearance. The entire argument turns on what the early sources taught with regard to what was seen. Simply asked, did they think Jesus’s raised body appeared? Or was he a disembodied, glorious spirit?

Outlined Arguments for Jesus’s Bodily Resurrection Appearances

Notes

Amos Kloner, “A Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries in East Talpiyot, Jerusalem,” ‘Atiquot 29 (1996): 15.

James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 23.

Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 3–8.

Jodi Magness, “Has the Tomb of Jesus Been Discovered?,” SBL Forum, February 2007, http://www.sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=640.

Tabor provides details in Jesus Dynasty, 8; Christopher A. Rollston, “Prosopography and the Talpiyot Yeshua Family Tomb: Pensées of a Paleographer,” SBL Forum, March 13, 2007, http://www.sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=649.

Magness, “Tomb of Jesus.”

Magness, 2–4.

Jacobovici and Pellegrino, Jesus Family Tomb, chap. 4.

Kloner, “Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries,” 17–19. Cf. also Rollston, “Prosopography”; Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 23.

James Tabor, “The Top Twenty Fictions Related to the Talpiot ‘Jesus Family’ Tomb,” TaborBlog, February 17, 2018, https://jamestabor.com/the-top-twenty-fictions-related-to-the-talpiot-jesus-family-tomb/.

Jacobovici and Tabor in The Lost Tomb of Jesus: A Critical Look, interview by Ted Koppel, Discovery Channel, aired March 4, 2007.

Jacobovici and Pellegrino, Jesus Family Tomb, 168. Cf. also Stuart Laidlaw, “Christ’s Tomb Found? Canadian Filmmaker Claims Burial Boxes Belonged to Christ’s Family,” Toronto Star, February 25, 2007, https://www.thestar.com/news/christs-tomb-found/­article_dd08a8fa-4d50-5ae0-977b-6dd0f7e1e215.html.

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2003), chaps. 56, 58.

Jacobovici and Pellegrino, Jesus Family Tomb, esp. 76, 95.

Brown provides another similarity here in Da Vinci Code, 249.

Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 33.

Jacobovici and Pellegrino, Jesus Family Tomb, 210.

Jacobovici and Pellegrino, 182, 188.

James Tabor, email to select colleagues and friends, February 28, 2007.

Tabor email.

Joe D’Mello, “The Correct Interpretation of Dr. Andrey Feuerverger’s 1:600 Odds Calculation,” NT Blog, March 2, 2007, https://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/correct-interpretation-of-dr-andrey.html.

James Tabor, “The Talpiot Jesus Tomb: An Overview,” The Jesus Dynasty Blog, March 24, 2007. No longer accessible.

Tabor, “Talpiot Jesus Tomb.”

Laidlaw, “Christ’s Tomb Found?”

“Theological Considerations,” Discovery Channel “Tomb of Jesus” web page (2007?). Article no longer available.

“Theological Considerations.” The italics were original, and the last two sentences were written in bold type.

Jacobovici and Tabor, Lost Tomb of Jesus.

Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 230–33, 262–66; both quotations are from 264.

This was one of the real surprises after the story aired.

Tal Ilan, quoted in Christopher Mims, “Special Report: Has James Cameron Found Jesus’s Tomb or Is It Just a Statistical Error?,” Scientific American, March 2, 2007, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jesus-talpiot-tomb-or-statistical-error/.

Stephen Pfann, “The Improper Application of Statistics in ‘The Lost Tomb of Jesus,’” University of the Holy Land, 1–2. This publication was previously found on the University of the Holy Land website but is no longer available.

Richard Bauckham, “The Alleged ‘Jesus Family Tomb,’” Chrisendom (blog), March 1, 2007, http://blog.christilling.de/2007/03/; Bauckham’s ossuary statistics are also listed in Ben Witherington, “The Jesus Tomb? ‘Titanic’ Talpiot Tomb Theory Sunk from the Start,” Ben Witherington (blog), February 26, 2007, http://blog.christilling.de/2007/03/. See also Joe Zias, “Deconstructing the Second and Hopefully Last Coming of Simcha and the BAR Crowd,” http://www.joezias.com/tomb.html. Unfortunately, the URL for Zias’s article is no longer active.

“Dominus Flevit,” 2 (downloaded on March 22, 2007); email from Michael S. Heiser, March 13, 2007.

James H. Charlesworth, “Reflections on the So-Called ‘Lost Tomb of Jesus,’” February 7, 2007, 1.

Stephen Pfann, quoted in Karen Matthews, “Documentary Shows Possible Jesus Tomb,” Associated Press, February 26, 2007, 2. Article no longer available. See ­NBC11.­com, “Director Claims Discovery of Jesus’ Tomb,” February 26, 2007, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20070303084823/http://www.nbc11.com/entertainment/11116378/­detail.html.

Steve Caruso, “The Aramaic Blog,” February 29, 2007, 3; also listed on “NT Gateway” site of Mark Goodacre of Duke University.

Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 23.

Bauckham, “Jesus Family Tomb”; Pfann, “Improper Application of Statistics”; Ben Witherington, “Problems Multiply for Jesus Tomb Theory,” Ben Witherington (blog), February 28, 2007, http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/02/problems-multiple-for-jesus-tomb-theory.html.

Tabor, “Talpiot Jesus Tomb.”

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Together at Last?” (a review of Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino’s The Jesus Family Tomb), America: The Jesuit Review, April 9, 2007, https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2007/04/09/together-last; Witherington, “Problems Multiply,” 2.

Ben Witherington, “The Jesus Tomb Show—Biblical Archaeologists Reject Discovery Channel Show’s Claims,” Ben Witherington (blog), March 5, 2007, http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/03/jesus-tomb-show-biblical-archaeologists.html.

Fitzmyer, “Together at Last?”

Fitzmyer, “Together at Last?”; Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Witherington, “Jesus Tomb?”

Bauckham, “Jesus Family Tomb.”

Witherington, “Jesus Tomb?”; Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Stephen Pfann, “Mary Magdalene Is Now Missing: A Corrected Reading of Rahmani Ossuary 701,” SBL Forum, March 2007, 7, https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/­Pfann.pdf.

James Tabor, “Tabor Responds to Phann,” SBL Forum, March 2007, https://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=654.

Francois Bovon, “The Tomb of Jesus,” SBL Forum, March, 2007, https://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=656.

Bauckham, “Jesus Family Tomb.”

Mark Goodacre, “The Statistical Case for the Identity of the ‘Jesus Family Tomb,’” NT Blog, March 1, 2007, https://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/.

Mike Licona, “First Person: Has the Family Tomb of Jesus Been Found?,” Baptist Press, February 27, 2007, https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/first-person-has-the-family-tomb-of-jesus-been-found/.

Goodacre, “Statistical Case.”

Zias, “Deconstructing.”

For examples of those who mention this, see Zias, “Deconstructing”; Chris Rosebrough, “Archaeological Identity Theft: The Lost Tomb of Jesus Fails to Make the Grade,” Extreme Theology, February 26, 2007, https://www.extremetheology.com/2007/02/archeological_i.html.

Laidlaw, “Christ’s Tomb Found?”

Laidlaw, “Christ’s Tomb Found?”

Witherington, “Jesus Tomb?”

Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Witherington, “Jesus Tomb?”; Licona, “First Person.”

Kloner, “Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries,” 15–22; David Horovitz, “Kloner: A Great Story, but Nonsense,” Jerusalem Post, February 27, 2007 , https://www.jpost.com/israel/kloner-a-great-story-but-nonsense; Zias, “Deconstructing”; personal emails from Joe Zias, March 1, 2007, and from Amos Kloner, March 3, 2007.

Kloner, “Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries” 21.

Stephen Goranson as quoted by Mark Goodacre, NT Blog, February 27, 2007, 1–2.

Tabor comment from February 27, 2007 as quoted in Christopher Heard, “They’re Baaaa-aaaack,” February 25, 2007, http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=539. This URL is no longer active.

Mark Goodacre, NT Blog, February 27, 2007, 2.

Jonathan Reed, in The Lost Tomb of Jesus: A Critical Look, interview by Ted Koppel, Discovery Channel, aired March 4, 2007.

Ben Witherington, “The Smoking Gun—Tenth Talpiot Ossuary Proved to Be Blank,” Ben Witherington (blog), March 1, 2007, http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/03/smoking-gun-tenth-talpiot-ossuary_9874.html.

Zias, “Deconstructing.”

Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Koppel, Lost Tomb of Jesus.

Zias, “Deconstructing.”

Kloner, “Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries,” esp. notes 2, 22.

Tabor, “Talpiot Jesus Tomb.”

Rollston, “Prosopography,” note 29. Pfann agrees in “Improper App­li­cation of Statistics.”

Zias, “Deconstructing.”

Witherington, “Jesus Tomb?”

Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 26, repeated on 27.

Carney Matheson, in Christopher Mims, “Says Scholar Whose Work Was Used in the Upcoming Jesus Tomb Documentary: ‘I Think It’s Completely Mishandled. I Am Angry.’” Scientific American, March 2, 2007, http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=says_scholar_whose_work_was_used_in_the&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1. No longer accessible. Zias, “Deconstructing,” concurs in this evaluation regarding the DNA testing.

Goodacre, “Statistical Case.”

Andrey Feuerverger, “Dear Statistical Colleagues,” March 12, 2007, the quotations appear on 1, 2. Originally posted on Feuerverger’s academic website at http://fisher.ustat.toronto.edu/andrey/OfficeHrs.txt. Unfortunately, this link no longer works.

Andrey Feuerverger, in The Lost Tomb of Jesus: A Critical Look, interview with Ted Koppel, Discovery Channel, aired March 4, 2007.

Feuerverger, “Dear Statistical Colleagues,” 1.

D’Mello, “Correct Interpretation.”

Fitzmyer, “Review of The Jesus Family Tomb.”

Goodacre, “Statistical Case.”

Tabor email, 2–3.

“Dominus Flevit,” 2 (downloaded on March 22, 2007); email from Michael S. Heiser, March 13, 2007.

Stephen Pfann, “Improper Application of Statistics.” Pfann also argues the following issues: most ancient Jewish tombs have already been looted, not all ossuaries have been saved even after being discovered, and Rahmani notes that only about 25 percent of ossuaries have names on them.

Zias, “Deconstructing.”

Kloner, “Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries,” 22.

Rollston, “Prosopography.”

Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Zias, “Deconstructing.”

Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Kloner, “Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries,” 21.

Tabor, “Talpiot Jesus Tomb.”

Pfann, “Improper Application of Statistics.” For some of the scholars who agree that Mariamene is not Mary Magdalene, see Magness, “Tomb of Jesus”; Rollston, “Prosopography”; Goodacre, “Statistical Case”; Michael Barber, “7 Reasons Cameron’s Theory is Sinking,” February 27, 2007, 4; Rosebrough, “Archaeological Identity Theft.”

Carney Matheson, in The Lost Tomb of Jesus: A Critical Look, interview by Ted Koppel, Discovery Channel, aired March 4, 2007.

Goodacre, “Statistical Case.”

Rollston, “Prosopography.”

L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalog of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1994), no. 705.

Jacobovici and Pellegrino, Jesus Family Tomb, 78.

“Statistics Overview” from Andrey Feuerverger’s analysis, Discovery Channel website. Article no longer available.

Horovitz, “Kloner”; Witherington, “Jesus Tomb Show,” 4.

Randy Ingermanson, “Jesus Family Tomb: A Statistical Analysis of the ‘Jesus Equation,’” Randy Ingermanson: First Century Jewish Fiction (blog), accessed October 31, 2023, https://www.ingermanson.com/mad-science/jesus-family-tomb/statistics/.

Jacobovici and Pellegrino, Jesus Family Tomb, 75, also 77.

Cf. Ingermanson, “Jesus Family Tomb: A Statistical Analysis,” with Jacobovici and Pellegrino, Jesus Family Tomb, 82.

Ingermanson, “Jesus Family Tomb: A Statistical Analysis.”

Jacobovici and Pellegrino, Jesus Family Tomb, 78.

Feuerverger, “Dear Statistical Colleagues.”

Goodacre, “Statistical Case.”

Examples include Magness, “Tomb of Jesus”; Goodacre, “Statistical Case”; Witherington, “Jesus Tomb?”; Ingermanson, “Jesus Family Tomb: A Statistical Analysis”; Rosebrough, “Archaeological Identity Theft”; Barber, “7 Reasons,” 1–2; cf. Rollston, “Prosopography.”

See Ingermanson, “Jesus Family Tomb: A Statistical Analysis.”

Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Tabor, “Talpiot Jesus Tomb.”

Magness, “Tomb of Jesus.”

Mark Goodacre, quoted in Simcha Jacobovici, “Probability,” The Lost Tomb of Jesus, https://www.jesusfamilytomb.com/evidence/probability.html.

Goodacre, “Statistical Case.”

See esp. Rollston, “Prosopography.”

Ingermanson, “Jesus Family Tomb: A Statistical Analysis.”

Rosebrough, “Archaeological Identity Theft.”

Ingermanson, “Jesus Family Tomb: A Statistical Analysis.’”

Ingermanson, “Jesus Family Tomb: Bayes Theorem and the Probability of Authenticity,” Randy Ingermanson: Bayes Theorem and the Probability of Authenticity (blog), accessed October 31, 2023, https://www.ingermanson.com/mad-science/jesus-family-tomb/probability/.

Personal email from Randy Ingermanson, March 26, 2007.

Incredibly, in the article “Jesus Family Tomb: Bayes Theorem and the Probability of Authenticity,” Ingermanson provides an Excel spreadsheet where interested readers can answer the same “fuzzy factors” and create their own odds!

Kloner, “Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries,” 21.

Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Magness as quoted in Mims, “Special Report”; Witherington, “Jesus Tomb?”; Licona, “First Person.”

Alan Segal as quoted in Lisa Miller and Joanna Chen, “The Tomb of Jesus Christ?,” Newsweek, March 5, 2007, 3.

Magness, “Tomb of Jesus.”

Segal as quoted by Miller and Chen, “Tomb of Jesus Christ?,” 3; Magness as quoted in Mims, “Special Report,” 3; Licona, “First Person.”

James D. Tabor, “Two Burials of Jesus of Nazareth and the Talpiot Yeshua Tomb,” Bible History Daily, March 14, 2007, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/­archaeology-today/biblical-archaeology-topics/two-burials-of-jesus-of-nazareth-and-the-talpiot-yeshua-tomb/.

Zias, “Deconstructing.”

Witherington, “Problems Multiply.”

Magness, “Tomb of Jesus.”

For just two examples of this approach as applied to the resurrection of Jesus, see Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996); Habermas with Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004). These and other texts may be consulted for much of the discussion in this chapter.

Matt 28:11–15; Justin, Dial. 108; Tertullian, Spect. 30. Also, a Jewish writing from much later, the Toledot Yeshu, presents a similar account; see Habermas, Historical Jesus, 205–6; cf. Paul L. Maier, In the Fullness of Time: A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), 200–202.

For many details on the Jewish view, see especially N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), chaps. 3–5.

Maier, In the Fullness of Time, 197.

When scholars count source attestation, they do not simply count the Gospels as four independent texts. They count what they perceive to be the number of different reports from which the various Gospel accounts were derived. On the empty tomb, depending on the scholar, we have anywhere from three to six very early sources. Besides the three to four sources that scholars think they can find in the Gospel texts at this point, we also have the potential early creedal statement in Acts 13:29–30, 35–37 and the implications of Paul’s early creedal report in 1 Cor 15:3–5. This does not even count the later but still useful reports by Justin Martyr and Tertullian.

Tabor, “Two Burials.”

Magness, “Tomb of Jesus.”

See Magness, “Tomb of Jesus.”

Tabor, “Two Burials.”

Tabor, “Two Burials.”

For many details besides the sources already named, see Gary R. Habermas, “Experiences of the Risen Jesus: The Foundational Historical Issue in the Early Proclamation of the Resurrection,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 45 (2006): 288–97; Gary R. Habermas, “Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What Are Critical Scholars Saying?,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3 (2005): 135–53.

For this list in a slightly different form, see Habermas, “Experiences of the Risen Jesus,” 289–93.

Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 454; Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 2:84.

Compare Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 with 1 Cor 15:7.

As noted above, this is disputed. See Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III, The Brother of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

The epistle refers to Jesus as “Lord” and “Christ” (Jas 1:1; 2:1). See the thesis of Shanks and Witherington referenced in the prior note.

See Habermas and Licona, Case for the Resurrection, chap. 9.

Jesus’s bones should have been buried in the family tomb about five years earlier.

For James’s martyrdom, see Josephus, Ant. 20.9.1. For Peter’s and Paul’s martyrdom, see Clement of Rome, Corinthians 5.

Especially in Tabor, “Two Burials.”

We must remember here what we said at the outset of this appendix. Our point is assuredly not that their view is wrong because the New Testament says so. The point is that with all the evidence we have in support of the historical facts that we are using here, those who subscribe to the Talpiot thesis are mistaken precisely because their hypothesis is refuted by that data at every turn. This is why virtually all scholars have reacted so strongly against their ideas.

For example, see the volume by Habermas and Licona, Case for the Resurrection.

For the hallucination and other similar views, see Gary R. Habermas, “Explaining Away Jesus’ Resurrection: The Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories,” Christian Research Journal 23 (2001): 26–31, 47–49.

The sources in the previous chapter will also provide additional details for these points.

Many of our points concern Paul’s view, for it is by far the chief critical focus. That the Gospels teach bodily resurrection appearances is not challenged.

In Acts 23:6–9, Luke reports that Paul claimed to still be a Pharisee, specifically identifying with their view of bodily resurrection.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 32–552.

Robert H. Gundry, Sōma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), esp. chap. 13: “The Sōma in Death and Resurrection.” Cf. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 263–64. For one of the most careful and detailed studies of the relevant issues here, see John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 1, 54–55, 591–93, 618, 623, plus numerous other considerations throughout this excellent text.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 83; cf. Michael Licona, “The Risen Jesus: Casper or Corporeal?,” in Buried Hopes or Risen Savior: The Search for Jesus’ Tomb, ed. Charles L. Quarles (Nashville: B&H, 2008); cf. Dale C. Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (London: T&T Clark, 2021), 130–36; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 349–53; Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis, 591, Gundry, Sōma in Biblical Theology, 165–66.

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