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 beginning7
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 apparently were not, 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.8 We will dispute momentarily whether all these names existed as a single family under one roof, which it now seems that 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 these 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 in the last chapter.9 Apparently the Talpiot cluster of names is not so rare as supposed.
Stephen Pfann says that the 600:1 probability that the Talpiot Tomb belonged to Jesus' 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 Caiphas ossuary held the remains of several people).10 In the last chapter we already recounted Zias' published results of a Jewish tomb where 15 ossuaries contained the remains of 88 different people! Accordingly, Zias thinks that the Talpiot Hypothesis statistics were “rigged.”11 That multiple persons were buried specifically in the Talpiot ossuaries seems to be more than clear. Kloner estimated that 17 individuals were buried in the ten ossuaries!12
The “Caiaphas Ossuary.” Caiaphas was the name of the chief priest at the time of Jesus' crucifixion. This ossuary was found near Jerusalem in 1990 and contained the bones of several people. Photo: David Rubinger//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
Further, as noted by Rollston, rock tombs held the remains of extended families, including one's uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents.13 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.14 After all, Matthew claims that Jesus was buried in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea (Matt. 27:60), 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.”15 Witherington argues that the three languages found on the ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb indicate that it was probably multi-generational.16 We might add that that the large number of persons inside the Talpiot Tomb (35 people according to Kloner but only a third or so of that according to Tabor17) 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.”18
That Tabor plainly wants to argue otherwise on these points19 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 persons, and over a few or even 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, practically 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.
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 beginning7
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.8 We will dispute momentarily whether all these names existed as a single family under one roof, which it now seems that 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.