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.
The Mariamene ossuary. Photo: Mariana Salzberger, Courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority via Getty Images.
With Mariamene there are at least two main issues: Was she the same person as Mary Magdalene? Was she married to Jesus?
• We argued in the last chapter 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, 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.”20
• 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.”21
• 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.”22
Was Jose the brother of the Jesus buried in the Talpiot Tomb? Since we already have one Joseph in the tomb (Jesus' 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.23 Further, there is also some archaeological evidence for this view, as well. L.Y Rahmani, in the standard scholarly work on Jewish ossuaries that was used by Jacobovici and Pellegrino, said that, “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).”24 But it seems that the only major reason to overlook Rahmani's sensible suggestion is that to claim that it is Jesus' of Nazareth's brother fits far better with the Talpiot Hypothesis.
Inscription on the Matthew ossuary. Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.
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 geneology.25 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.26 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 as with Matthew, many scholars still wanted to make Judah's presence in the tomb a negative factor (also see below).
Inscription on the Jesus ossuary. Photo: Mariana Salzberger, Courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority via Getty Images.
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 the 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 and Kloner noted that there were three or four such ossuaries.27
• Using available listings of first-century names, estimates indicate that, during the time the ossuaries were used, Jerusalem would contain approximately 1008 men named Jesus, who also had a father named Joseph!28 Intriguingly, Pellegrino uses these same figures, including 7,200 men in Jerusalem named Jesus, 1008 of whom would have a Joseph for a father.29 But Ingermanson points out a mathematical error in Pellegrino's figures, dropping his final figures from 2.5 million:1 all the way down to 31:1.30 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 would seem 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.”31
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 family32 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.”33
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.”
“COLLECTIVELY THESE POINTS ARE DEVASTATING, SINCE THE STATISTICAL ANALYSES PRESENTED IN THE FILM ARE BASED ON CERTAIN ASSUMPTIONS MADE ABOUT THESE NAMES.”
JODI MAGNESS
When these negatives are ignored or treated as neutral, we have an “essential problem” and that is why the Talpiot case is “severely flawed.”34 Some of the problems have been alluded to immediately above. Here are the main ones, noted by many scholars35:
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' family. In my opinion, Ingermanson places far too high the suggested chances against Jesus having a son.36 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, we have already said that Matthew was not counted in the second Talpiot computation, but it's 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' brothers are Matthew.37 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.38
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 she 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 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.”39 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,”40 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.”41
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? Was she married to Jesus?