Hate Mail: "They've Got The Bones of Jesus"

The challenge is made to my statement on Monday that they would need positively identified bones of Jesus and his family in order for science to be done refuting the belief that Jesus rose from the dead after the death penalty was imposed on him by the Romans.

But.... oh dear.  If you're going to make claims based on the PR campaign of a cable-TV movie producer, Simha Jacobovici, not a scholar in the relevant disciplines, you should, at the very least, READ THE STORY YOU CITE.   I read your cited article, from the Jerusalem Post (really, the Jerusalem Post) and it doesn't mention bones being analyzed*, it mentions boxes, including that "James brother of Jesus Ossuary" that was being peddled by the same cable TV movie maker, Simha Jacobovici, in the news a few years back.  Claims which were, as the present one, tied to a cable TV "documentary" which Jacobovici was peddling.  I don't recall if the first one was timed for release at the Easter season or not, but I suspect the timing, this time, isn't coincidental.

I will stop here to make up a First Law of this kind of thing, always be wary of archaeological and sciency claims made first in a cable TV "documentary" and the media instead of in a reviewed journal.  Jacobovici is not an archaeologist or a scientist and I've found nowhere is there a claim that he's ever done either of those things or published any findings in them in a reviewed journal.  He is called a "filmmaker-journalist" in the Jerusalem Post story but I don't see anything in his past to warrant the "journalist" title, either.  Though anyone can claim to be a "journalist" these days and take on the misplaced confidence that label carries, misplaced because anyone can claim to be one.

The claims being made are not based on straight forward identification and positive confirmation but are based on evidence and "evidence" of different quality and reliability of authenticity.  Some of the evidence and the "evidence" is turned into a simulation of evidence by asserting connections and identifications that simply aren't warranted.  The claims are that

1. Ossuaries, bone boxes, found in  a tomb discovered in the East Talpiot district of East Jerusalem while they were putting up a hotel in 1980 is the "family tomb" of the family of Jesus, including a wife whose bones are in a box carrying the inscription "Mary" and son whose bones are identified by an inscription on a box “Judah, son of Jesus”.

2. That the ossuary featured in the previous "documentary" and publicity archeo-controversy that was mounted around it, the "James brother of Jesus" ossuary was originally from the same East Talpiot tomb.   The claims, made on the claim of a geologist, Arye Shimron, that his chemical analyses place the "James" box in the Talpiot tomb. Oded Golan, the owner of the box, however, doesn't seem to be especially helpful for that claim, for reasons I'll get to in a while.

3.  That a statistical analysis of the names done by Adrey Feurverger give a very high probability that the names correspond with names from the New Testament accounts of Jesus and and give a slam dunk to the Jesus debunkers and Jacobovici legitimacy as the movie maker who got the biggest scoop of all times.

Only there are some big problems with all of it.   I won't do anything about the claims about the chemical analyses of alleged samples from various ossuaries involved (or not) because they don't seem to have been published and I don't trust the vague, sometimes silly statements made about that in the media.  I will note that actual authorities in the archaeology of the area aren't exactly supportive of the claim.

Critics like Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem district archaeologist at the time, essentially accused Mr. Jacobovici of jumping to conclusions to promote his movie...

... Shimon Gibson was among the Antiquities Authority archaeologists who entered the newly exposed Talpiot Tomb in 1980. He said recently that it was clear that the underground entrance to the tomb had been open since antiquity and that the tomb had filled with soil abruptly as a result of a single quick event — possibly an earthquake.

Dr. Gibson and other archaeologists concluded that tomb raiders had probably been there during the Byzantine period. But he discounted any possibility that the James ossuary had been spirited away when the tomb was uncovered.

“I myself have excavated a handful of tombs that were open and filled with soil,” Dr. Gibson said. “Personally I don’t think the James ossuary has anything to do with Talpiot.”

Still, Dr. Gibson said, the scholarly community was eagerly awaiting the publication of Dr. Shimron’s results in a scientific journal for peer review,

But even if Shimron's claims are true, the entire case rests on the positive identification of the names on the boxes as those of people mentioned in the scriptures and earliest documents of the life of Jesus.  There are no bones that have had DNA extracted from them making positive identifications of who those belonged to, the interpretation of the site is that it was altered, possibly by grave robbers in the medieval period and the result of some kind of catastrophic event that filled the tomb with soil.

A good part of Simha Jacobovici motive in this is to resell the highly dubious claims he made about the "James ossuary".   In order to do that he has to ignore one very important aspect of that.  The James ossuary wasn't found in the Talpiot tomb discovered in 1980, its present day owner said he bought it from an antique shop four years before the tomb was discovered.  You would have to explain how that could have happened before the tomb was even known.  Why some tomb raider would have taken that one box and not the others to sell on the black market is a question I haven't seen asked in any of the discussion about the claims.  If the name "James" is famous, that of "Mary" and certain a "son of Jesus" would be as saleable.  No, they would have been ten if not a hundred times as valuable to a tomb robber.  The "James" ossuary isn't exactly a thing of beauty in the way some of the others pictured in the various stories about this latest publicity push are nicer looking.  I have seen one critique of the claims for the "James" ossuary that noted it was weathered in a way that the others found in the tomb are not.  I have no idea how much of a factor that could be in refuting the claims made by Jacobovici but they are there.

In short, the claims of provenance for that box are far from reliable.  I won't go into the inscription on it and its authenticity, doubted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and some other authorities but supported by others, all based on analysis of the "patina" on the box.  I suspect that such "patina analysis" is not exactly hard science and is based as much on individual interpretation, considering the lack of consensus.  The fact that the judge said the authorities hadn't proved their case accusing the owner of the box with forgery and other charges related to the sales and handling of antiques from the classical period doesn't exactly clear him of suspicion and does nothing to confirm his claims.  It just means the judge didn't buy the case the government made against him.

But, even leaving aside the "James box" the inscription on the "Mary box" isn't exactly a slam dunk for the Jesus debunkers either.  Adrey Feurverger's paper in which he published his statistical analysis says:

This elegantly rendered ossuary (see Figure 1) has multiple possible readings.
Mara, an (absolute) contracted form of (the emphatic) Martha, is a rare name,
these being feminine versions derived from the Aramaic dominant masculine form mar meaning “lord,” “master,” or “honorable person.” The question of whether Mara was intended here as a title, such as “honorable lady,” or whether it was intended only as an alternate (i.e., second) name is disputed. If this inscription were understood as in Hebrew, then Mariamenou would be a diminutive (i.e., endearing) form of Mariamne or Mariamene and the inscription would read “Mariamene [diminutive] the lord/master” provided we also assume also that Mαρα (or [the Hebrew which I don't know how to type])is intended as “lord” or “master” and that “η” is meant as the feminine article “the.” An alternate reading requires that one interpret the stroke between “Mariamenou” and “Mara” as representing not an η, but only a scratch mark; in that case one interpretation is that this ossuary contains the remains of two persons—one called Mariame, and the other called Mara. However, the manner in which these two words run closely together, and on the same line, seems more suggestive of their referring to a single person. Rahmani (1994), pages 14 and 222, reads the inscription as follows: “The stroke between the υ of the first and the μ of the second name probably represents an η, standing here for the usual η και... used in the case of double names...” and he posits that the second name is a contracted form [not a contraction] of “Martha” leading to the reading “Mariamene [diminutive]who is also called Mara.” According to Greek usage of the time, the first word of the inscription is a genitive/possessive form for Mariamene, rendered in a particular diminutive form understood to be an endearment, so that the inscription then translates as “[the ossuary] of Mariamene [diminutive] also known as Mara.” Rahmani’s reading, which is the one we adopt, was accepted by Kloner (1996) and has been corroborated by others in the field.

I'm no expert in New Testament studies but apparently there is no precedence in the documents from that period which would back up that name ever being used for the most popular candidate for a "wife of Jesus" Mary Magdalene and there's absolutely no mention, anywhere of a “Judah, son of Jesus”.  This article says,

But many experts say that statistical case doesn't hold up. For one, almost all the names in the tomb were common at the time. In addition, some of the inscriptions, such as the name for Jesus, are hard to read, said Robert Cargill, a classics and religious studies professor at the University of Iowa in Ames, who was not involved in the study.

What's more, some of the names found on ossuaries from the tomb have no historical precedent — such as "Judah, son of Jesus."

"There's no evidence at all that Jesus had a son at all, let alone a son called Judah," Goodacre said.

One of the boxes is inscribed with what may be "Mariamne" or, alternatively, "Mary and Mara," Goodacre added. While Jacobovici argues that the name corresponds to one of Jesus' followers, Mary Magdalene, early Christians didn't call Mary Magdalene "Mariamne" — rather, she was just called Mariam or Marya, Goodacre said.

When those inconsistencies are also considered, the statistical case for the names matching those of Jesus' family falls apart, Cargill said.

You should want to have at least reliable confirmation that any known document of any reliable antiquity that used that name for any of the named "Marys" of the Bible before taking the claim that they have the bone box of the "wife of Jesus" as anything other than a movie maker on the make and a statistician with a theory to market.   Without that it would seem to me they've got nothing and neither do the rest of the claims made in the article.

The article as a piece of journalism doesn't do anything for the reliability of the reporter or the Jerusalem Post.  It doesn't consult anyone who doesn't have a stake in Jacobovici's movie or who doesn't have a financial link to him, including the geologist Arye Shimron and James Tabor from the University of North Carolina, who they present as if he were an independent scholar confirming the validity of what Jacobovici and Shimron are claiming.   Tabor was a consultant for Jacobovici's 2007 movie and the co-author of a popular book on his claims in 2012.   Tabor, the author of, "The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity,"  has his own highly unorthodox and widely rejected claims concerning Jesus and the earliest movement of his followers which are at odds with those lines which the large majority scholars of the literature and period support.  I haven't read his book but reading the skeptical reviews of it by scholars in the field, it's clear why he'd want to sell this story as well.

Most strikingly in all of this, to me, is that a lot of the guys, you, I suspect included, who are rejoicing in this as positive proof that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, are also the same guys who deny he ever existed.   It seems that in this, as in everything about atheism, you want to have it both ways even as that is a logical impossibility and would have to debunk the authenticity of either this "find" or the others you use when you want to turn Jesus into an historical myth.  But, then, when you don't believe that it's a sin to tell a lie, you don't really value the truth, substituting whatever line gets you what you want as it gets that for you. Which is the reason I believe that what Jesus said was true.   The truth does make a difference, it sets you free.

*  Here is what Jacobovici's statistician has to say about the bones found in the tomb.

The vestibule of the tomb was damaged by the blasting operations that led to its discovery. The tomb had otherwise been covered by earth, apparently undisturbed since antiquity. On the exterior facade above the tomb’s entranceway there was carved in relief a circle beneath an upward pointing
gable—a rare feature. Within the 2.3×2.3 m tomb were six kokhim —two on each of the other three walls—each just over 1.6 m in length, and under 0.5 m in width, deep enough to store two or three ossuaries in each. Within these kokhim a total of ten ossuaries were found, some of them broken. Two ossuary lids, discarded in antiquity, were found beneath the soil fill in the room. Early Roman (Herodian) sherds (i.e., broken pieces of pottery) were also found on the floor which date the site to the late Second Temple period, that is, from the end of the first century BCE or the beginning of the first century CE to approximately 70 CE. Such bones as were within the ossuaries were in an advanced state of disintegration. Two arcosolia (shallow shelves intended for laying out bodies) had been carved in the tomb walls and contained broken and powdered bone remains. Disturbed bones, presumably swept off the arcosolia, were also found on the floor. The golal (blocking stone) to the tomb’s entrance was not found at the site indicating that the tomb had been accessed by robbers in antiquity.

Update:  I don't keep up with the Jerusalem Post but not that long ago it had the reputation of being a right wing rag.  This article is such a piece of unjournalistic junk that it doesn't lead me to believe its quality is reliable, today.