Widow stirs Talpiot tomb tumult as scholars ponder Jesus family bone boxes

Jesus, Mother Mary, and Joseph... sounds rather like my great aunt sputtering in surprise on some April Fools' Day, but this is part of the litany of names scratched on ancient bone-boxes unearthed in a Jerusalem suburb back in 1980 which were at the center of an academic conference which concluded in Jerusalem this afternoon.

The Third Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins was called to evaluate the Talpiot Jesus Family tomb in the academic context of Jewish burial (and reburial) practices in the Second Temple era and Jewish belief in the afterlife. You can already find the tomb on Google Earth and Wikipedia, even though it's been resealed: you'd think by popular demand the academics might give it the nod.

After days of sound and fury amongst preachers and professors, the jury still is out on whether these ossuaries-- labelled Jesus, son of Joseph; Maria (in Aramaic); Mariamne (in Greek); Matthew; Judas, son of Jesus; and Yose, a diminutive of Joseph-- might have anything to do with the remains of Jesus H. Christ. Two of the academicians said no way, two said the 'evidence' was encouraging, and one diffident scientist said more digging must be done, since there is not enough evidence one way or another to rule out a possible link with Jesus of Nazareth. An official report written by the Israeli archeologist Amos Kloner found nothing remarkable in the discovery. The cave, it said, was probably in use by three or four generations of Jews from the beginning of the Common Era.

(See the links at right in the sidebar "Gripes,Hypes & Bones to Pick" for earlier posts and articles about Talpiot.)

The real show-stopper happened when the widow of archaeologist Yosef Gath was called onstage to receive an award for her late husband, who had catalogued the bone boxes back in 1980. (The tomb already had been vandalized by latter-day Crusaders, so there was a limit to what a full-scale dig would have yielded.) She told the audience in Hebrew that her husband had always suspected that the cluster of famous names might be linked to THAT Jesus; but as a holocaust survivor, he was reluctant to unleash a possible backlash onto the Jews with his dramatic find. "The world has changed in our lifetime," she had said, accepting the honors.

Simcha Jacobovici, the Naked Archaeologist for Discovery Channel who'd resurrected the tomb controversy in a broadcast last year, attended the conference. "When she said that, I just started shaking," he confided to journalists. His speculations have not been vindicated yet, though, and some scholars propose reopening an archaeological dig in Talpiot to gain more information.

Some cynical conference-goers thought that the pro Talpiot-buffs had exploited the Israeli widow, and wondered why, if it's the one, not a single tradition or legend had flourished around this humble cave tomb in Jerusalem's 'burbs. "The hypothesis smells a bit bogus to me," sniffed one scholar over falafel and beer afterward.

New Scholarly Scrutiny for Jesus Tomb

Well, well, Jesus is under the scholarly spotlight again.
Biblical archaeologists converge this week in Jerusalem to examine Jewish burial (and reburial) practices in the Second Temple era, to weigh Jewish belief in the afterlife, and pointedly to evaluate the controversial Talpiot "Jesus Family tomb" within this academic context. Scripture and evidence will be pored over by all. Will this yield more heat or just dust?

Ossuaries are usually quite a dry academic subject, but conclusions about these ten bone boxes became a world-wide bone of contention last February when statistical analysis by non-specialists appeared to contradict the New Testament account of resurrection and years of Christian tradition. Why Jesus of Nazareth would be reburied in Jerusalem, not near his family home in Galilee, still is a puzzle, no bones about it. Devout believers cried heresy when scientists question the Bible's account. It's no cruci-fiction, most Christians insist, and suggest that Hollywood hyped a hypothesis to goose its box office and bestseller lists. It's not the money but the fame.

The big brouhaha that arose after last year's claims by Titanic producer James Cameron (a Mason?), the self-dubbed Naked Archaeologist Simcha Jacobovici (an Orthodox Jew), and potboiler author Charles Pellagrino that Jesus of Nazareth lived well past age 33, wed the former prostitute and latter-day Christian leader Mary Magdalene and sired a son named Yehudah may be set off again by this conference. It shines a light on Masonic plots, some suggest. Amos Kloner wrote about the 1980 salvage of a vandalized Talpiot tomb by the Israeli archaeologist Yosef Gath, who was alerted by complaints that boys were kicking ancient skulls in the East Talpiot construction site. Kloner shrugged off the cluster of famous names inscribed on half a dozen of the ossuaries, and took no special care to preserve bone matter, so some may feel obliged to salvage his academic reputation; James Tabor, a Christian scholar from North Carolina who has been touting the Talpiot tomb association with Jesus Christ since archaeologist Joe Zias questioned the Israeli archaeological establishment's dismissal of its importance back in 1996.
Whatever the outcome, the Third Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, funded in part by the communications tycoon George Blumenthal, will be worth watching. Izzy Bee will be there, recording all the thorny fallout. Israelity bites.

Cherrypickers,Gnostic Nasties,Unholy hype

Here is Simcha, the self-dubbed Naked Archaeologist, who insists he found Jesus. Literally. Then got James Cameron in on the deal.

No bones about it, the most hits in the brief history of the Israelity Bites blog came this weekend after Izzy Bee posted that Discovery Channel docu-drama preview of the disputed “Lost Tomb of Jesus” on Friday. James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici triggered a major cyber-spasm on this site with their claim that a suburban Jerusalem tomb had contained Jesus Christ & son, plus a clutch of other relatives. So the Holy Sepulcher’s not wholly holy? The implication made some clergymen get rather hot under the dog collar. Nuns were having none of it. After all, second Temple-era stone ossuaries, similar to the two caskets unveiled at the NYC public library this week, are so common that Israelis frequently use them as planters for begonias or geraniums. But when a Canadian journo and the Titanic showman teamed up to think outside the box, plenty of people got that sinking feeling.

Hey, I did not intend for my blog to be another conduit for the James Cameron publicity machine, but it turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. The comments poured in for days and Izzy pored over them in fascination.

They ranged from testimonies of faith, rationalist discourse, gnostic nasties and Monty Python shtick, with some doubting Thomases and furtive freemasons weighing in, too. And all blasphemers were cursed in CAPS by a fire-and-brimstone believer in a vengeful deity. Izzy Bee hopes that after the controversial show runs on Sunday, sceptics and believers will resume their dialogue here. Time to curb your dogma, sharpen your tongue, and go at it with logic and vigor.

This afternoon, Izzy Bee followed the senior archaeologist Dan Bahat through a subterranean tunnel that skirts the sacrosanct Western Wall of the Temple Mount. An Al-Jazeera film crew came along too, trailing the heritage protection team from UNESCO, and after a few snarls from the Israeli security detail, all were allowed inside. Dr Bahat is both a scientist and a religious man, and besides teaching at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, is on the theology faculty at the University of Toronto. Like most experts on Jerusalem’s past, the professor seemed to be bothered by the sketchy science behind the “Lost Tomb” program. The Talpiyot cave's 10 caskets were catalogued and the bones reburied 27 years ago, so this earth-shattering hypothesis is a non-starter in Israeli scientific circles. The video trailers suggest that evidence was cherrypicked to support the documentary’s premise that the body of Jesus, son of Joseph and worshipped as Christ, was stuffed in a box outside the walled city for 2000 years. This strikes Jerusalem-based scholars as pseudo-science based on conjecture. But interesting if true...

As our group walked past enormous Herodian stone blocks, where Jewish prayers on paper slips were tucked into some ancient crevices, then beside Byzantine arches, Umayyad masonry, old Roman toilets, moats, cisterns and the like, this unholy row over Cameron’s slight-of-hand documentary seemed carefully manipulated for maximum profit. Watch this space.