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.