The Jesus Tomb

You may have read the news recently on the BBC website. A book and documentary are coming out about how the tomb of Jesus and his family has been discovered.

Actually the only "news" here is the book and the film aspect. The discovery of the tomb goes way back to 1980, but in a media saturated world, documentaries about discovered tombs are given more importance than the discovery itself.

So could this really be the tomb of Jesus and family?

It's easy to want to dive into questions like this and do everything you can to disprove them. After all, the idea of Jesus being resurrected is at the heart of the Christian faith. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile" (1 Cor 15:17).

The problem is that by deciding to deliberately try to disprove such a claim we can be more than happy to accept any opinions we come across that support our desired point of view, and ignore their flaws or inaccuracies. Unfortunately, when those who want to honestly assess the evidence spot these errors, they not only reject it, but also our point of view.

So what is the argument for this tomb being Jesus'? Well it actually comes down to statistics (who thought they could be interesting?).

The tomb was found in 1980 with ten ossuaries (boxes of bones) inside. The makers of this documentary claim that the combination of names written on the various ossuaries are sufficiently unusual to mean that this could very well be the tomb of Jesus's family.

The names themselves are all relatively common. In fact, surveys of tombs from the time suggest that they are amongst the most common names found in the period. The point is, however, that even common names in certain combinations are relatively unlikely.

So how likely is this combination of names? Well James Tabor, one of the biblical scholars who worked on the project, using the following simple analogy:

Imagine a football stadium filled with 50,000 people—men, women, and children. This is an average estimate of the population of ancient Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. If we ask all the males named Jesus to stand, based on the frequency of that name, we would expect 2,796 to rise. If we then ask all those with a father named Joseph to remain standing there would only be 351 left. If we further reduce this group by asking only those with a mother named Mary to remain standing we would get down to only 173. If we then ask only those of this group with a brother named Joseph only 23 are left. And finally, only of these the ones with a brother named James, there’s less than a 3/4 chance that even 1 person remains standing.

So in Tabor's mind it is highly likely that this tomb belongs to Jesus. So much so that he has revised his earlier theories. But does this analogy hold up?

Overall it's a very clear analogy, but there are a few problems. Firstly the population of Jerusalem my have been 50,000 at any one time, but this tomb could be from anytime during the Herodian period, so the likelihood is that the number should be around 100,000 people – twice as many. In other words there would be one or two people standing out of the initial group.

Secondly there is some disagreement over one of the inscriptions. Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who first investigated the tomb, recorded 10 ossuaries, 6 of which bore names (Mary, Mary/Miriam, Jose / Joseph, Jude son of Jesus, Matthew and Jesus son of Joseph). One of the unnamed boxes disappeared sometime after the discovery.

Around the same time another Ossuary was discovered, from the same time period with the inscription "James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus". Tabor now claims that this ossuary is the one that is missing from the Jesus tomb. Whilst there is some evidence that this is true, the majority of the evidence suggests that this is not the same box.

So this would remove the final name call from Tabor's picture. Now, instead of there only being one or two people standing, there are 46.

Thirdly, if this is the family of a couple called Mary and Joseph, then the chances that there would be another family member present also called Joses / Joseph, is higher than average. My daughter is named after her Grandma. My brother is named after his Uncle. Whilst it's impossible to estimate this factor, it means that the number of people standing up in the stadium is considerably greater than 46. And that is assuming that Jesus and his family had a tomb in Jerusalem in the first place. They could just as plausibly be in a stadium in Galilee or Bethlehem

Whilst this doesn't disprove that this is Jesus's tomb it means that on balance it probably isn't. Imagine that football stadium again. Just before you ask the first question, another 50,000 people flood in and stand on the pitch. You ask your first few questions, and the numbers whittle down, but when you ask those still standing to come forward, there are over 50 of them.

How do we know which man owns the tomb?

We don't. And whilst there is a chance it is the same Jesus who founded Christianity, you probably wouldn't want to bet on it.

Posted by: Matt Page on Tuesday Feb 27th, 2007

Comments

Sam Huggill writes:

Thanks Matt, excellent article. A good, level headed response to somewhat inflated media reporting and the dramatisation that goes on.

And reading the scriptures makes it clear that Jesus' body was raised, no dusty bones remaining to be found in tombs years later.

...left on Thursday Mar 1st, 2007

Tim Morris writes:

Matt- this is really good.

I read this article on BBC News, and my first thoughts were "Oh look, the Da Vinci Code hype is over, it was only a matter of time before the next "church destryoying" conspiracy surfaced.

The article on BBC News states that James Cameron (documentary director) says that this does not mean Jesus did not rise from the dead, only that he was buried here, but as Sam said, him rising from the dead and the ascending to heaven are essential points, both had to happen.

...left on Sunday Mar 4th, 2007

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