THE "LOST TOMB OF JESUS"
Around Easter time someone or other is bound to come up with a sensationalist theory which will sell a few copies of a book or newspaper, or encourage a few more people to watch a TV channel. This year's offering is a documentary made by James Cameron. It needs to be borne in mind that a very thorough examination of Palestinian Jewish names between 330 BC and AD 200 finds that, among male names, Jesus (Joshua in Hebrew) was the 6th. most common, Joseph is the 2nd. most common, and James (Jacob in Hebrew) is the 11th most common name. Mary is the most female name by far for the same period. Therefore an ossuary (bone box) inscribed "Jesus bar Joseph" proves nothing at all. Neither does an inscription identifying a "Jesus" married to a "Mary". The comment below is taken from the blog of an eminent Jewish archaeologist, and the scholar he quotes, Amos Kloner, is also an eminent Jewish archaeologist - and the person who first discovered these ossuaries to boot. Neither of these scholars have any interest in proving the claims of Christianity, and you can read what they say for yourself. I have quoted the entire text of the blog entry.
"Lost Tomb of Jesus" claim
February 26th, 2007 by Leen Ritmeyer
A brief comment on this, as so many people have asked me about it. It would have to be an archaeologist's worst nightmare. Imagine - your careful academic work, as was Amos Kloner's supervision of the tomb's excavation for the IAA (Israel Antiquities Authority) in 1980 - hijacked by Hollywood. And that to produce a sensationalist documentary that the Discovery Channel website, for whom the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" was produced, foretells "will be carried round the world". It is possibly the most cynical claim yet to be made in the field of Biblical Archaeology and only serves to give the subject a bad name.
Will the world take heed to the comments of Amos Kloner, quoted in the Jerusalem Post who said that the documentary's claims were "impossible" and "nonsense" and that there was "no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb in Jerusalem"? Jesus and his family hailed from Nazareth in Galilee, as anyone with a shred of Bible knowledge knows and there was no reason for them to have a family tomb in Jerusalem. It is worth knowing that Jacobovici and Cameron are not original in their claim. The assertion that the family tomb of Jesus has been located was made in James D. Tabor, "The Jesus Dynasty, The Hidden Story of Jesus, His Royal family, and the Birth of Christianity" (2006).
Watch this theory go the way of all such contrived "sizzling" and "staggering" "discoveries"!
See:
http://blog.ritmeyer.com/2007/02/26/lost-tomb-of-jesus-claim/
and