James Tabor’s Descent into Ignominy

On his site, James Tabor, the chair of the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Charlotte, discusses this article, by Aren Maeir, chair of archaeology and land of Israel studies at Bar Ilan University. Overall it is a relatively neutral piece, with the only large objection I can find being Maeir’s statement concerning those who wish to move from Biblical Archaeology to Near Eastern Archaeology:

Yet that approach is espoused “by those who have a very strong ideology in the other direction,” Maeir said, and don’t believe there is any historical accuracy in the Bible.

I certainly think that there is some historical accuracy in the bible, but that we should give up on Biblical Archaeology, due to its many problems, which I will discuss in a later piece.

James Tabor’s take on this article is quite different. Overall, he agrees with it, up until Maeir begins discussing over sensationalist representations of finds. Maeir gives four examples; repeated discussion of Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat, the Shroud of Turin, which is a 14th century fake, the recent popularization of the Talpiot Tomb as Jesus’s tomb, and the James Ossuary.

Obviously, due to his various levels of investment in both the Talpiot Tomb and the James Ossuary, Tabor takes issue with the characterization that Maeir gives to both. As proof of the validity of the Talpiot Tomb, Tabor points to the most recent issue of Near Eastern Archaeology, which has numerous articles on the tomb, and the recent peer review publication of the statistical analysis associated with the tomb.

Now, lets look at this argument for just a minute. Does Tabor say anything about the actual articles and their content? No, just that they were written. By that same logic, he could look to Maeir’s article as proof for the tomb, because it a is an article about it. As for the statistic, peer review does not make something valid or true. Instead, what Tabor should do is actually present the data and the facts, which can give readers an actual ability to assess the strength of his argument. In the case of the statistics, it is obvious why he does not go into such depth. There are quite truthfully many problems with the statistical analysis used in the book and the documentary about the tomb.

• It includes the James Ossuary, which cannot be tied to the Talpiot Tomb. In fact, if we actually look to the site report, the missing ossuary was not inscribed in any way, and cannot be the James Ossuary. However, Tabor and his associates wish for everyone to simply assume that the site report missed not only textual inscriptions but designs inscribed on one side of the ossuary. They offer no proof for such an assumption, except that it helps them build a tautological argument concerning the tomb and the ossuary.
• It overlooks misses concerning the textual pieces we have concerning Jesus that would otherwise make the statistical likelihood of the Talpiot Tomb being from Jesus’s family equal to zero. There is no Matt in the Jesus family, but Tabor hopes that those involved will make another assumption concerning the Tomb, without any evidence.
• The analysis of the tomb is based on additional conclusions concerning the Jesus and one of the Mary ossuaries, namely that Jesus had married this Mary. Of course, once we reach this point, we are dealing more with a Dan Brown novel than we are with textually or archaeologically supported conclusions.
• Statistics cannot be used to prove something in this way. The statistics used compare a single tomb to an extremely small sample size, which in and of itself gives us little value. Beyond this, all that the statistics prove is that this is a relatively rare association of names. One that, if we ignore various misses, is comparable to Jesus’s Family. However, this does not prove them to be one and the same. A similar example would be flipping a coin 100 times in a row, and having each one end up heads. The 101st flip will not be tails because of the low likelihood of having 101 heads in a row, instead it will be a 50/50 chance of either heads or tails.

On a final not concerning the Talpiot Tomb, it should be remembered that in his publication one year before the documentary and book associated with it, Tabor was attempting to convince his readers that a different tomb that he had just happened to discover was the tomb of Jesus. If one were to follow Tabor’s studies, they would find that he is constantly finding items tied to a historical Jesus, as long as one is also willing to make various logical jumps and ignore contrary pieces of evidence.

Tabor also takes issue with Maeir’s inclusion of the James Ossuary as an over hyped piece of looted garbage. Looking at this piece, we can put our selves in Tabor’s shoes for a second. First, ignore the AIA, ASOR, and various other groups arguments against using looted artifacts, and the potential damage that they can cause to archaeological sites and studies. Then, ignore the fact that the item was looted, and subsequently declared a forgery.

Now from this, you still become stuck with he fact that you have no site to tie the Ossuary to. The only potential value can come from the addition of the names and inscription to our knowledge of what people were called in a specific period of time. The attempts to match the patina to the Talpiot Tomb, are pointless, as there are no actual studies that have shown the accuracy of such methods, or that the interior sediment and conditions of the Talpiot Tomb would have been sufficiently unique as to be the only site to create the patina on this ossuary. There is no reason to tie this specific ossuary to Jesus Christ or his brother or father.

Of course, we cannot ignore the fact that this item was looted, and that the amount of attention being given it may have added to the destruction and looting in Israel as people attempt to find similar items to make it big on the antiquities market. Nor can we ignore that it has been, after scientific testing, found to be a forgery. If Tabor feels that this is an error, he should attempt to rectify it, have the ossuary studied, and see if the inscription is real, but until this is done, any analysis of the inscription or study that utilizes the inscription, is flawed, and a waste of time and resources.

As a side note, in his 2006 publication, Dr. Tabor also attempted to tie the James Ossuary to the Shroud Tomb, while also linking it to the Talpiot Tomb. Apparently, he wishes to hedge his bets, and make sure he had stood where Jesus was laid to wrest.

I would like to call specific attention to Maeir’s statement concerning those who do work like Dr. Tabor’s:

Those who do so, he said, almost always are not professional archaeologists; have not been published in refereed, scholarly professional journals; and talk of sensational finds in a way that later is proven to be a gross misunderstanding of fact or an outright fraud.

While Dr. Tabor’s degree is in New Testament and Early Christian Literature, which likely does require some exposure to archaeology, but not necessarily to the scientific rigor one would expect and hope for, he takes part in numerous excavations and plays a role in training future archaeologists. His work on the Jesus dynasty and Talpiot Tomb has been published in popular books and through a cable documentary, as well as a peer reviewed article, and he is generally willing to write off any scholarly or professional criticisms of his findings as being over skeptical and not giving the issue a chance. He also does tend to focus on sensational finds and base his conclusions on assumption, misunderstandings of statistics and science, and potentially outright fraud. (Update note: After talking with Dr. Tabor, I no longer believe his work is knowingly fraudulent, just wresting on poor methodology).

In short, James Tabor, who is a professional scholar, has been descending into a position comparable Hancock or Von Daniken. He treats his conclusions with religious respect, never allowing review or concerns of scholars to pass through his conclusions. Perhaps, if we look at where is conclusions come from, we might see why. In the introduction to his book The Jesus Dynasty, Tabor writes of a childhood trip to Jerusalem, and how it changed his life as he felt himself walking where Jesus had walked. He proceeds to discuss how the attempt to recapture this feeling had become a driving force in his life. Perhaps it is this religious hope that has led Tabor to associate every tomb, ossuary, and statue he deals with in his scholarly work with a historic Jesus. It is also likely because of this drive that he is so closed to review of his sensationalism and so offended by such critiques. I doubt that any scholarly reviewed piece or conference will ever be able to change James Tabor’s mind, and it is because of this that his work has trespassed beyond modern scientific archaeology into the realm of authors such as von Daniken.