With this article, I begin looking at the pieces published in the most recent Near Eastern Archaeology, concerning the Talpiot Tomb and its proposed identification with the family of Jesus. Dr. James Tabor, the leading scholarly proponent for such an identification has noted these pieces as supporting the discussion and importance to the tomb, as I go on, I begin to wonder how true this is.
The first article in this issue was written by Eric M. Meyers, and is titled “The Jesus tomb controversy: an overview”. It lives up to that title, presenting a fair overview of the events, beginning with the original press conference, where the documentary was announced.
Meyer’s presentation is certainly negative, concerning the claims that the tomb belonged to Jesus and his family, and presents evidence for a more conservative assessment, largely focusing on the the issues of context related to the tomb. This includes the use of the James brother of Jesus ossuary. While Meyers avoids the issue of authenticity, he is quite right in confronting the the idea that the ossuary was at first misidentified as being blank, and then stolen from the Israeli government. His article should also serve to remind those who seek to tie this artifact to the tomb, that Golan claims that it came into his possession well before the Talpiot Tomb was excavated, and that it subsequently could not be the one in the site report marked as being blank.
Meyers’ assessment also deals, quite rightly, with the issue of contamination of the site. Some of the ossuaries may well have been multiple burials, and were certainly exposed at various times throughout the centuries. Kloner, the origional excavator, noted as many as eightteen secondary burials in the tomb. This is of course not to mention that children had actually been playing with the bones and that exposure to archaeologists and construction workers could have introduced additional contamination. This seems to make the assessment of DNA studies from this tomb even more questionable. I would, however, have liked Meyers to be more straight forward in challenging the identification of Jesus and Mary as married, based on a simple absence of mDNA.
Meyers finishes by discussing the scholarly issues with the methodology of Jacobovici and others involved in the production of the documentary and accompanying volumes. By requiring confidentiality agreements and silence until their media was allowed out, they silenced scholarly critique and peer review. This creates obvious issues of analysis, and in the end seems to have presented a one sided extremely positive analysis. Eric M. Meyer’s piece in NEA may be one of the first, of what will likely be many, peer reviewed pieces forthcoming that will challenge this simplistic and one sided presentation.
Meyers, Eric M. “The Jesus tomb controversy: an overview” in Near Eastern Archaeology 69 3-4 (2006). 116-118
Filed under: Archaeology, Archaeoporn, Looting, Peer Review, Pseudo-Science, Talpiot Tomb | Tagged: Eric M. Meyers, James Tabor, Jesus Tomb, Peer Review, Simcha Jacobovici, Talpiot Tomb
I just want to add my thanks for going through this stuff for us. When people ask me, as some kind of professional of the past if you see what I mean, what I think about such stories, it’s really useful to have people like yourself out there telling me where I can go look stuff up…
Talpiot Tomb – Random Name Simulation
Sceptical critics of the Talpiot Tomb discovery object that inscribed names found there were common in first century Judea, and could be expected in any such tomb. Obviously they’re not in the habit of purchasing Lotto tickets or Football coupons; It is easy to get a few numbers right but more difficult to obtain a winning combination.
Not one of my three simulations of 1000 tombs, each containing 7 names of first century Palestinian Jews, came up with the combination found at Talpiot. Frequency of names used corresponded to databases published by either L Y Rahmani or Ben Witherington, both harsh critics of the significance of Talpiot.
In none of the simulated 1000 tombs did all 5 distinct names ever appear – there was always a non-qualifier. Despite 7 trials in each tomb, non-appearance of at least one of the qualifying names was common exceeding 50% of all tombs: Mary (618), Joseph (609), Judah (624), Jesus (768), Matthew (822).
Combinations of names that occurred were: Joseph & Jesus (85); Mary & Jesus (73); Jesus, Mary & Joseph (25); Jesus, Mary, Joseph & [Judah or Matthew] 6. The combination of all 5 distinct names did not occur.
Including the name of James, increased the number of trials in each tomb to 8. Repetition of names was fairly common, but seldom with any other names of interest. For example, 1 tomb had 4 Mary’s and 11 had 3 Mary’s; 13 had 3 Joseph’s, and 24 had 2 Jesus’. Actual repetition of names in a family tomb might be expected to occur seldom, depending on cultural practices of handing down names to progeny.
In the James trials, 39 tombs had Jesus, Mary & Joseph; No tomb had Jesus, 2 Mary’s & 2 Joseph’s as occurred at Talpiot. There were 19 tombs with Jesus, Mary, Joseph and one other qualifier, 2 tombs with at least 2 other qualifiers. These last two tombs gave: Run 497 – Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Judah, James, 3 non-qualifiers; Run 854 – Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Judah, Matthew, James, 2 non-qualifiers. These last two results were the best that could be attained.
The conclusion must be that despite the prevalence of the individual names, their combination is very rare, and the full combination did not occur in any of the simulations. In view of the three independent simulations of 1000 tombs, the stated probability of 1 in 600 would seem to be extremely, even unnecessarily, conservative.
Regardless of the actual identity of the occupants, the combination of names is unique and would never have been found in any other tomb, even if every ossuary found had been inscribed, and even allowing that many tombs have been despoiled and looted. My advice to the critics is “Don’t purchase Lotto tickets, you don’t understand the game, and you’ll lose your money!” Whereas any Ops Stats 101 student can do a like simulation.
A couple notes here.
1) you don’t actually outline your methods of simulations, making them useless (are they random or properly weighted?)
2) You seem to come from the position of purely random name selection, this is an assumption that is actually very unlikely.
3) You seem to assume equal favor of all names, also very unlikely.
4) Your position comes to the conclusion that this combination can never happen again. Actually, the fact that it happens once, means it can happen again. If a combination of names is possible once, uniformitarianism tells us it is possible again.
5) You only illustrate that the name group may have been unlikely (a conclusion I still doubt, and would actually debate as being more likely than many other possible arrangement of names), you fail to show why this proposed rarity has any value. ie. just because it is rare, does not mean it is the tomb of historical Jesus, a conclusion completely absent from your comment. (A conclusion I should also note is made relatively unlikely by the inclusion of names outside of the Jesus family. Is a 1 in 600 chance more likely than a 0 in 1 chance?)
6) You have a very positivistic approach that ignores any of the advances in archaeological theory made since the late 1970s. Sorry, until it stands up to the last 30 or so years of theory and methods, it doesn’t cut the mustard.
BTW, I would like to add a question about your closing.
Skeptics should not play the lottery?
The fact is that skeptics understand the very small chance that this is the Jesus tomb, from various historical, theoretical, and archaeological positions.
It seems to me that believers should avoid the lottery, since they think a one in a million chance is sufficient to guarantee a win.