Jesus Family Tomb, The

Hardcover

1st

First Person

Non-Fiction

312

14

2018-06-26 17:51:19

`The Jesus Family Tomb’ is a hypothesis written in a format suitable for a general readership.

A brief review cannot possibly do justice to this book - it’s scope and wealth of evidence are impressive as is the manner in which the subtle arguments are conveyed - it’s an exciting read too. I will merely try to entice or interest a potential audience - as I think that it deserves wide circulation.

So, would it stir your interest if I mentioned that in his preliminary paper a professional statistician calculated the odds at 2,400,000:1 in favour of this hypothesis?

The evidence for this hypothesis includes in depth scientific analysis (spectral analysis and comparison of the chemical composition of the ossuary patinas, for example. Don’t worry it gets explained very clearly.); expert opinion and general consensus on certain key points (for example the provenance of the tomb, the number of ossuaries, the authenticity of the inscriptions); well documented archaeological data and clear, educated and well-presented explanations of the speculations involved.

`Speculations?!’, you may cry. Yes, it is worth noting that this case is not, never has been and never will be about certainty. It is about probability. What is the probability of this being the family tomb of Jesus - high or low? Statistically significant or not?

Perhaps statistical probability ratios are not your thing?

Here’s another teaser:

People raise the popular objection,

`These were all common names! Jesus and Joseph were common names back then - you’d expect to find loads of them turning up in tombs’.

Okay, but just how common? How many have been found in tombs to date, and given educated estimates of the population density of males in the time period in question, what percentage may have had these first names?

The book goes in to great detail on this subject (amongst many others), but just for starters consider this question:

Given that there have been hundreds of ossuaries recovered from provenanced tombs in the past 200 years, how many do you think bear the inscription `Jesus, son of Joseph’?

A couple of dozen, perhaps? You’d expect at least a handful given these names are supposedly so common.

In fact, only one ossuary exists that bears this inscription - the one discovered in 1980 by the Israel Antiquities Authority, at a freshly uncovered site catalogued IAA 80/500 - 509, in other words - our hypothetical Jesus Family Tomb.

That this ossuary, and eight others (five with significant inscriptions also), was filed away in a warehouse and ignored for 16 years is testament to the fact that even the IAA specialists thought `this is not significant, the names are common’. Thankfully, some people who were a little more curious than that decided to investigate further. This book is their story, told in their own words.

So, given that...

a) the tomb has an uncontested official provenance;
b) the six ossuary inscriptions have all been authenticated with consensus opinion;
c) four of the names are significant/uncommon spellings or nicknames;
d) the names fit a list of potential candidates for a Jesus Family Tomb based on detailed textual analysis;
e) the tomb fits the right time period;
f) the statistical probability of this cluster of names arising in a single tomb is very low ranging from millions to one to a `super conservative’ 600:1*

and,

g) there is a strong possibility based on scientific evidence and background information that a tenth ossuary, inscribed `James, brother of Jesus’ belongs in the Talpiot tomb. If correct, as one statistician put it - `the case is an absolute slam-dunk’, meaning the probability goes through the ceiling. This would effectively close the case for all but the most unreasonable, cynical or dogmatically incapable.

...what do you think?

Easy to dismiss out-of-hand as `utter rubbish’?

Or, worth further investigation?

Notes:

* This final equation actually excluded some of the more interesting inscriptions, such as one inscribed Joseh, a nickname for Joseph (much like `Joey’) that is unique among the thousands of ossuaries discovered; it also excludes the `son of Joseph’ patronymic on the Jesus ossuary. It also includes negative factors such as the brothers of Jesus not present in the tomb grouping. This is statistically significant as two of the missing names are relatively uncommon. Further, the total was divided by a factor of four to allow for `unintended bias’ in the historical sources. It was then divided by 1000 to allow for the maximum number of tombs that may have existed in the 1st century. This is how we get from millions to one down to this 600:1 figure. In other words, it is a very conservative estimate, yet still making the conclusion highly probable. Scholars who wish to factor in even more negative powers whilst eliminating all positive ones are being unreasonable and are probably driven by other agendas.

HarperElement

9780007245673

St. Ives, England.

2007-06-01

1

English

London, England.

~£2.97

2024-02-08

2018-06-26 17:51:19