Separating fact from fiction

Last year I blogged about the controversial Lost Tomb of Jesus which had generated a lot of bitter and heated arguments around the globe. Subsequently while everyone thought the issue had sunk like the great Titanic, it was resurrected in the recently concluded Talpiot Tomb Conference organised by Princeton Theological Seminary.

Experts appearing in this major conference to discuss the validity of the claims as publicised by the producers of Discovery Channel in a more academic manner, consisted not only of archeologists, but also theologians, statisticians, epigraphers, DNA forensic experts and patina specialists. Opinions differed greatly from highly unlikely to possible that this was the tomb belonging to the Jesus family. The documentary team felt vindicated. According to director/author Simcha Jacobovici, 'My work with James Cameron was the catalyst for an international symposium that has finally considered the evidence and is opening the door for further research. It's time that the world seriously considered that the Jesus family tomb may very well have been located'.

From the statistical point of view, everything seemed to be dependant on whether one of the inscriptions actually referred to Mary Magdalene. If this is so, the probability will greatly favour the claim. Andrey Feuerverger, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Toronto revealed for the first time that his statistical model has now been peer-reviewed and accepted by the leading statistical journal Annals of Applied Statistics and will be published in their first issue of 2008 in February.

As I have also suggested in my earlier post, more patina tests need to be done on neighbouring ossuaries as a form of random sampling and this was the similar conclusion coming from patina experts.

This grand meeting of some highly intellectual debates experts of various disciplines (and perhaps we were told, some highly tensed encounters as well), provided an emotive highlight in the form of a frail lady coming up on stage to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of her deceased husband who was the original excavator of the tomb:

The widow of the Israeli archeologist who led the excavation of a hugely controversial First-Century burial tomb in Jerusalem’s Talpiot neighborhood 28 years ago said on Wednesday that her late husband knew he had found the burial place of Jesus and was afraid the discovery would trigger a wave of anti-Semitism because of the apparent challenge to Christian beliefs.

Ruth Gat unleashed her archeological earthquake when accepting a lifetime achievement award on behalf of her late husband, Yosef Gat of the Department of Antiquities, at the conclusion of a four-day academic conference in Jerusalem, at which leading archaeologists, epigraphers, biblical experts, statisticians and other scholars gathered to evaluate “the Talpiot Tomb in context.”

A small-framed, frail-looking lady, Mrs. Gat told the scholars calmly that her husband knew he had found “the burial tomb of Jesus Christ,” and that he had “serious concerns and fears” over the consequences of his discovery. She noted that Yosef had been a child in Nazi-occupied Poland, and that with his bitter childhood memories still in mind, he had feared “a wave of anti-Semitism” might erupt as a result of the Talpiot find. She said she was relieved that the world had “changed for the better,” and that this feared reaction had not come to pass.

Speaking briefly to The Jerusalem Post after her address, Mrs. Gat said her husband had been “staggered” by the discovery, and that he had discussed it with her “at the kitchen table.”

Gat died soon after excavating the Talpiot tomb in 1980, and left only minimal notes of what had been found there. source

In conclusion, I echo the thoughts of Prof James Charlesworth, the co-organiser of the conference:

'the possible discovery of Christ's tomb will illicit mixed reactions among Christians. Most, he believes, will view it positively. The faith of some believers, he says, will be buoyed by historical proof that Christ, the son of Joseph and Mary, did exist. "I don't think it will undermine belief in the resurrection, only that Jesus rose as a spiritual body, not in the flesh." He adds: "Christianity is a strong religion, based on faith and experience, and I don't think that any discovery by archeologists will change that."'

Prof Charlesworth has been tasked to lead a team to reopen and reinvestigate the Talpiot Tomb.