09/23/2020 – Was the tomb of Jesus found?

Wait, what? The tomb of Jesus might have been found? Bruh! Stick around to hear this theory. This is TenOnReligion.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. Information about archeological discoveries in the academic field of religion take a long time to trickle down to the general public, although this one is a little different as there have been books and video productions about it. James Tabor, a professor at UNC Charlotte, has led the idea of possibly finding the tomb of Jesus. To get started we have to get into a little background into Jewish and Christian culture first and then get into the details of this theory and see what you think.

There was a short time period of about a hundred years when Jewish burial practices included placing a newly deceased body in a long niche inside a carved out cave so the flesh would decay leaving only the bones after a year or so. Then the bones would be placed inside a box, called an ossuary. Several ossuaries, or bone boxes, of family members would then be placed in smaller niches in various parts of the cave and this became a family’s tomb. Some of the ossuaries have inscriptions on them with rather informal writing so family members could know whose bones were in which box, or ossuary, when they moved them around inside the cave tomb. Around 1000 cave tombs have been opened in the Jerusalem area in the past 150 years with over 2000 documented ossuaries. Nearly 600 of the ossuaries have inscriptions on them.

Now why would anyone expect there to be an ossuary with the bones of Jesus of Nazareth inside? Didn’t the gospel accounts record a resurrection and the book of Acts an ascension? Yes, but the original understanding of resurrection comes from the earlier letters of the apostle Paul and not the gospel narratives which were written many decades later. The Jewish concept of the resurrection of the dead is completely unrelated to the idea of the immortality of the soul. In the Jesus movement, the resurrection of the dead did not mean disembodied bliss or “life after death” but a re-embodied life. To be resurrected from the dead meant to be re-clothed with a new spiritual body. This is very different from the ancient Greek view of the soul being released from the restrictions of the body, which was the standard belief during the Greek and Roman empires.

According to the apostle Paul, the resurrection of Jesus was not the resuscitation or reanimation of a human corpse, the physical earthly body of Jesus, but instead was a new spiritual body of Jesus. This was Paul’s proof that the new cosmic process of transformation into a new age had begun and signaled the start of the general resurrection of all of the dead into newly glorified bodies. Since the belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was not the same body but a glorified spiritual body, it is logical to assume that the bones of Jesus could theoretically be discovered.

One caveat against this possibility is that the bodies of crucified criminals in the Roman Empire during this time period were often left hanging for animals to consume with the bones eventually thrown in a pile somewhere nearby. If this is what happened to Jesus’ body, the bones are long gone. But if he was given a Jewish burial, the following ideas are an interesting proposal.

About 1 ½ miles from the Old City of Jerusalem in a neighborhood today known as East Talpiot two tombs have been discovered, now called the Garden Tomb and the Patio Tomb. Six ossuaries in the Garden Tomb have readable inscriptions on them.

• Yeshua bar Yehosef (Aramaic) – Jesus son of Joseph
• Yoseh (Aramaic) – Joses
• Mariamene Mara (Greek) – Miriam [also known as the] Lady
• Yehuda bar Yeshua (Aramaic) – Judah son of Jesus
• Maria (Aramaic) – Maria or Mary
• Matya (Aramaic) – Matthew

Even though Jesus was a very common name, there are no other tombs discovered with anything close to this cluster of names. Other ossuaries that have a Jesus inscription on them have a cluster of names with no known association with Jesus of Nazareth or are quite far from Jerusalem and thus decreasing the probability factor significantly. If an ossuary with the bones of Jesus of Nazareth was found near Jerusalem, what other people would one expect to be buried with him?

A typical Jewish family tomb might include:

• A person (Jesus)
• Wife & children (if married & if had children)
• Parents (Joseph & Mary)
• Brothers along with any wives or children (James, Joses, Simon, & Judas)
• Sisters, if died unmarried (Salome & Mary)

If a woman was married, she would be in her husband’s tomb, if not, she would be in her father’s tomb. A widow might be in her son’s tomb.

Jesus was executed by the Romans around the year 30 CE. Since the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70 CE, the list must be restricted to those who died roughly between 30-70 CE. So let’s break this down.

First, Jesus’ father Joseph should be eliminated from the list because he seems to have died decades earlier, probably in Galilee, and we have no record of him in Jerusalem in this period according to Acts 1:14. Jesus’ mother, Mary, given her age, could likely have died before 70 CE, and as a widow, according to Jewish custom, she could have been put in the tomb of her oldest son. Jesus’ brothers Simon and Jude apparently lived past 70 CE, according to historical records, so they should be eliminated from the list.

Jesus’ brother Joses is a strong candidate for inclusion since he is the “missing brother” in historical records. When James is murdered in 62 CE, it is Simon, the third brother, not Joses, the second brother, who takes over leadership of the movement – indicating that Joses had likely died by that time. The New Testament letters of James and Jude testify to their influence, and we have an account of the death of Simon by crucifixion, but nothing survives whatsoever regarding Joses. Now the authorship of the James and Jude letters are controversial historically, so this part of the argument is a little weaker.

Given the culture it is likely that Jesus’ sisters would have been married, and thus buried in the tombs of their husbands, so they are not prime candidates for the Jesus tomb.

Since there is no textual record of wives and children of either Jesus or his two brothers who died before 70 CE one can only say hypothetically that if such people existed they might have been included.

As for the two Marys in the Talpiot tomb, there were three personal “Marys” in Jesus’ life: his mother, a sister, and Mary Magdalene. Indeed, it was Mary Magdalene, his mother, and his other sister, Salome, who attended to his burial rites in Mark 16:1. Intimate family members carried out this important rite of washing and anointing the naked corpse for burial. DNA tests on the bones indicate the women buried inside was not Jesus’ sister or mother. It seems a logical possibility that she could be the “third” Mary, namely Mary Magdalene, his follower and close companion, based on her inclusion as a named close relationship of Jesus in the earliest records.

The one inscription that cannot be accounted for in terms of what might be expected in a hypothetical Jesus family tomb is Matya or Matthew. The name is relatively rare, just 2.4 percent of males. But the name Matthew occurs more frequently than any other name in the family genealogy of Jesus in Luke so it is quite possible that such a name would have been given to a close relative and later buried with Jesus.

So that’s the theory in a nutshell, but what about possible objections?

Objections:

• The names in the tomb are common.
  A: True. Some of the individual names are common, but this cluster of names is not common and exists nowhere else in any discovered tomb from this time period near Jerusalem.


• Jesus had no wife or children.
  A: The ossuary with a Maria inscription could be Jesus’ mother (unless she lived past 70 CE, which is unlikely) or the wife of one of his brothers. Mary Magdalene takes the lead in carrying out the burial rites for Jesus – an intimate task for a wife, mother, or sister. No one knows if Jesus was married or not, and either way there are several possibilities in accounting for the ossuary name inscriptions.


• Jesus and his family were too poor to have afforded a cave burial tomb.
  A: This objection overlooks the fact that at least one follower of influence and means, Joseph of Arimathea, did in fact see to the initial burial in a rock-hewn cave tomb. This is possible, but this objection is a good one and might be the strongest objection on this short list as some historians believe Joseph of Arimathea is a narrative or literary figure and not necessarily an historical one.


• Jesus would have been buried in Nazareth, not in Jerusalem.
  A: All of the textual evidence places the death and burial of Jesus in Jerusalem, not in Galilee. Since it was forbidden in Jewish law and custom to transport a corpse, the idea that Jesus’ body would have been taken to a family tomb in Galilee is highly improbable and the least likely conclusion. Whatever happened to Jesus’ body, it happened in or around Jerusalem.


• Jesus’ body was resurrected and taken up to heaven.
  A: This final objection is theological, not historical. The original disciples, and especially Paul, obviously had a different understanding of the resurrection of Jesus from those who imagine it involving reviving a corpse and being transported to heaven. As mentioned earlier, that’s not the original understanding of what resurrection meant to the earliest followers of the Jesus movement and was a later implied interpretation by the gospel writers. For example, there’s no resurrection description in the four gospels of Jesus’ corpse being resuscitated, only an empty tomb and glorified body of some sort. That definitely leaves a lot of room for possible historical explanations.

So is the Garden Tomb a candidate for the tomb of Jesus? Some archeologists firmly deny it, but are there political reasons for doing so? Certainly more research needs to be done, but it’s quite an interesting proposal to say the least. Let us know what you think.

Well I hope this vlog has helped you better understand this topic. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, please like this video and subscribe to the channel. This is TenOnReligion.