What could be Jesus’ family tomb discovered

Scientists have found evidence that may be used to establish that a tomb in Israel is Jesus’ final earthly resting place, according to an article on LiveScience.

Chemical analysis shows that a box with the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” could possibly be from a tomb in Talpiot, Israel. The tomb contains the bones of people with the names of Jesus’ other family members.

According to Aryeh Shimron, the geologist who conducted the study, it’s unlikely that this group of people who were buried together would all have the same names as Jesus’ family by chance. This suggests that the Talpiot tomb might have once contained Jesus’ bones.

“If this is correct, that strengthens the case for the Talpiot or Jesus Family Tomb being indeed the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth,” said Shimron.

But other historians still have their doubts, pointing out  that some of the names in the bone boxes in the Talpiot tomb don’t match the names of Jesus’ family members, and that the current research hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

According to Mark Goodacre, a New Testament and Christian origins scholar at Duke University who wasn’t involved in the study, in Jesus’ time, it was customary for the dead to be initially buried in a shroud. Once the flesh had rotted away, the bones would then be collected in a small limestone box called an ossuary.

The James Ossuary was revealed in 2002. It was inscribed with “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” in Aramaic. If it’s proven to be authentic, it could be the only known relic from Jesus’ family. In 2003 the Israel Antiquities Authority claimed that the text was a forgery, but a judge concluded that the collector who owned the box was not guilty of forgery.

In 1980, the Talpiot tomb was discovered. Talpiot is a suburb of Jerusalem. The tomb had been flooded with rendzina, a reddish soil, and contained 10 boxes. Some of the boxes were inscribed with the names Jesus, Mary, Judah, Joseph, and Yose. Israeli journalist and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici theorized that the James Ossuary came from the Talpiot tomb and that the tomb belonged to Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

In the current study, Shimron took scrapings from the James Ossuary and compared them to samples from the Talpiot tomb and from more than 30 randomly chosen ossuaries from the Israel Antiquities Authority. The findings showed that the chemical signatures from the Talpiot ossuaries matched that of the James Ossuary.

The problem now is proving that the tomb belongs to Jesus of Nazareth (and his family) instead of to a completely different Jesus. While some researchers argue that the chances of this group of names occurring together is small, other experts say that the names were actually common at the time. And some of the names had never been mentioned in history before.

“There's no evidence at all that Jesus had a son at all, let alone a son called Judah,” Goodacre said.

One of the boxes is inscribed with “Mariamne” or “Mary and Mara.” Jacobovici argues that it might belong to Mary Magdalene, but Goodacre said that early Christians called her “Mariam” or “Marya.”

James Tabor, a historian at the University of North Carolina, argued that Jewish men during Jesus’ time were more likely to be married with children, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Jesus would have had a son.

“If you find the bones of Jesus, the resurrection is off,” Tabor told Live Science. Some conservative Christians could see it as an attack on their beliefs and “also a refutation of the faith of Christianity.” — Bea Montenegro/BM/TJD, GMA News