Jesus Tomb Film Scholars: "Well, um...that's not what I meant..."
From yesterday's Jerusalem Post:
Several prominent scholars who were interviewed in a bitterly contested documentary that suggests that Jesus and his family members were buried in a nondescript ancient Jerusalem burial cave have now revised their conclusions, including the statistician who claimed that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the tomb being the family burial cave of Jesus of Nazareth, a new study on the fallout from the popular documentary shows.
The dramatic clarifications, compiled by epigrapher Stephen Pfann of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem in a paper titled "Cracks in the Foundation: How the Lost Tomb of Jesus story is losing its scholarly support," come two months after the screening of The Lost Tomb of Christ that attracted widespread public interest, despite the concomitant scholarly ridicule.
Read the full post, "Jesus Tomb Film Scholars Backtrack."
Although I initially thought the Jesus tomb "scandal" would have become a much bigger deal than it turned out, it looks like it may not even garner a footnote in the events of 2007. This is primarily because of the immediate dismissals and rebuttals that came from just about every spectrum of the academic community.
Is anyone surprised? James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici should immediately donate the money they made from this project (and I'm sure there was money to be made) to the church of their choice as penance.
More Thoughts on Cameron's "Jesus' Family Tomb"
From Larry:
It may be the case that Israel Antiquities Authority acted incorrectly in this case -- I don't feel I have enough information from the article to judge. I don't regard Biblical Archeology Review as a very careful journal, and I do note that expert witnesses in court trials tend to always make statements that agree with the side that retained them (if only because experts who don't agree with the lawyers are never put on the stand.) I don't think we can exclude the possibility of a careful forgery; certainly this would not be the first case.
On a more substantive note, based on the New York Times article today it appears that the main evidence presented by the filmmakers is the improbability of the names appearing together in the crypt. The article mentions the estimate of the chances of the names appearing together in the tomb are one in 600, based on an analysis by Andrey Feuerverger. I wonder if this doesn't reflect some statistical error. For example, there are presumably a number of ossuaries, both known and unknown, in the greater Jerusalem region. The NY Times article mentions that thousands of of ossuaries have been discovered.
Second, depending on how the problem was posed to the Feuerverger, the statistic may be quite misleading. A moment's thought reveals that there are many possible different configurations of names that could potentially "match" a potential family for Jesus. Thus, the actually probability of a ossuary having a set of names that match a purported Jesus family is perhaps far more likely than mentioned. Of course, we can't tell for sure without seeing Feuerverger's actual calculations, and to the best of my knowledge, he is not publishing those.
I did contact Feuerverger (whom I know) and he has not responded to my inquiries.
I am also struck by the fact that a $4 million budget film decided as a cost saving measure to limit the number of DNA samples tested. It raises suspicions.
Most damning of all is the quote by Kloner, which I repeat here:
Among the most influential scholars to dispute the documentary was Amos Kloner, former Jerusalem district archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who examined the tomb in 1980.
Mr. Kloner said in a telephone interview that the inscription on the alleged “Jesus” ossuary is not clear enough to ascertain. The box on display at the news conference is a plain rectangle with rough gashes on one side. The one supposedly containing Mary Magdalene has six-petalled rosettes and an elaborate border.
“The new evidence is not serious, and I do not accept that it is connected to the family of Jesus,” said Mr. Kloner, who appears in the documentary as a skeptic.
Amos Kloner discovered the tomb, and you can read his report at the link given below. Kloner is a professor at Bar-Ilan (the Israeli equivalent of Yeshiva University) and has won the "Emet Prize" (truth prize) which includes a cash award of one million dollars from the Israeli government.
- Link to the NY Times article.
- Also check out Ben Witherington's take on the subject.
Da Vinci Code Redux: James Cameron Style
This time it's coming from
Cameron, the director of movies such as The Terminator and Titanic will be holding a press conference tomorrow claiming that tombs have been discovered in Jerusalem with the names of Jesus, his wife Mary, and their son, Judah.
[What? I thought there was a daughter named Sophia!]
The press conference will promote Cameron's new documentary airing soon on the Discovery Channel. Feel free to read the initial report from Time.com.
There's been very little response yet from the Christian community on this, but it's too early. Expect there to be controversy. Expect there to be a lot of attention--perhaps even more than what was unnecessarily given to The Da Vinci Code.
And before you change your plans for next Sunday morning, take a deep breath, and realize that these kinds of claims have come before and will be around again. But in a video age, they seem to get more and more spectacular. For a sane early reflection on this, be sure to read Michael Spencer's thoughts on this over at Internet Monk: "A Rejected Messiah Buried without Honor? Responses to the 'Tomb of Jesus and His Family' Story."
Stay tuned. I'll come back to this story, if warranted, as it develops.
Meanwhile, has anyone ever read Skeleton in God's Closet by Paul Maier?