Jesus' Tomb

Sunday Sermons

Mark Dunagan
03/04/07 - Sunday Evening

Jesus’ Tomb

The Discovery Channel is airing a TV documentary put together by James Cameron (The Titanic) and Jewish director, Simcha Jacobovici entitled The Lost Tomb of Jesus on March 4^th at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT in the attempt to prove that Jesus’ burial cave and body have been discovered near Jerusalem. They further attempt to prove that Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdalene. Of course, if this is all true, then all of Christianity has been based upon a false claim, which means that the entire world is presently lost in sin and in a hopeless situation only destined for eternal torment, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). Before we explore this claim, it should be noted that in 2006 the above team also produced a documentary on the Exodus in which it was claimed that the Ten Plagues were a series of highly unusual but natural calamities triggered by the volcanic eruption on the Aegean island of Santorini (ancient Thera).

The Facts

The tomb in question was actually found in 1980 in the Jerusalem suburb of Talpiot. In the tomb were found ten limestone bone boxes (ossuaries). Six inscriptions were discovered on the boxes, with names similar to some of Jesus’ own family and disciples. The names are: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mariamene e Mara, Matthew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua. The reason that this wasn’t a big deal in 1980 was because the original archaeologists understood:

The names mentioned were very common in the First Century. There are seven other Mary’s mentioned just in the New Testament. Besides the mother of Jesus and twenty-five percent of the women in Jesus’ day wore this name. Joseph was equally a common name, and one in ten had the name “Jesua”. Richard Bauckham, New Testament scholar from St. Andrews University in Scotland has noted, “The chances of the people in the ossuaries being the Jesus and Mary Magdalene of the New Testament must be very small indeed”. He further noted that even when one runs the probabilities of the entire group, the odds of it being the famous family are very low. “Several of these ossuaries have very popular and familiar early Jewish names. As the statistics above show, the names Joseph and Joshua (Jesus) were two of the most common names in all of early Judaism. So was Mary. Indeed both Jesus’ mother and her sister were named Mary. This is the ancient equivalent of finding adjacent tombs with the names Smith and Jones. No big deal” (Ben Witherington).

“Furthermore, so far as we can tell, the earliest followers of Jesus never called Jesus ‘son of Joseph’. It was outsiders who mistakenly called him that! Would the family members such as James who remained in Jerusalem really put that name on Jesus’ tomb when they knew otherwise?” (Ben Witherington). One should equally note that the experts disagree on the meaning of the inscriptions. Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem is unsure that the name “Jesus” on the bone box was read correctly. He thinks it’s more likely the name “Hanun”.

“Professor Amos Kloner, one of Israel’s prominent archaeologists, and the scholar who supervised the discovery site 27 years ago, in a recent interview with the Jerusalem Post, declared emphatically that the current theory ‘is impossible. It’s nonsense’. He added: ‘There is no likelihood that Jesus and His relatives had a family tomb. They were a (poor) Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the First Century’”(www.christiancourier.com). The ancestral home of Joseph was Bethlehem, and his adult home was Nazareth. The family was still in Nazareth after he was apparently dead and gone. Why in the world would he be buried (alone at this point) in Jerusalem? The fact that Jesus belonged to a poor family can be established along the following lines of evidence. The sacrifice Mary offered when Jesus was born (Luke 2:24; see Leviticus 12:8), the fact that Jesus did not have a formal religious education (John 7:15), at times depended upon others for financial support(Luke 8:3), and neither owned nor had a place of residence (Luke 9:58).

Of course one might wonder, “If this tomb was discovered 27 years ago, why is it a big deal now?” One very probable answer is that with the successful hype surrounding the Da Vinci Code, which also claimed that Jesus was not resurrected, but rather married Mary Magdalene and had children, remains an opportunity to ride the popularity and profitability of that book and movie.

The DNA Evidence

Reportedly, DNA has been collected, and the inference is that this DNA somehow proves that this is the famous biblical family. Yet the key problem here is that DNA tests would not tell anyone anything, unless you have some known DNA with which compare it. So for the Jesus DNA claim, you need DNA known to be either from Mary or from God, or at least DNA known to be from a descendant of Mary. Naturally we don’t have that. In fact, since the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, there is no way to even establish what the DNA in the line tribe of Judah would resemble.

Tough Facts

· First, many archaeologists (who are not professing Christians), dispute this claim and consider it either dishonest or nonsense.

· If Jesus was buried in this family tomb, which was located near Jerusalem, then why didn’t Jesus’ enemies, or the Jewish leaders, expose the tomb when the apostles began preaching so successfully and vigorously His resurrection (Acts 4:2; 5:28 “You have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us”). They were so successful, that many Jewish priests were leaving Judaism in favor of Christianity (Acts 6:7 “A great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith”). It certainly does not make any sense that the Jewish or Roman authorities were unable to find the body of Jesus three days after His death, or during the remainder of the First Century, if His body had been simply lying in a family tomb. It seems that if such a tomb had existed, this would have been the first place to look.

· Why did the Romans, who controlled the entire city of Jerusalem, fail to discover this tomb?

· Why didn’t the contemporary Roman and Jewish historians write about this tomb?

· “Eusebius the father of church history (4th century) tells us that there had been since New Testament times a tomb of James the Just, the brother of Jesus, which was near the Temple mount and had an honoric stele next to it, and that it was a pilgrimage spot for many Christians. It was apparently a single tomb, with no other Holy family members mentioned nor any other ossuaries in that place. The locality and singularity of this tradition rules out a family tomb in Talpiot. Christians would not have been making pilgrimage to the tomb if they believed Jesus' bones were in it-- that would have contradicted and violated their faith, but the bones of James were another matter. They were considered sacred relics. Here is part of the passage from Eusebius on Jesus' brother--- James "was buried on the spot, by the Sanctuary, and his inscribed stone (stele) is still there by the sanctuary." (Hist. Eccles. 2.23.18). This is clearly not in Talpiot, and remember, to claim there is a Talpiot family tomb means that Jesus would have been buried there long before James was martyred in A.D. 62. In other words, the James tradition contradicts the Talpiot tomb both in locale and in substance. James is buried alone, in another place” (The Jesus Tomb, Ben Witherington.blogspot.com).

Website Claims

The website behind this documentary is Jesusfamilytomb.com. They claim that their show does not challenge the Resurrection. “It asks viewers to consider the possibility that the Resurrection occurred from a second tomb”. Yet when it comes to the subject of Jesus’ ascension, the website says, “It is also a matter of Christian faith that Jesus, on the fortieth day after the Resurrection, ascended to Heaven. There is much debate among Christians as to whether this was a spiritual or physical ascent. Did He leave His body behind or did He take it with Him?” Thus, they are saying that the bodily remains of Jesus would not disprove the resurrection. He was resurrected, yet claim He may have left His body here when He ascended into Heaven. The problem with this view is that it completely ignores what the text says about the ascension. “And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). Clearly, the disciples are seeing Jesus ascend, not “in spirit”, but in the body in which He had been walking around, the same body that had been put to death and resurrected (Acts 1:3; Luke 24:39; John 20:27). Obviously these “experts” who are handling all the evidence at this family tomb, are not handling the Scriptures accurately, but seem determined to make everything fit their preconceived idea. If they are doing this with the biblical text, then what guarantee do we have that they are being objective with all the other evidence?

In addition, the claim is made that the Ossuary often attributed to James, the brother of Jesus originally came from this tomb as well, yet Archaeologists reject the filmmaker's claim that the James Ossuary, which is at the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.

Other Supposed Burial Sites

This is not the only supposed tomb of Jesus. The website www.tombofjesus.come cites eight lines of evidence that leads to the conclusion that Jesus was buried in Srinagar, Kashmir, India. Another website, www.thiaoouba.com claims that Jesus’ tomb exists in Shingo Village (Herai) Japan.

Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017