the "jesus tomb"

That's the commercialized name for a tomb discovered in 1980 in East Talpiot, Jerusalem. The excavation has been reported before without much fanfare, but now it has been brought into the limelight through a media blitz involving a documentary airing on the Discovery Channel, and a book written by some of the documentary's participants. The claim of these participants is that the tomb is that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

Here are some of the relevant details as best as I can discern them:

• The tomb was first discovered in 1980 and studied by a team which included Shimon Gibson. The results were published in 1996 by Amos Kloner. During this time the academic community saw little significance in the findings in terms of any possible connection with early Christianity.
• The tomb included ten ossuaries, stone boxes which were used to store the bones of deceased persons after decomposition. These have been dated to the late Second Temple era (ca. late first century B.C.E. to 70 C.E.).
• Six of these ossuaries are inscribed with names: "Jose" (a short form of "Joseph"), "Matthew," "Jesus son of Joseph," "Judah son of Jesus," "Mary," and "Mariamne or Mara" ("Mara" as a short form of "Martha"). All of these were very common names among first century Palestinian Jews.
  
• Usable DNA evidence was discovered in two of the ossuaries: "Jesus son of Joseph" and "Mariamne or Mara." These two persons were not maternally related.
• Apparently, one of the ten ossuaries disappeared from the tomb during its original analysis.

Those are the basic details which form the basis for the theory that this represents the family of Jesus of Nazareth. But there are several questions that I have about this theory.

• The notorious "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" ossuary from a few years ago has been suggested as the missing ossuary from the Talpiot tomb. However, as far as I can tell from the reports, the missing ossuary from the original Talpiot excavation was not inscribed at all. This is problematic for the assertion that the "James" ossuary is this missing ossuary, since at least the first part of the "James" ossuary inscription appears to be authentic. In other words, the "James" ossuary--which has had at least a partial inscription since the first century--could not be the missing Talpiot ossuary--which apparently had no inscription whatsoever. Even if there are uncertainties regarding all this, it further appears that the two ossuaries were different sizes and that soil samples from the two ossuaries indicate that the "James" ossuary came from a different location than the Talpiot tomb. So, the "James" ossuary should be left out of the equation.
• As far as I can tell from the reports, the family relationships among those in the tomb are far from certain based on the evidence of the tomb itself. The only DNA samples were taken from the "Jesus" and "Mariamne" ossuaries, and tests indicated that these persons were not related. So DNA really gets us nowhere. In terms of inscriptions, there is only the "Jesus son of Joseph" and "Judah son of Jesus" connection. The other ossuaries don't mention any family connections. So, let's start with what we know: what is the statistical probability of a grandfather "Joseph"-father "Jesus"-son "Judah" connection in first century Jerusalem? Given the popularity of these names at that time, I imagine it's probably pretty high. Anything beyond this explicit "Joseph"-"Jesus"-"Judah" family connection is pure speculation, and there are several different ways one could imagine the other names--all popular names at the time--fitting into that basic family line.
  
• The arguments from statistics really don't get us anywhere. They either tell us that it's likely that one would find a family in Jerusalem with those particular names--something which the tomb itself apparently indicates--or they tell us that it's unlikely that one would find a family in Jerusalem with those particular names--something which the tomb itself apparently contradicts. If one wants to press those statistics into service to make a connection with the family of Jesus of Nazareth, then one encounters an immediate problem: the names don't really match up well with what we know of the family of Jesus of Nazareth. Who's "Matthew"? How does "Judah" escape any mention in the written sources? Where's James, another brother of Jesus and the only family member known from written sources to have lived extensively in Jerusalem and died there?
  

So what do we really have to connect this family with the family of Jesus of Nazareth? In my estimation, not very much. But it will be interesting to see how the experts in archaeology and ancillary disciplines respond, and how this all plays out in the weeks to come.

Update (03/01/07): I originally posted this on mid-Monday this week, when things were first coming out, and there's been nothing to change my initial impressions. In fact, several points are being questioned vigorously by others with more expertise, including the unlikelihood of the "James" ossuary originally being part of the Talpiot tomb, and questions about the DNA and statistics. In addition, one interesting question which is being discussed and which I hadn't thought of initially was whether the name "Mariamne" could even point to Mary Magdalene. See the Goodacre and Williams links below to follow up on all these discussions.

For more on this:

• The Lost Tomb of Jesus (Discovery Channel; see especially the "Tomb Evidence")
• The Jesus Family Tomb (documentary website)
• Update (02/27/07): Mark Goodacre has some good posts under the label Talpiot tomb
• Update (03/01/07): Tyler Williams has good collections of links under the label Talpiot tomb