I have computed that the probability of the tomb in the Talpiot district of Jerusalem being the family tomb of the Jesus of Nazareth is at least 12 to 1 *against*. Apparently the makers of the movie calculated the probability that more than one family living in ancient Jerusalem would produce a cluster of names like the ones discovered in the tomb in the Talpiot district of Jerusalem, and found that this probability is very small and that therefore this must be the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth's family. But I think they asked the wrong question. The right question is: How many families living in ancient Jerusalem would produce a cluster of names in a tomb that would appear to be as similar to the names in Jesus' family as the cluster of names actually found? And the answer is that more than 12 families would have produced such remarkable cluster of names in a tomb.

Here is how I computed this number. According to the gospels Jesus' family consisted of Joseph and Mary, Jesus, and four male brothers of Jesus named James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (besides unnamed female siblings). We also know the approximate frequency of names in ancient Palestine. According to http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/02/jesus-tomb-titanic-talpiot-tomb-theory.html these are: 9.2%, 8.3%, 6.2% and 3.8% for Simon, Joseph, Judas and Jesus respectively for male names, and Mary’s name frequency is a whooping 21.3% for female names. The tomb discovered in Talpiot contained 10 ossuaries, of which 6 carried inscriptions. The relevant inscriptions here are "Jesus son of Joseph", "Mary", "Mary", and "Joseph". These inscriptions were in different languages and used different forms for these names, but that's about it. (see: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070228135009.htm) I read somewhere that first century Jerusalem had about 50,000 inhabitants. As the period in question spanned various generations I used a population of 10,000 families.

I wrote a computer program simulation that actually randomly produced 10,000 families of 10 members each (keeping the right name frequencies) and then proceeded to compute the following average numbers:

111 families would have a "Jesus son of Joseph". I understand that in fact other ossuaries have been found with the inscription "Jesus son of Joseph".

75 families would moreover have at least one Mary.

71 families would moreover have one more name that belongs to Jesus' family, be it Joseph, Simon or Judas, or maybe a second Mary (supposedly Mary Magdalene).

43 families would have two more such names. One of such clusters might be: [Jesus son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Joseph], as is the one discovered in the Talpiot tomb.

And 16 families would have three more such names. Here is in detail the very first family case my simulation produced: An unnamed (i.e. with no relevant names) couple have three children: a daughter Mary, a son Joseph, and an unnamed second daughter. Their daughter Mary marries Simon and produces an unnamed daughter. Their son Joseph marries an unnamed wife and produces two children, Jesus and Mary. Voila: A family cluster of 10 whose tomb might have had inscriptions "Jesus son of Joseph", "Mary", "Joseph", "Mary", and "Simon" – all names related to the circle of Jesus of Nazareth, but this is not Jesus Christ's family. Nevertheless this cluster would appear to be even more statistically conspicuous than the one discovered in the Talpiot tomb.

The film producers have tested the DNA of one of the Mary's and discovered it is not maternally related to Jesus' DNA. I compute that adding this condition we still get 12 families. Here is the very first such case my simulation produced: A Jesus (whose father was named Joseph) marries a Mary and has 4 children: Simon, Jesus, and two more unnamed ones. Their son Simon marries a second Mary but have no children that would be buried in the family tomb. One unnamed daughter marries Joseph and has a daughter Mary. That's the second Mary who is also not maternally related to "Jesus son of Joseph". – So, any of these 12 families might have produced tomb even more conspicuous than the one found, but at most one of these families could be Jesus'. Hence the chance of the Talpiot tomb being Jesus is less than 1/12.

(I did the above computations in a hurry and it's possible that I have committed some mistake. If you send me an email to dianelos@tecapro.com I will gladly send you a copy of the program I wrote, so that you can check it yourself. It's written in Pascal, and it's a simple 150 lines program that any programmer can read.)

Further: Taking into account that Jesus' family was not from Jerusalem, that his family was too poor to afford a family tomb, that if Jesus' bones were put in an ossuary one would expect the ossuary itself or the inscription on it to be more special in some way, and that if Jesus' body was buried in a tomb to decompose and then put in an ossuary then probably somebody would have found out back then when so much was made of Jesus' bodily ascension to heaven – taking all that into account the probability of the Talpiot tomb being of Jesus is much less than 12 to 1 against. Finally, if the movie producers really believed that this was Jesus' tomb one would expect that they would have asked neutral professional archeologists to evaluate their evidence or argumentation – which they haven't done.

There is some more arguments, such as the "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" ossuary (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ossuary) having come from this same tomb, but the archaeologist who first studied the tomb flatly denies it (see: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1171894527185&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull) and the archeological report on the Talpiot tomb counts six ossuaries with inscriptions, all accounted for (go to http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/explore/explore.html and click on "Enter the Tomb", then on "Download Documents" and then on "Download PDF").

I suppose my argument in a nutshell is this: Assume that Jesus' family is in fact *not* entombed in Jerusalem. Even so there is a good chance that a tomb would be found in Jerusalem with a cluster of inscriptions that is remarkably similar to the names that, according to the gospels, belonged to members of Jesus' family. And if people asked the wrong statistical questions they would conclude that this tomb almost certainly belongs to Jesus' family.