Several others are now making statemnts about the Jerusalem Meeting. I will not post them all, but just give the links.
Ben Witherington has also just made a post. I will post much of it.
Here is Witherington's take:
Let
me be clear that no fresh evidence came to light from this conference,
except one somewhat surprising revelation-- the widow of Joseph Gat,
Gat being one of the original archaeologists who dug the Talpiot Tomb,
revealed that her husband thought back in the 80s that this might be
the tomb of Jesus, but he kept these views to himself, because. his
wife averred, being a Holocaust survivor he was fearful of an
anti-Jewish reprisal had he made his views known. This is sadly
understandable.
So let's review for a moment what most scholars concluded was the case about this tomb:
1)
it is too far out of town; and 2) too ornate a tomb to have been the
Jesus family tomb, especially if James was buried in it because 3) his
shrine was near the Temple mount and this tomb is miles away, and
furthermore the Gospel evidence, as we have it, suggests Jesus was
buried hastily near the place of this crucifixion; and 4) Jesus'
crucifixion is one of the most reliable pieces of multiply-attested
historical evidence we have from antiquity, including from
non-Christian Jewish and Roman sources.
Because of some of these
factors, Simcha Jacobivici's documentary argued that Jesus was
reinterred later at the Jesus family tomb, perhaps very soon after his
initial interment in Joseph's own family tomb. Of course this is an
argument entirely from silence, not from evidence or even inference. We
have no historical evidence of Jesus being reburied in the Talpiot
area, much less being buried for the first time there, unless one can force the Talpiot tomb's inscriptions to provide such evidence. But they positively resist such an analysis.
Let
us review then the onamasticon (or name list) evidence as well. Close
examination of the inscription on the so-called Mary Magdalene ossuary
revealed that instead of saying 'Mariamne' or Maria the Master, it in
fact listed two names--- Mary and Martha. Secondly, the so-called Jesus
ossuary with an inscription of 'Jesus son of Joseph' is unlikely to
have been the way Jesus' would have been listed had he even had an
ossuary and had undergone re-interment. Why? Because it was well and
widely known that Joseph was not Jesus' father, and as I pointed out in
my previous post last March on this blog, only outsiders who did not
know the situation called Jesus--' son of Joseph'. There is no evidence
any member of the family ever did so, and Luke, who offers us the
virginal conception idea in Lk. 1-2, quite rightly in connnection with
his genealogy of Jesus in Lk. 3. use the phrase 'as was supposed' when
relating the name Jesus to the phrase 'son of Joseph'. This signals the
dubious nature of such a view in Luke's mind. None of the other names
on the other ossuaries are helpful for resolving this matter. The James
ossuary does however confirm what the Synoptic Gospels especially
suggest--- that Jesus had brothers and sisters, the other children of
Mary (and Joseph).
It is worth pointing out as well, that if this were a Jesus family tomb
why exactly are neither Joseph nor Mary buried there (and why would
such a tomb be in Jerusalem rather than in Galilee)? According to later
church tradition Mary died in Ephesus and was buried there, having
moved there with the Beloved Disciple.
What does indeed bother
me about Jim Charlesworth's reported remarks, who says he has doubts
about the Talpiot tomb theory anyway, is that he makes the unhelpful
remark that this whole matter is irrelevant to Christian faith, because
even if it were true, it would simply mean that Jesus had a spiritual
body or a spiritual resurrection.
He surely knows better than to
misrepresent the view of resurrection found in both early Judaism and
early Christianity in this manner. As Tom Wright demonstrated at great
length in his landmark study on 'Resurrection and the Son of God'
(Fortress Press), resurrection everywhere refers to something that
happens to and involves a physical, not some ethereal spiritual body.
Paul in 1 Cor. 15 does not in
fact refer to a 'spiritual body'. What 'pneumatikon soma' means is a
body totally empowered by the Spirit, not a body made out of spiritual
material (an idea that would have been a non sequitur or oxymoron--
'spirit refers to something non-material, and so not a material
component or physical substance of a body). The term Spirit, in the
phrase 'life-giving Spirit' is set in contrast to the phrase about Adam
as a 'living being' (i.e. with physical breath). Thus in this phrase
Spirit, has the same meaning as it does in John 4 where Jesus refers to
God as Spirit (i.e. a divine being). The point of the contrast is to
make clear that while Adam had physical existence and so was alive as a
human being, Jesus as the risen Lord has the ability to do what only
God the Spirit can do-- namely give life. None of the discussion in 1
Cor. 15 has anything to do with a 'spiritual (i.e. non-material)
resurrection body'. Note that there is plenty of talk in the ancient
world about human spirits or souls, or even animal spirits, but in
neither case are either viewed as a 'material' or physically
substantive part of a creature's body. Thus when Jesus says 'into thy
hands I commend my spirit', he is referring to his personality or the
non-material part of who he is.
What the Jerusalem conference
does call for is a further investigation of this matter, which is fine.
But unless there is some new and compelling evidence (and Joseph Gat's
personal opinion does not count in that category), since both the DNA
and the statistical evidence offered by Simcha Jacobivici's Discovery
Channel special were shown to be very flawed, and this is one of the
main reasons the theory was rejected by the vast majority of scholars,
then there is no reason to change the previous overwhelmingly negative
majority view of the evidence. Actual promising new evidence would be
required.
But this lack of solid evidence of course never
prevents gadflies who are not scholars but rather sensationalizers of
ideas which they think have buzz, or potential buzz, from gadding about
what most have regarded, quite rightly, as a dead issue--dead meat.
I
suspect this revival of the theory without new evidence will simply die
an even quicker death than the first presentation did, and will not
find the press much interested in a Jesus tomb redux theory. The News
cycle (or as I like to call it, the spin cycle) on a story without any
new dimension is typically very short.
Any historian worth his
salt will tell you that mere possibilities, while worth exploring, do
not become probabilities by stringing together flawed evidence on hyped
up by docu-dramas. A hypothesis becomes viable when it explains most of
the evidence we already have and illuminates certain things previously
obscure. But what the Talpiot tomb theory requires is that we reject or
ignore most of the hard evidence we have, and put in its place evidence
that is so tenuous that if even one link in its chain is weak, the
whole theory falls apart. Such an approach cannot be called responsible
historiography.
_________________________________________________________________
Other key posts Include:
Andre Lemaire <http://www.uhl.ac/blog/?p=405>,
Israel Knohl
<http://www.uhl.ac/blog/?p=404>,
Geza Vermes
<http://www.uhl.ac/blog/?p=403>, and
Shimon Gibson
<http://www.uhl.ac/blog/?p=402>.
Go here and then scroll down to see
each of them.
http://www.uhl.ac/blog/
Gibson participated in the original dig. Knohl was on the final panel at the Jerusalem symposium. Lemaire and Vermes are well known for their work in Jewish materials.
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