'Lost tomb' full of questions, but has few answers

Frank Miele

Well, a couple of weeks have passed since it was announced that the tomb of Jesus was possibly discovered in Jerusalem, and the world has not changed one iota.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but it does seem to be a reflection of our information overload at the very least. One can be pretty sure that if the tomb of Anna Nicole had been found in Jerusalem, that it would have been good for at least two weeks of reporting. Even the vault of Al Capone might get more airtime if there were actually anything in it.

Nonetheless, the film "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" did receive a considerable amount of publicity in the week before it first aired, and we can report assuredly now that Christianity did not suddenly collapse as a result, even though a fair number of people apparently believe in the authenticity of the archeological find.

Nor has Christianity become a more or less viable religious faith as a result of the TV special and accompanying book about the so-called "Jesus Family Tomb." The important thing to remember is that Christianity is very much a "faith," an acknowledgment of the importance of "things not seen." It is not a religion based on whether or not Jesus left bones behind, but on whether or not he left the Comforter behind, a living spirit that continues to minister to the world 2,000 years after the death of the man.

Or so it seems to me, at least.

Which is why I continue to be somewhat amused by the absolute terror with which some of my fellow Christians appear to view the tomb story. I have yet to read one story by a debunker of the tomb which did not distort the evidence in some way in an attempt to mislead the general public.

The latest compellingly foolish such report that I saw came from an Associated Press story dated March 16. The reporter notes that "Stephen J. Pfann, a textual scholar and paleographer at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said the makers of 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus' incorrectly identified an ancient ossuary from the cave as belonging to the New Testament's Mary Magdalene."

Indeed, the documentary had included experts who said that the inscription on one of the ossuaries found in the tomb read in Greek as Mariamne y Mara, and translated that as "Mary and master." The film concluded that the first part was a form of the name by which Mary Magdalene was known and that the second part was an honorific title applied to her.

The AP reporter claims that Professor Pfann's research shows that the film was "wrong" about a crucial piece of evidence, implying therefore that the film's conclusions will fall like a house of cards.

Unfortunately, anyone who knows Bible history is not going to agree. In fact, Professor Pfann's translation of the inscription on the ossuary is even more provoking than the official one in the film. Pfann claims that the translation actually reads "Mary and Martha," and that the two names were written at two different times, with "and Martha" having been added later in a different hand.

Presumably any such common burial in one ossuary of two women would mean they were closely related, and perhaps inextricably linked together in history. The fact that just such a pair of sisters named Mary and Martha are found in the New Testament does not seem to have occurred to the AP reporter Matti Friedman. These friends of Jesus - the New Testament Mary and Martha - were also the sisters of Lazarus, who was coincidentally raised from his own tomb by Jesus.

Interestingly, there is a tradition in Christianity that Mary Magdalene and Martha's sister Mary are one and the same, although it is not widely believed anymore. That point cannot be solved without further research, although the evidence is tantalizing. Nonetheless, the addition of one more name found in the tomb that is historically connected to Jesus of Nazareth does not lessen the likelihood of this being his tomb, but greatly increases it. And the fact that the Mary and Martha are so closely linked as to be buried in the same ossuary means that the evidence goes way beyond the probability just associated with the names themselves.

Of course, the argument about "common names" is one of the red herrings thrown out by critics who don't want to face the possibility that the tomb at Talpiot is the real thing.

From the beginning, we heard over and over that the names inscribed on the ossuaries were very common in the first century A.D. And that is, of course, true. Jesus, Joseph, Mary and Matthew were indeed common, and if you were to find any one of them in isolation, it would have no probative value at all. But that was not the case here.

Instead, we had a collection of 10 ossuaries, six of which had inscriptions. The most important is for Jesus, who is identified as the "son of Joseph." Two of the other names could be members of Jesus' immediate family, his mother Mary and a brother Yose, which is a diminutive of Joseph and is the rather distinctive name used to identify one of Jesus brothers in the New Testament.

Another key name present is the aforementioned Mariamne, which in a fourth-century manuscript is identified as the name of Mary Magdalene, the companion of Jesus who was the first person to find the original empty tomb after the crucifixion.

A fifth ossuary bears the name of Matthew, a name familiar to us as one of the original disciples. The name Matthew is also found repeatedly in the ancestry of Jesus through his mother Mary's family tree, so this may or may not be the Matthew of the New Testament, but could still be a relative of Jesus.

The sixth name is perhaps the most problematic because it would represent a new personage in Christian tradition, a son of Jesus named Judah. Anyone who is offended by new ideas would automatically, therefore, conclude that this can't be the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, because "that Jesus" didn't and couldn't have a son or the scriptures would have said so. But that, of course, is not science; it is dogma.

More importantly, if you were going to find a tomb of Jesus, doesn't it make sense that he would be surrounded by those people who loved him in life and followed him even after his death. Can anyone imagine finding a tomb of Jesus of Nazareth that contained people named Hananiah and Shelamzion and Eleazar, other common names from the first century? Of course not.

Therefore, it is foolish to argue against the validity of the discovery by complaining that the names are too common to prove anything. Of course, they don't prove anything, but they certainly don't disprove anything either.

Moreover, the absence of any names from the tomb that are not consistent with the known history of Jesus from the Gospels and other writings is possibly even more compelling than the possible coincidence of the original names. Indeed, if this were just a tomb full of commonly named folk from the first century, we would surely have a Simeon or two, as well as a Shelamzion.

Some of the other criticisms have been just as thick-headed.

Here are a few:

. Jesus was from Nazareth, so he would have been buried in Nazareth, not Jerusalem. - This presupposes that a family in the first century would automatically transport a body over a considerable distance to be buried. It also ignores the known fact that Jesus was first buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea in Jerusalem, from which we can determine that Jesus would not have been buried in Nazareth in any case. Jesus was considered by his followers to be of the Davidic lineage, and a burial in Jerusalem would have been entirely appropriate.

. Jesus came from a poor family, so they would not have been able to afford a tomb or ossuaries. - Clearly Jesus had many wealthy friends including Joseph of Arimathea. In addition, he was the beloved and cherished leader of a rather large group of followers who considered him at the very least to be a holy man. Do we really need to be surprised that a tomb would be provided for him? Obviously not, since the historical record already provides evidence of him being buried in the first tomb. Nor is it surprising that his family members would want to be buried with him. The ossuaries in the tomb, for the most part, are actually rather plain, not ornate, which argues that this family was somewhat less than well-to-do.

. Jesus was buried elsewhere, and then rose from the dead, so the idea of a second tomb makes no sense. - This argument presupposes that the resurrected Jesus ascended bodily to heaven, which is not at all a necessary part of Christian dogma. The oldest Gospel, Mark, in its earliest-known texts, does not even confirm a resurrection, but merely speaks of the empty tomb. The other Gospels do confirm numerous sightings of the risen Jesus, however, so it is easy to accept the eyewitness testimony as evidence that Jesus rose from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

The more important question is what happened to Jesus at the end of his post-crucifixion appearances to the disciples. Mark, of course, is silent, on this point, according to the earliest manuscripts. So too is Matthew, which concludes with Jesus giving his disciples the "Great Commission," but does not say what happened to the risen Jesus. Neither does the Gospel of John, which concludes with the resurrected Jesus still present on earth. It is only Luke which concludes with Jesus being "taken up into heaven," and there is no explanation of how this happened. An ending that was appended to Mark in later editions also says that Jesus was "taken up into heaven" and adds that he "sat at the right hand of God."

It is up to each individual believer to interpret these various accounts, but surely they do not exclude the possibility that the risen Jesus had been later reburied after his post-crucifixion mission was completed. His ascension could have been spiritual rather than bodily in accord with Paul's preaching that "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."

Moreover, there is some question about what was actually in the ossuary identified as belonging to "Jesus son of Joseph." The contents of the ossuaries were reburied according to Jewish law, and there is just a little dust left in them now. But according to the producers of the film, the contents of the Jesus ossuary included what appear to be fragments left from a burial shroud such as would have remained after the resurrection. The blood and sweat of Jesus could have been on his shroud after his crucifixion, which could account for the DNA findings even if there had been no body there at all.

So we are left where we started. With questions, questions, questions. "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" offers plenty of those. If we are looking for answers, we will need to look far beyond its walls to find them. Perhaps, as Jesus himself said, "If you seek, you will find."