• Scholars have known about these tombs for over 25 years. There’s a reason they haven’t taken these names seriously. Only three have any direct biblical significance: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And that cluster of names is statistically unremarkable. In fact, it would be odd if a family with those three names was not found in a tomb together, given their common use (there are at least four ossuaries discovered inscribed “Jesus, son of Joseph,” and one in four women were named Mary, so it’s even money that one of these tombs would have that combination). And connection of Jesus to any of the other names? Wild speculation. So what you have here is a creative guessing game.

• The entire argument is based on the statistical significance of the names in a cluster. If Jesus was married, and if Jesus was married to a woman named Mariamne, and if Mariamne was also a nickname for Mary Magdalene, and if Jesus had a brother named Matthew, and if Jesus had a son named Judas, and if the now-famous James ossuary belonged to James the brother of Jesus, then you’d have all the members of Jesus’ family together in one tomb. But that’s a lot of “ifs.

• Even though this is called the “Jesus Family Tomb,” there is no hard evidence that any of these so-called “family members” is even related. The only DNA testing that’s been done—between Jesus and Mariamne—came up negative. Let me repeat that: The DNA test came up negative. That is fact. The rest is speculation.

• The documentary claims, “Jesus and Mary were married, as the DNA evidence suggests.” This is nonsense. Think about it. How can DNA evidence suggest someone is married? DNA can’t “suggest” anything about legal relationships, only biological ones. In this case, the DNA evidence showed Jesus and Mary were not related by a mother, not that they were husband and wife. The truth is, she could have been married to any one of the males in the tomb, or to none of them for that matter. The DNA “suggests” nothing.

• The researchers claim they’re just trying to connect the dots? Fair enough. But why connect the dots the way they did? I’ll tell you why. Because it tells their story. There are many other legitimate ways to connect those same dots—some much more probable than the way the documentary connects them, but won’t give the story they’re promoting. But, of course, that wouldn’t create breaking news, would it?

• Jesus’ family was a poor family from Nazareth, not a middle- to upper-class family from Jerusalem. So this tomb is the wrong kind of tomb located in the wrong city.

• The documentary claims Jesus spoke in codes. This is false. Jesus spoke in parables, like many of the teachers of His day, not in codes that needed to be deciphered. They say Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ most trusted apostle. But you have to wait 400 years before this evidence pops up in any alleged historical record. They said that Jesus’ family members were executed because He was a pretender to throne of Israel. This is pure fiction. Notice what this accomplishes, though. All of these little exaggerations and inaccuracies make an unlikely tale sound more plausible when, on its own unembellished merits, it is not.

• What we have here are two different characterizations of what happened to the body of Jesus of Nazareth 2,000 years ago. One is based on artifacts—the ossuaries—and one is based on documents—the historical records of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Paul. Now granted, these kinds of things are not entirely exact science, but all things being equal, which do you think gives us more precise information, bone boxes or written records? The written records, obviously.

• The claim of Jesus’ resurrection, was part of the earliest, most primitive testimony regarding Jesus. And it was made by those very same people that the documentary suggests knew Jesus’ bones were actually secretly buried in Jerusalem. Why would so many of them die for this lie when they knew it was a lie? It doesn’t add up. But that’s what you must believe if you take seriously the conclusions of this documentary.

There is just one tiny problem with the super-hyped Jesus Tomb claim: Nearly all archeological experts dismiss it out of hand, or at least note it is both highly improbable and entirely unprovable, and therefore hardly worth mentioning.

By now, most everyone has heard the main reason why. The Hebrew names Yeshua (Jesus), Miriam (Mary), Judah, and Yoseph—all found inscribed on stone burial ossuaries situated inside the ancient tomb when it was discovered by Israeli construction workers in 1980—were extremely common monikers in the time of Jesus. To allege that they point to the family tomb of Christianity’s revered redeemer is a giant stretch, to say the least.

But Cameroon and Jacobovici claim another name was found inside the tomb that nearly seals their case—Mary Magdalene! It is almost statistically impossible that her unique second name would be found with the others if we were not talking about the tomb of the world renowned Jesus of Nazareth and his relatives, they maintain.

American scholar Stephen Pfann, who serves as a locally trained textual scholar and paleographer at Jerusalem’s Holy Land University, has just conducted an intensive examination of the ossuary that supposedly held the bones of the Messiah’s alleged bride. He insists that the burial box is inscribed with two apparently unrelated names, the second of them Mara, the Greek version of Martha, not Magdalene. He discerned that the two names were etched in distinctive styles on the stone ossuary by clearly different hands. Scholars have long known that such burial receptacles often housed the bones of more than one person, mainly for economic reasons. Ref. http://www.bibleheadquarters.org/TombofJesus.html
 

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