THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE DISCOVERIES
These discoveries in the Patio tomb provide a new context for our discoveries in the Jesus tomb, but they also open the way for a reevaluation of ossuaries and their inscriptions and ornamentations in general. There has been a sharp debate among scholars as to whether we have any evidence that the Jewish followers of Jesus in 1st century Jerusalem left any distinctive evidence of their faith by the way in which they inscribed and marked the ossuaries in which they were buried.
In the 1970s Pau Figueras came across a small fragment of an ossuary in the IAA warehouse of unknown provenance that had the name Yeshua—Hebrew for Jesus—inside a circle that he identified as a fish. He was convinced that he had discovered the first archaeological evidence that could be tied to Jewish followers of Jesus.32 Most scholars disagreed, taking the so-called fish as a carelessly drawn circle simply calling attention to the name of the person buried in the ossuary. Levi Rahmani wrote, “The similarity of the circle to a fish is coincidental and the inferences drawn by Figueras excessive.”33 Jonathan Price recently concurred, labeling Figueras’s suggestion “an over-interpretation.”34 These editors of the two most prestigious catalogues of ossuary inscriptions from this period represent a general consensus. They maintain that not only is there no distinctive archaeological evidence left behind by Jesus’ first followers, but also that ossuary ornamentations in general are nonsymbolic and have nothing to do with expressions of hope for resurrection or the afterlife.35 However, images that fall out of the ordinary pattern and seem to have some individual stamp of expression such as the Jonah image in our Patio tomb challenge this standard opinion. We are convinced that a new examination of the evidence might reveal much that has previously been overlooked.
31. The Yeshua “fish” ossuary fragment.
We recently examined the Figueras ossuary fragment in the warehouse of the Israel Museum and discussed it with the collections curator David Mevorach. Although he supported the minimalist position that the artifact was simply a crudely drawn circle, he admitted that with further evidence—perhaps more examples of fish with a clearly symbolic meaning—he might change his mind. We suggest here, in light of our recent discoveries, that the Figueras fragment is a representation of the “sign of Jonah”—Jesus inside a fish. It appears to be a fairly well-drawn fish, not a careless circle, and the inscription inside the fish—the name of Jesus—might not refer to a person named Jesus who was buried in the ossuary, but rather to that deceased person’s faith in Jesus and his resurrection. In other words it would be a symbol of faith, not a careless marking.
Price mentions that there are only two other examples of names within “circles” on ossuaries, and one of them is from the Jesus tomb: the name Mariamene Mara—the name associated with Mary Magdalene. We had never paid attention to it before but from the photo one can clearly see the sweeping flourish of a bulging circular shape enclosing her name. We recently examined the inscription in the IAA warehouse at Beth Shemesh. The “circle” is in the shape of a fish—maybe even a great fish. Was this just a thoughtless flourish or was it purposely and carefully executed to convey some kind of symbolic meaning? If the custom of drawing circles around names occurs only three times out of 650 ossuary inscriptions, and two of them are connected to a “Jesus” name, we think these inscriptions might be quite important.
We began to investigate further and made a rather startling discovery. The only other example of the name Mariamene, which in the Jesus tomb we have interpreted as the ossuary of Mary Magdalene, is now stored in the basement storage area of the Rockefeller Museum.36 This unusual spelling of the name, written with the n rather than the more common name Mariame, is engraved under the lid of the ossuary—which is not visible from the outside. It is extremely faint and difficult to see. When we examined the ossuary itself we were quite surprised to see that it had three little fish, very similar in style to the Figueras find, carved along the front of its façade. The distinguishing mark seemed to be the little crossed tails and a mouth. One of them had what looked like a Greek letter scrawled inside but it was too crudely drawn to decipher.
32. The Mariamene Mara ossuary inscription with the oval shape around it.
The name Jesus itself is a case in point. One of the most frequent observations made by theologians and academics alike regarding the Talpiot Garden or Jesus tomb was that the name Jesus was very common in 1st century Jerusalem. As a result, the discovery of a tomb with the name “Jesus son of Joseph” says nothing—or so the argument goes—since there were many males named Jesus with a father named Joseph in 1st century Jerusalem.
The name Jesus is known but hardly common. The definitive Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity includes all named references to Jewish males in Hebrew or Greek from 330 BCE to 200 CE in the land of Israel.37 Based on that hard data we can say that approximately 3.9 percent were named Jesus. This is a valid statistical sampling that compares the name Jesus with other known male names and their frequencies in all our sources—literary as well as epigraphic. In a sampling of one hundred Jewish males of the time only four would have the name Jesus. One would hardly call this common.
If we take all known inscribed ossuaries there are only 21 out of approximately 600 that have any form of the name Jesus, whether Yeshua in Hebrew or Iesous in Greek. Two of these are in the Talpiot Jesus tomb—“Jesus son of Joseph” and “Jude son of Jesus,” and a third, the controversial “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus,” we argue might well be from the Jesus tomb as well. If that were the case, we are left with eighteen others to consider. We recently examined all of these Jesus inscriptions that are available firsthand. Four of the twenty-one have disappeared and are known only through drawings or reports. We have spent countless hours in basement storage areas, warehouses, and museums, filming and closely studying each ossuary using special cameras and lights. We have visited the Rockefeller Museum, the IAA collection at Beth Shemesh, the Israel Museum, the Franciscan Museum, and a half-dozen other scattered locations where we have diligently tabulated all the evidence.
We have a working hypothesis that a number of the eighteen Jesus inscriptions on ossuaries refer not to the skeletal remains of a person in the ossuary named Jesus, but to Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, we think there are cases where families wrote “Jesus” on their ossuaries as a devotional tribute to their faith in him.
The ossuary fragment with the Yeshua inscription inside the fish discussed above is our first case in point. Since we don’t have the entire ossuary we cannot be sure, but if the “circle” is not a careless circle but a fish, we think it is most likely an example of someone with faith in Jesus representing the “sign of Jonah” on his ossuary.
In 1945, Eleazar Sukenik, who was the first to identify the Dead Sea Scrolls as being authentically from the Second Temple period, discovered a tomb off Hebron Road in southern Jerusalem. The tomb contained fourteen ossuaries; five were inscribed. Sukenik was convinced that this tomb contained the earliest records of Jewish followers of Jesus ever discovered.38
One of the ossuaries in this tomb had the inscription “Jesus Woe” (Iesous Iou), written faintly in charcoal, which Sukenik took to be a plaintive cry, either to Jesus or in memory of Jesus, perhaps referring to his suffering on the cross. A majority of scholars today dispute Sukenik’s reading and have argued that the word Iou is an abbreviated form of the name Ioudas or Jude/Judas—so the ossuary would read “Jesus [son of] Jude.” Many other interpretations have been suggested, some of them agreeing with Sukenik that this is some kind of a cry of woe.39 The ossuary is now stored in the basement of the Rockefeller Museum. We looked at it closely, using special lights and cameras that can enhance invisible or faded letters, and are satisfied there are no letters after the word Iou, faint or otherwise. There is a faint slanting diagonal stroke far to the right of the inscription, but it is certainly not a letter. It seems to us highly unlikely that anyone wanting to write the name Judas would have written it Iou leavin
g off the last letters.
The argument that the inscription represents the two names of son and father—Jesus (son of) Judas—is based upon an assumption that we think should be questioned, namely, that ossuaries invariably have the names of the dead inscribed rather than epigrams or iconographic expressions of faith.
But there was more in the Sukenik tomb. In addition to this first ossuary was another, this time with the strange formula Iesous Aloth. The first word is the name “Jesus” in Greek but what is the meaning of Aloth? Is it just another name, or perhaps a nickname, for the deceased person named Jesus? Or is it, as Sukenik argued, another cry of faith? He translated it as “Jesus Alas!” parallel to “Jesus Woe!” He connected it to the Hebrew word ’alah, “to lament.” Others have since argued that it might come from a similar Hebrew word, ‘alah, which means “to rise,” that looks almost the same in English but in Hebrew is spelled one letter differently. In that case it would read “Let Jesus arise” or “Jesus has gone up.” There is an amazing parallel in the Dead Sea Scrolls that says, “You brought me up out of the grave,” using this same Hebrew verb, aloth (4Q437.2.11). In the light of our new inscription, in which there is either hope for, or celebration of, Jehovah “raising up” someone from the dead, we think it is time to revisit Sukenik’s interpretation. But the story of the Sukenik tomb doesn’t end there.
On the “Jesus Aloth” ossuary were four charcoal crosses—on the two sides and two ends. Sukenik, rightly in our view, believed these crosses could not be random markings because they were too carefully executed. He believed that they had to refer to Jesus and early Christianity. Usually such marks are dismissed as meaningless “mason’s marks,” but in this case these four crosses are so symmetrical and carefully placed, one on each surface side of the ossuary, that they can hardly be accidental. They are also written with the same charcoal style as the inscription itself—so they were definitely done by the same hand.
So far we have mentioned three possible “Jesus” inscriptions, the fish and the two in the Sukenik tomb, counted among the eighteen total but which could well refer to Jesus of Nazareth and faith in him, not to the names of the deceased. This possibility should be reconsidered. We have read all the literature pro and con and we don’t find the skeptics’ arguments convincing.
There is another inscription, discovered on the Mount of Offense, just south of the Mount of Olives, two miles north of Talpiot, which was inscribed twice in Greek: “Jesus Jesus.” It is of course possible that the bones in the ossuary belonged to a Jesus and that the family simply wrote his name twice. However, since the two names are written together on a single line, one should at least consider the possibility that someone is writing “Jesus” on their ossuary, as in the case of the Sukenik tomb, to invoke or express some kind of faith in Jesus of Nazareth. In front of the first name Jesus there is also a cross or X mark. Scholars have dismissed this as a mason’s mark that was scratched on the body of an ossuary to match a similar X on the lid, showing how the lid should be turned to fit the ossuary properly.40 Unfortunately the ossuary has disappeared and the mason’s mark argument cannot be further examined. We have examined dozens of other such X’s on ossuaries, and although some of them have a matching X on their lids, the great majority do not.41
33. The “Jesus Aloth” ossuary with the crosses drawn on four sides.
Another name on one of the inscribed ossuaries in this same tomb was “Judah,” with a cross mark below the name almost identical in style to the four on the ossuary from the Sukenik tomb. Again, scholars have interpreted it as another mason’s mark, without symbolic value. Unfortunately the lid is missing, which might have a corresponding mark to show its orientation on the ossuary, so we cannot be sure. The style of the cross is identical to the four cross marks on the Sukenik “Jesus Aloth” ossuary, and its placement under the name seems to serve no function as a mason’s mark. As it happens the “Jesus son of Joseph” inscription in the Talpiot Garden tomb also has an X or cross marking just in front of the name Jesus. It, like the others, has been dismissed as a random scratch, or mason’s mark. This Mount of Offense tomb contained other strange markings, including one very clear Christian cross, but it is assumed that it must have been carved onto the ossuary centuries later by a Byzantine Christian visiting the tomb, since crosses simply don’t exist in the 1st century according to the standard interpretation.42
In considering our eighteen instances of the name “Jesus” on ossuaries, apart from the three we are associating with the Talpiot Garden tomb, over half a dozen might well refer not to a deceased person named Jesus whose bones are in the ossuary but to Jesus of Nazareth. In several cases there are symbols on these ossuaries that we take to be expressions of Jewish-Christian faith. We are not arguing that every “Jesus” refers to Jesus of Nazareth but that many do.
We also are convinced that the locations in which these “Jesus”-inscribed ossuaries were found might be relevant to this discussion. They are not, as one might expect, evenly distributed throughout the Jerusalem area wherever ancient burial caves have been found. Five of the total are of unknown provenance—so we have no idea where they were found. Among these is the fragment of Jesus in the fish.43 The Sukenik tomb is near Talpiot, about a mile from the Jesus Garden tomb. Eight others are within a mile and a half from Talpiot, mostly fanning out to the north, toward the Mount of Olives.44 Only three are far removed from Talpiot, north or southeast of the Old City, but each of those three ossuaries names a Jesus who is the son of someone other than a Joseph—disqualifying them as a reference to Jesus of Nazareth.45 What this means is that we have a cluster of Jesus inscriptions, some of which refer to Jesus of Nazareth, in close proximity to these two Talpiot tombs.
The entire scholarly discussion of whether the early Jewish followers of Jesus left any symbols on their ossuaries suffers, in our view, from a predisposition to dismiss any evidence that might argue to the contrary. On the face of it, this assumption that none of the Jewish followers of Jesus who lived and died in Jerusalem from 30 CE to 70 CE ever left behind any testimony to their resurrection faith is unwarranted. The recent discoveries in the Talpiot Patio tomb have put the entire discussion of the archaeological evidence for Jewish-Christianity in 1st century Jerusalem in a new light so that previous assumptions should now be questioned.
CHAPTER FOUR
* * *
RETURNING TO THE JESUS FAMILY TOMB
The new finds from the Patio tomb offer a dramatic new context for the Talpiot Garden tomb and increase the likelihood that this latter tomb may be the burial tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.
That a tomb contains an ossuary inscribed in Aramaic Yeshua bar Yehosef—“Jesus son of Joseph”—is not in dispute. The question is whether this particular Jesus can be reliably identified with Jesus of Nazareth—or was an otherwise unknown Jesus who lived in the 1st century.
HOW COMMON ARE THE NAMES?
The major objection of those who have disputed connecting this tomb to Jesus of Nazareth is that the six names inscribed on the ossuaries from the Garden tomb are extremely common among Jews in this period. Shimon Gibson and Amos Kloner, the excavators of the tomb, in their recent comprehensive article on the subject, conclude: “We are simply left with a group of ossuaries bearing common Jewish names of the first century CE . . . As a result, there is nothing to commend the Talpiot tomb as the family tomb of Jesus.”1 This objection has been repeated so often—spread over the Internet, in the media, and in books on the subject of the Talpiot tomb—that many who have not had the opportunity to review the evidence take it as a truism.
We strongly disagree that such is the case. Let’s imagine a future archaeologist finding a burial plot from our own generation with a John, a Paul, and a George—common names in the English language, far too common to attempt any specific identification even though a certain British musical group comes to mind. Then we find out that the John was the son of an Alfred. With a bit of research we learn that John Lennon’s fa
ther was named Alfred. Could this possibly be the burial plot of the famed musical quartet known as the Beatles? It seems possible but there is still not enough evidence. Then a fourth grave turns up with the name Ringo. Finally, not two hundred feet away we find a burial monument dedicated to the memory of the Beatles and all they contributed to pop music in their long career together. We believe that this is essentially what we have in the case of the two Talpiot tombs. We in fact have our “Ringo” in the Jesus tomb, as we will see—and what’s more, we believe that we have a “Yoko” as well—and the Patio tomb now provides us with a new context in which we can better understand the resurrection faith of Jesus’ first followers.
Far from being extremely common, several of the names in the Jesus tomb exhibit unique markers that tie them specifically to Jesus and his family. The six names, five in Aramaic and one in Greek, are the following.2
1. Yeshua bar Yehosef (Aramaic)—Jesus son of Joseph
2. Yoseh (Aramaic)—Joses
3. Mariamene Mara (Greek)—Miriam [also known as the] Lady
4. Yehuda bar Yeshua (Aramaic)—Judah son of Jesus
5. Maria (Aramaic)—Maria
6. Matya (Aramaic)—Matthew
Maria or its variant Mariam—the English name Mary—was the second most common women’s name of this era after Salome.3 It makes up about 21.9 percent of known female names from the period. Judah and its variations (Jude, Judas) account for approximately 6.5 percent of known male names. Matthew, in its various forms, is less common and accounts for only 2.4 percent of the total. There is no disagreement that Mary is common and so is Judah. The addition of Matthew is still not distinctive enough to strengthen the odds that this is the tomb of Jesus. Although we have no record of anyone named Matthew being part of Jesus’ immediate family, the name occurs five times in Jesus’ mother’s genealogy so it seems to have a strong link to his family (Luke 3:23, 24, 26, 29, 31). He might be a son of one of Jesus’ brothers. We just can’t know.
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