The Jesus Discovery

by James D. Tabor

  In the Bible, when the bones are buried, the spirit or soul descends into the “world of the dead,” called Sheol in Hebrew and Hades in Greek. Sheol is described as a land of silence and forgetfulness, a region gloomy, dark, and deep (Psalms 115:17; 6:5; 88:3–12; Isaiah 38:18). All the dead go down to Sheol, and there they make their bed together—whether good or evil, rich or poor, slave or free (Job 3:11–19). The dead in Sheol are mere shadows of their former embodied selves; lacking substance they are called “shades” (Psalms 88:10).7 There is one “séance” story in the Hebrew Bible in which the infamous medium of Endor conjured up the “shade” of the dead prophet Samuel at the insistence of King Saul, who wanted to communicate with him. When Samuel appears, rising up out of the earth, he asks Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (1 Samuel 28:8–15). But even Samuel must then return to Sheol. Death is a one-way street; it is the land of no return: “But man dies, and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake, or be aroused out of his sleep.” (Job 14:10–12)

  There are three stories of the resuscitation of the dead in the Hebrew Bible. Elijah raises the son of a widow; his successor, Elisha, raises the child of a wealthy woman; and a dead man put in the grave of Elijah, touching his bones, “lived and was raised to his feet” (1 Kings 17:17–22; 2 Kings 2:32–37; 2 Kings 13:21). Jesus raises three people from the dead in the gospels: a twelve-year-old girl; a young man, son of a widow; and Lazarus, brother of Mary and Martha (Mark 5:41–43; Luke 7:11–17; John 11:43–44). Matthew says that at the death of Jesus many of the dead came out of their graves and walked about in the city (Matthew 27:52). Peter raises a widow and Paul revives a young man who fell from a window (Acts 20:9–12).

  What is important to note about all these stories of “resurrection” is that these people returned from death to live again, but they subsequently died again. This notion of a temporary return from death, basically a revival of a corpse, is not the view of resurrection of the dead that Jews in the time of Jesus believed and that followers of Jesus affirmed about him.

  The Hebrew Bible says very little about resurrection of the dead in this more extended sense. The single unambiguous passage is from Daniel, one of the latest books, but it is a key to understanding the concept at its core:

  And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And multitudes of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. (Daniel 12:1–4)

  The metaphor of “sleeping in the dust of the earth” and then awakening captures precisely the core idea of resurrection of the dead. The bodies of the dead have long ago decayed and turned to dust, so this is no resuscitation of a corpse, nor is it even Ezekiel’s vision of re-clothing dry bones with sinew and skin. This is an entirely new concept that has begun to develop in Jewish thought. Jews like Jesus, as well as the Pharisees, believed that on the “last day” the dead would be raised. People confuse this notion with the literal idea of resuscitation or the “standing up” of a corpse. The Jewish idea of resurrection at the end of days does not involve collecting the dust, the fragmentary decaying bones, or other remains of the body and somehow restoring their form. According to the book of Revelation, even the “sea” gives up the dead that are in it—which can hardly mean one must search for digested bodies that the fish have eaten and eliminated, as unpleasant as the thought may be (Revelation 20:11–15). Corpse revival is not resurrection of the dead.

  The fully developed view of resurrection of the dead among Jews in the time of Jesus was that at the end of days the dead would come forth from Sheol or Hades—literally the “state of being dead”—and live again in an embodied form. The question was, what kind of embodied form? It was there that the debates began. The Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, poked fun at the Pharisees, who affirmed it. How could God raise the dead? What if a woman had had seven husbands in her life, each of whom died—in the resurrection whose wife would she be? Jesus was confronted with this question in the gospels (Luke 20:34–40). His answer was clear and unambiguous: when the dead come forth they will be in a transformed body, much like the angels, not the literal physical bodies that they once inhabited. There will be no “marriage or giving in marriage,” as there will be no “male or female” in terms of physical gender. There will be no birth, no death, but a new transformed life.

  Paul is clear on this point. Some of his converts in the city of Corinth were denying the resurrection of the dead. They were most likely thinking along the lines of Plato—if the immortal soul is freed from the prison of the body at death, why would it ever return to the body? And yet that is precisely what Paul defended—a return to a body. But as he makes clear, it is not a natural or “physical body”—the one he calls the body of “dust”—but a spiritual body, literally “wind body” (pneumatikos), that is transformed and not subject to death (1 Corinthians 15:42–50).

  Resurrection of the dead, according to both Paul and Jesus, has nothing to do with one’s former physical body. Paul’s objectors taunted him—“How are the dead raised? In what kind of a body will they come forth?” He called them fools because they had no idea about the concept of resurrection, mistaking it for corpse revival (1 Corinthians 15:34). Paul says that Jesus had become what he calls a life-giving spirit. The difference between this idea and that of the Greek notion of the immortal soul is difficult to understand, but in the Hebraic view of things the distinction was important. Simply put, in Greek thought death was a friend that released one from the bonds of the lower, mortal, decaying, material world. In Hebrew thought the created world is good—even very good—and death is an enemy, but one that can be conquered. Paul writes that the “last enemy to be destroyed is death,” and then the creation, which is good, will be “released from its bondage to decay” (1 Corinthians 15:26; Romans 8:21).

  The whole concept turns on the notion of how the created world is viewed—as something to abandon and escape (the Greek view) or something to be transformed and changed (the Hebrew view). That is why the Bible speaks of “new heavens and a new earth,” rather than leaving this earth to go to heaven (Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 21:1). The kingdom of God arrives when the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament the ideal future arrives when God comes down to the renewed creation, not when we leave a hopeless world to join God in heaven (Revelation 21:3).

  Paul makes clear that in Christian resurrection the body is left behind like a change of clothing, to turn to dust, and the spirit is “reclothed” with a new spiritual body. He compares the physical body to a temporary tent, but the new body is a permanent house (2 Corinthians 5:1–5). He even throws in a polemic against the Greek Platonic view of the “unclothed” or disembodied immortal soul. He says our desire is not to be naked, which is the state of death before resurrection, but to be clothed again!

  Paul reflects the earliest Christian view of Jesus’ resurrection, the resurrection hope his followers had, and that our Talpiot tombs affirm. That is why the presence of bones—even if they are the bones of Jesus—do not contradict the faith in resurrection of Jesus’ followers.

  THE FIRST CHRISTIANS AND RESURRECTION

  What we have found in the Talpiot tombs is primary evidence of what the first Christians believed about resurrection faith. It is not theology, but it is firm archaeological testimony that helps us to reconstruct what early Christians believed. The tomb evidence agrees with the teachings of both Jesus and Paul about the new spiritual body. The confusion in the gospels has come because of a fundamental misunderstandi
ng of the empty tomb. There was an empty tomb, but it was the first tomb, the temporary one in which Joseph of Arimathea placed the corpse of Jesus until the Passover and Sabbath were past. The Talpiot Jesus tomb was not empty—the “Jesus son of Joseph” ossuary held his bones, and we have even been able to do DNA tests on those remains.

  Discovering remains of the body of Jesus is no threat to the original resurrection faith of Jesus’ followers; it is actually an affirmation of that faith. Paul knows nothing of that first empty tomb. He knows that Jesus died and was buried and on the third day he was raised up. He then appeared to his followers not as a resuscitated corpse, but in Paul’s words, as a “life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). These words of Paul are our earliest testimony to faith in Jesus’ resurrection—until now. We now have testimony by Jesus’ original followers that possibly predates Paul, and predates the gospels by many decades. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were written between 70 and 100 CE. The names on the books are traditional. They are not included in the text but were added to the manuscripts later as “titles.” In other words, Mark does not begin, “I Mark, having witnessed these things, do hereby write . . .” Nor does Matthew, Luke, or John. In that sense all four gospels are pseudonymous—we don’t know their real authors.

  If you take the gospels in order, beginning with Mark, there are no appearances of Jesus after his death, just the statement that he will “go before them to Galilee.”8 Several scholars understand this as a reference to his second coming. In Matthew the women at the tomb see Jesus and later the eleven apostles encounter him on a misty mountaintop—but some doubted. Jesus gives them their commission to take the gospel to the world (Matthew 28:18–19). Here we have clearly left the world of history and entered the world of theology. The “Great Commission” is Matthew’s view of the Christian mission until the end of the age. Scholars do not regard these words as spoken by the historical Jesus. Luke first introduces the idea that Jesus came back in a physical body—wounds and all, asking for food to eat. He tells a story of Jesus appearing to two men on the road to Emmaus, and then appearing to the eleven apostles and other disciples. They mistake him for a ghost, but he lets them know that he has “flesh and bones” and is not a spirit. He then eats fish in front of them (Luke 24:39). John, like Luke, affirms this same view—that Jesus shows his wounds to Thomas and later meets a group of the apostles on the Sea of Galilee and cooks fish on the shore on a charcoal fire (John 20:24–25; 21:9–14).

  What Luke and John introduce, namely that Jesus appeared in the same body that had been placed in the tomb, represents a major departure from early Christian resurrection faith. This later understanding of Jesus’ resurrection has led to endless confusion on the part of sincere Christians. These stories are secondary and legendary. Mark, who wrote decades earlier, does not know them, and Paul, who writes even earlier, says plainly that the new resurrected body is not “flesh and blood” (1 Corinthians 15:50).

  These accounts of Luke and John were written for apologetic purposes against pagan critics like Celsus who charged that the “appearances” of Jesus to his followers were merely hysteria and delusion. By the time Luke and John wrote, at the turn of the 1st century or even later, Christians were disputing with pagans and Jews who did not accept a Jesus born of a virgin or raised from the dead. The pagans charged that the resurrection appearances were delusional but within Jewish tradition it was reported that the body was moved. Matthew’s polemic against this view, protesting that it was a Jewish lie, actually testifies to its partial truth (Matthew 28:11–15). Matthew, in his typical anti-Semitic fashion, charges that the Jews were easily bribed for money and willing to spread a lie, saying, “The disciples came and stole him away.” Part was true—they did come by night and take the body away, but they hardly stole it. Joseph of Arimathea had been given permission to take care of the burial by the Roman governor himself—Pontius Pilate. When Matthew says the “story is spread among the Jews to this day,” that is likely also partially true. Jews who lived in Jerusalem knew that Jesus’ body had been moved, and reverently buried by his family and his followers. One has to remember that the gospel writers, removed five or six decades from the events, know nothing of the Christianity that thrived and grew in Jerusalem even before Paul came along. Jesus died around 30 CE, Paul writes in the 50s CE, and the gospels, again, were written between 70 and 100 CE, or even later. The gospel writers are far removed from the original followers of Jesus, most of whom were dead, including Paul, Peter, and James.

  The Q document that was a source for Matthew and Luke, and the letter of James wholly concentrate on the ethical teachings of Jesus. They contain no Christian theology at all. James mentions his brother Jesus only twice, both times in passing. Paul, on the other hand, begins the development of what we come to know as classic Christian teachings—Jesus as the incarnate divine Son of God, his death and resurrection for sins, forgiveness through his blood, baptism as a mystical rite of union, and the Eucharist as eating the body and blood of Christ. Paul, though, still has the notion of resurrection of the dead straight and he says he received what he passes on in this regard—presumably from the first witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:1–8). Although we believe that Paul’s theology is far removed from that of Jesus’ first followers, his view of Jesus’ resurrection comes directly from them—and it did not involve bones or corpses being revived. Paul is our best link to the Talpiot tombs.

  We realize it is hard to imagine, given the confusion the later gospel accounts have introduced, that early followers of Jesus would have visited the Jesus family tomb, honoring and remembering their revered Teacher, the one they believed was the messiah, and declaring their resurrection faith. But when one understands the Jewish culture and context of the time, that is precisely what one would expect. Within Judaism the tombs of the zadikim—the righteous ones—are honored, remembered, and considered holy.

  LOST BONES AND JESUS’ DNA

  The question we have most been asked since the Talpiot Jesus tomb was first brought to the attention of the public is, “What happened to the bones in the ossuaries?” A second related question we are asked is, “Why don’t you run DNA tests on all the bones in all the ossuaries?” The answer to the first question is, We don’t know. Our assumption, as we have explained, is that the bones were taken to the Rockefeller Museum, still in the ossuaries, where the custom at that time was to have them examined by an anthropologist. We know that was the case a year later with the one ossuary that Amos Kloner removed from the Patio tomb. The official IAA photo, taken before it was cleaned, shows the skeletal materials inside.

  42. The small ossuary from the Patio tomb full of bones.

  It would truly be a boon to our knowledge if we had a proper bone report on the remains inside all the ossuaries. One would think there would at least be written records confirming their receipt. Such materials are registered and signed for if normal procedure is followed. After all, if the Jesus son of Joseph ossuary contained the remains of Jesus of Nazareth, assuming the bones were not too deteriorated, a skillful anthropologist might have been able to identify marks from crucifixion or other evidence of trauma. We would have known the sex and age of the various individuals if more than one person’s bones were in a given ossuary, and a wealth of additional forensic information might have become available. Regrettably, this information appears to be missing.

  Because burial is such a central ritual to the Jewish faith, there has been mounting tension over the past few decades between archaeologists and segments of the Orthodox Jewish community over the fate of human remains uncovered in archaeological digs. This controversy stems from the fact that some Orthodox groups believe that archaeological excavations of human tombs and ossuaries are a defilement of ancient Jewish graves. Conversely, archaeologists argue that excavation is an essential tool in the understanding of ancient cultures and religions, and in the advancement of archaeology as a science.

  The 1978 Antiquities Law, sometimes referred to as the “dry
-bones law,” distinguished human remains from the category of antiquities in an attempt to resolve this conflict. Established by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Antiquities Law made it illegal to excavate known burial sites, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. Therefore, if archaeologists accidentally uncover human bones, the bones are to be turned over promptly to the Religious Affairs Ministry. In 1994, legislation was passed so that archaeologists had to discern on site whether bones found during excavations were humans or not. Remains could be moved to the lab for analysis only if it was impossible to distinguish on site whether bones were human or nonhuman. Due to this legislation all human materials were ordered removed from the Rockefeller labs and turned over to the Orthodox authorities. How this law might have affected the bones from the Talpiot Jesus tomb we have no way of knowing.

  One has to remember that the archaeologists involved in the tomb at that time, Amos Kloner and Shimon Gibson, as well as Joe Zias, the anthropologist at the Rockefeller, have stated repeatedly that the Talpiot Jesus tomb is of no particular scientific or historical interest. In other words, there is nothing more to be said about it beyond Amos Kloner’s 1996 published report. In their judgment we have spent six years of our time, not to mention huge sums of money, investigating something unimportant. The statistical studies, paleographic analysis, patina and soil analysis, and DNA tests are unwarranted. The constant refrain, now repeated endlessly from every quarter, has been that the names are common; they mean nothing. As we have seen, this is simply false, and a growing number of historians and archaeologists realize this fact.9

  Until recently, DNA tests were not done on skeletal materials from tombs, so far as we know. The tensions with the Orthodox authorities have also had some bearing on DNA analysis, as some of the rabbis understand the value of such tests for identifying the dead while others are opposed to any handling of human bones.