Jim Tabor’s Latest Take on the Tomb as He Summarizes His View of the Evidence – March 24

Jim Tabor, the biblical scholar and historical consultant on the Lost Family Tomb Documentary and Professor at the University of North Carolina (Charlotte), and I have been emaling back and forth privately about the evidence for the last few weeks. Today he emailed me his currect take on the evidence for the tomb belonging to Jesus’ family which he has posted on his web site.

I note the URL, as the text is full and is best read in context.

Jim Tabor, the biblical scholar and historical consultant on the Lost Family Tomb Documentary and Professor at the University of North Carolina (Charlotte), and I have been emaling back and forth privately about the evidence for the last few weeks. Today he emailed me his currect take on the evidence for the tomb belonging to Jesus’ family which he has posted on his web site.

I note the URL, as the text is full and is best read in context.

http://jesusdynasty.com/blog/2007/03/24/the-talpiot-jesus-tomb-an-overview/

I will not comment on this post in detail now, but just refer to it for everyone’s reference. The discussion has three parts; Historical Context, Statistics, and Inscriptions.

I will make a couple of observations about how some aspects of the argument are presented.

(1) Tabor still insists that ossuary no. 10 is "missing, described as plain." As all the reports of those involved have indicated, this ossuary is not missing. It was catalogued, noted and described in the original offical reports (as Rhamani’s catalogue and Kloner’s article shows), and treated as all such plain ossuaries were: set aside with all such plain ossuaries, since it had nothing of special value to note. In fact, I saw Kloner’s original notes on this when I was in israel. He showed them to me. It is this kind of "fudging" with the facts (or at least not noting key details tied to the find) that have left many others so frsutrated with how the documentary has presented its case.

(2) There also is the note that this is the only tomb where we have found a Yeshua son of Joseph inscription. This also is playing with the edges of the facts. Only is a very technical sense is this accurate, and what is left out is important. In Rahmani’s catalogue, ossuary 9 has "Yeshu, son of Yehosef" (where Yeshu is a clear contraction for Yeshua as Rhamani notes because the full name Yeshua appears elsewhere on the ossuary). So the find is not as unprecedented as Tabor suggests. The selective use of names and their contractions, along with the failure to mention clearly related details in describing pieces of the evidence, is another feature of the discussion that is frustrating to many scholars.

I have others things to observe about his summary, but will engage them in subsequent posts.