Response to Tabor’s Remarks on Inscriptions – March 27

Now we look at Tabor’s remarks about the inscriptions. Here is his summary:

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The Inscriptions: There were ten ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb with six inscribed. This is actually a rather high percentage, as normally only about 20% of ossuaries have names on them. It is not the case, as has been reported, that the remains of up to 35 additional individuals were found in this tomb. The only records we have regarding bones found outside the ossuaries are the official reports of the excavator, the late Joseph Gath, who indicates two or perhaps three other individuals at the most. The Talpiot tomb is a small, modest pre-70 CE family burial cave with a dozen or so individuals buried inside, six of whom we can know by name. Here are the ten ossuaries with their inscriptions in their transliterated Aramaic and Greek forms:

Now we look at Tabor’s remarks about the inscriptions. Here is his summary:

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The Inscriptions: There were ten ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb with six inscribed. This is actually a rather high percentage, as normally only about 20% of ossuaries have names on them. It is not the case, as has been reported, that the remains of up to 35 additional individuals were found in this tomb. The only records we have regarding bones found outside the ossuaries are the official reports of the excavator, the late Joseph Gath, who indicates two or perhaps three other individuals at the most. The Talpiot tomb is a small, modest pre-70 CE family burial cave with a dozen or so individuals buried inside, six of whom we can know by name. Here are the ten ossuaries with their inscriptions in their transliterated Aramaic and Greek forms:

1. Yeshua bar Yehosef (Aramaic)
2. Maria (Aramaic)
3. Mariemene [also known as] Mara (Greek & decorated)
4. Yose (Aramaic)
5. Matya (Aramaic)
6. Yehuda bar Yeshua (Aramaic & decorated)
7. 8. 9. No names & decorated
10. Missing, described as “plain”

What I find particularly striking about this cluster, beyond the mathematical probabilities that I note above, is that four of these names, including that of Jesus himself, correspond to individuals named in our New Testament records as part of Jesus’ most intimate family circle, all of whom we might assume to have died before 70 CE when this tomb went out of use. There is new evidence that pinpoints the 70 CE war as the terminus ad quem for interments in this Talpiot tomb.

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My comments: First a remark on how many bodies were found and how many were there originally. As my audio interview with Kloner notes, often there was more than one set of bones in an ossuary. This is where Kloner gets his estimate of possibly as many as thirty five bodies from. if this tomb is like many others, that coudl well be the case. But let’s be fair. We do not know this from what was found. Why is this so important potentially. It means that the DNA tests may not have involved DNA of the figures named on the ossuaries, complicating any conclusions one can make from the find. (But it is an "if" that is not equal to evidence).

It is also correct that we have a high number of inscribed ossuaries in this tomb versus what we normally see. What is interesting is the mix of Aramaic and Greek we have. It is important to note that Galilee was not known as a heavily hellenistically influenced area of Israel (See work by Chancey on Galilee). Mary Magdalene was from Migdal by the Sea, so why would she carry a Greek name on the ossuary. This is a point not addressed about the inscriptions.

We have already raised questions about the description of ossuary ten in an earlier post (Post No. 1 from March 24).

The significance of the cluster, which is the key argument for the hypothesis, was already dealt with under the statistics.