"Jesus Family Tomb" ID Refuted

I found an interesting article about the so-called "Jesus Family Tomb" and James Cameron's documentary about it over at the Jerusalem Post site. Apparently, in addition to the widely noted criticism of scholars and theological concerns voiced by Christian groups, some of the experts involved in the documentary are calling some of the claims in the film into question:

Several prominent scholars who were interviewed in a bitterly contested documentary that suggests that Jesus and his family members were buried in a nondescript ancient Jerusalem burial cave have now revised their conclusions, including the statistician who claimed that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the tomb being the family burial cave of Jesus of Nazareth...
The dramatic clarifications, compiled by epigrapher Stephen Pfann of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem in a paper titled "Cracks in the Foundation: How the Lost Tomb of Jesus story is losing its scholarly support," come two months after the screening of The Lost Tomb of Christ that attracted widespread public interest, despite the concomitant scholarly ridicule.

...

Some of the scholars who were interviewed for and appeared in the film are questioning some of its basic claims.

The most startling change of opinion featured in the 16-page paper is that of University of Toronto statistician Professor Andrey Feuerverger, who stated those 600 to one odds in the film. Feuerverger now says that these referred to the probability of a cluster of such names appearing together... Israeli archeologists have said that the similarity of the names found inscribed on the ossuaries in the cave to the members of Jesus's family was coincidental, since many of those names were commonplace in the first century CE... Shimon Gibson, who was part of the team that excavated the tomb two and half decades ago and who appeared in the film, is quoted in Pfann's report as saying he doubted the site was the tomb of Jesus and his family.

...

In the film, renowned epigrapher Prof. Frank Moore Cross, professor emeritus of Hebrew and oriental languages at Harvard University, is seen reading one of the ossuaries and stating that he has "no real doubt" that it reads "Jesus son of Joseph." But according to Pfann, Cross said in an e-mail that he was skeptical about the film's claims, not because of a misreading of the ossuary, but because of the ubiquity of Biblical names in that period in Jerusalem.

"It has been reckoned that 25 percent of feminine names in this period were Maria/Miriam, etc. - that is, variants of 'Mary.' So the cited statistics are unpersuasive. You know the saying: lies, damned lies, and statistics," Cross is quoted as saying

...

Furthermore, Pfann also says that a specialist in ancient apocryphal text, Professor Francois Bovon, who is quoted in the film as saying the enigmatic ossuary inscription "Mariamne" is the same woman known as Mary Magdalene - one of the filmmakers' critical arguments - issued a disclaimer stating that he did not believe that "Mariamne" stood for Mary of Magdalene at all.

Read the full story HERE.

I can't say that I'm at all surprised by this turn of events. Just sad that the refutations likely won't get the same publicity as the misinformation spread by Cameron's documentary. But such is life, I suppose...

Ralph on the "Jesus Tomb"

I've hesitated to even comment on the whole "Jesus Tomb" thing that James Cameron has stirred up, but Ed Cook over at Ralph the Sacred River has a few meaningful comments on some linguistic aspects of the find, as well as providing some links to other takes on the situation.

Akkadian Gift

A while back I blogged about a coffee mug Eisenbrauns was offering around the time of last Fall's AAR/SBL Annual Meeting. My Akkadian professor was kind enough to acquire enough of these mugs for my whole class! A very cool surprise (well, for an Akkadian nerd anyway!)The text is the first two lines of Enuma Eliš, the traditional Babylonian creation story.

e-nu-ma e-liš la na-bu-ú šá-ma-mu
šap-liš am-ma-tum šu-ma la zak-rat

"When on high no name was given to heaven,
nor below was the netherworld called by name..."

The smaller insription, which is just above "eisenbrauns.com" reads:

LÚ.DAM.GÀR kib-rat erbe-tim

"Merchants of the four corners [of the Earth]"

The--extremely esoteric--joke being that "of the four corners" was a common epithet of the Neo-Assyrian kings!

Lost in Translation

In Hebrew we (I say "we," but I didn't actually take part) had an interesting side discussion on the instructor's standards for a "good understandable English translation." As should have been expected, there were several different opinions on how to deal with language specific idioms (the example, I seem to recall was something like "עלה לישראל” ["he went up/ascended to Israel"]) Even among well qualified and experienced translators there would be many differing opinions, depending on what theory or philosophy of translation one holds to and what the target audience is (our instructor only mentioned the question of target audience, but am giving her the benefit of the doubt that she is aware of the differing philosophies of translation). The instructor favored translating the above phrase as simply "he went to Israel" or "he moved to Israel" to avoid any confusion on the part of the reader. Some of the students seemed purely concerned because they were used to merely copying a very literal translation from a dictionary, weren't used to be expected to make judgment calls on their translation and didn't want to lose points for a slightly wrong word choice, while another classmate seemed genuinely concerned about being true to the original Hebrew source and not losing any of the Hebrew "flavor". This struck me as a very Buber-Rosenzweig way of looking at things and I wondered to myself if he is familiar with either their work or that of their disciple Everett Fox. Perhaps instead of wondering I should just ask him?

Surely enjoying such theoretical discussions a sign that I do belong somewhere in academia. Or maybe it just shows that I'm weird (or both maybe!)

Akkadian Coffee Mug @ Eisenbrauns

Great timing, since I'm taking my first Akkadian class this term!

Enuma Elish cuneiform mug
(Price: $7.50)

The text is the opening lines of Enuma Elish, the creation story from Babylonian mythology, much of which parallels the creation story found in Genesis.