A leading scholar of Jerusalem University has ruled out decisively that one of the ossuaries found in the so-called Jesus family tomb could be that of Mary Magdalene.

Update: Jodi Magness is the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She offers a highly readable and pretty devastating rebuttal of the “Jesus family tomb” hypothesis on the website of the Society of Biblical Literature, the primary professional association of biblical scholars.

To combat female jihadists. Reports Crossroads Arabia,

They are playing a part in the overall efforts of the Saudi government to discourage youths from adopting extremist ideologies, nipping the problem in the bud rather than having to fight them in the streets. The article points to the way Al-Qaeda has paid attention to women in its own outreach programs and how female extremists are more difficult to pull away from their ideologies.

See what you think.

Yesterday I showed why the entire thesis of the Talpiot tomb containing the ossuaries of Jesus, his claimed wife Mary Magdalene and their claimed son, Judah, is at bottom a conspiracy theory: It completely depends on Jesus having been an anti-Roman agitator or wannabe revolutionary leader. But there is no historical evidence of that. In my own seminary studies I read or scanned through a large number of books that serious scholars had written, claiming that Jesus was a wisdom teacher, a sage, an apocalyptic prophet; a Jewish reformist, and so on. But I don’t remember even one claim that he was attempting to agitate against Rome.

No matter what the DNA tests show, no matter what the names on the ossuaries, if the claim that Jesus was an anti-Roman agitator cannot be sustained - and it most certainly cannot - then the entire edifice of the “family tomb” proposal falls into ruins, for that is the only reason the show presents for their claim of a secret marriage of Jesus and Mary Mag. and the secrecy of them giving birth to a son, Judah. As far as I know, I am the only person who has identified this flaw in the family tomb proposal.

I urge you to read pieces by two others. One is noted New Testament scholar, Professor Ben Witherington, at his blog. Start here, but there is a lot more on his site. Especially do read the comments.

The other is by RealClearPolitics contributor Jay Cost, “Examining the ‘Jesus Tomb’ Evidence.”

Here is a grab from last night’s “Jesus Family Tomb” show on the Discovery Channel, that i sort of live blogged.

Here is the context of the show in which this scene appeared. Film maker Simcha Jacobovici claims to have located the concrete sealed-over Talpiot tomb, discovered in 1980, investigated and evacuated then, and shortly afterward built over by apartment complexes. This occurs in the last half hour of the show and is, dramatically, a really big thing. The Talpiot tomb had been covered with a concrete slab by the government even though all the human remains and the ossuaries had been removed. So Simcha and crew removed the slab to get inside:

Once inside, Simcha, a crew member and the cameraman discovered, as expected, that the bone boxes were gone. But there were old copies of the Jewish Scriptures interred there. These were put there after the tomb’s discovery; the narrator explains that Orthodox belief requres that worn-out Scriptures be buried or interred. (So does Islam, btw, for worn Qurani.)

Simcha discovers that one of the texts is open to the book of Jonah. The narrator says that Jesus told his disciples that “Jonah is the key” to his ministry: “If you want to know what I am up to,” Simcha quotes Jesus, “read the book of Jonah. That’s the code.” The narrator then kicks in: “The Gospels record that Jesus constantly spoke in parables and codes, not surprising for the leader of what today would be an anti-government movement.”

There are three problems with this claim.

One: Jesus never said that Jonah was “the” key. He did mention Jonah when some people asked him for a sign of his authenticity. Jesus responded, “… no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here! ”

It is an illuminating comparison, indeed, but Simcha overstates it by saying it is “the key” to understanding Jesus’ ministry. And, worse for Simcha, even if it was the key, it cannot jibe with the third problem, below.

The second, and much more serious problem for the show’s thesis is that the Gospels do not claim that Jesus spoke in codes. In my New Testament studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, I learned that what Jesus taught and preached was mostly quite transparent to his hearers. It’s true that a couple of Jesus’ parables were so opaque to the Twelve that they asked him outright what the meaning was, but in each case Jesus’s explanation was religious, not political. Example: the parable of the sower who went out to sow.

The third, and most severe problem is this: Nowhere in the NT is Jesus presented as a political pretender to the ancient throne of David. There is no basis in the NT that the Twelve or the several women who arranged for Jesus’ daily support - and must be included as part of Jesus’ inner circle - had any idea that Jesus wanted them to oppose the government. In fact, when challenged on this point by Pilate, asking him whether he was king of the Jews, Jesus bluntly answered in Luke’s telling, That’s your rumor (”You say so”). In the Gospel of John, it flows thus:

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate then dismisses the conversation with the word, “What is truth?”

The idea that Jesus was a political threat to Rome was a claim made about him, not by him in either word or deed, intended to lead Pilate to order Jesus executed. Pilate is well known to modern historians has an inept governor of Judea (one of an unfortunate series) and one who was especially willing to execute Jews on the flimsiest of evidence, or none at all. This was well known 2,000 years ago, obviously, and Jesus even used Pilate’s liberal use of the sword as a religious teaching point - but not as a political point.

Where does Jonah strike against this claim? Simcha cannot have it both ways. He can’t claim that Jesus was a political agitator, a claimant to a political throne, and then turn around and say that the key to Jesus ministry is Jesus’ claim, via Jonah’s text, that he will be resurrected from the dead after three days. You can have one, you can have the other. You can’t have both.

This is crucial because the entire edifice of the Jesus family tomb show hangs on the claim that Jesus was an anti-government agitator and not a religious reformer or something else. Why? Because that is the only reason Simcha gives for the secrecy of Jesus’ marriage and son. If Jesus was executed by Rome, Simcha says, then how much greater would be the danger that Jesus’ son, Judah, would be hunted by the authorities? So there is a presumed, vast conspiracy of silence among —

— all Jesus’ disciples, including the several women,

— the straphangers who moved in and out of his travels, the Jesus groupies, as it were,

— his hometown synagogue where he presumably would have been married and which the Gospels record was inimical to him personally; Luke even records his own congregants tried to kill him one day,

— the Jewish hierarchy itself, all the way up to the Sanhedrin, whose members would have at least been interested in the question of Jesus’ marital status if for no other reason to compile a dossier - and this interest would have been felt by friendly Sanhedrin members such as Nicodemus, not merely those opposed to Jesus.

In short, the conspiracy to keep Jesus’ presumed marriage secret would have had to encompass keeping it secret not merely from the Romans, but from Jesus’ own countrymen. It would have amounted literally to a nationwide conspiracy.

Simcha’s entire hypothesis stands on this conspiracy because his whole explanation of the tomb depends on his unproven and unprovable claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were secretly married and finally, secretly entombed in the same place along with their secret son.

Can anyone say, “conspiracy theory?” Yep.

Now, back to that skull. One of the reasons that NT scholar Jonathan Reed called the show “archeo-porn” in the following “Critical Look” segment was for scenes such as that one. It is simply sensationalistic, dramatized hype. It is deceptive. The scene does not take place in the Talpiot tomb, but there is nothing in the show telling you that. You see Simcha entering the Talpiot tomb, examining the book of Jonah, then some other sequences are shown, and then we’re back in the tomb - apparently, as far as we know, because there is Simcha rustling on the tomb’s floor in faded light and he picks up this skull and shakes the dirt out of it. Then he puts it back down. There is not a syllable of narration nor a crawl on the screen to indicate that this is anything other than the Talpiot tomb. Then Simcha exits the tomb with this shot.

But this is a shot of the entrance to the Talpiot tomb, not the skull tomb, looking from the inside out. It is a near-exact match of an earlier shot of Simcha entering the tomb. It immediately follows the skull-handling sequence. What are viewers supposed to believe about what they have just seen? At worst, that there are still human remains in the presumed Jesus tomb, at best that Simcha goes tomb hopping and casually handles human remains. And neither give confidence that he plays straight with his audience. He simply does not tell the whole truth.

Update: More on Jesus’ presumed political pretensions. It’s worth noting that John 19:19-30 relates:

19 Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” 20 Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. 21 Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, “The King of the Jews,’ but, “This man said, I am King of the Jews.’ ” 22 Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”

Here Pilate specifically rejects the idea that Jesus himself claimed the throne of David.

The “Jesus’ Nephew Family Tomb”?

“The Jesus Tomb” is 30 minutes on, and so far we have had explained ossuaries with these names:

1. Jesus son of Joseph

2. Maria

3. Yose

4. Matia

There are other ossuaries, but at this point these are the only four ossuaries that have been presented. At this point the show has moved on to another angle.

As the show pointed out, the Gospels says that Jesus of Nazareth had a brother named Joseph, whose name is actually recorded in English Bibles as a nickname for Joseph, Jose or Joses. According to Prof. James Tabor, on camera on the show, this particular nickname for Joseph is very rare and matches the spelling of the name on the ossuary found in the Talpiot tomb. But his “given” name was Joseph, as traditionally spelled. Okay, fine.

Let’s do a little stipulation here. Let’s stipulate, just for argument’s sake, that for some reason (just make up one if you wish) the family of Jesus, beginning with his generation, decided not to open a family tomb in Galilee, where Jesus grew up and where the rest of his family would have stayed. Let’s suppose that with the dawn of the Christ-following movement (the term “Christian” came much, much later) that the locus of Jesus’ family activities was in Jerusalem, since it was there that the Christian movement first came into nascense. Jesus’ brother, James, for example, became the main leader of Christ followers in Jerusalem before he was martyred by being hurled off the Temple Mount, then stoned to death.

So that eliminates the “problem” of the Jesus’ family tomb being in Jerusalem. But why c0nclude that the ossuary of “Jesus, son of Joseph” is the ossuary of Jesus, called the Christ?

Why not conclude it was the ossuary of the son of Jesus’ brother, Joseph? That is, Jesus Christ’s ‘ nephew, named Jesus by the brother Joseph?

What buttresses this hypothesis? Well, the fact that Jesus the Christ was never called, “Jesus, son of Joseph.” In fact, one day Jesus went to his hometown synagogue and began to teach there, where, “many who heard him were astounded. They said, “… Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary … ?” (Italics added.)

In the Gospels, Jesus called himself “Son of Man” (a reference to a messianic description in Daniel 7:13-14) but never “son of Joseph.” If - as I said, this is just thought-experiment stipulation - the Talpiot tomb contained the bones of actual family members of Jesus called the Christ, then I think there is a stronger case to be made that the bones of “Jesus, son of Joseph” were of the Christ’s nephew than of the Christ himself.

The DNA testing featured on the show was done only on DNA remnants taken from the Jesus son of Joseph ossuary and the Mariamne ossuary. Only mitochondrial tests were done, which test only for maternal relationships. The only thing the DNA testing showed was the the presumed occupants of the Jesus ossuary and the Mariamne ossuary did not have the same mother, or any other maternal lineage in common. But they might have had the same father. Or Mariamne might have been the daughter of the occupant of the Jesus ossuary. Or a niece through a brother’s line. And so forth. My point is that the leap to assume they were husband and wife is merely one leap of several possible.

It also must be pointed out that Jesus had quite a different idea of whom were his brother or sisters than even his own family did. Mark records that Jesus was preaching to a small crowd one day when,

31Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Now the show has moved 45 minutes further along since I started writing. More later on, but not tonight. So far, though, there’s a lot of provocative teasing questions, such as another tomb found (apparently) near the Talpiot tomb, now covered by apartment housing and concrete. The tease? “Could this be the tomb of Jesus’ early followers, or even another part of the Jesus family tomb?” And cut to commercial.

Update: The Beloved Disciple is Judah, the son of Jesus? The Beloved Disciple, so-called in the Gospel of John, would have been almost as old as Jesus. So I guess Jesus got married and had a kid when he was about 10. Gosh, what tripe.

Update: In the “Critical Look” post-show, Ted Koppel is doing a good job pressing Simcha about some of the objections others have raised in the past week. “Archeo-porn”! That’s the term of the night, uttered by Prof. Jonathan Reed, describing his opinion of the show.

James Arlandson writes it.

Dr. Ben Witherington is professor of New testament studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is also a world-recognized biblical scholar. He writes,

Having now scrutinized the book The Jesus Family Tomb book which accompanies the show there are further things that need to be stressed that are wrong with this whole theory and its varied speculations. I will list them seriatim as bullet points.

And he does. I urge interested parties to read his work; he is far more erudite than I on the technical matters related to first-century Judaism and Christianity and has a extensive Rolodex of other experts to call upon and cite as well. RTWT!

See also his current op-ed piece at OpinionJournal.com

Headline: “Israel may open ‘Jesus tomb’ to public.”