James Charlesworth on Talpiot Tomb B

Those with an interest in the claims made by Simcha Jacobovici and James Tabor on Talpiot Tomb B, "the Patio Tomb", have been looking forward to hearing more about the views of Prof. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary who acted as the "primary academic consultant" on the project (Tabor, Preliminary Report, 1, n. 2) and who appears in the documentary labelled The Resurrection Tomb Mystery (USA) / The Jesus Discovery (Canada).  His report is now available, as a PDF on the Foundation on Judaism and Christian Origins website:

What is the Message of the "Patio Tomb" in Talpiot, Jerusalem?
[Note: link became inactive 26 May; see updates at the bottom of the post]
James Hamilton Charlesworth, Princeton

The article provides a useful summary of the issues raised by the documentary and the related book (but not the Jesus Discovery website or the Preliminary Report, neither of which is mentioned).  Charlesworth is broadly supportive of Tabor's and Jacobovici's claims, but he is cautious and sceptical at several points.  Charlesworth discusses the different possibilities for the interpretation of the image on ossuary 6 (nefesh, amphora or fish?) and he defends his reading of YONAH at the bottom of that image.  He asks lots of questions and encourages continued debate.

The piece is aimed at a non-scholarly audience for whom Charlesworth explains terms like "ossuary" and "nefesh"; he explains what happened in 66CE (pp. 1-2); he notes the correspondences between Hebrew and English letters (pp. 6-7) and explains that  "Hebrew is written right to left" (p. 7).

In spite of that target audience, I will admit to some disappointment that Charlesworth does not engage directly with any of the scholars' critiques of the project, whether here, on the ASOR blog, on Bible and Interpretation, on Robert Cargill's blog, on Christopher Rollston's blog or elsewhere.  He does mention "scholars and non-scholars" who "have been reporting and blogging" and he speaks about his dismay over "occasional ad hominem comments".  As one who has experienced some unpleasant remarks, including from those involved in the making of the documentary, I very much share Charlesworth's concern on that front.  Nevertheless, I think there is a danger in only mentioning blogging in the context of complaining about those who abuse the medium because it can all too easily be taken as a reason not to engage with serious scholarly criticism of the claims.

In relation to this, it is disappointing that Charlesworth simply repeats the sight reading of the inscription on Ossuary 5, "Divine [YHWH], who lifts up (or raised up), from (the tomb or death?)" (p. 5), which is seen in the documentary, and does not engage with the careful analysis and criticism of this claim, with alternative readings, offered by Richard Bauckham, Christopher Rollston and others (see also Rollston's review here; see further links in those posts).  The difficulty with not engaging with the critics is that it can give the impression that the reading in question is uncontested and somehow self-evident.  It is not.  It is controversial and unclear.

By contrast, there is some exposition of the alleged YONAH inscription that appears at the bottom of the image on Ossuary 6 (pp. 5-8).  It is useful to have this exposition given that previously Charlesworth's views were only known through reports (See most fully Taborblog).  Charlesworth is actually quite guarded about his suggestion and only puts forward the reading quite tentatively.  Of the four alleged letters, he regards only the he as "unmistakable" (p. 6).  The yod may be a zayin; "some imagination is required" for the reading of the waw (p. 7) and the nun "is not prima facie obvious" -- it may be a lamed (p. 6).

Having read Charlesworth's own defence of this claim, I admit to being no more convinced than I was before, and pleased to see the way in which he makes the suggestion only tentatively.  One of the reasons for my own scepticism has been the confusing nature of the case.  With so much going on in the head of the fish / base of the vessel -- arms and legs of a stick man, a mouth and an eye of a fish, Hebrew letters that extend unusually and further lines that are unaccounted for -- it is doubtful that YONAH is there (see further The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy and the Talpiot Tomb).

Like Tabor and Jacobovici, Charlesworth is inclined to see a stick man here too (p. 8), though he does not explain which lines belong to the stick man, and whether any of the lines that form the stick man do double duty as parts of the alleged YONAH inscription (see further my Changing Body of the Stick Man and links there).  I suspect that most scholars will remain sceptical about the presence of a stick man given the lack of clarity about which lines represent his arms and legs.

Charlesworth does, however, add a new element to the discussion of the stick man with an interesting speculation about the size of his head:

If this is a large fish and Jonah is intended, then it is possible to image [sic] a stick figure inside the fish.  If so, the head is absurdly large. Why? Obviously, some Jews imagined the resurrection body to be similar to but different from the fleshy body.  Would some early Jews have imagined a resurrected body would have a large head?  Is that the ideal body? We simply need to raise questions and be open to dialogue. (p. 4).

I would be interested to hear if there is any analogy for the idea of the resurrection body having a massive head.  I would doubt it, but I will listen with interest.  But in any case, the key question presumably would relate not to the resurrection body but to the book of Jonah, where there is no hint that the character has a massive head, either before or after being swallowed by the fish.

Moreover, one of the issues mentioned by Charlesworth does have a straightforward explanation.  He asks:

Why has the engraver spent so much time on the lines within the spherical "bottom"?  One can count at least 14 strokes.  Why? What was imagined? (p. 4).

As  Juan V. Fernández de la Gala has helpfully illustrated (ASOR Blog), those lines are the way that the artist shades in the vessel, seen also at the top of the vessel (the "fish tail") and the vessel decorations (the "scales"):

But what of the image itself?  Charlesworth is inclined towards Tabor and Jacobovici's "fish" interpretation, but he suggests that there are merits also in the ideas that it is a nefesh monument or an amphora.  Indeed he wonders whether the artist was being deliberately ambiguous, perhaps attempting to depict all three.  He suggests, for example, that:

A symbol must be interpreted and usually has many meanings.  Symbols appear in a world of ambiguity and bring with them more than one meaning (p. 3).

Charlesworth adds:

But, something is intended.  We should move beyond what it could possibly be and ask what is the intentionality that created this image (p. 4).

I must admit to struggling with this.  It is difficult to ask about the "intentionality" of the artist without having a clear handle on "what it could possibly be".  Perhaps my fondness for Occam's Razor is the problem.  Where Charlesworth wonders about the decorative squares inside the image --

Could they be an attempt to meld an image of a fish with a nefesh?  Is there some conflation to be contemplated? (p. 4), 

-- I can't help thinking that it is unnecessary to interpret the image as a conflated nefesh-fish when the vessel interpretation appears more plausible.

Charlesworth's concern with the amphora theory relates to the handles:

The image has something on each side. Could these be handles?  If so, they are not like any known handles on an amphora, whether drawn or part of an amphora itself (p. 4).

Since Charlesworth does not mention any of the scholarly critiques of the project, it may be that he is unfamiliar with the attempts to illustrate answers to this type of question.  Antonio Lombatti's detailed and helpful illustrated article Observations on the “Jonah” Iconography on the Ossuary of Talpiot B Tomb, for example, provides several useful analogues, including this graphic from a useful post by Thomas Verenna:

Moreover, since he does not mention it in the article, Charlesworth may be unaware that in May 1981, Zvi Ilan reported that the first excavators of the tomb, who actually saw the ossuary, interpreted the image in question as an amphora (ASOR blog).  Furthermore, while Charlesworth suggests that the image on the side of ossuary "looks like a fish's tail" (p. 4), this image clearly appears to have handles on either side, as I have often mentioned here (see How the half-fish became a vase and why it matters and links there):

The key point about this image, which Tabor and Jacobovici concede may have been interpreted as a vase in 1981, is that it provides the all-important contextual information about the image on the façade.  Vase on the side; vase on the front.

Charlesworth's post concludes with reflections on the meaning of the image, and although he suggests that "meaning resides in ambiguity and all symbols are multvalent" (p. 8), he focuses on the idea of Jonah and the fish, linking this first with repentance and then with resurrection. He draws attention to the repentance theme in Luke 11.29-32 and adds that

 Jonah was read on the evening of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) to signal the importance of seeking forgiveness before God.

There is, however, no evidence that I am aware of that Jews were reading Jonah on the Day of Atonement as early as the first century.  The first reference I know of to Jonah being read at Yom Kippur is b.Meg. 31a.  But in any case that does not help with the imagined Christian identification of the tomb.

Charlesworth goes on to mention the connection between the resurrection and the sign of Jonah in Matt. 12.38-41, the text that is key in Tabor's and Jacobovici's case (See my The Talpiot Tomb, Jonah and Q).  The big question here relates to dating.  Most scholars (me included) date Matthew after 70CE, after the dates of the ossuaries in this early Roman period tomb, which places a question mark against Tabor's and Jacobovici's case.  Charlesworth's comment is:

These Jewish reflections [Matthew's] are from the first century CE, but after 70CE they were reported by those who were claimed to have seen a resurrected Jesus (p. 9).

And Charlesworth goes on to quote 1 Cor. 15.3-8 followed by Joseph Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth.   It looks like Charlesworth is here distancing himself from interpreting the sign of Jonah as a sign of the resurrection in the pre-70 period, and so aligning himself more with sceptics like me than with Tabor and Jacobovici.  But I could be wrong -- it is not easy to parse Charlesworth's prose here (What does "there were reported by those who were claimed to have seen a resurrected Jesus" mean?).

Before concluding this post, there were three further elements that raised questions.  The first is a mention of a "rubbing of that image" (p. 11, n. 2), i.e. the image of the fish / vessel on ossuary 6.  I had not heard about this before and so asked Prof. Charlesworth for clarification.  He responded by saying emphatically that in fact "there was no rubbing" but it remains unclear what he is referring to in that note.

Second, I was interested to see measurements for the fish/vessel image (23 x 15 x 9 x 3) for the first time.  This is helpful information, but I am curious about how the image was measured.

Third, I don't understand the dates given in the article.  On p. 1, the first sighting is in the "summer of 2011" but on p. 2, the same event seems to be dated to "January 2012".

In summary, after having read Charlesworth's article carefully, I am sorry to say that I remain completely unpersuaded by the claims made in the documentary, the book, the website, and the preliminary report.

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Update 1 (Friday, 9.29am): See now Richard Bauckham's comments to this post, which I have promoted to the post itself:

(1) I have been able to access Jim Charlesworth's article only via your website. I cannot find it on the Foundation on Judaism and Christian Origins website, and I am baffled by the opening sentence of the article: "For the full report with more images, visit http://www.FJCO-DSS-Events.org." I cannot find this "full report" at that web address. Where should I be looking?

(2) Charlesworth's reiteration of the reading of the Greek inscription that he made when he first saw it (shown in the film) without taking any notice at all of any of the very considerable subsequent discussion of it by fellow-scholars is extremely disappointing, especially as he himself says in this article that "we need each other in a dialogue that appreciates the input of others" (p. 5).

(3) I was puzzled by his appeal to the multivalency of symbols in relation to the fish/nephesh/amphora image when he first made it in email correspondence back in the autumn, and his elaboration of it in this article still leaves me baffled. He says, "Any attempt to enter the mind of an engraver in order to discern the intention of an “artist” borders on unsophisticated methodology," but then goes on precisely to discuss all sorts of considerations precisely with a view to discerning the engraver's intention. Furthermore, what exactly does he mean by calling this image a symbol. His footnote refers to his own extensive discussion of the image of the "serpent" in his book on that topic, reporting that he found this to have about thirty meanings. But these are all meanings of the image of a SERPENT. This scarcely seems a valid parallel to the suggestion that the image on the ossuary may be ambiguously a nephesh or an amphora or a fish. If it is indeed a fish, then one might say that the fish is a multivalent symbol - conceivably, for example, an early Christian engraver might have intended both Jonah's fish and the Christian ICHTHYS acronym (though Jim Charlesworth himself rather dogmatically dismisses the latter as having any relevance). An amphora might also have more than one possible symbolic significance (a funerary symbol? one of the famous Temple vessels?). In such cases, we could be dealing with an intentionality on the part of the engraver to provide a symbol with a range of meaning or we could have an image so ambiguous that we can't discern the engraver's intentionality, given our limited evidence. But what does it mean to say that the image is ambiguously a nephesh and a fish and an amphora? I don't think Charlesworth means that the engraver could have intended such an ambiguity (see page 4, paragraph 4, beginning "It is easy..."). He seems to mean that the image is ambiguous to us and we find it very difficult to discern the engraver's intentionality. Even so, as I have pointed out, Charlesworth himself offers plenty of considerations towards resolving the ambiguity. So is his appeal to the multivalency of symbols no more than a warning to us not to seize too quickly on an interpretation, but to engage, as he says, in "a dialogue that appreciates the input of others, whether philologists, archaeologists, biblical scholars, or specialists in ancient art" (p 5). If that is all it amounts to, then I must say it seems to me that a good deal of such dialogue has actually occurred in the extensive discussions, especially in the highly reputable location of the ASOR Blog. I can say this as someone who has not contributed to that particular dialogue myself (reserving my own contributions to the discussion of the Greek inscription).

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Update 2 (Friday, 10.05 am): See now James Tabor's comments on Charlesworth's article at Taborblog.  Tabor echoes Charlesworth's focus on the "intention" of the engraver and suggests that "Often only a trained eye can decipher what the writer intended".  This may well, of course, be the case, but the "intention" of the writer still has to be demonstrated on the basis of what s/he actually wrote.

Tabor also echoes Charlesworth's stress on the notion that all the strokes at the base of the vessel / fish are accounted for:

Also, as Charlesworth points out, those who read these markings as intentional Hebrew letters do not claim that all the marks in the mouth of the fish are part of the letters, some are related to the fish itself (i.e., the straight line of the mouth), whereas others seem to form the eye of the fish as well as the arms and legs of a stick-like figure, attached to the large head. What does seem to be the case is that all of the inscribed markings (not the scratches or imperfections in the stone) are intentional.

There are, I think, a couple of difficulties here.  First, Charlesworth does not appear to be convinced that the image is a fish.  He thinks it might be, but he also finds the nefesh and amphora theories compelling, even suggesting some conflation of all three, with ambiguity and multivalence. But if it is not a fish, then all the extra lines in its "head" need explanation because they can no longer be relegated to the background in order for the alleged YONAH inscription to stand out.  

Second, even if some lines are attributed to YONAH, some to a stick man (variously configured) and some to a fish head and mouth, there are still some lines left over.  See, for example, Bob Cargill's helpful graphic here:

Notice especially the several "ignored lines". 

Third, both Charlesworth and Tabor make clear that they don't see all the marks here as forming Hebrew letters.  Charlesworth writes:

Obviously, I never intimated that all the lines in "the head of the fish" are letters; anyone who imagined that I did make such a claim or that I ignored some lines simply was dependent on a journalist's summary of my comments (p. 7).

And Tabor here echoes the comments.  I am puzzled by their insistence on this point since I am unaware of anyone who says that they claimed that  "all the lines . . . are letters".  It is a fact, though, that several of the lines in the "head of the fish" do not do service as letters or lines in the fish head or lines on a stick man.  But to repeat my earlier point, I think it is always preferable to cite those against who one is arguing so that one can check up on whether the argument is fairly represented.

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Update 3 (30 May): the link to Charlesworth's article is now broken and has been since at least 26 May.  The report is that Charlesworth's article was a draft and that it was uploaded by mistake.  More here.

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Update 4 (11 June): a revised version of the article is now available on The Bible and Interpretation.  Although some of the revisions adjust points that I had criticized above, most of my critique stands.  I will therefore revise and repost this response and provide a link here when it is ready.

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Update 5 (11 June): my revised version of this post now updated in line with the revised version of Charlesworth's article is available here.

RBL Innovation: Scholarly Rejoinders to Reviews

Ever had a book review that you would like to issue a rejoinder to?  It's almost always been the policy of journals not to allow a right of reply to authors who feel that they have been hard-done-by in a book review.  But now the SBL Review of Biblical Literature is allowing authors their right to reply in its blog.

The blog format enables authors to add their thoughts on their reviewers in the "comments" and the regular RBL newsletter has begun to draw attention to these.

It will be interesting to see how this develops.  I can imagine someone offering a right humdinger of a response if they feel they have been treated unfairly.  Will this make reviewers more careful to be as fair and accurate as possible?  Will it make them more restrained, their tone more civil?

I must admit to mixed feelings about this.  On one level, it could help to hold reviewers to account.  But on the other hand, it is part of the academic experience to learn to cope with reviews of your work with which you may disagree.  I wonder if the ease of a blog-comment response will encourage too many authors to respond too quickly and too negatively to critiques of their work that may -- on reflection -- help them.

Moreover, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.  If you have an unfair review, it's sometimes better not to respond.  Knee-jerk responses all too often end up looking petty, pompous or self-indulgent.

Walter Wink (1935-2012)

Further to my brief post last week, there is now confirmation of the sad news of Walter Wink's death on 10 May.  Richard Deats, on the Fellowship of Reconciliation website, writes:

Walter Wink, 76, one of the most creative and influential scholars of our day, died peacefully at his home in Sandisfield in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts on May 10, 2012. 

The website goes on with a fine tribute.  Comments also on The Biblical World and The Quaternion and a tribute at The Holy Irritant.  As further tributes appear, please let me know (in the comments below, if you like), and I'll update this post with them.

Update: more tributes collected here on Anoigmatic.

Walter Wink

Several on twitter are reporting the death today of Walter Wink.  I am sorry to hear about this.  I haven't yet seen a confirmation of this; more in due course.

A short tour around Duke University's west campus

Want to come to Duke?  Here's a nice little youtube video of what west campus (where I work) looks like in the spring.

 

Anthony Le Donne

I have been an admirer of the work of Anthony Le Donne for a few years now, and I have read with profit his Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David (and what a fine use of the Oxford comma in that title!) and his recent, shorter Historical Jesus: What Can We Know and How Can We Know it?, which is a great way to spend a couple of hours stimulating your thinking.  I was present at a great session at the SBL a couple of years ago that focused on Anthony's first book.  And we were delighted to publish in the Library of New Testament Studies the book he co-edited with Tom Thatcher, The Fourth Gospel in First Century Media Culture.

Anthony is an original thinker, a fine scholar and an obvious star of the future.  I was really shocked, therefore, to hear that Lincoln Christian University recently terminated his employment, apparently because of some perceived problem with his recent book on the Historical Jesus.  It makes no sense to me that an institution that uses the name of "university" would do something so stupid and so damaging to its reputation.  Nothing good can come of this.  I offered my sympathies to Anthony privately when I first heard about this several weeks ago, but now that it is public information, I wish to make a public statement of how disgusted I am by this folly.

I mentioned to Anthony and to Chris Keith that in the light of this action, I would not be willing to participate in the planned conference on Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity, scheduled for October, if it were to take place at Lincoln Christian University. I am pleased to hear that there are now plans to host the conference elsewhere, and I do hope that those plans will come to fruition.

Many other bloggers have commented on the shameful affair. Jared Calaway is Appalled and Angry, Michael Bird writes about Evangelical Confessionalism and Academic Freedom, Brian LePort writes about Academic freedom, evangelical confessionalism, and the word “university”, James Crossley weighs in with Academic Freedom, Christian ‘Universities’ and ‘Secular’ Universities, James McGahey has a post on Another Unjust Firing: Reflections on Anthony LeDonne's Dismissal from Lincoln Christian University, Jim West speaks about When Ideology and Indoctrination are More Important Than Education: The Bizarre Firing of Anthony Le Donne, Christopher Skinner writes on The Curious Case of Anthony Le Donne and James McGrath asks if it is Time for the End of the Sectarian University?  Larry Hurtado speaks more generally about this kind of affair in Academic Injustice and Shameful Cowardice, with a response by John Hobbins.

The Work of Professional Scholar: Answering Emails

Over on his new blog, my colleague down the road at UNC Chapel Hill, Bart Ehrman, has been offering a series of insights into The Work of the Professional Scholar.  Only the first part is (Introduction) is publicly available but one can get a flavour of those behind the paywall from their titles, Supervising PhD Dissertations, Undergraduate Theses, Undergraduate Courses and Graduate Seminars.  

Now of course these are all important elements in the life of the professional scholar, but what Bart has not so far mentioned is that the vast majority of one's time is spent ploughing through the endless, endless stream of emails that pour in on a daily basis.  For some scholars, the situation is so bad that they simply choose to ignore all email correspondence until the emailers in question become as persistent as the importunate widow.

One scholar confided in me that they only way that he was able to get any research done was to ignore everything until people started shouting at him.  I suspect that many other academics are the same.  As the editor of a book series, I will confide here that many academics routinely ignore emails requesting assistance.  Ask any publisher and you will hear the same story.

When my kids were little, I remember someone asking one of them what their dad did for a living and she said "He does something on the computer".  It wasn't "teaching" or "reading books" or "talking to students".  She'd seen me endlessly attempting to dig down through that email mountain.

Bruce Longenecker on Hearing the Silence in Luke

Thanks to Caitlin Mackenzie for sending over this press release about Bruce Longenecker's new book:

Uncovering the Literary Dimensions of Luke’s Gospel
Learning from the Silence in Luke 4:30

After Jesus is threatened to be thrown from a cliff by an angry crowd, Luke 4:30 says that He “passed through the middle of them and went on his way.” What happens to elicit his escape? Why are readers not given all the details of this important story? What should we be listening for in this seemingly intentional silence?

In this refreshingly unique book, New Testament scholar Bruce Longenecker demonstrates that reading Luke’s narrative is richly enhanced through attentiveness to that which is tantalizingly left out. Hearing the Silence invites the reader to delve deeply into the literary and theological dimensions of the Lukan narrative through an exploration of Jesus’ strangely under-narrated “escape” in Luke 4:30. Through a unique survey of this scene in Jesus novels and films, Longenecker brings into dramatic relief the options for interpreting this curious event, including a variety of strategies that have been employed to iron the scene’s narrative oddity. Against their backdrop, Longenecker’s own constructive proposals bring the reader into direct contact with some of the most significant features of the Lukan Gospel and worldview . . . .

More here.

Jesus' Will Found!

Over on the Huffington Post, Mark Miller has the scoop of the century, something that dwarfs other recent claims to have found Jesus' bonebox, the nails used to crucify him and the earliest Christian iconography.  We now have the Jesus' final will and testament:

Jesus' Will Found

An archaeologist has scored the discovery of a lifetime, unearthing a tattered, faded parchment that experts have certified as the last will and testament of Jesus Christ.

It looks like New Testament scholars will be eating humble pie for some years to come.  Not only does it hint at a romantic relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but also it suggests that the author of the first Gospel was personally known to Jesus and, moreover, that he was not the tax-collector by the same name but a "school buddy" from Nazareth.

Still more intriguing is the mention of Luke in the document.  Does this mean that the author of the third Gospel was engaging in subterfuge when he suggested that he was not one of the eye-witnesses (Luke 1.1-4)?  Perhaps this will turn out to be a previously unsuspected case of protective anonymity.

Although I am going to have to reassess some of my own work on the Gospels in the light of the new discovery, one element confirms something that I have been saying for a while, that we need to take seriously the Missing Pieces in Historical Jesus research.  The mention of Vinnie, the village beggar, and Janet, the masseuse, illustrates that there are indeed figures involved in Jesus' life about whom we know nothing.

On the other hand, perhaps I could just join the "few naysayers" already mentioned in the article.  I'm sure if I look hard enough, and sit around at the computer blogging all day, I might be able to find something to nit-pic about.

Also noted by Jim West and Antonio Lombatti, who will also, no doubt, be among the nay-sayers.

Criticizing the Criterion of Embarrassment in Historical Jesus studies

Both Loren Rosson and Doug Chaplin comment on my recent NT Pod 60:  The Criterion of Embarrassment and they make some excellent points.  There are also some very helpful remarks from Michael Barber on the post itself.  Here are some further thoughts, partly by way of clarification and summary, on the criterion:

(1) The major difficulty is the term itself, "embarrassment".  I simply do not believe that the evangelists were "embarrassed" about anything that appeared in their Gospels, unless of course one is thinking of the skandalon of the cross that all the early Christians were dealing with in different ways.  The evangelists were not sitting around, dictating the story of John's Baptism, fidgeting uneasily, with red faces.  When I read Mark's account, it's quite the contrary -- a bold proclamation of a theophany that establishes Jesus' identity clearly for everyone listening.

E. P. Sanders prefers the term "against the grain" and this is far more useful than "embarrassment", which sounds so horribly like attempts at pop-psychology of the evangelists. Looking for features in an account that go "against the grain" is what historians do all the time.

(2) The use of this criterion, like the other criteria, is often used too mechanistically. It is invoked, and the invocation is often regarded as sufficient to establish the historicity of the event or saying in question.  As I've been arguing in the recent podcasts, the value of the criteria is in teaching students about how the historian works, especially students who bring with them some confessional agendas that might interfere with the task.

As soon as the criteria become a kind of toolbox for the historical Jesus scholar, they become problematic.  It should give us pause when we remember that other ancient historians do not devote pages of their studies to discussing the special "criteria" for their topics.  Discussion of historical criteria is useful for training students.  Their use in scholarly invocation is the problem.

(3) Historical Jesus scholars seldom give any thought to how the criteria work in concert with one another.  As I have mentioned before, I cannot get my head around the apparent absurdity that the very traditions that are supposed to be "embarrassing" are the very same traditions that are supposed to be "multiply attested".  At the very least, some thought should be given to the contrast between the criteria.  One should inform and correct the other.

The point can be illustrated from the phenomenon of singly attested traditions, like the Blind Man of Bethsaida (Mark 8.22-26).  Scholars commonly provide good reasons for Matthew's and Luke's omission of the story from Mark -- the use of spit, the non-immediate healing.  The fact of the omission illustrates that the evangelists were not reticent about omission when they wished.  If a later evangelist was really "embarrassed" by material he found in an earlier account, he simply omitted it.  By analogy, one can imagine the same thing happening at different stages in the tradition, with different tradents.

At the very least, I would like to underline the problems with the terminology.  If we can talk instead about material that is "too much with the grain" and "against the grain", I suspect that we will improve our historical sensitivity.

Jesus the Magician Rowan Atkinson Style

If you haven't seen this before, you'll love it.  If you have, you'll love it even more -- it's sublime.  Rowan Atkinson reads from something that sounds rather like John 2.1-11 (Wedding at Cana) but morphs into something that is from a version that is less familiar to most New Testament scholars:



It's actually a superb creative harmonization of several Synoptic and Johannine texts, largely from the KJV.  I am really tempted to set this video as a challenge in my NT Intro next semester to see how many of the texts they can recognize.  I especially love the play on "sick of the palsy" which always sounds so strange to modern ears.

Ephesus Conference

Just heard about this conference at Harding School of Theology:

Ephesus Conference in honor of Dr. Richard Oster

An international conference on the study of Ephesus and its connection to the New Testament will be held at HST as a tribute to the 65th birthday of professor Richard E. Oster.

The May 18-19, 2012, conference is slated to acknowledge Oster’s work on ancient Ephesus as a religious center and site of early Christian activity.

More here, and official website here.

HT: a comment from Jeremy.

Was Jesus a Magician? - Helen Ingram

I am delighted to see that my former doctoral student, Helen Ingram, has put together an excellent website based on her PhD work at the University of Birmingham:

Was Jesus a Magician? 
Extracts from "Dragging Down Heaven: Jesus as Magician and Manipulator of Spirits in the Gospels" by Dr Helen Ingram

It's packaged to be a little less dense and technical than the PhD itself, with most footnotes removed, and some nice pictures added.  And there are a couple of Youtube presentations of  the thesis by means of audio interviews with another Birmingham PhD, Dr Richard Goode. Here's the first, for a taster:



Thanks, Helen, for making your work widely available in this way!  Also mentioned already on Paleojudaica, Exploring our Matrix and elsewhere.

Richard Oster's 7 Subversive Letters

Thanks to Allen Black for pointing out his colleague Richard Oster's blog in which he focuses on the Book of Revelation in anticipation of his forthcoming book on the subject:

7 Subversive Letters

Sub•verto –– to overturn, cause to topple over, by pressure from below or at the base (s.v. Oxford Latin Dictionary).

This blog is based upon research and ideas for a manuscript I have sent off to a publisher. It looks at Revelation 1-3.

• Written by an author relocated because of subversion.

• Sent to 7 congregations needing to resist the cultural regime of Roman Asia.

• Designed to sabotage the recipients' easy reliance upon the values of the culture and its religions.

Bible and Ancient Greek Linguistics

Thanks to Wally V. Cirafesi for letting me know about this new venture:

Bible and Ancient Greek Linguistics

Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics (BAGL) is an international journal that exists to further the application of modern linguistics to the study of Ancient and Biblical Greek, with a particular focus on the analysis of texts, including but not restricted to the Greek New Testament.

The journal is hosted by McMaster Divinity College and works in conjunction with its Centre for Biblical Linguistics, Translation and Exegesis, and the OpenText.org organization (www.opentext.org) in the hosting of conferences and symposia open to scholars and students working in Greek linguistics who are interested in contributing to advancing the discussion and methods of the field of research. BAGL is a refereed on-line and print journal dedicated to distributing the results of significant research in the area of linguistic theory and application to biblical and ancient Greek, and is open to all scholars, not just those connected to the Centre and the OpenText.org project.

More at the link above. 

April Fool's Biblical Studies' Carnival

Jonathan Robinson has put together an excellent Biblical Studies Carnival, rounding up all the activity for the month of April:

April Fool's Biblical Studies Carnival

Don't miss the seriously weird illustration of something that is not Jonah coming out of the fish's head.

British New Testament Conference

This year's British New Testament Conference will be held at King's College, London and there are details here:

The 32nd Annual British New Testament Conference

06 - 08 September, 2012

King’s College London has the honour of hosting the BNTC 2012. This annual conference brings together scholars from across the United Kingdom to explore various areas of research pertaining to the New Testament. The conference is divided into seminar groups and plenary sessions featuring this year’s keynote speakers:

Andrew Clarke
James Crossley
Anthony Thiselton (Graham Stanton Memorial Lecture)

More here.  (Wish I could be there!)

The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy and the Talpiot Tomb

I have often attempted to articulate here what I see as some of the difficulties with the claims made by those involved with the TV documentaries The Lost Tomb of Jesus (2007) and The Resurrection Tomb Mystery / The Jesus Discovery (2012).  Earlier today a blog commenter made me aware of a phenomenon known as "The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy", which is nicely explained in this short Youtube video:



In my post on Returning Once Again to the Names in the Talpiot Tomb, I had attempted to explain that one of the difficulties for the claim that Talpiot Tomb A belonged to the family of Jesus was that names that correlate with early Christian texts are celebrated while names that do not correlate are ignored.  It is a kind of cherry-picking of the data.  Paul Regnier then commented:

There is simply no evidence that Jesus was married, or had children, or more specifically that he had a son named Judas. As mentioned above, you can't draw attention to matches with the NT record and ignore non-matches. Focusing on a piece of data that does fit a theory and ignoring the pieces of evidence that do not fit has a name - it's called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.

Daniel McRaney explains on his website You Are Not So Smart: A Celebration of Self-Delusion why it is called The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy:

The fallacy gets its name from imagining a cowboy shooting at a barn. Over time, the side of the barn becomes riddled with holes. In some places there are lots of them, in others there are few. If the cowboy later paints a bullseye over a spot where his bullet holes clustered together it looks like he is pretty good with a gun.

The relevance to the Talpiot Tomb claims is that a cluster of names in a given tomb is only impressive if that cluster is not contaminated with non-matches and contradictory evidence.  It is true that Jesus son of Joseph, Mary and Joses are also found among Jesus' family names in early Christian texts, but Matthew and Judas son of Jesus are not.

The same issue appears again in relation to the claim that a stick man, allegedly the figure of Jonah with seaweed wrapped around his head, is drawn into the head of the "fish" in the tomb:

The changing lines of the stick man Jonah (left: original; right: new version)
See The Changing Figure of the Stick Man in Talpiot Tomb B

James Tabor has offered two different versions of the stick man, utilizing different lines on each occasion, the earlier version to the left above and the later version to the right.  In my analogy, this is akin to the Texas sharpshooter drawing the target around holes, or here to the attempt to isolate specific lines that may or may not help us to see the presence of a stick man differently configured each time.

The same issue crops up again in relation to the alleged letters now seen in the "head" of the "fish":

Alleged letters spelling out "Jonah" on James Tabor's blog

This interpretation, attributed to James Charlesworth, isolates parts of some of the lines seen in at the bottom of the vessel (the "head" of the "fish") and suggests that they spell out the name Jonah, YWNH.  The difficulty is that there are lots of lines there, and one can only see YWNH by ignoring lines and parts of lines.  Once again, it is like the Texas sharpshooter drawing his target around the bullet-holes in the side of the barn.  (See further Do the lines in the "fish" head spell out Jonah;  With Each New "Jonah Ossuary" Photo, Multiple New Problems and links there and Talpiot Tomb B: Connected and Unconnected Lines).  

As Daniel McRaney writes, 

Anywhere people are searching for meaning, you will see the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. For many, the world loses luster when you accept the idea random mutations can lead to eyeballs or random burn patterns on toast can look like a person’s face.

And of course it is possible to spot the face of Jesus on the side of one of the ossuaries in Talpiot Tomb B, just as it is possible to see a fish in another ossuary in the same tomb, a stick man and letters in its head, and Jesus' family in the tomb next door.

Accused of slander for criticizing the "Jesus Discovery" claims

I was disappointed to see Nicole Austin, Associate Producer on The Resurrection Tomb Mystery documentary (The Jesus Discovery in Canada), characterizing this blog as engaging in slander.  In a comment on Robert Cargill's blog today, she responded to Paul Regnier who  had asked her a question about the scholars working on the project.  She wrote:

You are repeating the same slander which has dominated the Cargill/West/Goodacre blogs and has kept the majority of true scholars away from this discussion. 

Nicole, who works for Associated Producers Ltd., goes on to make other rude remarks, mentioning me by name again, but it is the accusation of slander that I find especially disappointing.  The others mentioned in this comment can of course answer for themselves, but I would say that I have always attempted, both in relation to the recent project and the one from 2007, to be fair and accurate, to state any objections in a calm and reasonable way, basing them solely on the evidence presented. If this kind of honest, rigorous critical analysis is characterized as slander, then it is clearly impossible to have a serious discussion about the claims made in the Simcha Jacobovici and James Tabor's project.

Returning once again to the names in the Talpiot Tomb

In an essay in Bible and Interpretation, On Yoseh, Yosi, Joseph, and Judas son of Jesus in Talpiot, Kevin Kilty and Mark Elliott respond to critics of the statistical case for the identification of the Talpiot Tomb with the family of Jesus of Nazareth.  They respond in particular to comments made in criticism by John Poirier, Richard Bauckham and me.  I will respond here to the points they make on my blog post.

First, a minor comment on a shorthand that they use.  They speak of critics of Simcha Jacobovici's theory as "critics of Talpiot"; and they speak of my "argument against the Talpiot tomb".  However, I am not a critic of the tomb.  On the contrary, I am fascinated by it.  I am a critic of the theory that connects this particular tomb with Jesus of Nazareth and his family on the basis of a alleged name correlations.

But the issue at hand relates to two of the names found in the Talpiot Tomb, what is now known as Talpiot Tomb A in order to contrast with Talpiot Tomb B next door.  Talpiot Tomb A has the names in it, "the Jesus family tomb", and Talpiot Tomb B is the one recently explored by means of the robotic arm and which Jacobovici and Tabor think is the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and the early disciples of Jesus.

The two names that Kilty and Elliott discuss are Yoseh (Joses) and Judas son of Jesus.  The statistical case benefits from the treatment of Yoseh as a rare name and from not regarding Judas son of Jesus as contradictory evidence, points that I pressed in a blog post earlier this year entitled Returning to the Talpiot Tomb.  I noted that:

The difficulty . . . is that the names Joses and Joseph are clearly regarded as similar or the same in the New Testament. Mark 6.3 calls Jesus' brother "Joses" while the parallel in Matt. 13.55 calls him "Joseph".  Matthew clearly regards Joseph as an alternative, preferable way of saying "Joses".  Likewise, the character who appears in Mark 15.40 and 15.47 is called Joses in Mark and Joseph the Matthean parallel (Matt. 27.56).  Moreover, the fact that this character may be a different character than the brother of Jesus also witnesses against the alleged extraordinary nature of the name. The same Joseph / Joses variation is found in the texts too, and not just here in Matthew but also in Acts 4.36, Joses / Joseph Barnabas.

Kilty and Elliott's response misunderstands or misreads the point.  They characterize my argument in this way:

Mark Goodacre argues that Matthew uses the name Joseph for Jesus' brother (Matt. 13.55 and Matt. 27.56) and should take priority over Mark's Joses (6:3) for this same brother.

I do not argue that the name Joseph "should take priority".  I argue that the names Joseph and Joses are interchangeable in the NT, both synoptically and text-critically.  They write that "we don't agree that Matthew's Joseph should take priority over Mark's Joses".  Nor do I.

Kilty and Elliott go on:

So does Matthew have any insight on the name Joses? What information did Matthew have concerning Jesus' brother? Did he know anyone from Jesus' family? What evidence exists that Joses was ever called Joseph?

Arguing for Matthew's ignorance of Jesus' family is, however, a risky strategy.  If we were to marginalize Matthew's witness, then we would marginalize also the information that he provides that is absent in Mark, that Jesus' father was named Joseph (Matt. 1.16, 18, 19, 20, 24; 2.13, 14, 19, 21), something that is key to the Talpiot tomb statistical argument.

The discussion of the variant in Acts 4.36 is similar.  I am attempting to point to the fact that it is not only the evangelists who regarded Joseph and Joses as interchangeable, but also certain scribes.  It is not the case that I am calling for "viewing Joseph as the only legitimate name to be used in any calculation concerning the Talpiot tomb"; I am pointing to the importance of including the interchangeability in the calculations.

Moreover, I do not think it unreasonable to suggest taking the evidence from the first century Gospel of Matthew seriously when Simcha Jacobovici asks us to take seriously the fourth century Acts of Philip.  To their credit, Kilty and Elliott steer clear of this.

Now, I had also repeated something I had often said before and recently said again, that one of the difficulties with the identification between the Talpiot Tomb and the family of Jesus of Nazareth is the name Judas son of Jesus.  In order to make the case, they require extraordinary correlation but what we have here is an extraordinary contradiction.

It is no answer to this point to enter into general discussions about Jesus' celibacy or to say that Jesus may have been married in spite of the silence of our sources.  The point is, let us remember, that the case is based on allegations of amazing correlation.  There is no other basis for the case.  So contradictory evidence simply has to be taken seriously.

I don't know of a fresh way of saying this, so I will simply restate the point by means of the analogy that Simcha Jacobovici and others so like, the Beatles analogy.  When our future researchers find a tomb in Liverpool that includes "Ziggy, son of John", we do not say, "Aha!  John Lennon must have had a son called Ziggy that we have never previously heard about!"  No, we say, "Oh, it does not look like it is the tomb of the Beatles, after all.  Those sources that said that he was cremated in New York must be right after all."

There is some nonsense at the end of Kilty's and Elliott's essay about "biblical literalism" that I will ignore except to point out that the comment that I repeated about the unlikelihood of Jesus naming his son Judas was so obviously facetious that I am amazed that anyone would take it seriously.

Do the lines in the "fish" head spell out Jonah?

Just over a week ago, James Tabor discussed an interesting suggestion made by James Charlesworth that the name "Jonah" might be spelt out in Hebrew letters in the head of what they see as the "fish" in Ossuary 6 in Talpiot Tomb B, the image that others see as some kind of vessel or vase, Name of “Jonah” Encrypted on the Jonah and the Fish Image (see also The Hebrew Name “YONAH” Embedded in the Image of the Fish on the Talpiot Tomb Ossuary).

My worry about the suggestion was that it led to a revision of an already problematic aspect of the case, the idea that the image featured a "stick figure" of Jonah emerging from the fish, a point made by Stephen Goranson and illustrated in my post headed The Changing Body of the Stick Man in Talpiot Tomb B.  But more importantly, the suggestion about the letters spelling out Jonah was received with scepticism -- Christopher Rollston in the Globe and Mail aticle; Jim Davila in Paleojudaica, Antonio Lombatti, Robert Cargill, Robert Cargill again, Steve Caruso and Steve Caruso again.

Now James Tabor makes clear that, as far as he is concerned, the Inscription on the “Jonah image” Says YONAH.  He complains about several blog responses and he quotes from troubling posts that I have not seen.  My preference is, of course, to deal with matters of substance and there is something I would like to draw attention to.

One of the difficulties that  some have seen with the new proposal is that one of the alleged letters, the nun, appears to be broken in the middle, and thus does not appear to be a nun at all.   Here, for example, is Robert Cargill's helpful illustration:

Image (bottom) on Ossuary 6. Original image here .Coloured lines courtesy of Robert Cargill.

On the left is a close up of the bottom of the image as it appears on ossuary 6.  On the right is Robert Cargill's representation of the engraved lines.  The alleged nun is here represented by the yellow and green lines in the picture on the right.

The difficulty with this letter is that there is an obvious break between the elements of the alleged nun.  James Tabor maintains, however, that the lines are clear and that they are not random markings.  He does not acknowledge that there is any break at all in the lines that constitute the alleged nun.  In his pictures, the line is represented as continuous.  Take for example the recent illustration on his blog:

Alleged letters spelling out "Jonah" on James Tabor's blog

But how do we test the competing claims?  Is the alleged nun here continuous or broken?  Tabor maintains that the letters are "crystal clear" but I remain sceptical.  One of the main reasons for my scepticism is that the break in the middle of the alleged nun is actually "crystal clear", to borrow Tabor's language.  This is not a nun; it is two random lines.

Indeed, one can test for the clarity of the lines here by returning to the CGI composite image of what is depicted on ossuary 6.  This image aims to represent what the authors of the project used to regard as clear and self-evident and yet it is quite clear that before this new "Jonah" reading had been proposed, they too saw a break in the line that is now held to be a nun.  In other words, before the "Jonah" inscription interpretation, they too could not see the continuous line of a letter "nun".

It's worth taking a close-up look at the image.  The original CGI image is oriented horizontally, but a rotation and a zoom-in helps us to compare this with the images used to illustrate the alleged inscription:

Close-up of CGI composite of the bottom left facade of Talpiot Tomb B

A glance at the image confirms that those involved with the project could not see what is now interpreted as a nun.  The two lines are quite clearly unrelated.  To draw attention to this clear non-nun, I have added a red circle here to show the key area in question:

Close-up of CGI composite of the bottom left facade of Talpiot Tomb B,
drawing attention to the break in the alleged nun.

It is not just sceptics of Tabor's and Jacobovici's claims who are struggling to see the name of Jonah spelt out here.  It is the project authors' own  CGI picture, designed before the new claim, that bears testimony to the difficulty in seeing the letters that they now wish to see.

Update (6.54am): Link to James Tabor's post above fixed (with thanks to James Davila). See now Jim Davila's helpful comments on Paleojudaica, including the following:

If Professor Tabor wants to convince his colleagues that there is an inscription there and that it says "Jonah," he needs to take up the objections one by one and demonstrate that (1) the lines he says he sees on the ossuary, especially those of the "nun," are really there and as he sees them and (2) that each supposed letter shape can be closely paralleled by specific letters in other Herodian informal lapidary inscriptions such as appear on ossuaries.

Update (4.45pm):  See now also Antonio Lombatti, Is YONAH there or not? and Robert Cargill, When is a nun not a nun?.  (See what he did there?!).  See too Steve Caruso, Unfaithful Representation.

The Bart Ehrman Blog

I am grateful to my colleague Bart Ehrman down the road at UNC Chapel Hill for letting me know about his new blog:

Christianity in Antiquity: The Bart Ehrman Blog

It's looking slick and professional and there are already a couple of posts, one on the First Century Copy of Mark? that has previously been discussed here and elsewhere and one on his new book about Jesus Mythicists.

Extra goodies are hidden behind a paywall, including an extension of the above post on the first century Mark fragment.  Also, only paying members are able to comment on blog posts.  Money earned from the site will go to assisting the needy.  I am not aware of other academic bloggers who have added a paywall, so it will be interesting to see how the blog fares.  I am looking forward, though, to the public posts.  Welcome to the blogosphere, Bart!

Jane Schaberg has died

I was sorry to read, on Kathy Schiffer's blog on Patheos, that Jane Schaberg has died.  Jane Schaberg was Professor of Religious Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy and is most well known for her controversial but thought-provoking The Illegitimacy of Jesus which recently (2006) celebrated its twentieth anniversary with a new edition.  She has also published extensively on Mary Magdalene, including The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament.  Her passing is a great loss.

Divine Women, Bettany Hughes

I meant to mention this last week when Leonie Jameson (Executive Producer) sent it over, but there is a new three-part series on Wednesday evenings on BBC2 entitled Divine Women.  It is presented by Bettany Hughes.

There is more here, including clips:

BBC Two: Divine Women

There is more too at the Open University.  I was a consultant on the episode that airs tomorrow night, Handmaids of the Gods.

Jesus Christ Superstar back on Broadway

It's good to see that Jesus Christ Superstar is back on Broadway again, forty years after the original run.  There's a nice montage of shots from the show set to its most famous song "Superstar" here.  Jesus' hair is a bit freakily long for my liking, and I'd love to hear what his voice is like and whether it rivals the great Ted Neeley's, but otherwise it looks like an interesting adapatation:

How the "half-fish" became a vase and why it matters

Over on the ASOR blog several days ago, "Jonah" Ossuary discussed in print in 1981, Eric Meyers and Chris Rollston brought to our attention Zvi Ilan's report, in DAVAR in May 1981,  on the discovery of what is now called Talpiot Tomb B.  The report was revealing because it mentioned the sighting of a vase or vessel on one of the ossuaries and it mentioned nothing of a "fish".

The article has spawned many comments, including several from Simcha Jacobovici and James Tabor themselves.  Jacobovici writes:

As for what the article says; it refers to “architectural façades (belonging to the Temple?), a vase and two names written in Greek.” So it seems that the “vase” reference is not to the Jonah image at all! The article speaks about Temple “façades” or “features” in the plural i.e., the fish is subsumed under “Temple façades,” since it is carved next to a Temple-like structure on the front of the “Jonah ossuary.” The “vase” is a separate item altogether and it’s referred to in the singular, probably what we have identified as the tail of a fish at the backend of the ossuary.

Similarly, Tabor writes:

 Since Ilan does not seem to know about the four line Greek inscription, or clearly mention the Jonah image, my guess is he might be referring to the “half fish” (Cargill and Goodacre’s vase with handles) that is clearly visible in the photos in Kokh 1, ossuary 1, and NOT the Jonah image that is on its face since this account implies Kloner was in and out very quickly without moving the ossuaries.

The reason that I am interested in these comments is that they at least suggest that Tabor and Jacobovici accept that it would be reasonable to interpret the "half-fish" as a vase.  Let's just take a moment to look again at the relevant image:

This is a detail taken from Kloner's original 1981 investigation of the tomb, with arrows pointing to the handles (from here; see also here; new photograph here).  I suggested that this picture of a vase provides key contextual information about the interpretation of the picture on the façade of the same ossuary (see Robert Cargill's Sins of Commission and Omission for more).   A vessel on the end of the ossuary; a vessel on the façade of the ossuary.  Compare, for example, these images from Rahmani's catalogue shared by Tom Verenna in which there is a vessel on the end of the ossuary, and a vessel on its façade.

Now of course it could, in theory, be that there was a vessel on the end of the ossuary but a "fish" on its façade, but the very fact that Jacobovici and Tabor have insisted on the "half-fish" interpretation for the end of the ossuary suggests that they are aware of the importance of contextual clues.

However, I must admit that I think it most unlikely that the DAVAR article is referring to this vase on the end of the ossuary.  The more striking image is the one on the façade and I cannot imagine that the vase on the end of the ossuary would have commanded their attention more than the one on the façade.

Either way, the article is telling for another reason.  Simcha Jacobovici recently suggested that the reason that many scholars do not see a "fish" is that they are involved in some kind of "theological trauma".  But as Paul Regnier commented , "Quite how can you be traumatised by a viewpoint that won’t actually exist for another 30 years?!" However one attempts to spin this one, the original investigators did not see any fish on this ossuary, and I am afraid that that is telling.

Congratulations to Stephen Carlson!

I would like to take a moment to congratulate Stephen Carlson who has successfully defended his PhD dissertation here at Duke.  His thesis title is "The Text of Galatians and Its History".  Bart Ehrman and I were co-advisors.   Joel Marcus, Douglas Campbell and Michael Holmes joined us on his committee.  Those of you who already know Stephen's work will not be surprised to hear that his thesis was outstanding, and his defense of it exemplary.  If we awarded "honors" here at Duke, or "graduation with distinction", this thesis would have received that award.  Very many congratulations to Stephen on a richly deserved PhD.  I feel a great sense of pride to have been able to work with him during his time at Duke.  He is a bright star of the future and I know that I will not be the only one who will follow his career with great interest.  

The Gospel of Us

I was just listening to The Film Programme on Radio 4 and it begins with a discussion of The Gospel of Us, a new film that comes out this weekend in the UK.  I am ashamed to say that until hearing this feature, it had completely passed me by.

The film is a kind of cinematic version of a modern Passion play set in Port Talbot in Wales and it stars Michael Sheen as "the teacher".  As far as I am concerned, anything with Michael Sheen in it is worth watching, and to see him in a Passion play set in Wales sounds just wonderful to me.  In fact, I once spent a happy weekend in Port Talbot as a kid; my dad is a book collector and there was a book fair there.  I can't wait to see the film.  Here's the official trailer:



The Guardian is a bit muted in its enthusiasm:

Passion plays are like Titanic for Christians: it's a tale they never tire of hearing, despite knowing how it ends. Sheen's secularised approach (his Christ figure is referred to as the Teacher) was spread over several days at venues in and around Port Talbot, an impressive theatrical undertaking that deserved to be recorded for posterity. Dave McKean's film is a stylised documentation of the event, a bold attempt to turn it into something more cinematic. He keeps things visually interesting and exciting, overlaying images and using the occasional separately filmed segment. For the most part it works well, although having all the dialogue virtually shouted (a necessity in outdoor theatre) doesn't help.

More elsewhere in the Guardian here.  The Independent really hates it -- "a calamitous misjudgement", in part because:

The director Dave McKean admits he's an atheist, which is fine, but denuding the Easter story of any religious dimension is surely nuts. He says he's exploring "belief systems" but fails to show what anyone here believes in.

I'd have thought the religious beliefs (or lack of them) ought not to be decisive in the film's impact.  After all, one of the most critically respected Jesus films, The Gospel According to St Matthew, was directed by the atheist Pier Paolo Pasolini.  The Independent article goes on:

Sheen calls himself Teacher, and all he does is pass around sandwiches (the feeding of the 5,000, I think) and ask people to tell him their "stories" – as if in this age of blogging people need encouragement. The Teacher has provoked evil corporate profiteers who want to exploit the town's resources. How he could threaten them never becomes clear. Sheen is a Messiah figure without the mystery, majesty or dark wit that characterised Jesus. Instead of giving great speeches to inspire followers or worry enemies, he just looks vaguely beatific, like a local boy made good. The conceit of it is at once narcissistic and completely banal.

IMDb's entry is here.  BBC News has a feature and an interview.  And there are three clips here.  The chance of catching it in one of the cinemas here is pretty remote so my guess is that I will have to wait for the DVD.

Joseph of Arimathea and Talpiyot Tomb B, by Richard Bauckham

I am delighted  to have the opportunity to blog the following guest post from Prof. Richard Bauckham.  It is also available as a PDF file here.

Joseph of Arimathea and Talpiyot Tomb B

Richard Bauckham

The “Resurrection Tomb Mystery” documentary attempts to suggest that Talpiyot Tomb B was the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Hardly any evidence for this is actually provided. The only point at which some reason for the identification is given is this:

“The two [Talpiyot] tombs were found on what had been in the first century a rich man’s estate, complete with wine press and ritual bath. And the area is dominated by two hills. Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man and his name, in Hebrew, means ‘Two Hills.’”

This comment obviously depends on the usual explanation of Arimathea as representing the Hebrew place name Ramathaim (1 Sam 1:1), and correctly notices that this is a dual form of the word ramah. The latter means ‘height’ but is scarcely used except in place-names, either alone, as Ramah (there are 4 or 5 towns so-called in the Hebrew Bible), or in compounds, such as Ramoth-Gilead. In such cases, it designates a town built on a high place. For the Arimathea/Ramathaim from which Joseph is named, there needs to be a town, not just an estate ‘dominated by two hills’. That there was a town, or even small village, called Ramathaim, so close to Jerusalem but mentioned nowhere else in our sources, seems unlikely.

The most likely identification of Joseph’s place of origin is with the Ramathaim (textual variant: Rathamin) mentioned in 1 Macc 11:34 as the headquarters of a toparchy transferred in 145 BCE from Samaria to Judea. This Ramathaim is clearly not near Jerusalem, but near the borders of Judaea and Samaria. Eusebius’s Onomasticon places it at the village of Remphis (Israel map grid 151159), which is about 30 km north-west of Jerusalem. It should be noticed that the dual form of Ramathaim is an archaic form, which has survived unusually in this place name (otherwise only in 1 Sam 1:1, which may refer to the same place, evidently called Ramah later in the narrative of I Samuel). It is therefore very distinctive (unlike the common Ramah) and we should not multiply Ramathaims unnecessarily.

The makers of the documentary perhaps assume that, since Joseph appears in the Gospel narratives in Jerusalem and has a tomb near the city, Arimathea must be near Jerusalem. But this is a mistake. Like many aristocrats in the ancient world, Joseph had estates in the country (not necessarily at all near Jerusalem) but lived most of the time in the city. This is the most obvious way of explaining why he has a new tomb, not yet occupied, near Jerusalem. His aristocratic family would surely already have a tomb – back in Arimathea. But Joseph has decided that he would like to be buried near the holy city, rather than having his body transported back to Arimathea. We now have a nice parallel in the case of the Caiaphas family, another aristocratic Jerusalem family. They had the now well-known tomb in north Talpiyot, where the high priest Caiaphas himself was interred, together with other family members. But from the ossuary inscription that was made known to the public only last year (the ossuary of Mariam daughter of Yeshua of the Caiaphas family), we now know that there was also a family tomb elsewhere, somewhere in the vicinity of the Elah valley (where the ossuary is said to have been found), plausibly at Khirbet Qeiyafa. This will have been where the family estates were located. (See my article, ‘The Caiaphas Family,’ JSJH 10 [2012] 3-31.)

So the only shred of evidence presented in the documentary for identifying Talpiyot Tomb B as that of Joseph of Arimathea is entirely without value.

The Resurrection Tomb Mystery: Live Blog

I am live blogging a commentary on The Resurrection Tomb Mystery documentary that is airing on Discovery Channel (USA) tonight, 10pm EDT.  It is airing at the same time in Canada as The Jesus Discovery (Vision TV).

It's a while since I have done one of these live blogs, but I have been posting so extensively about this tomb over the last six weeks that now seems like a good time to do it.  The idea is simply that I tap away on my laptop while I watch.  If you want to follow along, you'll have to remember to hit the "refresh" button from time to time.

The way that this tends to work is that I blog the most during the ad breaks.  On this occasion, I am particularly excited about actually getting to see some footage of the tomb.  Although I have been heavily critical of the claims being made in the published materials so far, I am nevertheless genuinely excited about seeing inside this early Roman period (1st century BCE to 1st century CE tomb).  I'm sure that that footage will be the highlight for me.

9.58: tuning in.  Discovery are showing a documentary on Jesus to get people in the right mood.  Just realized that I need to feed the cats and grab a glass of wine before I settle down.

10.00: Starting.  Begins with a note that people will disagree about what they see.

Goes on with a flashback to the previous documentary from 2007.

Note: Bob Cargill is also live-blogging over on XKV8R.

Ok, they are cracking on with it.  Good.  Already talking about the 1980 excavation of Talpiot Tomb A.  Nice black and white style reconstruction as if we are looking at real footage.  Now some footage from the 2007 film.  Explanations of the cluster of names from the Talpiot Tomb A, Jesus Son of Joseph, etc.  And now the first contribution from James Tabor saying that the Talpiot Tomb is Jesus' family tomb.

22.04: They talk about the controversy, but imply that the problem comes from fundamentalists, not scholars who find the claims implausible.

Now they are doing a nice reconstruction, again in black and white, of the 1981 excavation. They show two of the pictures from 1981.  Good to see.

22.06: the name of Joseph of Arimathea is brought up for the first time.  First worrying sign.  And now "Two hills" are linked with "Arimathea" to link the tomb to Joseph of A.  This is very weak.  Bear in mind that there is absolutely nothing in this tomb that links with Joseph of Arimathea.

22.08: the Haredim manage to shut down the excavation; shots of activists disrupting the excavation.

22.09: explanation of how they are looking for the tomb and using GPR.  They do not mention the fact that they already sent cameras down into the tomb in 2007, and that there was footage in the documentary of the ossuaries and the inside of that tomb.  Unless I missed it, the implication is that they did *not* go into the tomb at that point, and that they are looking for it here afresh.

22.10.  First ad. break. 22.13. Starts again.  They don't know how to access the tomb.

James Tabor and Rami Arav now introduced formally.  They need to get into the tomb somehow without going in themselves.  William Klassen is now being introduced in Toronto -- robotic arm and the camera.  This is easily the most interesting and important element, in my opinion, in the documentary.  Fantastic new technology and the chance to see an early Roman period tomb.

22.15: "What would an early Christian symbol look like".  They go to Rome with Robin Jensen to look at possible Christian images.  Catacombs.  Simcha asks Jensen, "Jonah is Christian?"  "Oh yes".  In context here, yes!

Bear in mind that Robin Jensen has made clear that she does not endorse the claims made in this documentary about the "fish" in the Talpiot tomb.  But there are further problems -- we should not be going in, expecting to find Christian images.  This is predisposition.

22.18: We are back in the attempts to get into the tomb.  Finding problems getting in, etc.  And now "the moment we have been waiting for".

22.19: Another ad break.  Nice to see the Geko with a British accent.

OK, a third of the way through and we are not yet in the tomb.  But it's on its way.  Audience have been told that if we find Jonah and the fish, then we have an early Christian image of resurrection.  So what's the guessing that they are going to find Jonah and the fish?

I've just heard that Tom Verenna is live blogging too.  Don't forget to check up Robert Cargill too.  If anyone else is live blogging, let me know.

22.24: longish ad break. Starts again.  Robotic arm stuff and general recap.  Simcha "believes . . . the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea".  This is persuasion by repetition.  Bear in mind that there is nothing to link this tomb to Joseph of Arimathea.  Absolutely nothing.

22.25:  The camera is going in.  We are getting the shots of the tomb.  Simcha and company is thrilled.  "Almost there, almost there", they say.  Don't get that.  Almost where?  What are they looking for?

22.27: Fabulous to see shots of ossuary one, and the snaking through.  Tabor: "It's really ornate, befitting a wealthy person"  So Joseph of Arimathea, then?!  They are showing the Nephesh on ossuary 1.  Nicely done.

22.28.  Moving to kokh 2.  They are calling them "niches".  Looking at ossuaries 2, 3 and 4.  Looking at ossuary 4, MARA spelt out.  They are linking it with Mariamene Mara from Talpiot Tomb A.  Now linking with Mary Magdalene.  Here we go.

I just want to look at the ossuaries; I don't want all this stuff.

They are pressing on after making progress.  But the cable has snapped and they've hit a problem, a problem of the kind that in documentaries requires an . . .

. . . . ad break!

Half way through the documentary now.  For me, a highlight is seeing the footage of the ossuaries.  I am not enjoying hearing repeated, unfounded references to Joseph of Arimathea.

Just checked up on how Robert Cargill is doing in his blog and he also spots the repeated references to Joseph of Arimathea.  Ad break is going on a bit, so checked on Tom Verenna's too.  He notes that they had already seen these ossuaries before in 2007, so there is an element of staging here.

10.34: we are off again.  Broken robotic arm.  This will last a short while and then we will overcome it and carry on.  Documentaries have to have a few crises. "The exploration appears to be over before it really begins."  Repaired and back.  Good.  Now let's see some more ossuaries!

10.36: looking at kokh 3, plain ossuary and no inscriptions.  They are running out of options.  No Joseph of Arimathea, they say.

10.37:  now they are approaching ossuaries 5 and 6 and we are about to have whoops of delight, I am sure, when they see the vessel on one of the ossuaries.  They talk about looking at "number 4", which can't be right.  They see "the cross".  Here we go.

10.39: "earliest Christian related cross ever found".  And that requires an ad break!

Two thirds of the way through and we have not yet got to the "fish" business, and the inscription.  It'll be coming shortly.

10.42: resumes.  Summary. Haha, there's the Jesus face that that "Duke professor" found.  "We have a cross which I think is a Christian cross".  But Tabor says, we don't have anything that links it to the tomb next door.

10.43: they have found the image.  Close ups of the image of the "fish".  Rami Arav thinks it is a nephesh.  Simcha thinks it's a nephesh.  The others disagree.  "Those could be the handles".  They saw the vase first.

"That's Jonah's head . . . it's spitting Jonah out"  And here's the composite cgi version emerging.

The stick figure, the fish; and the fish inked in -- even more strongly than in the pics.  This whole section is pretty depressing to those of us who have spent time studying the image.

10.47: the earliest Jesus symbol ever found.  They are all thrilled with it.  The documentary repeatedly shows the "fish" in the CGI reconstructed version, and sideways, not in the orientation it has on the ossuary.

10.48: they talk about the handled half-fish, and go to the Kloner 1981 photograph, highlighting a part of the vessel, but not the handles on the sides.

Ad break. They are saving the inscription until the end.  This was, as I expected, the most disappointing section of the documentary so far -- the entire way that the image was shown was front-loaded with its interpretation as a fish, oriented to one side, using the CGI reconstruction with the tapered tail, with the inked-in "fish" in the margins, and the handled half-fish.

Using the ad break to check in on Robert Cargill's blog.  As I expected, he was not too pleased with that section!

10.52: we are off again, probably for the last section.  The CGI reconstruction is used again. They've found the inscription now.  Trying to read it.  "The inscription is in Greek, the dominant language of the wealthy in Jerusalem".  What?!

10.53: they've called in James Charlesworth.  He's looking at the inscription.  He's doing the interpreting.  God or Zeus or YHWH / raise up / spelling it out.  "I am lifted up, says Jesus, I am lifted up".  Now they are reading "God Jehovah Raise Up! Raise Up!"  etc.

10.55: My wife has fallen asleep.

10.56: They are trying to use the use of the divine name to link the ossuary to Jesus.  I wish they'd just show me some more of the ossuaries.

10.57: Tabor explains that he is now up to 95% linking it with Jesus.

10.58: Charlesworth explains that this links to Jesus -- Jonah and the fish and Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified.

Tabor explains that it is about Jesus' resurrection, but it's not physical resurrection of bones and flesh but a spiritual exaltation.

10.59: summing up.  "Talpiot, Jerusalem is the resting place of Jesus and his family, his disciples  . . ." etc.

"Debate is just beginning"  Well, it's been going on for six weeks or so and I'm afraid we are not persuaded.  Sorry, Simcha.  Sorry, James.

11.00: the documentary is over.  No real surprises.  One big disappointment for me was not seeing more of the ossuaries and the tomb itself.  I was surprised to see just how often they mentioned Joseph of Arimathea and just how weak the attempts to link the tomb to Jesus appeared.

End of live blog.  Beginning of reflections!