The Talpiot Tomb

The science fiction author William Gibson once remarked, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” I was reminded of this quote last week while speaking with a skeptic at Cal State Northridge.

The skeptic saw my little evangelism booth from a distance, saw the sign which reads, “LETS TALK ABOUT JESUS”, road over to me on his bike, and approached me with the greeting, “They found Jesus’s skeleton in 1980!” After he had laid his bike to one side and taken a seat, he explained a bit more and I came to understand that he was referring to the so-called Talpiot Tomb.

For those of you who have forgotten, the Talpiot Tomb is a tomb located in the Jerusalem area which made headlines a few years ago when James Cameron (yes, the one who made the movies Titanic and The Terminator) and a few other people made a “documentary” claiming that the tomb likely contained the bones Jesus of Nazareth. Well, maybe not the bones themselves, but at least a stone box called an ossuary that once contained Jesus’s bones. Not only this, Cameron and Co. claimed that other ossuaries found at the site once housed the bones of Jesus’s mother, Mary, and Mary Magdalene and even those of Jesus’s forgotten son. Big news, to be sure, and the media had a field-day with the claims.

Anyway, like I said, when my skeptical conversation partner invoked the Talpiot Tomb I was reminded of Gibson’s quote. Only I adapted it a little in my imagination: “The truth is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

You see, despite James Cameron’s titillating documentary and the media’s predictable interest and sloppy reporting, the claimed connection between Jesus of Nazareth and the Talpiot Tomb has been examined by genuine experts and dismissed. I knew this, others in the ministry presumably knew this, but my eager skeptic didn’t. But that’s not too surprising. Popular media can use attention-getting headlines (e.g. “Jesus’ Body Found?”) to sell magazines and newspapers; more sober headlines (e.g. “Some Stone Boxes with No Connection to Jesus Discovered”) aren’t quite as marketable. As a result, goofy fringe theories that seek to debunk religion get presented in the popular press as if they have more credibility than they actually do. Books and periodicals that specialize in religious matters from an academic perspective are less widely read and so fewer people get the less sensational and more boring side of the story.

Since many readers may remember the Talpiot Tomb and the unsettling theories that James Cameron and his crew propounded, I thought that I’d share with you the information I ultimately gave my CSUN skeptic.

Eric H. Cline, a professor of archeology at George Washington University, discusses the Talpiot Tomb and the scholarly consensus regarding it in his book, Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, published by the Oxford University Press in 2009. Speaking about the excavation of the site, Cline clearly states, “The final report of the excavations was published in 1996 by [Amos] Kloner, now an associate professor of archaeology at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. There was no mention in the report of any possible connection of the tomb to Jesus or any members of his family, nor was there any reason that there should have been, for there was no link to be made.” (pg. 104) Cline goes on to inform us that, despite this, film-makers James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovichi made a movie that argued the site was, in fact, the final resting place of Jesus of Nazareth. Unfortunately for Cameron, Jacobovichi, and their confederates though, the film “was extensively criticized by archaeologists, who protested the manipulation of data and the leaps of faith involved in making such a claim.” (pg. 104) Ultimately Cline sums up the current view among scholars in the field: “As far as professional archaeologists are concerned, the tomb of Jesus and his family remains undiscovered.” (pg. 104)

Further, Craig A. Evans, a professor of New Testament at Arcadia University in Canada, looked back on the Talpiot Tomb episode in an article published through The Huffington Post. There Evans observed that “Scholars didn’t bite then and they aren’t biting now.” He indicates that, when it comes to scholars’ views concerning the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was buried there, “Most agree” it’s just nonsense.

What’s more, after the airing of Cameron’s sensationalistic documentary about the Talpiot Tomb, an academic conference was organized at Princeton Theological Seminary to discuss the site. After the conference, a long list of scholars from a variety of backgrounds present at the conference published a letter in which they plainly say, “the majority of scholars in attendance—including all of the archaeologists and epigraphers who presented papers relating to the tomb—either reject the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to Jesus’ family or find this claim highly speculative.” Geza Vermes, a retired professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford University, issued his own statement in which he said that “the arguments advanced in favor of the Talpiot burial chamber being the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth are not just unconvincing but insignificant … most of the fifty or so participants shared this opinion.” Vermes concluded by saying that “the matter is and, short of substantial new discoveries, must remain closed.”

I think that’s sufficient to establish how the claims of Cameron and his friends are viewed by the scholarly mainstream within the archaeological and historical communities. If you’re interested in learning the reasons why the consensus of archaeologists is very strongly against identifying the Talpiot Tomb with Jesus of Nazareth, you may wish to read the fuller treatments of the issue found in reputable third party sources. There’s the article at National Review Online written by Thomas F. Madden, a professor of history at Saint Louis University, which gives some reasons why rejection of Cameron’s claims within the scholarly community is “virtually unanimous”, as he says. Also, there are a few treatments of the issue in apologetical books (e.g. here & here).

So there, the future truth is a little more evenly distributed now.

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Admittedly, in some parts of modern Western culture, the whole notion of “the demonic” and possession is viewed with deep skepticism. But as M. Scott Peck (former Chief of Psychiatry at the Army Medical Center in Okinawa, Japan and then the Assistant Chief Psychiatry and Neurology Consultant to the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army) pointed out, such skepticism is more a product of prejudice than any actual advances in scientific understanding. The following excerpt from Peck’s book, People of the Lie, appeared on the back of the Sunday bulletin and (Peck’s slightly defective theology notwithstanding) helpfully introduces this particular concept:

Having come over the years to a belief in the reality of benign spirit, or God, and a belief in the reality of human evil, I was left facing an obvious intellectual question: Is there such a thing as evil spirit? Namely, the devil?

I thought not. In common with 99 percent of psychiatrists and the majority of clergy, I did not think the devil existed. Still, priding myself on being an open-minded scientist, I felt I had to examine the evidence that might challenge my inclination in the matter. It occurred to me that if I could see one good old-fashioned case of possession I might change my mind.

Of course, I did not believe that possession existed. In fifteen years of busy psychiatric practice I had never seen anything faintly resembling a case. … I doubted that I ever would.

But the fact that I had never seen a case did not mean such cases, past or present, were out of the question. I had discovered a large volume of literature on the subject—none of it “scientific.” Much of it seemed naïve, simplistic, shoddy, or sensational. A few authors, however, seemed thoughtful and sophisticated, and they invariably stated that genuine possession was a very rare phenomenon. I therefore could not assume it to be unreal on the basis of limited experience.

So I decided to go out and look for a case. I wrote around and let it be known that I was interested in observing cases of purported possession for evaluation. Referrals trickled in. The first two cases turned out to be suffering from standard psychiatric disorders, as I had suspected, and I began making marks on my scientific pistol.

The third case turned out to be the real thing.

Since then I have also been deeply involved with another case of genuine possession. In both cases I was privileged to be present at their successful exorcisms. … I now know Satan is real. I have met it.