burial of jesus Archives - Biblical Archaeology Society

Unlocking the Secrets of Egyptian Mummification

Lauren McCormick — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:45:45 +0000

Ptolemaic period mummified individual. Courtesy Paul Hudson from United Kingdom, CC-BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Few things captivate the imagination like Egyptian mummies. Their intricate wrappings and lifelike preservation carry both religious significance and enduring mystery. A recent study focuses on something far more earthly: their smell.

Mummified remains have a distinctive musty and woody aroma, which has been shown to preserve a chemical record of ancient embalming practices. The study is showing how scientists can read that record without harming the priceless burials. Even the faintest scents from mummified remains carry a wealth of historical information, offering new ways to connect with Egypt’s ancient past without unwrapping a single bandage.

Mummification in ancient Egypt was not just a burial practice but a spiritual one. Preserving the body ensured safe passage into the afterlife. Over thousands of years, Egyptians experimented with natural materials that slow decay, including animal fats, plant oils, beeswax, resins, and, later, bitumen. Each material leaves a chemical “fingerprint,” releasing tiny molecules into the air called volatile organic compounds.

The study’s innovation lies in analyzing these compounds non-invasively. Scientists capture them on fiber waved in the air around the mummified remains. The compounds stick to the fiber and are then analyzed to identify which embalming materials were used. Instead of cutting into the remains, researchers “sniff” it chemically. The researchers report that short-chain fatty acids reveal oils, mono-carboxylic fatty acids and cinnamic compounds indicate beeswax, sesquiterpenoids point to resins, and naphthenic compounds signal bitumen.

This approach even distinguishes differences between mummified individuals from different historical periods, showing how embalming materials age over time. Some compounds degrade quickly; others persist for millennia. Understanding these patterns helps explain why two mummified individuals may smell different despite similar treatments. It also illuminates the evolution of Egyptian embalming, from simple fats and oils to complex mixtures including costly resins and bitumen.

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The study has relevance for biblical archaeology as well. Ancient Israelite custom held that corpses be washed, anointed with oils and spices, and wrapped—a process also reflected in New Testament accounts of Jesus and Lazarus. After Jesus’s crucifixion, for example, his body was washed, anointed with myrrh and aloes, and wrapped in linen before being laid in a tomb (John 19:39–40). While Israelite and early Christian practices did not involve chemical embalming, the careful washing, anointing, and wrapping reflects a similar spiritual care: honoring the deceased, masking decay, and preparing the body for what comes next.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

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Virtually Explore Jesus’ Tomb at the National Geographic Museum

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 14:00:43 +0000

Since 2017, the District of Columbia has been awash in Biblical archaeology. From the opening of the Museum of the Bible to the National Geographic Museum’s exhibit, Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience, visitors to the nation’s capital have myriad opportunities to explore Biblical studies. The Tomb of Christ exhibit, located at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC, opened in 2017 and closed in 2019.

The National Geographic Museum exhibit Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience presented an immersive 3-D look at the conservation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus is believed to have been buried. Photo: Oded Balilty, AP for National Geographic.

The focus of the Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience exhibit is Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the recent restoration and conservation project conducted by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). The church, first constructed by Roman emperor Constantine in 335 C.E., stands over the suspected site of the burial of Jesus after his crucifixion at Golgotha.

Over the last two millennia, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and interior Aedicule—the shrine that houses the tomb—have been subjected to destructions, renovations, and alterations. In the 20th century, church leaders recognized the need to perform serious restoration and conservation of the church’s artwork and infrastructure. It was not until the past decade that the church seriously considered the application by the NTUA and secured a private donation to carry out the exploratory and innovative restoration.

Watch a video on the National Geographic Museum’s Tomb of Christ exhibit.
Documented by the National Geographic Society, the NTUA team employed state-of-the-art technologies like LiDAR and Ground-Penetrating Radar in their investigation into the structural weaknesses of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and even used thermal imaging to see paint pigments covered in hundreds of years of candle soot and grime. During the process, they mapped and 3-D-imaged the entire interior of the church in an effort to aid the preservation process. The exhibit details the history of the site along with the recent restoration efforts and utilizes the results of the 3-D imaging to create a unique tour of one of Jerusalem’s holiest sites.

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Upon entering the Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience exhibit, the visitor first steps into a waiting room with images of the inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre accompanied by a short video that introduces the exhibit. Every few minutes, intimate groups of about a dozen are led into the first room, which offers a quick video on the history of Jerusalem and the site of the church itself.

The group makes its way past a few shop stalls like one would find in Jerusalem’s Old City and into a room with projections on the walls that place the visitor in the middle of the courtyard of the church. A virtual tour guide explains many of the more intriguing aspects of the practices and agreements of monks of the six Christian sects—Greek Orthodox, Franciscan, Ethiopian, Coptic, Armenian, and Syrian Orthodox—that reside in separated areas of the structure. The guide highlights the “Immovable Ladder,” an old wooden ladder that rests on a window balcony in a common space and has come to symbolize the “status quo” that no monk may alter an aspect of the common space of the church without the unanimous consent of the five other orders.

Next, visitors are adorned with 3-D glasses and step into another virtually projected courtyard. This dizzying adventure is a rollercoaster ride through many of the nooks, crannies, and hidden passages of the church. The 3-D experience through the massive structure focuses on the Aedicule and takes the viewer inside the tomb itself. Many interesting discoveries made by the NTUA team are presented along the way, such as the uncovering of an original Constantinian tomb stone.

In one of the first rooms of the groundbreaking exhibit, visitors don 3-D glasses and get a thrilling, up-close-and-personal tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the work conducted by researchers. Photo: Rebecca Hale/National Geographic.

After the 3-D experience visitors pass through a traditional exhibition with photographs of the restoration, details about overcoming challenges in the project, and explanations about techniques and technologies used by the NTUA team and how they work. The short exhibition hall is adorned with a thorough timeline of the history of the church as well as labels that present odd and intriguing pieces of niche historical trivia.

The exhibit guides visitors through the different technologies used in conserving and mapping the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, including LiDAR and Ground-Penetrating Radar. Photo: Robin Ngo.

Though the Church of the Holy Sepulchre holds a brilliant and vibrant history through many eras of occupation by different cultures and faiths, the exhibit lacks significant critical engagement with the Islamic period prior to the conquest of the Crusaders and the Ottoman period before the British mandate in Palestine. These periods in history had a critical effect, culturally and aesthetically, on the city of the Jerusalem, and on the continuity of the church, yet see little engagement in this exhibit.

Just before visitors exit the exhibit, they have the option to slip on a virtual reality headset and take a self-guided tour of the church interior. As you move about the 3-D reconstructed church, a voice narrates the history of individual monuments, shrines, cathedrals, and artifacts housed inside.

Wearing a virtual reality headset, BAR Managing Editor Megan Sauter explores the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Photo: Robin Ngo.

The exhibit does well to explain many of the history and processes that transformed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre over time, a composite of styles and ideologies. The exhibition hall ends with a message emphasizing that the appreciation of the church and its restoration is not restricted to a single faith. All can enjoy and participate in the lush history and beautiful, artistic features of this cultural landmark.

The National Geographic Museum’s Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience is a great opportunity to learn about the ancient cultural heritage of one of the Near East’s historic and culturally vibrant cities. If you do not have the opportunity to visit the holy city and tour the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in person, the museum has certainly done an exceptional job of rendering the adventure and intrigue of the church in an accessible exhibit.

Samuel Pfister is the collections manager at the Badè Museum in California. He wrote this post while an intern at the Biblical Archaeology Society in 2018.

A version of this post first appeared in Bible History Daily in 2018

Jesus and His World

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:40:01 +0000

Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence

By Craig A. Evans
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 208 pp., $25 (hardcover)
Reviewed by George Giacumakis

Written for the nonexpert and student, this book examines the archaeological discoveries of the last century and a half that are important to understanding the life and world of Jesus. The information comes not only from archaeological finds in published excavation reports, but also from the author’s visits to the various sites and museums and from interviews with archaeologists.

Jesus and His World centers around five areas of investigation. The first is a discussion of the archaeological finds from Sepphoris, a city neighboring the village of Nazareth. How does this relate to the first-century world of Jesus? The author distinguishes between archaeological finds that were dated to the earlier part of the first century C.E. and finds dated to the latter part of that century. The finds from the pre-70 C.E. period indicate a Jewish community, while the finds from the post-70 C.E. period (after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple) point to a more Greek and Roman way of life in Sepphoris.

The second area of focus is the archaeological evidence relating to the first-century synagogue. The author explains that the synagogue of that time was both a congregation or assembly and the actual physical structure. The famous Theodotus Inscription, found in Jerusalem and dating to the first half of the first century, evidences the existence of the synagogue during Jesus’ lifetime, as do pre-70 C.E. excavated synagogues.

One of the strongest chapters of the book focuses on literacy at the time of Jesus. Evans discusses a number of prefirst- century C.E. inscriptions as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially the Biblical scrolls. Numerous Jewish scribes worked in the first century world and produced scrolls not only at Qumran but also in most synagogues. Several references in the Gospels to Jesus reading from a Biblical scroll strongly indicate that Jesus could read, even though he was not formally educated as a scribe.

The fourth chapter deals with the issue of purity in relation to the religious establishment. Jesus and his disciples had confrontations with the ruling priests in Jerusalem. Because of their unwashed hands and feet, the priests declared that Jesus and his followers were unclean. The famous “Temple Warning” inscription is an example of priestly threats of death to all Gentiles or foreigners who came too close to the Temple because they were unclean.

The book’s last chapter deals with archaeological evidence of Jewish burial customs. Evans looks at this evidence (and Jewish customs regarding a dead body) and concludes that the burial of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels is accurate.

Two appendices—“Have we found the family tomb of Jesus?” and “What did Jesus look like?”—conclude the book. The student is given various possibilities to consider.

Evans has provided a very clear presentation of the first-century world for the nonspecialist, based on the material evidence archaeology provides. This book is strongly recommended for the student of Biblical and historical studies at the time of Jesus.

George Giacumakis is professor of history at California State University, Fullerton, and director emeritus of the university’s Irvine Campus. He is also director of the Museum of Biblical and Sacred Writings in Irvine, California.

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Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:01:24 +0000

Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus

By Jodi Magness

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011, 375 pp.
$25 (paperback)
Reviewed by Shaye J.D. Cohen

Archaeologist Jodi Magness is well known to BAR readers, perhaps best known for her work on Qumran. She is a leading scholar in her field and a dynamic lecturer. And this book well documents her expertise in the archaeological remains of ancient Judaism.

As Magness explains in the preface, the book was first conceived as a study of the archaeology of purity in ancient Judaism, a correlation of literary and archaeological evidence. The book gradually took on a broader focus, but the issue of purity in all its manifold aspects is never far away. Of the book’s 12 chapters at least nine deal with purity in one way or another.

In most chapters Magness begins with a citation from literary evidence, usually a passage from the Gospels, Josephus or rabbinic literature. She then discusses some interpretations that have been advanced in modern scholarship and then, by invoking archaeological evidence, she explains why one explanation is more convincing than another. Magness has read widely in modern scholarship, and her bibliographical reach is broad and deep, but her discussions are not, and do not claim to be, exhaustive; hence they are both readable and accessible to students and other nonspecialists. This is not a small accomplishment.

Perhaps the strongest chapter (and, not coincidentally, the longest) is on “Tombs and Burial Customs.” She begins with a discussion of the rock-cut tombs of the Jerusalem region, observing that they were prepared for and used by members of the upper classes. In their decoration and design they also document the influence of foreign cultures on those upper classes. Next comes a discussion of ossuaries or bone boxes. Magness endorses the view that they were inspired by Roman funerary urns, further evidence for the influence of non-Judean culture on the social elite. Magness then turns to pit graves and trench graves, used by the people of Qumran and, we assume, by the lower classes generally. She closes with a discussion of the burial of Jesus and the burial of James, the brother of Jesus, including a delightful demolition of the recent suggestion that a tomb found in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem was the final resting place for the bones of Jesus and his family.

Magness is an expert in archaeology; she is not, however, an expert in the interpretation of classical Jewish texts, and this deficiency, I am sorry to say, manifests itself regularly. Here are some examples:

(1) Magness says, “Jesus reportedly prohibited divorce and remarriage after divorce, a position similar to that of the Qumran sect and the house of Shammai” (p. 8). The house of Shammai did not prohibit remarriage after divorce.

(2) Magness says, “The rabbis ruled that although touching a Torah scroll defiles the hands, the affected person must undergo purification through total immersion in a miqveh, not just hand washing or hand immersion” (p. 28). This is wrong, or at least not necessarily correct. In this situation, total immersion in a miqveh is required only of someone who was about to come into contact with the water of lustration of Numbers 19; otherwise hand washing or hand immersion does indeed suffice. The matter is properly explained in Magness’s source, The Artscroll Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 18b, but she misread her source.

(3) She mistakenly says (pp. 86–87) that the rabbinic term reshut, a designation for various domains in Sabbath law, appears in Jeremiah 17:22; it does not.

(4) She misinterprets Mishnah Berkahot 3:5 (p. 141), which does not speak about a zav and which does not say that “a zav recites the Shema while immersing.”

(5) She says that “the rabbis ruled that it was not necessary to collect all of the bones” for placement in an ossuary (p. 152). This alleged rabbinic rule results from a misreading of the adduced rabbinic passage.

(6) She writes that “The sectarians [Qumranites] required a corpse-contaminated person to immerse on the first, third, and seventh days after defilement, in contrast to Pharisaic and rabbinic halakhah, which requires immersion only on the seventh day, following Numbers 19:16–19” (p. 161). She means, of course, “only on the third and seventh days.”

(7) She writes that “The Temple Scroll indicates that Jews buried their dead everywhere, even inside houses.” Perhaps this is just a bad typo; the Temple Scroll attributes this reprehensible behavior not to Jews but to gentiles.

Am I nit-picking or is there a problem here?

In sum, if we set aside my one complaint, this is a useful book. It is well written, accessible and informative—the work of a fine scholar who knows ancient Jewish archaeology. It is not, however, a full portrait of “Jewish daily life in the time of Jesus.” For that, readers will have to turn to the recent Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine,^* edited by Catherine Hezser. But on the subjects that Magness treats, she is always interesting and worth reading.

Notes

* (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010).

Shaye J.D. Cohen is Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.

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Two Burials of Jesus of Nazareth and the Talpiot Yeshua Tomb

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:01:06 +0000

Back to “Jesus Tomb” Controversy Erupts—Again

James D. Tabor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Jodi Magness argues on this web site that the controversial tomb in the east Talpiot area of Jerusalem cannot be the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family because (1) such an idea contradicts the canonical gospel accounts; (2) it ignores the lower-class status of Jesus’ family and their non-Judean origins; (3) and finally, even if the family might have had such a tomb it would be in Nazareth not Jerusalem. Christopher Rollston has now contributed a piece (found on the web site of the Society of Biblical Literature) arguing that the inscriptions on the six ossuaries found in the Talpiot tomb are sufficiently common, generic, and lacking in patronymic data as to preclude any convincing prosopographic identification with the family of Jesus of Nazareth. I take it that Rollston is not arguing the impossibility of the identification but rather its lack of convincing data.

I agree with Magness that Jesus was buried twice, but my own view, contrary to Magness, is that the Talpiot tomb fits nicely with our earliest canonical sources (the gospels as well as Paul) as to the nature and location of that second burial. At the end of my treatment here I will offer some very brief observations on Rollston’s welcome contribution. The nature of the question, with its theological and emotional overtones, coupled with the way the issue was put before the public and the academy (through a documentary film and a popular book), has understandably galvanized the responses into “yes” or “no” (mostly “no”) when reasonable alternatives might be “possible but uncertain,” to even “probable but not certain,” but in any case a call for further investigation. I will make some suggestions at the end of this piece regarding directions for future research.

1. Why the tomb does not contradict the Gospel Accounts: Dead but Twice Buried

Our earliest testimony to the death and burial of Jesus comes from a letter of Paul to his followers at Corinth in the early 50s CE. He reports on a tradition he had received “that Christ diedÉthat he was buriedÉthat he was raised on the third day. . .that he was seenÉ” (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). Leaving aside the matter of the nature of these “sightings” of Jesus, including Paul’s own claim in that regard years after the crucifixion, it is significant that Paul writes that Jesus was buried. Burial implies a tomb, of whatever type, and he clearly intends the phrase “raised on the third day” to imply that that tomb was empty. In that regard I have to agree with evangelical apologists that Paul knows an “empty tomb” tradition. I cannot see how his language can make any sense otherwise.

Chronologically Mark would be our next source, assuming one is convinced, as I am, of the priority of his account of the burial and the empty tomb. Mark relates that an influential sympathizer of Jesus and his movement, Joseph of Arimathea, obtained permission from Pontius Pilate to remove Jesus’ body from the cross and to bury him in haste before the Sabbath arrived. Mark writes that Joseph wrapped the corpse in a linen shroud, laid it in a rock-hewn tomb, and blocked the entrance to the tomb with a stone or golal (Mark 15:42-47). He also notes that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses (whom I take to be Jesus’ mother, see my book, The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 77-81) were present at this burial. Here one must read carefully, as Mark does not say, as often assumed, that this tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, nor does Luke, who is following Mark, or John, who clearly has independent material. The only source for the commonly held assumption that this tomb belonged to Joseph is a gloss in Matthew, whereby Joseph becomes a “rich man” who puts Jesus in “his own new tomb.” This is clearly not history but Matthew’s tendentious attempt to show a fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 53:9, where the suffering servant is buried in the tomb of a rich man.

If we discount Matthew’s theological embellishment and rely upon the core source Mark, we find that it comports well with John, who offers an independent but corollary account. John also knows the Joseph of Arimathea tradition but he adds a critical point: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there” (John 19:41-42). Both Mark and John see this burial as hastily done, and John makes it clear that it was a burial of temporary necessity in constrained emergency circumstances. What does one do with a corpse as the Sabbath approaches (and according to John, the Passover seder)? How can it be kept from predators until the rites of burial are completed? This initial burial of Jesus was by definition a temporary and emergency move, based on necessity, until something more permanent could be worked out or arranged.

What happened next in terms of when and how the corpse of Jesus was taken from that temporary tomb is unfortunately a matter about which historians can say little, given the theological nature of our sources and their relatively late apologetic character. Mark, our earliest narrative source, reports that the tomb was empty by early Sunday morning and that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were told by a “young man” waiting for them in the empty tomb that Jesus had been taken up (aorist passive of egeiro) and would see them in Galilee. Mark ends abruptly with no sightings, but according to some, including my teacher Norman Perrin, his community looked in hope to the promise of a parousia appearance in Galilee, something they still anxiously awaited in the time Mark composed his gospel in the 70s CE.

One must assume that the corpse was taken and reburied, perhaps as soon as the Sabbath was over just after sundown Saturday night. If one were speculating, one might suppose that Joseph of Arimathea, the one who had taken responsibility for the corpse in the first place, would have retrieved the body as soon as Jewish law permitted. Whether the family was involved or whether we are to trust the accounts of the Sunday morning visits to the tomb are questions that take us beyond history to a later apologetic stance intended to defend a view that Jesus had been raised bodily and taken to heaven (Luke and John). As historians we can reasonably expect that the “tomb” would be empty, given that the tomb near the crucifixion site was not intended as a permanent place for Jesus’ corpse but used in an emergency until other arrangements could be made.

At this point we enter what John Dominic Crossan has called the “dark age” of early Christian origins. Jesus died in 30 CE, but we have no records until Paul, in the 50s CE, of what the early Jerusalem followers of Jesus, now led by his brother James, might have preached or taught regarding the death of Jesus. For centuries everyone has “filled in” those 20 years based on the narratives of Luke-Acts and the sharply polemical account of Paul in his letter to the Galatians, but many of us have become convinced that Luke’s creation of a “myth of origins,” and Paul’s claim that his “gospel” was accepted by the Jerusalem “pillars,” (James, Cephas, and John) should be radically questioned (see the Society of Biblical Literature symposium papers, Redescribing Christian Origins, eds. Cameron and Miller).

My purpose in this piece is not to argue these complex issues but to make the simple point that from a critical reading of our earliest sources on the emergency burial of Jesus’ corpse, we would expect that first tomb to be empty within 24 hours. And I think we can safely assume that it was.

2. Was Jesus poor and lower class, and so most likely buried in a trench tomb?

Magness argues that whoever took the body would have buried him in a simple trench grave with no marker since the family was too poor to have afforded a rock-hewn tomb. Yet, she seems to allow that at least one follower of influence and means, namely Joseph of Arimathea, did in fact see to the initial burial. Why would one assume that either Joseph, or other followers of means who were devoted to Jesus’ messianic program, would not be able to provide a permanent tomb? The Jesus movement, now led by James his brother, was headquartered in Jerusalem for the next 40 years and their numbers and influence were enough to be noted by Josephus in the Antiquities. The family of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, who lived in Bethany and with whom Jesus was intimately connected, could afford to bury their dead in a rock-hewn tomb. I also find the evidence presented by Mancini, Bagatti and Milik, and Sukenik and Avigad, regarding rock-tomb burials with inscribed ossuaries elsewhere in Talpiot, at Dominus Flevit, and on the Mount of Offense, as convincingly connected to the early followers of Jesus (Finegan, Archaeology of the New Testament, pp. 359-374).

On more general grounds, what Magness overlooks, in my view, is the extraordinary devotion that followers exhibit toward their spiritual/messianic leaders. Mark tells us that the followers of John the Baptizer went to collect his body and that they placed him in a tomb (Mark 6:29). The Syriac “Ascents of James,” for example, recounts how devout followers of James buried another murdered leader, known in some traditions as Stephen, in a tomb close to Jericho to which they made an annual pilgrimage (see Van Voorst, Ascents, SBL Dissertation Series 112). I have studied apocalyptic and messianic movements, both ancient and modern, for 30 years now and I have never encountered anything close to the scenario that Magness imagines when it comes to such groups burying a murdered leader. It is an open and debated question in the field of Christian origins as to whether Jesus was poor and without means of any sort, but even if that were granted, to rule out the likelihood that devoted followers of means would have provided him and his family with a place of burial is unwarranted.

I have been in the Talpiot tomb, and it is quite modest in size and arrangement, measuring under 3 x 3 meters and less than 2 meters high. It is nothing like the more monumental decorated tombs closer to the city. Also, of the six inscribed ossuaries four are “plain,” and only two are “decorated,” (Mariamene Mara and Yehuda bar Yeshua). I am not convinced that the mere existence of a modest rock-hewn tomb of this type indicates high status and wealth. Indeed, Amos Kloner’s survey of rock-hewn burial tombs in and around Jerusalem seems to show that as one moves away from the “front-row seat” near the Old City, the tombs south of Akeldama, around the Mount of Offense, and south into Talpiot, are often more modest in form and size: thus the old adage, location, location, location.

3. The likelihood of a Jesus family tomb in Jerusalem and the question of toponymic markers

Finally I would expect, rather than doubt, that a tomb of Jesus and his family would be in the Jerusalem area rather than in the Galilee. We have no record that in the period from 30-70 CE that James and his brothers, and presumably their mother and sisters, lived anywhere but Jerusalem. Crossan has even argued, somewhat convincingly I think, that James might have established himself in Jerusalem long before the death of Jesus. Again, it is the nature of a messianic movement of this type to band together in hope and expectation rather than to scatter and go back to business as usual. The solidarity of the movement in the 40s, 50s, and 60s surely depended on fervent apocalyptic and messianic expectations that focused on the fate and future of Jerusalem (Mark 13). Jerusalem was the “50-yard-line of the apocalypse,” and everyone wanted a front-row seat. When Mark addressed the community, with the 70 CE disaster in mind, his word was “Let those who are in Judea, flee to the mountains.” The “sign” the community is waiting for was the “desolating sacrilege” of Daniel in which a foreign ruler would erect some sort of offensive image in the Temple, echoing the pattern of Antiochus IV in the second century BCE. The incident with Caligula in 41 CE provided a contemporary example of what might be possible.

It is the case, as Magness notes, that ossuaries sometimes included toponyms, especially for native places of origin outside Roman Palestine, but to insist that all those from places other than Judea must have such toponyms is unlikely. Also, toponyms known from literary sources (“Judas the Galilean,” “Jesus of Nazareth”), written decades after a person’s life, are not necessarily reflective of contemporary oral or epigraphic designations.

4. A few notes on prosopography and the Talpiot Tomb

Strictly speaking Rollston is correct that the inscriptions on the six ossuaries found in the Talpiot tomb are sufficiently common, generic, and lacking in patronymic data as to preclude any convincing prosopographic identification with the family of Jesus of Nazareth. I think to some degree it is a question of rigor. There is a good deal of latitude between prosopographic certainty and flights of irresponsible fantasy. Indeed, it is often the case with historical data that if we demanded absolute rigor we could say hardly anything. In the case of the Talpiot tomb I am convinced that there is more we can say but not necessarily prove. Let me suggest an alternative way of approaching the prosopographic data that has more to do with testing a hypothesis rather than drawing an absolute conclusion.

One has only to page through the 895 entry catalogue of Rahmani listing ossuaries in the State of Israel collection to realize that the east Talpiot tomb stands out in a rather striking manner. Only 227 ossuaries in the catalogue are inscribed (25%) and yet this tomb has six out of ten, including the only provenanced example ever found of an ossuary inscribed “Yeshua bar Yehosef.” The cluster of names, even with their limited patronymics, appear to have statistical relevance based on purely mathematical considerations regarding name frequency data for the period.

Let’s pose the hypothetical questionÑof the named individuals we know, either as part of the Jesus family or intimately connected thereto, who might we expect in a pre-70 CE family tomb? I would list Jesus himself, his mother Mary, his brother Joses, perhaps his brother James who was murdered in 62 CE, his sisters Mary and Salome, and possibly Mary Magdalene, who seems intimately involved with the mother and the sisters in the burial rites (Mark 15:40; 16:1). Of those unnamed we might have spouses and children of the brothers and sisters, if they had any, but we have no names. This seems to me to be our “tight” list of named intimates. We would not expect the brothers Simon or Judah in a pre-70 CE tomb since Simon took over leadership of the movement at the death of James in 62 CE, and Judas and his sons (or grandsons) are also known in later accounts after 70 CE. Since Simon succeeded James, rather than the brother Joses, who was next by birth, and we know nothing else of this “missing brother;” it might well be that he died before 70 CE.

The Talpiot tomb has inscribed ossuaries naming a Jesus son of Joseph, a Mary (Maria), another Mary (Mariamene/Mara), a Joseph (Jose), a Matthew (Matya), and a Jude (Yehuda) son of Jesus. Four of the six names correspond to names we might predict in a pre-70 CE intimate family tomb of Jesus. The name Yose, only found here on an ossuary, is quite rare as a nickname and corresponds well with the Greek nickname in Mark (6:3; 15:40, 47) by which Jesus’ second brother, Joses, is known. Of the two Marys, the only DNA test that was possible indicates that Mariamene is neither Jesus’ mother nor his sister. Since there are three Marys that are intimate in the life of Jesus, his mother, his sister, and Mary Magdalene, one might suggest a hypothetical identification of this Mariamene with Mary Magdalene. This is, of course, by no means certain, but it is based on eliminating her as mother of sister. She could, of course be any other Mary, even one we know nothing about, since Mary is a common name (25% of all females). However, if we stay here with our list of hypothesized pre-70 named intimates, she can be logically included for consideration. Maria, the other Mary, is an appropriate name in Aramaic for Jesus’ mother in early Christian texts, and she is sometimes distinguished from Mary Magdalene, who is given forms of the name Miriame/Miriamne. Matthew is a name we would not have predicted, though it is found multiple times in both genealogical records of the Jesus family (Matthew 1, Luke 3), so we really can say nothing about him. Judah son of Jesus is unexpected, as we have no clear literary evidence of Jesus of Nazareth having a son, though one might assume, in the case of this particular Talpiot Jesus, that one of the Marys named might be the mother, and we do know that Mariamene is not a sister of Jesus or his mother. I am not persuaded that the presence of a son of this Jesus precludes his identification with Jesus of Nazareth.

This tomb and its possible identification with Jesus and Nazareth and his family should not be dismissed. The evidence from the gospels I have surveyed, coupled with the cluster of significant names that fit our hypothetical expectations for a posited pre-70 Jesus family tomb, is strong and should be further tested. Of course, if the ossuary inscribed “James son of Joseph,” is added to the cluster, and the evidence for that possibility is unresolved at this point, the correspondence would be all the more striking. What is needed is further work on the epigraphy, expanded patina tests, further DNA testing if that is possible, and since the tomb in 1980 had to be excavated so quickly but now has been located, a fuller archaeological examination of the site itself.

The post Two Burials of Jesus of Nazareth and the Talpiot Yeshua Tomb appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Has the Tomb of Jesus Been Discovered?

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:15:24 +0000

Back to “Jesus Tomb” Controversy Erupts—Again

In the new documentary film, The Lost Tomb of Jesus (which appeared on the Discovery Channel on March 4th, 2007), director Simcha Jacobovici and producer James Cameron claim to have identified the tomb of Jesus and his family in the Jerusalem suburb of Talpiot. The tomb itself is not a new discovery; it was excavated in 1980 and published by Amos Kloner, an Israeli archaeologist. What is new is the sensational claim that this is the tomb of Jesus and his family. Although Jacobovici and Cameron are not scholars, their claim is supported by a handful of archaeologists and religious studies specialists. On the other hand, many archaeologists (including Kloner) and scholars of early Judaism and Christianity reject their claim. Having seen the film, I agree with Kloner and the others; the Talpiot tomb is not—indeed, cannot—be the tomb of Jesus and his family.

I would first point out that by making this announcement in the popular media, Jacobovici, Cameron, and the others involved have chosen to circumvent the usual academic process. Archaeology is a scientific discipline. New discoveries and interpretations typically are presented in scientific venues such as professional meetings or are published in peer-reviewed journals, where they can be considered and discussed by other specialists. By first making the announcement in the popular media, those involved have precluded legitimate and vital academic discourse. It is impossible to explain the many flaws of their claim in a one-minute segment on TV or the radio, or in two or three sentences in the newspaper, as I have been asked to do repeatedly since the announcement was made. The history and archaeology of Jerusalem in the first century are far too complex to be boiled down to a short sound bite, yet that is precisely what has happened here. This is a travesty to professional archaeologists and scholars of early Judaism and Christianity, and it is a disservice to the public.

Now let us consider the claim itself. We have no contemporary accounts of the death and burial of Jesus. Our closest sources (in time) are the canonical Gospels, specifically the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke), which are thought to have been composed about 30-50 years after Jesus’ death. Although the canonical Gospels may not be accurate in every detail, most scholars agree they contain some historical information. The claim that the Talpiot tomb is the tomb of Jesus and his family contradicts the canonical Gospel accounts and means that we must reject our earliest traditions about Jesus. Those who identify the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus support their claim by citing later, non-canonical traditions such as the Gospel of Philip.

The Gospel of Mark (15:42-46) describes the death and burial of Jesus: “When the evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council [in a similar account, the Gospel of Matthew describes Joseph as a wealthy man], who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus . . . he [Pilate] granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.”

How did the Jews of Jerusalem bury their dead in the time of Jesus? The Gospel accounts describe Jesus as having been laid to rest in a rock-cut tomb. Rock-cut tombs consisted of one or more burial chambers hewn into the bedrock slopes surrounding the city of Jerusalem. Burial chambers were lined by single rows of burial niches (called loculi), with each niche cut into the walls about the length of a person’s body. Each rock-cut tomb belonged to a family and was used by the members of a family over the course of several generations. When a member of the family died, his/her body was wrapped in a shroud and placed in a loculus. The opening to the loculus was sealed with a stone slab, and the entrance to the rock-cut tomb was also sealed with a stone. Eventually, over the course of generations, the loculi became filled with burials. When it became necessary to make space for new burials, the earlier remains (consisting of bones and burial gifts) were cleared out of the loculi and placed in small boxes (ossuaries). Sometimes the relatives scribbled the name(s) of the deceased on the outside of the ossuary when they placed the remains in the box.

The Gospel accounts provide an accurate description of Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus’ body in a loculus in his family’s rock-cut tomb. Because rock-cut tombs had to be cut by hand out of bedrock, only the upper classes (wealthy Jews like Joseph) could afford them. The poorer classes of Jewish society—the majority of the population—buried their dead in simple, individual trench graves dug into the ground, similar to the way we bury our dead today. This involved digging a rectangular trench in the ground, placing the deceased (wrapped in a shroud) at the bottom, and filling the trench back in with earth. Usually a crude headstone was set up at one end of the grave. Ossuaries are associated only with rock-cut tombs; bodies interred in trench graves were not dug back up for deposition in an ossuary.

Now let us reconsider the Gospel accounts. Jesus was crucified on Friday. This is consistent with what we know about Jesus’ background, as the Romans generally reserved crucifixion for the poorer classes, who they regarded as common criminals. Why did Joseph of Arimathea request Pilate’s permission to bury Jesus? Jewish law requires burial within 24 hours of death. However, burials are prohibited on the Sabbath (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday). According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus died on the eve of the Sabbath (late Friday afternoon), just before sundown. For Jesus to be buried in accordance with Jewish law, he had to be buried before the Sabbath started; otherwise, it would have been necessary to wait until Saturday night, thereby exceeding the 24-hour time limit.

Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy follower of Jesus, was concerned to ensure that Jesus was buried in accordance with Jewish law. Jesus came from a poor family that presumably could not afford a rock-cut tomb. Under ordinary circumstances he would have been buried in a trench grave. However, there was no time to dig a trench grave before the beginning of the Sabbath. Therefore, as the Gospels tell us, Joseph hastened to go to Pilate and requested permission to take Jesus’ body. He laid it in a loculus in his own rock-cut tomb, something that was exceptional (due to the circumstances), as rock-cut tombs were family tombs.

When the women entered the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea on Sunday morning, the loculus where Jesus’ body had been laid was empty. The theological explanation for this is that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. However, once Jesus had been buried in accordance with Jewish law, there was no prohibition against removing the body from the tomb after the end of the Sabbath and reburying it. It is therefore possible that followers or family members removed Jesus’ body from Joseph’s tomb after the Sabbath ended and buried it in a trench grave, as it would have been unusual (to say the least) to leave a non-relative in a family tomb. Whatever explanation one prefers, the fact that Jesus’ body did not remain in Joseph’s tomb means that his bones could not have been collected in an ossuary, at least not if we follow the Gospel accounts.

Although the Gospel accounts of the death and burial of Jesus might not be completely accurate from an historical point of view, they are consistent with our literary and archaeological information about how the Jews of Jerusalem buried their dead in the time of Jesus. The Gospels also show familiarity with Jewish law, conveying Joseph’s concern to bury Jesus before the Sabbath. They make it clear that Joseph was not trying to “honor” Jesus by burying him in a rock-cut tomb (a modern, anachronistic concept, since there was no shame associated with burial in trench graves, which was the accepted practice). Instead Joseph wanted to ensure that Jesus was buried within 24 hours, in accordance with Jewish law.
Jesus’ family, being poor, presumably could not afford a rock-cut tomb, as even the more “modest” ones were costly. And had Jesus’ family owned a rock-cut tomb, it would have been located in their hometown of Nazareth, not in Jerusalem. For example, when Simon, the last of the Maccabean brothers and one of the Hasmonean rulers, built a large tomb or mausoleum for his family, he constructed it in their hometown of Modiin. In fact, the Gospel accounts clearly indicate that Jesus’ family did not own a rock-cut tomb in Jerusalem—for if they had, there would have been no need for Joseph of Arimathea to take Jesus’ body and place it in his own family’s rock-cut tomb! If Jesus’ family did not own a rock-cut tomb, it means they also had no ossuaries.

A number of scholars, including Kloner, have pointed out that the names on the ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb are extremely common among the Jewish population of Jerusalem in the first century. But beyond this there is a bigger problem. Being a Jew in the time of Jesus was not, strictly speaking, a religion, as it is today. Instead, Jews in the time of Jesus were Judeans—that is, people from the district of Judea, the area around Jerusalem. Judeans worshiped the national god of Judea (the God of Israel) and lived according to his laws. Other ancient peoples had their own national deities. During the two centuries before Christ, the Hasmonean kings (a Jewish dynasty descended from the Maccabees) had established an independent Jewish kingdom in Judea (this kingdom was eventually taken over by the Romans). The Hasmonean kings conducted a campaign of expansion, conquering neighboring peoples whom they forcibly converted to Judaism. Under the Hasmoneans, Galilee (to the north of Judea) and Idumaea (to the south) were Judaized, which means their non-Jewish populations began to worship the God of Israel and live according to his laws.

L. Y. Rahmani, an Israeli archaeologist who compiled a catalogue of all of the ossuaries in the collections of the state of Israel, observed that “In Jerusalem’s tombs, the deceased’s place of origin was noted when someone from outside Jerusalem was interred in a local tomb.” On ossuaries in rock-cut tombs that belonged to Judean families, it was customary to indicate the ancestry or lineage of the deceased by naming the father, as, for example, Judah son of John (Yohanan); Honya son of Alexa; and Martha daughter of Hananya. But in rock-cut tombs owned by non-Judean families (or which contained the remains of relatives from outside Judea), it was customary to indicate the deceased’s place of origin, as, for example, Simon of Ptolemais; Papias the Bethshanite (of Beth Shean); and Gaios son of Artemon from Berenike. Our historical and literary sources (such as the Gospels, Flavius Josephus, etc.) often make the same distinctions between Judeans and non-Judeans (for example, Galileans, Idumaeans, Saul of Tarsus, Simon of Cyrene, and so on). If the Talpiot tomb is indeed the tomb of Jesus and his family, we would expect at least some of the ossuary inscriptions to reflect their Galilean origins, by reading, for example, Jesus [son of Joseph] of Nazareth (or Jesus the Nazarene), Mary of Magdala, and so on. However, the inscriptions provide no indication that this is the tomb of a Galilean family and instead point to a Judean family.

The identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus and his family is based on a string of problematic and unsubstantiated claims, including adding an otherwise unattested Matthew (Matya) to the family of Jesus; identifying an otherwise unknown son of Jesus named Judah; and identifying the Mariamne named on one of the ossuaries in the tomb as Mary Magdalene by interpreting the word Mara (which follows the name Mariamne) as the Aramaic term for “master” (arguing that Mariamne was a teacher and leader). To account for the fact that Mary/Mariamne’s name is written in Greek, the filmmakers transform the small Jewish town of Migdal/Magdala/Tarichaea on the Sea of Galilee (Mary’s hometown) into “an important trading center” where Greek was spoken. Instead, as in other Jewish towns of this period, generally only the upper classes knew Greek, whereas poorer Jews spoke Aramaic as their everyday language.

Taken individually, each of these points weakens the case for the identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus and his family. Collectively these points are devastating, since the statistical analyses presented in the film are based on certain assumptions made about these names.

The identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus and his family contradicts the canonical Gospel accounts of the death and burial of Jesus and the earliest Christian traditions about Jesus. The claim is also inconsistent with all of the available information—historical and archaeological—about how Jews in the time of Jesus buried their dead, and specifically the evidence we have about poor, non-Judean families such as that of Jesus. It is a sensationalistic claim without any scientific basis or support.

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 received a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Archaeology and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has participated in more than 20 excavations in Israel and Greece, and currently directs excavations in the Roman fort at Yotvata, Israel. Her publications include an award-winning book on The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eerdmans 2002) and an article entitled “Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James,” Journal of Biblical Literature 124 (2005).

The post Has the Tomb of Jesus Been Discovered? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

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