The Tomb of Yoshua of Jerusalem

Background Information....
- On March 4, 2007, the Discovery Channel aired a program The Lost Tomb of Jesus, made by Simcha Jocobivici and James Cameron.
- It's about a tomb in the Talpiyot district of Jerusalem:
  The tomb was found in 1980 during construction for new housing.
  Not much was done about the find until the children of Tova Bracha, playing in the construction debris in her basement, found an opening and wiggled down into the space beneath where they found 10 ossuaries with bones in them. Six had inscriptions on them.
- According to James Tabor (a liberal scholar), Simcha Jocobivici (film maker) and James Cameron (film maker), the makers of the film "The Lost Tomb of Jesus", the box inscriptions should be read as follows:
  1. Yeshua bar Yehosef - 'Jesus son of Joseph' (speaks for itself)
  2. Maria - the Latin for the normal 'Miriam' or Mary (mother or sister of Jesus?)
  3. Yose - alternate form of 'Joseph' (Matthew 13:54 lists 4 brothers of Jesus: James, Joses, Simon, Judas; and unnamed and unnumbered sisters)
  4. Yehuda bar Yeshua? 'Judah son of Jesus' (some claim this refers to Jesus of Nazareth's son)
  5. Mariamne e mara? 'Miriamne the master' (some say Mary of Magdala's real name was Miriamne; mara is the same term as Maranatha "Come, oh Lord [mara]" in 1 Corinthians 16:22 )
  6. Matya? 'Matthew' or 'Matthias' (possibly a husband of one of the women in an unmarked ossuary)
- The implications are:
  - Jesus of Nazareth's body was buried in this tomb
  - Jesus had a son named Yehuda (Judah)

Significance of their claim

The implication of the Talpiyot findings strikes at the root of Christianity:

If indeed this is Jesus of Nazareth's ossuary and bone fragments, then Jesus was not raised from the dead.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: 13-14:

"But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain."

There are people that say that "their faith will go on, even if what the film claims is true"
To this, I say: "what is your faith about ???"
Whatever your faith is, it is certainly not in Jesus was raised from the death.
And since you denied that Jesus was rasied from the death, your faith is - as Paul said it - vain
The film can persuade and may convince some naive believers, but anyone with an ounce of knowledge in apologetics can brush their claims aside.
Furthermore, they resorted to highly speculative interpretations to make their "conclusion" stick.
I have gather many objections and present them together in this webpage

Location, Location, Location
- Jesus home town is Nazareth, if He had a family tomb, it would be located in Nazareth and not near Jerusalem
Wrong title
- Jesus is never called Jesus, son of Joseph by His disciples
  They recognized that Jesus' Father was not Joseph
- Those that did call Jesus as "Jesus, son of Joseph" were people who DID NOT believe that Jesus was the Christ:
Wrong History
- If Jesus' body was buried and thus available, it would be a piece of cake to shut the disciples up who were preaching Jesus' resurrection.
- The Pharasees can easily produce the corpse and tell the people that the Disciples were preaching falsehood.
- It did not happen. Instead, we read:

Jesus was not married

In the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul was defending his ministry as Jesus' apostle.

One of the issue that he had to defend was his right to marry:

[1 Co 9:5-6] Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living?

If Jesus was married, Paul would have made a much stronger argument by including Jesus in the examples of married persons.
The fact that Paul did not include Jesus was: Jesus was not married !

Mary of Magdalene was never called Mariame

The claim that the ossuary named "Mariame e Mara" belonged to Mary of Magdalene is based on "Acts of Philip" - click here
(I have saved a local copy: clcik here )
The "Acts of Philip" manuscript dates from the fourteenth century but it is thought to be a copy of a fourth century original
Read: a FOURTH century ORIGINAL
So you are gonna use a FOURTH century ORIGINAL document to claim that a FIRST century woman known as "Mary of Magdalene" was in fact called "Mariame" - while EVERY FIRST century ORIGINAL document (the gospels were all written originally in the first century) called her "Mary" and never calls her "Mariame" ???
That's like finding a document written in the year 2000 that called "George Washington" by the name "Gregory" and prove that Washington was in fact called "Gregory Washington"...
Wow, great scholarship, people...
Oh, BTW, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to anyone who believe this... Really !

BTW, a number of sources have alleged that Fran?ois Bovon of Harvard Divinity School claims that that Mariamne could be identical to Mary Magdalene.

However, Bovon himself denies this, writing in a letter to the Society of Biblical Literature:

As I was interviewed for the Discovery Channel's program The Lost Tomb of Jesus, I would like to express my opinion here.

First, I have now seen the program and am not convinced of its main thesis. When I was questioned by Simcha Jacobovici and his team the questions were directed toward the Acts of Philip and the role of Mariamne in this text. I was not informed of the whole program and the orientation of the script.

Second, having watched the film, in listening to it, I hear two voices, a kind of double discourse. On one hand there is the wish to open a scholarly discussion; on the other there is the wish to push a personal agenda. I must say that the reconstructions of Jesus' marriage with Mary Magdalene and the birth of a child belong for me to science fiction.

Third, to be more credible, the program should deal with the very ancient tradition of the Holy Sepulcher, since the emperor Constantine in the fourth century C.E. built this monument on the spot at which the emperor Hadrian in the second century C.E. erected the forum of Aelia Capitolina and built on it a temple to Aphrodite at the place where Jesus' tomb was venerated.

Fourth, I do not believe that Mariamne is the real name of Mary of Magdalene. Mariamne is, besides Maria or Mariam, a possible Greek equivalent, attested by Josephus, Origen, and the Acts of Philip, for the Semitic Myriam.

Fifth, the Mariamne of the Acts of Philip is part of the apostolic team with Philip and Bartholomew; she teaches and baptizes. In the beginning, her faith is stronger than Philip's faith. This portrayal of Mariamne fits very well with the portrayal of Mary of Magdala in the Manichean Psalms, the Gospel of Mary, and Pistis Sophia. My interest is not historical, but on the level of literary traditions. I have suggested this identification in 1984 already in an article of New Testament Studies.

Fran?ois Bovon, Harvard Divinity School

Problem with how the letters are inscribed in the "Mariame e Mara" ossuary
- The following is taken from an article by Dr. Stephen J. Pfann.
  - Main Article: click here
  - Supplementary Notes: click here
  I have saved a local copy:
  - Main Article: click here
  - Supplementary Notes: click here
- Stephen J. Pfann (and others) examined the "Mariame NOU Mara" inscription and drew a complete different conclusion and after seeing the photos of the inscription, I have to say that the film makers are either blind or they have an agenda.
- Here is a photo of the "Mariame e Mara" inscription:
- Here is the outline of the "Mariame e Mara" inscription:
- These letters are BOTH the letter M:
- Notice the difference in style:
- Stephen J. Pfann concludes that these two letters were written by TWO difference people !
  This is not uncommon and ossuaries can be used to store the bones of multiple individuals.
- Pfann has included in his supplementary notes on what the inscription "Mariame e Mara" would look like if the same person had made the inscription:
  And:
They forced the reading of "Mariame e Mara"
- That's just the tip of the deception.
  The next forced interpretation is very unethical especially when it was not revealed in the film that many experts disagreed with their interpretation
- According to the film, the inscription:
  should be read as:
- According to the film, the inscription:
  is to be read as "NOU"
  Look carefully at the first letter, does that look like an N ???
  If you think so, then you must have "mirror-vision". Take away that mirror and look again.
  The diagonal line in letter N starts at the TOP and ends at the BOTTOM
  The first letter in the inscription starts at the BOTTOM and ends at the TOP
- Pfann included pictures of the the following inscriptions in his article:
  The word in question is KOI (AND), it is NOT NOU !!!
- I'm sorry to say this, but I think a 4-yr old can tell you that the highlighted word in these 2 examples is the same one inscribed in the "Mariame e Mara" ossuary.
  So these people who made the film are either blind or they have an agenda in the mind and is pushing it really hard...
- According to Pfann, the inscription:
  should be read as:
- And as evidence that it is not unusual to have more than one names inscribed on an ossuary, Pfann refers to actual examples of multiple names inscribed.
  He gave these pictures as examples:
  And:
Concluding Remark....
- The Tomb of Jesus of Nazareth is still "lost"...


M in Mariame	M in Mara


Straight lines !!!	Curved lines !!!