The Beatles and the Jesus Tomb

John, Paul, George and Richard. Four common names. Find them in a mausoleum in Liverpool and you might think nothing of it. But what if you found the names, John, Paul, George, and RINGO? Now you'd think that the Beatles really did die on the Sgt. Pepper album, and maybe you had discovered their secret resting place.

I like Simcha. I have seen a few episodes of his "Naked Archaeologist" show on the History Channel. But definitely his latest docu-drama for the Discovery Channel is the slickest (thanks to the backing of the producer who made The Terminator, Rambo, Aliens, and more recently Titanic).[1]

BTW, did you see the guy with Simcha on the Ted Koppel critique broadcast after the documentary? He is a University of North Carolina professor, featured often in Simcha's docu-drama, named James Tabor. Guess what he wrote in a book that was published just last year? Oh, come on, guess. Nope, it's a lot crazier than that.

Less than a year ago James Tabor was saying that the father of Jesus was Pantera (a Roman soldier), and Jesus was buried in Galilee (not Talpiot). Slop. Sloppy slop, even if you are a professor. What would make you change your mind like that in less than a year, especially when you have your own book out there, the fruit of "30 years of research"? Can anyone say m-o-n-e-y?

· The tomb was uncovered in 1980.

· Nothing remarkable was seen by the professionals (archaeologists) in the names Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Yose, Maria, Mariamenou/Mara, and Matia being together in one cemetery. Maybe this is because they have found at least six bone boxes scattered around Israel with the name Jesus scribbled on them.[2] The first one came "out of the cave" in the 1940s and caused people to go ape back then, too.

· Joseph was the second most popular name in first century Palestine (after Simon/Simeon), over 8% of the boys born being named that. They were named Judah over 6% of the time, and Jesus 3.4%. More than one in five baby girls were named Mary (Top two names for 2005? Jacob and Emily. Really. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ ).

· The same claims (about this being Jesus' family tomb) were made on Easter Sunday TEN YEARS AGO (1996 "to be precise," as the English would say) by British journalist Joan Bakewell in a documentary. That claim was then published in the National Enquirer, the Star magazine, etc. (Yes, this is the same Joan Bakewell that read on the BBC a gay erotic poem about a Roman centurion lusting after Jesus. Slop.)

Why hasn't there been more media hype from mainstream outlets and more pent-up demand that the tomb be reopened, the bones rediscovered, and everything re-examined? Because the major media already know what I just told you. They understand the way the game is being laid out by Simcha and James Cameron.

· There may have been as many as 35 people buried over the generations in the ten ossuaries in this one family tomb.

· The six people named could have belonged to as many as four separate generations. This fact and the prominence of the family (commoners could not afford rock-hewn tombs, but were instead interred in trench graves) would account for the decorative carved symbol above the cave. It was not a "pilgrimage site" for early Christians (they were all being hunted-down in the generation after Jesus—remember what pre-converted Saul was doing?). It was simply a mausoleum in a cemetery.

· Jesus' followers never called him "son of Joseph."

· If he did have a son named Judah by Mary Magdalene (1) the Romans and Jews would have hunted him down in the ensuing persecutions after Jesus' death (and the tomb would never be so clearly marked as it is on the outside as his burial place), and (2) the Gnostics would surely have mentioned this fact in their writings (after all, they were the alleged keepers of the real "secret code," for which you needed a real, secret decoder ring and a secret handshake).

· Call Michael Jackson, because here's the Thriller. This could not have been the burial place of Jesus Christ. How do we know? Because the stones tell us so. There are about 1000 ossuraries extant. Study the 200 or so that have inscriptions. What you find is that if someone is local to the area (say a Jerusalemite buried in their hometown) then it will say something like "Jesus son of Joseph." But if the person was not born in the city in which he is buried then it says "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus of Nazareth son of Joseph." So the bone box in question actually proves it entombed one of the 20 or so Jesuses (Jesusii?) who had Joseph fathers, that lived in Jerusalem at the time (see note 2 below, which is from an archaeological journal, not a religious magazine).

While the James ossuary (bone box) had a fairly close (though not identical) match in the patina to the other nine found in the tomb, we did not get to see how any of the others of the nine matched up to each other.

The tenth bone box was not the "James son of Joseph" one (Oded Golan got it from Silwan, much closer to the temple mount, and it had dirt in it from that location). The actual tenth box was so plain vanilla that it was simply placed out in the courtyard of the Rockefeller Museum for storage, with the hundreds of others that were unremarkable. (I think somebody now uses it as a planter.)

MARIAMNE/RINGO
To Simcha Jacobovici, "Mariamne" is the Ringo he's been looking for.

Sorry, Simcharlie. Close, but no Bingo.

First, Mary Magdalene is always called "Maria" in the Greek New Testament (and indeed in all 1st century Christian works), never Mariamne.

Second, Mariamne is not even found as a name until Hippolytus uses it in the early 3rd century in his Refutatio (refutation) of Naassene heresy, and even there it is no clear reference to Mary Magdalene (as a matter of fact, it is not clear at all, because it appears as a variant reading in some manuscripts only as a deformation of the name "Mariamme"). It refers to a Mary who had contact with James, that is all.

Watch how Simcha has to over-reach (dramatizations and all). One scholar, Francois Bovon, read in a 14th century Greek copy of a 4th century book called The Acts of Philip (which they then go on to say comes from a 2nd century tradition—you can see how the game works by how they lay out the board) about Mariamne. Now, in Gnostic writings like this any "Mary" is often a composite of three women from the actual historical gospels: Jesus' mother Mary, Mary of Bethany (Martha's sister, sitting in the dust at her rabbi's feet) and Mary Magdalene. Gnostic Mary.

But I have read the Acts of Philip. And in this writing "Mariamne" is associated with Martha and clearly identified as Philip's sister (and, she does not stay in Jerusalem at all, but acts as a missionary to foreign countries—and no mention of a son named Judah). Historically, Philip and Mary Magdalene were from different towns, so it is NOT Mary Magdalene who is being called "Mariamne" in the Acts of Philip. Bovon is simply wrong. Or "unsupported" as the genteel scholars say when talking to one another. (Always check your scholars before you buy-into them. Stop the slop.)

But let's look at the facts of the case (bone case, if you will). It says "Mariamenou," in the Greek genitive case, meaning "of Mary" or "belonging to Mary." It is then followed by a slash and the word "Mara." Simcha says this is related to the word "master." But I knew I was writing this blog, and all my reader are sophisticated, cultivated, educated people. So I couldn't be no lazy blog-writer; I would have to do my homework. So I did an etymological investigation, and do you know what I discovered? Mara is the diminutive form (short for) Martha. "Mary's / Martha." That's what it says. Don't get it twisted.

For Simcha, finding "Master Mariamne" was the master stroke, the "aha moment" that convinced him this was the family tomb of Jesus and his son Judah by Mary Magdalene. A better alternative to this slop? What Have They Done with Jesus: Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History, by Ben Witherington III (Zondervan, 2006).

CONCLUSION. So what do we have here? Four Aramaic, one Hebrew, and one Greek name. Why? Because it is an ancient tomb that housed up to three dozen people from as many as four generations. Don't smash them all together and announce that the Beatles have reunited.

Is this "The Lost Tomb of Jesus"? No, this is the tomb of a "lost Jesus," lost in antiquity until discovered in 1980. It is the tomb of the week. John, Paul, Martin and Wally. Maybe "Martin" is "George Martin, producer of all their records. And perhaps Wally was the long lost son that we didn't know Paul ever had. Honey, get my videocam! "I am the Walrus. Koo-ko-ka-choo."

Footnotes
1. Now, I do have to admit that for as slick as it is, Simcha is also sloppy. He says, "Everybody knows there are two Marys in Jesus' life: his mother and Mary Magdalene." No, there are several: a) His mother b) Magdalene c) Mary of Bethany, Martha's sis d) Mary of James and Joses e) Mary of Cleopas. (Did I say it was sloppy? Maybe it is just slop. Sensational slop.)
2. There were probably at least 20 people named Jesus (and hence could have been 20 family tombs) in and around Jerusalem who had both, Joseph for a father and James as a brother, at the same time that Jesus Christ lived, “Burial Box of James the Brother of Jesus,” Biblical Archaeology Review 28:6 (Nov/Dec 2002): 33.