CADRE Comments

The Jerusalem Post put up a story last week, April 11th, concerning various pro-J-Tomb advocates racheting back a bit on their claims, under pressure from critics on every side of the aisle. This is somewhat different than cases where a scholar was interviewed for the film and then later revealed that they were taken out of context. This is more like statistician Professor Andrey Feuerverger trying to come up with a more realistic way of keeping that 600:1 odds number (and commissioning alterations to a J-Tomb page on the Discovery Channel website); or DNA scientist Dr. Carney Matheson revising his original statement that "these two individuals [i.e. Jesus bar Joseph and Mary / Mara], if they were unrelated, would most likely be husband and wife." In addition, Professor Francois Bovon--quoted in the film as saying the enigmatic ossuary inscription "Mariamne" is the same woman known as Mary Magdalene--has now issued a disclaimer. I'm not _entirely_ sure this coun...

What sold author Simcha Jacobovichi of the Jesus Tomb on the idea that the tomb and ossuaries discovered at Talpiot 26 years ago were the tomb and ossuary of Jesus and Mary Magdalene were the odds behind that combination of names appearing in a single tomb. The Jesus Tomb website calls it the "Jesus Equation". In a short video, he makes reference to an analogy of engaging in an archaeological dig in Great Britain 2,000 years from now and finding the tombs of three people together identified on their tombstones only as John, Paul and George. Now, John, Paul and George, of course, are very common names in Great Britain, but taken together they have a strong significance -- they are three of the Fab Four. Of course, if you were the archaeologist who did Mr. Jacobovichi's analogous dig 2,000 years from now, would you conclude based on the names of Paul, George and John alone that the three graves were the graves of the actual Beatles? I expect that you'd recognize that ...

One of the claims made on the website about the bone boxes found at Talpiot in 1980 is that one of the ossuaries is inscribed with the name of "“Mariamene e Mara”. From this, it is concluded that this particular ossuary was the ossuary of Mary Magdalene. Why? According to the Jesus Family Tomb website : From the Acts of Philip, a fourth century work ostensibly written about Mary Magdalene’s brother, Phillip, and recently recovered from a monastery at Mt. Athos in Greece, Professor François Bovon (Harvard University) has determined that Magdalene’s name was "Mariamne." So, the reason that this is supposed to be Mary Magdalene's ossuary is because of the use of the name "Mariamene" which is close to the name of "Mariamne" from the Acts of Philip. Is this a particularly strong claim? First, I should point out that the claim on the website is overstated. Dr. Bovon hasn't "determined" that the woman named "Mariamne" is Mary Magd...