Author: Simcha Jacobovici ' Charles Pellegrino
Publisher: HarperElement
Price: £17.99
Isbn: 000724567X

I have no problem at all with the idea of the tomb of Jesus, but if the 10 ossuaries found in a tomb at Talpiot near Jerusalem really are the final resting place of the bones of Jesus and his family, it’s despite the arguments in this book-of-the-documentary, not because of them – even though TV producer James Cameron asserts in his Foreword that the book “proves” this “beyond any reasonable doubt” and that its conclusions are “virtually irrefutable”. He must be easily satisfied.

	Having ‘discovered’ the ossuaries, Jacobovici seems to treat them as his personal fiefdom

The facts are these: on an Israeli construction site in 1980, a bulldozer broke open an ancient tomb. It’s a very common occurrence. Archæologists were called; they drew the tomb, removed the ossuaries, recorded them (including the names scratched on some of them), and stashed them along with hundreds of others in a warehouse; then the tomb was sealed and the construction continued. Twenty-three years later, documentary maker Simcha Jacobovici hears of an ossuary marked “Jesus, son of Joseph”, and the saga begins.

Right from the beginning, despite the professional archæologists dismissing any significance in the finds, Jacobovici is convinced that he has found the Jesus family tomb. He starts recruiting other people, insisting they sign non-disclosure agreements before he tells them anything – despite the fact that all the inscriptions are a matter of public record. In fact, his attitude is cavalier and proprietorial throughout; having “discovered” the ossuaries he seems to treat them as his personal fiefdom. Nothing is allowed to get in the way of the Discovery Channel documentary he’s working up to.

And so, with his group of “experts” but without the permission of the Israel Antiquities Authority, he breaks into the Talpiot tomb. When the tomb was cleared of ossuaries in 1980, as a sacred burial place it was then used as a genizah to bury old and worn copies of the Jewish scriptures with reverence. Jacobovici tramples all over them, causing scraps of scripture to swirl in the air. He scrapes bits of patina off the walls. He argues with locals who ask what the hell he’s doing; when he sees they’re about to cut off the power to his cameras he threatens them physically. The lack of respect that he shows to the burial place, to the residents living around it, and to the legal authorities is mind-boggling.

He also shows no respect to the professional archæologists who are actually experts on Jewish tombs, several times saying (with no evidence for this) that they have “zero training in statistics”. His own attitude to statistics is somewhat naïve, completely ignoring reality. Mary (in various forms) was by far the most common name in first century Judea, so the presence of two Maries amongst the 10 ossuaries means nothing. Jesus is also quite a common name; not only have six ossuaries been found with this name, but two of them are inscribed “Jesus, son of Joseph” (the other one was found in 1931).

The authors make a huge fuss about the two Maries. One is actually Maria, the Latin form, though written in Hebrew letters. They go on and on about how significant this is, because Jesus’s mother “is referred to in one way and one way only” in Church tradition; she is “always” Maria. (Really?) Then they completely destroy their already fallacious argument by mentioning that “only a handful” of ossuaries are inscribed with “the Latin version of ‘Miriam’ written in Hebrew letters” – i.e. it’s by no means unique to Jesus’s mother. The other Mary ossuary is inscribed as Mariamne, a Greek form of the name. The authors quote a scholar, Prof. François Bovon, that the sister of Philip called Mariamne in the apocryphal Acts of Philip is Mary Magdalene. (Since the screening of the documentary, Prof Bovon has completely distanced himself from any of its findings.) Therefore, say Jacobovici and Pellegrino, this must be the ossuary of Mary Magdalene. And she must be married to Jesus because they extracted and analysed some mitochondrial DNA from the dust in the bottom of the Jesus and Mariamne ossuaries, and they’re not related.

Huh?

In one of the clumsiest leaps of logic in the book (and there’s stiff competition for that honour!) they say: “The only reason two unrelated individuals, male and female, would appear together in a family tomb in first-century Jerusalem is if they were husband and wife” – and therefore Mariamne is Mary Magdalene is Jesus’s wife.

There were 10 ossuaries in the tomb, six with inscriptions. Two have female names on them. So Mariamne, whoever she was, could have been married to any of the other men whose bones were interred there. Or she could have been someone’s mother-in-law or daughter-in-law or sister-in-law or step-mother, or even a friend or servant who became part of the family.

The next bit of “logic” is even worse. As Jesus was crucified as “the King of the Jews”, the authors claim that his wife and children would also be hunted down and killed by the Romans. So his wife must be referred to as his “companion” or “beloved” friend, and his son… well, his son would have been brought up as Jesus’s kid brother, wouldn’t he? One of the ossuaries is inscribed “Judah, son of Jesus”. This must be Didymos Judas Thomas, they say, and as Didymos and Thomas both mean “twin”, “can it be that the son became the ‘twin’ – perhaps an ancient code for ‘junior’ – in order to protect him from the Roman authorities?”

Gibber.

The awful thing is, by this stage in the book such “reasoning” almost seems reasonable. Just one more example, of many throughout the book. Jacobovici speculates that a group of Jewish Christians survived, keeping the secret of the truth about Jesus’s tomb for a millennium. When the Crusaders take Jerusalem in 1099, slaying practically everyone they find there, James Cameron suggests: “the Judeo-Christians… are about to be put to the sword by the Templars. At that moment they reveal who they are and lead the Templars to the tomb… and convert the Templars to their heresy.” In their inventiveness they somehow miss the awkward detail that the Templars weren’t founded until 1119, 20 years later.

As forteans, we’re all very used to bad speculative “history” books. This ranks among the worst of them. It’s tosh from beginning to end. The lack of an index simply affirms the lack of anything scholarly about it.