Disappearing “Evidence”

The infamous tomb from Talpoit, Jerusalem claimed to hold ossuaries containing the remains of the family of Jesus Christ.

The forensic and statistical evidence for this claim included two ossuraries that they considered vital to the theory: one which they claimed to belong to the brother of Jesus, and one they claimed to belong to a woman they claimed to be his wife and mother of a child belonging to Jesus. In the absence of these two items, their theory vanishes.

Mariamene e Mara Ossuary: 1) This Greek inscription has been interpreted as meaning “Mary the teacher” or “Mary the master.” A new clarification of the reading is now said to be inscribed by two different hands: the first “Mariame,” was inscribed in a formal Greek script, the second part which is seperated by a slash was scribed using a different cursive script “and Mara”. meaning “and Martha” not “The Master” as previous reported. This ossuary housed the bones of two different women. 2) Mary Magdalene was never referred to as Mariamne, only as Maria. The presumption that the Mariamene of the gnostic book, “The Acts of Philip” is the Mariamne (without the e) is totally inconclusive in the assumption that that Mary could have been Mary Magdalene and all evidence suggests otherwise.

“In view of the above, there is no longer any reason to be tempted to link this ossuary … to Mary Magdalene or any other person in biblical, non-biblical or church tradition,”

– Stephen Pfann, University of The Holy Land

Stephen Phann shows how Mary Magdalene is Now Missing

James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus Ossuary: 1) The theory stated that this ossuary was the 10th ossuary that was missing from the “Jesus family tomb” because the patina “matched” and the size was about right. The 10th ossuary was never “missing”, in fact, it was catalogued and is a blank ossuary. There is nothing to prove that this ossuary was ever in the said tomb. 2) This particular ossuary is believed to be a forgery with the “brother of Jesus” being an added inscription. Oded Golan, the ossuary’s owner, who is on trial for forging objects, has produced a photograph of the ossuary with a time stamp 1976, four years before the Talpiot tomb was accidentally discovered.

Read more about the missing 10th ossuary on Joe Zias’s Viewer’s Guide to Understanding the Talpoit Tomb

The theory is and always was nonsense. Exploring a first century Jerusalem family’s tomb is certainly interesting, but it never belonged to Jesus Christ of Nazareth. They have been speculating about a different Jesus, not Yeshua Hamashiach, Jesus the Messiah, only begotten son of the living God.

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Asking the Experts

~ by Carla Gade on March 13, 2007.