Israeli Court Rules Tomb that Shows Jesus' Marriage Is Not a Fake

ISRAELI COURT RULES 'JESUS TOMB' THAT SHOWS JESUS WAS MARRIED AND HAD CHILDREN IS NOT A FAKE

An Israeli court has ruled that the so-called “Jesus Tomb” is not a fake but theologians should decide if it is genuine. The Christian Post reports that the tomb was discovered in the 1980s. It was made famous in the 2007 documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” The film claimed the tomb included inscriptions of Jesus’ names and his family, evidence that Jesus had a wife and children. 

The court has now awarded filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici over $216,000 for a critic’s claims that the tomb is a fake. Still, many experts deny that the tomb holds the remains of Jesus. 

Bible archaeology professor Scott Stripling said, "I have been to the Talpiot Tomb and interviewed one of the archaeologists who excavated it in 1980. There is no evidence that Jesus or his family members were buried there, certainly not his supposed wife and son. Those behind this latest announcement traffic in sensationalism, not archaeology.”

http://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/israeli-court-rules-jesus-tomb-that-shows-jesus-was-married-and-had-children-is-not-a-fake.html

[TBC: Even CNN has recognized that the supposed scholarship which identified this tomb is very tenuous and doesn’t withstand close scrutiny.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/09/living/jesus-tomb-talpiot-evidence/

The identification of the Talpiot Tomb as the burial site for Jesus' family was made primarily on the basis of the names found on the ossuaries in the tomb: most notably, of course, those of Jesus and Mary.

We can start there. The box that supposedly says "Jesus, son of Joseph" definitely says "son of Joseph," but that first, crucial name is very much in doubt. One scholar suggested that it says Hanun, just to give a sense of how uncertain the reading is.

And the box that supposedly belongs to Mary actually says "Mariam and Mara," which suggests that there were actually two women buried in that single ossuary. It is also a problem that while all the other ossuaries are inscribed in Aramaic, this one is in Greek.

As for the names on the other ossuaries, some of them fit perfectly well into the Jesus story (Joseph, for example, Jesus' younger brother). Others, however, not so much: Matia (Matthew), not a member of Jesus' family according to the Bible, and, more problematically, Yehuda bar Yeshua - Judas, son of Jesus.

Supporters of the theory regularly point to the remarkably collocation of so many biblical names in a single tomb. But as most every other scholar has pointed out, these were just about the most common names in that period, especially Joseph and Mary.]