Document Type

Contribution to Book

Publication Date

12-19-2013

Publication Title

The Tomb of Jesus and His Family?: Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls

ISBN

978-0-8028-6745-2

Abstract

Excerpt: The Talpiot tomb, a tomb excavated outside Jerusalem in 1980 and brought to worldwide public attention in 2007, contained ten ossuaries, six of which were inscribed with names. The English equivalents of the names are Jesus son of Joseph, two Marys, a rare diminutive form of Joseph, a diminutive of Matthew, and a Judah son of Jesus. Because of the similarities between this collection of names and certain names appearing in the Christian New Testament, some are curious as to whether the Talpiot tomb may have once interred the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and some of his relatives. A number of statisticians have weighed in on the issue, and come to drastically different conclusions, admittedly based on different assumptions.1 The diversity of conclusions is at least in part due to the difficulty of modeling the problem for the purpose of statistical analysis.

Here we will consider a question of identity among certain persons in the New Testament that lends itself to a much more straightforward probabilistic analysis.

Comments

This is a preprint of the final published chapter available at The Tomb of Jesus and His Family?: Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls.

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