I compute a very low probability for the Talpiot tomb being Jesus'
Dianelos
district of Jerusalem being the family tomb of the Jesus of Nazareth
is at least 12 to 1 *against*. Apparently the makers of the movie
calculated the probability that more than one family living in ancient
Jerusalem would produce a cluster of names like the ones discovered in
the tomb in the Talpiot district of Jerusalem, and found that this
probability is very small and that therefore this must be the tomb of
Jesus of Nazareth's family. But I think they asked the wrong question.
The right question is: How many families living in ancient Jerusalem
would produce a cluster of names in a tomb that would appear to be as
similar to the names in Jesus' family as the cluster of names actually
found? And the answer is that more than 12 families would have
produced such remarkable cluster of names in a tomb.
Here is how I computed this number. According to the gospels Jesus'
family consisted of Joseph and Mary, Jesus, and four male brothers of
Jesus named James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (besides unnamed female
siblings). We also know the approximate frequency of names in ancient
Palestine. According to http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/02/jesus-tomb-titanic-talpiot-tomb-theory.html
these are: 9.2%, 8.3%, 6.2% and 3.8% for Simon, Joseph, Judas and
Jesus respectively for male names, and Mary's name frequency is a
whooping 21.3% for female names. The tomb discovered in Talpiot
contained 10 ossuaries, of which 6 carried inscriptions. The relevant
inscriptions here are "Jesus son of Joseph", "Mary", "Mary", and
"Joseph". These inscriptions were in different languages and used
different forms for these names, but that's about it. (see:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070228135009.htm) I read
somewhere that first century Jerusalem had about 50,000 inhabitants.
As the period in question spanned various generations I used a
population of 10,000 families.
I wrote a computer program simulation that actually randomly produced
10,000 families of 10 members each (keeping the right name
frequencies) and then proceeded to compute the following average
numbers:
111 families would have a Jesus son of Joseph. I understand that in
fact other ossuaries have been found with the inscription "Jesus son
of Joseph".
75 families would moreover have at least one Mary.
71 families would moreover have one more name that belongs to Jesus'
family, be it Joseph, Simon or Judas, or maybe a second Mary
(supposedly Mary Magdalene).
43 families would have two more such names. One of such clusters might
be: [Jesus son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Joseph], as is the one
discovered in the Talpiot tomb.
And 16 families would have three more such names. Here is in detail
the very first family case my simulation produced: An unnamed (i.e.
with no relevant names) couple have three children: a daughter Mary, a
son Joseph, and an unnamed second daughter. Their daughter Mary
marries Simon and produces an unnamed daughter. Their son Joseph
marries an unnamed wife and produces two children, Jesus and Mary.
Voila: A family cluster of 10 whose tomb might have had inscriptions
"Jesus son of Joseph", "Mary", "Joseph", "Mary", and "Simon" - all
names related to the circle of Jesus of Nazareth, but this is not
Jesus Christ's family. Nevertheless this cluster would appear to be
even more statistically conspicuous than the one discovered in the
Talpiot tomb.
The film producers have tested the DNA of one of the Mary's and
discovered it is not maternally related to Jesus' DNA. I compute that
adding this condition we still get 12 families. Here is the very first
such case my simulation produced: A Jesus (whose father was named
Joseph) marries a Mary and has 4 children: Simon, Jesus, and two more
unnamed ones. Their son Simon marries a second Mary but have no
children that would be buried in the family tomb. One unnamed daughter
marries Joseph and has a daughter Mary. That's the second Mary who is
also not maternally related to "Jesus son of Joseph". - So, any of
these 12 families might have produced tomb even more conspicuous than
the one found, but at most one of these families could be Jesus'.
Hence the chance of the Talpiot tomb being Jesus is less than 1/12.
Further: Taking into account that Jesus' family was not from
Jerusalem, that his family was too poor to afford a family tomb, that
if Jesus' bones were put in an ossuary one would expect the ossuary
itself or the inscription on it to be more special in some way, and
that if Jesus' body was buried in a tomb to decompose and then put in
an ossuary then probably somebody would have found out back then when
so much was made of Jesus' bodily ascension to heaven - taking all
that into account the probability of the Talpiot tomb being of Jesus
is much less than 12 to 1 against. Finally, if the movie producers
really believed that this was Jesus' tomb one would expect that they
would have asked neutral professional archeologists to evaluate their
evidence or argumentation - which they haven't done.
There is some more arguments, such as the "James son of Joseph brother
of Jesus" ossuary (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ossuary)
having come from this same tomb, but the archaeologist who first
studied the tomb flatly denies it (see:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1171894527185&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
and the archeological report on the Talpiot tomb counts six ossuaries
with inscriptions, all accounted for (go to
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/explore/explore.html and
click on "Enter the Tomb", then on "Download Documents" and then on
"Download PDF").
I did the above computations in a hurry and it's possible that I have
committed some mistake. If you send me an email to
dian...@tecapro.com I will gladly send you a copy of the program I
wrote, so that you can check it yourself. It's written in Pascal, and
it's a simple 150 lines program that any programmer can read.
Doug Weller
>
>I did the above computations in a hurry and it's possible that I have
>committed some mistake. If you send me an email to
>dian...@tecapro.com I will gladly send you a copy of the program I
>wrote, so that you can check it yourself. It's written in Pascal, and
>it's a simple 150 lines program that any programmer can rea
Thanks, I've reposted this to a couple of places that you might get
feedback from.
Doug
--
Doug Weller --
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Amun - co-owner/co-moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/
Doug Weller
http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?1,440790,441262#msg-441262
" Well there are MAJOR MATHEMATICAL FLAWS in this calculation.
1. I calculate only 1 in 78 families out of 10 had a "Jesus son of
Joseph", not 1 in 111, which reduces the probability down to 1 in 8.4
following the rest of his logic.
In addition:
2. He does not factor in the ratio of "Mary Magdelaines".
3. He does not factor in the issue that the most common male name "Simon"
does NOT appear, which is also relevant, and has to be factored in
statistically. This is archaeologically necessary because Simon's bones
are thought to be in a known location in Rome. There is also Paul,
although there is uncertaintly over the location of Paul's remains. "
I say odd because Professor Feuerverger's figure is "Jesus, Son of Joseph:
1 in 190" which now gives us 3 figures, or is the crucial bit 'families'?
Dianelos
wrote:
> Some slightly odd feedback already:http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?1,440790,441262#msg-441262
> " Well there are MAJOR MATHEMATICAL FLAWS in this calculation.
>
> 1. I calculate only 1 in 78 families out of 10 had a "Jesus son of
> Joseph", not 1 in 111, which reduces the probability down to 1 in 8.4
> following the rest of his logic.
>
> In addition:
>
> 2. He does not factor in the ratio of "Mary Magdelaines".
>
> 3. He does not factor in the issue that the most common male name "Simon"
> does NOT appear, which is also relevant, and has to be factored in
> statistically. This is archaeologically necessary because Simon's bones
> are thought to be in a known location in Rome. There is also Paul,
> although there is uncertaintly over the location of Paul's remains. "
>
> I say odd because Professor Feuerverger's figure is "Jesus, Son of Joseph:
> 1 in 190" which now gives us 3 figures, or is the crucial bit 'families'?
I respond to the various points:
1. I claim 111 in 10,000 families would include a "Jesus son of
Joseph", that's 1in 90 families. If your friend thinks it's even more
probable than that, namely 1 in 78 families, then this only
strengthens my argument that this is not Jesus' tomb. Professor's
Feurverger's figure of 1 in 190 appears to be way off the mark.
2. The issue of Mary Magdalene appears to be smoke and mirrors. There
were many different forms of "Mary" back then (just as William, Bill,
Billy, Will and Wilhelm are forms of the same name). One of these
forms apparently was Mariamme or Mariamne or Mariamene. The actual
inscription on the ossuary reads MARIAMENOUMARA. This is Greek,
presumably two words, and "Mariamenou" is clearly genitive. The
original archeologist's document translates this as "Mariamene known
as Mara" or as "Mara of Mariamene". Incidentally, there are few
ancient documents that call Mary Magdalene "Mariamene" and they were
written centuries after the canonical gospels. You can find a detailed
discussion of these issues in http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/search?q=smoking+gun
The upshot is this: Either this ossuary belonged to somebody called
Mary in some of its forms, or not. If it belonged to a Mary then my
analysis stands (and just conceivably this might by the ossuary of
Mary Magdalene). If it didn't then the case for this being Jesus' tomb
becomes even weaker.
3. Your friend apparently thinks that the name "Simon" refers to Simon
the apostle. In fact it refers to Simon the brother or half-brother of
Jesus (see Matthew 13:54), somebody one might expect to find in the
family tomb of Jesus.
just...@gmail.com
>
> The upshot is this: Either this ossuary belonged to somebody called
> Mary in some of its forms, or not. If it belonged to a Mary then my
> analysis stands (and just conceivably this might by the ossuary of
> Mary Magdalene). If it didn't then the case for this being Jesus' tomb
> becomes even weaker.
>
> 3. Your friend apparently thinks that the name "Simon" refers to Simon
> the apostle. In fact it refers to Simon the brother or half-brother of
> Jesus (see Matthew 13:54), somebody one might expect to find in the
>
> - Show quoted text -
There are far too many flaws with this claim in the first place...
1. There is no real record of who, if anyone was in that tomb with
Jesus (if it is the right tomb, and so forth and so on.)
2. There is no way to DNA sample the bones.
3. Although the bones may be dated, they still do not allow
explanation of 2 nor do they disprove 1.
4. From what I understand there has been no real peer review process,
this went from a film maker to 'scientists' who were funded by the
same film studio... So obviously there is an immense bias.
I can continue but I rather not, this whole film project as portrayed
by the media is facetious to say the least, but hey the general public
has no idea where places are on the map.. So perhaps this will be easy
to sell to them also.
Dianelos
> I have computed that the probability of the tomb in the Talpiot
> district of Jerusalem being the family tomb of the Jesus of Nazareth
> is at least 12 to 1 *against*. [snip rest]
A few days back I computed that there would be about 12 families in
10,000 in ancient Jerusalem that would have produced a tomb as
conspicuous as the one discovered in the Talpiot district. Now I have
prepared a more detailed analysis. Here is what I did:
I assume the best possible scenario for the movie makers, namely that
the family of Jesus included a wife Mary Magdalene and a son Judas,
and that the entire family including Jesus' parents and four brothers
would be entombed. Further I assume that only 60% of the ossuaries in
a tomb have an inscription, to reflect the facts of the Talpiot tomb.
Finally I assume the existence of 1,000 tombs (i.e. I assume that 10%
of the 10,000 Jerusalem families are entombed; observe that there is
therefore a 10% probability of the Jesus family being entombed) and
that all these tombs are discovered.
Then I randomly run a thousand world histories and I have the movie
makers study each one of the tombs and statistically decide which (if
any) of them were Jesus' tomb. Multiple positives are allowed. The
decision function they use is optimized for the Talpiot tomb, i.e. if
they encounter the Talpiot tomb they will produce a positive
identification but only just. Here are the results:
In 473 worlds out of the 1,000 the movie producers would not identify
any tomb as being Jesus' and would be correct. In 37 worlds they
identify exactly one tomb as being Jesus' and would be correct. In 305
worlds they identify exactly one tomb as being Jesus' and would be
wrong. In 150 worlds they identify more than one tomb and would be
wrong in all of them. In 24 worlds they identify two tombs, one
correctly one wrongly. Finally in 11 worlds they identify more than
two tombs including the correct one. All in all they identify 762
tombs as being Jesus and are right only in 9.4% of these
identifications. (Actually this was a lucky run; using a larger number
of world histories I compute the more precise probability of 7.9%).
The proportion of families that were entombed does not affect the
probability of a correct identification. If we assume that 30% of the
10,000 Jerusalem families were entombed (which implies that in 30% of
the worlds Jesus' tomb exists) then the results are: In 110 worlds out
of the 1,000 the movie producers would not identify any tomb as being
Jesus' and would be correct. In 21 worlds they identify exactly one
tomb as being Jesus' and would be correct. In 220 worlds they identify
exactly one tomb as being Jesus' and would be wrong. In 512 worlds
they identify more than one tomb and would be wrong in all of them. In
33 worlds they identify two tombs, one correctly one wrongly. Finally
in 104 worlds they identify more than two tombs including the correct
one. All in all they identify 2,185 tombs as being Jesus and their
success rate of correctly identifying Jesus' tomb is 7.2%.
The conclusion is that even assuming the best possible scenario the
probability of the Talpiot tomb being Jesus' is less than 10%.
BernardZ
just...@gmail.com says...
> 2. There is no way to DNA sample the bones.
>
Don't be so sure.
Interestingly the producers of the show refused to wait for the DNA to
be tested.
--
Blogging is very time consuming.
Observations of Bernard - No 110
Doug Weller
>In article <1172871916.1...@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>,
>just...@gmail.com says...
>> 2. There is no way to DNA sample the bones.
>>
>
>Don't be so sure.
>
>Interestingly the producers of the show refused to wait for the DNA to
>be tested.
You'd have to get permission from the IAA to dig up the bones, and I very
much doubt they'd give it. I can't see any justification for digging them
up again.
BernardZ
dian...@tecapro.com says...
Our results look okay. I wrote a program in powerbasic and came up with
a very similar result.
Actually I am wondering if the mathematician is being misquoted on
purpose. Not that I am saying he is innocent.
What the producers said is that he said the odds of this particular tomb
of not being Jesus by the names is 600 to 1.
Let us take your figures.
Say there were as you say about 10,000 families in Jerusalem.
12 families could have the name combinations.
That is 10,000/12 = 833 to 1
Which is not that far to what the producers mathematician said of about
600 to 1.
Note one issue that springs to mind is
A) Jerusalem had farmers nearby. It is quite possible the number of
people using it as a burial ground is much higher then 50,000.
B) Jerusalem had a non-Jewish population that might lower the population
I am sure that (A) is much greater then (B) so you have underestimated
the population.
Doug Weller
Dianelos
wrote:
> http://fisher.utstat.toronto.edu/andrey/OfficeHrs.txt
Well, the discovery site explains the statistics of the movie makers
(go to http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/explore/explore.html,
click on "Enter the Tomb", then on "Supporting Evidence", and finally
"Statistical Evidence"). Clearly the question they asked was: How
probable is to find this combination of suggestive names in a tomb?
The answer given to them by Feuerverger basically was: The frequencies
of "Jesus son of Joseph", "Mariamne", "Yose", and "Maria" (the
relevant names found in the Talpiot tomb) are 1/190, 1/160, 1/20, 1/4
respectively; therefore the probability of finding them all in one
tomb is their product, i.e. 1/2,400,000. Let's conservatively cut this
number to a quarter of it in order to account for biases in the
historical sources; we get then that the probability of finding this
particular mix of numbers in one tomb is 1/600,000. There are a
thousand tombs around Jerusalem from this era; therefore the
probability of any one tomb having these names is 1/600.
So? How do they get from this answer to the conclusion that there is
"a high statistical probability that the Talpiot tomb is the Jesus
Family tomb" as the discovery site says? This would *only* follow if
we knew a) that Jesus family was entombed in Jerusalem and b) that
their tomb would have the names "Jesus son of Joseph", "Mariamne",
"Yose" and "Maria" inscribed in them. But neither a) nor (and
especially) b) are likely. Indeed most people would think that b) is
highly unlikely, especially taking into account that also an
inscription "Judas son of Jesus" was found in the Talpiot tomb. Now
Feuerverger says "I now believe that I should not assert any
conclusions connecting this tomb with any hypothetical one of the NT
family." - Fine, but before now he allowed his name to be used to
shore up what appears now to be a charade.
The right question of course is: Given that we found a tomb with this
combination of suggestive names, what is the probability that this
tomb belongs to Jesus' family? This is the question I tried to
answer.
My first analysis (see the thread "I compute a very low probability
for the Talpiot tomb being Jesus'") shows that there were about 12
families in ancient Jerusalem who might have produced a tomb with just
as unlikely a combination of names (that according to the gospels
belong to Jesus' family) as the Talpiot tomb. So, *at best*, there is
a 1/12 probability of the Talpiot tomb being Jesus'.
My second analysis shows that even assuming that the family of Jesus
has the members the film makers hypothesize, and even assuming that if
the Jesus family had a tomb then all these members would be buried in
it, the film makers' method of identifying a tomb as being Jesus'
based on the very low probability of finding a particular combination
of names in it would be correct in only about 8% of the positive
identifications (so again we get at best a probability of 1/12 for the
Talpiot tomb being Jesus').
So, the film makers' claims are pretty much bogus. Still, a 1/12
probability or even a 1/120 probability of this tomb being Jesus'
should have been taken very seriously. I personally find it surprising
that the original archaeologists studied the Talpiot tomb for only a
few days and then tossed the bones into unmarked graves.
Ron
>
> What the producers said is that he said the odds of this particular tomb
> of not being Jesus by the names is 600 to 1.
>
> Let us take your figures.
> Say there were as you say about 10,000 families in Jerusalem.
> 12 families could have the name combinations.
>
> That is 10,000/12 = 833 to 1
>
> Which is not that far to what the producers mathematician said of about
> 600 to 1.
>
> Note one issue that springs to mind is
>
> A) Jerusalem had farmers nearby. It is quite possible the number of
> people using it as a burial ground is much higher then 50,000.
>
> B) Jerusalem had a non-Jewish population that might lower the population
>
> I am sure that (A) is much greater then (B) so you have underestimated
> the population.
Your A is on the right track
The family that the figures are about - did not live in Jerusalem at the
time of the death of Jesus
So I would have thought the numbers should at least be based on the
population of Greater Judea
Presumably the family that actually were in the tomb were born and lived
in a suburb of Jerusalem and the statistics clearly identify them if
only we know who they were and their relationships to each other - I
have not really tried to evaluate how many combinations of relationship
are in the tomb - there being 4 men and perhaps 3 named women (Mary and
Mariamene and Martha) and 4 unknown boxes. The genealogical records
presumably were lost in 70 AD when the temple was destroyed
--
Ron Lankshear - Sydney Aust (from London- Shepherds Bush & Chiswick)
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~lankshear/
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
(BernardZ) wrote:
> What the producers said is that he said the odds of this particular
> tomb of not being Jesus by the names is 600 to 1.
What bothers me is that IIRC the Bible clearly states that Jesus was
interred in a borrowed tomb provided by Joseph of Arithmea. Jesus was
not a native of Jerusalem, I would expect any family tomb to be in the
Bethlehem area.
Ken Young
Doug Weller
>On Mar 4, 11:26 pm, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
>wrote:
>> http://fisher.utstat.toronto.edu/andrey/OfficeHrs.txt
Note that Andrey Feuerverger revised his web page last night.
In particular, he's added:
" The role of statistics here is primarily
to attempt to assess the odds of an equally (or more) `compelling'
cluster of names arising purely by chance under certain random
sampling assumptions and under certain historical assumptions.
In this respect I now believe that I should not assert any
conclusions connecting this tomb with any hypothetical one
of the NT family. The interpretation of the computation should
be that it is estimating the probability of there having been
another family at the time living in Jerusalem whose tomb this
might be, under certain specified assumptions."
Doug
Peter Alaca
wrote:
> [...]
Jesus Tomb statistician backtracks from original claim
By StatGuy
University of Toronto professor of statistics Dr Andrey
Feuerverger is quoted in the documentary The Lost Tomb of
Jesus saying that the probability is very remote (about 600 to
1) that a family other than that of Jesus would have the same
names as the family buried in the tomb. That is to say, the
odds are extremely small that the tomb is not that of Jesus.
He has now posted a note at his U of T page backtracking
from that claim.
More... http://tinyurl.com/3be88s
--
p.a.
--
p.a.
Dianelos
[snip]
A big issue is made by some of the inscription "Mariamene". My
understanding after reading
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/03/smoking-gun-tenth-talpiot-ossuary_9874.html
is that "Mariamene" just an alternative form of the name Mary (or
Miriam, or Maria, or Mariamme, etc). There is no good reason to
believe that Mary Magdalene was called Mariamene and not Mary, as she
is called "Mary" in the gospels and the earliest mention of
"Mariamene" was written much later than the gospels (some 100 years
later) in a rather primitive Gnostic text (the "Acts of Phillip", see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Phillip ). Neither do we have
reason to believe that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus and would
possibly get a place in Jesus's family tomb, assuming that such tomb
exists. In fact the film makers make an assumption that depends on
four (count them) "ifs": If Mary Magdalene was known as "Mariamene",
and if she was married to Jesus, and if Jesus's family was entombed in
Jerusalem, and if Mary Magdalene was entombed in the Jesus's family
tomb then it's probable that the Talpiot tomb is Jesus's tomb. I
analyzed this case too. It turns out that if we accept all these "ifs"
then indeed there is a probability of 90% that the Talpiot tomb
belongs to the family of Jesus - but still far less than the 99.8% (or
599/600) probability the film makers suggested as the most
conservative one. In short the film's thesis is based on very shaky
assumptions, and its math is wrong to boot.
But how probable are the various "ifs"? I think the probability of
Mary Magdalene's real name being "Mariamene" and that for some obscure
reason she was called Mary instead in the gospels is very low, I would
say less than 10%. The probability that she was married to Jesus may
be larger, let's conservatively put it at 40%. So the probability that
she was both known as Mariamene and was married to Jesus is less than
4%. But let's suppose for discussion's sake that there was a
Mariamene married to Jesus of Nazareth. Then the following table gives
the probabilities of the Talpiot tomb being Jesus's. The first column
expresses the probability that the Jesus family would have a tomb near
Jerusalem; the second column expresses the probability that a member
of Jesus's family would be entombed in the family tomb; the third
column expresses the probability that the Talpiot tomb (with "Jesus
son of Joseph", "Mary", "Joseph" and "Mariamene") belongs to the
family of Jesus:
0% - 0%
10% 25% 2%
10% 50% 15%
10% 100% 42%
50% 25% 14%
50% 50% 47%
50% 100% 79%
100% 25% 23%
100% 50% 65%
100% 100% 90%
Incidentally my own opinion about the probability of Jesus's family
having a tomb around Jerusalem (first column above) is this: Even
though Jesus, as far as we know, came from a poor family from
Nazareth, after Jesus's crucifixion several members of his family
stayed in Jerusalem and would certainly be honored by the followers of
the incipient Christian movement. So my best *guess* of the
probability of Jesus's family having a tomb near Jerusalem is 50%.
Assuming that Jesus's family was entombed around Jerusalem another
relevant question is whether Jesus's body was entombed in it. That's
another big "if" question. Of course *if* it is true that Jesus's
family was entombed near Jerusalem but Jesus was not entombed in that
tomb then any tomb we might discover with an inscription "Jesus son of
Joseph" is not the Jesus family tomb - unless that is we assume that
there was another Jesus son of Joseph in Jesus's family, maybe a son
of Jesus's brother Joseph.
Ron
> tomb then any tomb we might discover with an inscription "Jesus son of
> Joseph" is not the Jesus family tomb - unless that is we assume that
> there was another Jesus son of Joseph in Jesus's family, maybe a son
> of Jesus's brother Joseph.
>
You might like to consider factoring in the possibility that the
inscription Jesus son of Joseph is not Jesus or Yeshua at all but some
other name
I read 2 experts as saying not Yesuha so would that be a 80% possibility
of the name even being a Yeshua
see Steve Caruso
<http://www.aramaicdesigns.com/?title=Page:The_Lost_Tomb_of_Jesus>
I know when you "know" what writing is you can then see the word - but
Steve doesn't think it is Bar either
I see all over the net:
Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in
Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, also gives little
credit to the film's theory. According to the same story in the
Associated Press, he even thinks that the name on the key casket is more
likely "Hanun" than "Jesus."
I did not find an actual page by Stephen on this but here is his take on
Statistics etc
http://www.uhl.ac/JudeanTombsAndOssuaries.html
Dianelos
Dianelos wrote:
[snip]
> 2. The issue of Mary Magdalene appears to be smoke and mirrors. There
> were many different forms of "Mary" back then (just as William, Bill,
> Billy, Will and Wilhelm are forms of the same name). One of these
> forms apparently was Mariamme or Mariamne or Mariamene. The actual
> inscription on the ossuary reads MARIAMENOUMARA. This is Greek,
> presumably two words, and "Mariamenou" is clearly genitive. The
> original archeologist's document translates this as "Mariamene known
> as Mara" or as "Mara of Mariamene". Incidentally, there are few
> ancient documents that call Mary Magdalene "Mariamene" and they were
> written centuries after the canonical gospels.
There is a recent development that pertains to this issue:
Francois Bovon, the Harvard professor of the history of religion who
is the main source for Simcha Jacobovici's claim that Mary Magdalene's
"real name" was Mariamne, has sent a letter to the Society of Biblical
Literature where he says the following (for the whole letter see
www.sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=656 ):
As I was interviewed for the Discovery Channel's program The Lost Tomb
of Jesus, I would like to express my opinion here.
First, I have now seen the program and am not convinced of its main
thesis. When I was questioned by Simcha Jacobovici and his team the
questions were directed toward the Acts of Philip and the role of
Mariamne in this text. I was not informed of the whole program and the
orientation of the script.
Second, having watched the film, in listening to it, I hear two
voices, a kind of double discours. On one hand there is the wish to
open a scholarly discussion; on the other there is the wish to push a
personal agenda. I must say that the reconstructions of Jesus'
marriage with Mary Magdalene and the birth of a child belong for me to
science fiction.
[snip]
Fourth, I do not believe that Mariamne is the real name of Mary of
Magdalene. Mariamne is, besides Maria or Mariam, a possible Greek
equivalent, attested by Josephus, Origen, and the Acts of Philip, for
the Semitic Myriam.
--- end of quote
Of course the film makers' case depends on the assumptions that Maria
Magdalene's "real name" was Mariamne, and that she was married to
Jesus of Nazareth. Without these assumptions not even their wrong
statistics can hold their ship afloat.
Also I think in this letter we get an inkling of how the film makers
"looked for the facts". It gives the appearance that they interviewed
experts without giving them the whole picture of what they were
investigating, and then used the experts' responses given out of
context to shore up their case.
Doug Weller
>
>Of course the film makers' case depends on the assumptions that Maria
>Magdalene's "real name" was Mariamne, and that she was married to
>Jesus of Nazareth. Without these assumptions not even their wrong
>statistics can hold their ship afloat.
>
>Also I think in this letter we get an inkling of how the film makers
>"looked for the facts". It gives the appearance that they interviewed
>experts without giving them the whole picture of what they were
>investigating, and then used the experts' responses given out of
>context to shore up their case.
Thanks very much for this.
Vlad the Emailer
"Dianelos" <dian...@tecapro.com> wrote in message
news:1174616417.4...@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
This is a sad fact about most modern documentary makers, especially the sort
who sell their product to the likes of discovery and the 'Hitler Channels'.
Sensationalism and lack of cost are their main objectives, as well as a
quick result.
Even the more 'respectable' ones associated with ITV, Ch5 the BBC etc should
be reguarded with suspicion, and closely questioned before offering any
'expert opinion' - you will probably see only a snippeted highlight or two,
out of context, that tends to support their agenda. Agendas which are often
wildly misinformed, flawed and even absurd.
I have seen chunks of my personal work quoted almost word for word, cut and
pasted by some internet researcher into the script no doubt, without so much
as a bye your leave. Fair enough, and I am in fact thankful that the
atrocious, ridiculously incorrect program gave me no credit in fact, it was
embarrassingly absurd.
They don't 'look for facts', they look for interesting snippets, lurid
details, and exciting anecdotes. They are in the business of entertainment,
not reporting historical and archaeological facts.
Cheers
Vlad