The Lazarus Effect-- Part One

The following is the beginning of a novel I have written (its complete in draft form) with the help of my wife about the discovery of the tomb of Lazarus. Enjoy...... BW3 Let me know when you are ready for the next installment
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DUSTJACKET TEASER

His heart filled his ears and was pounding at a rate worthy of a blood pressure measurement as his flashlight illuminated the ancient Herodian-period Aramaic staring back at him.

Twice dead...

And was that next word Aunder@?

Twice dead under...

Pilatus.

As if the limestone facing knew an encore was expected, the inscription continued:

Twice born of Yeshua, in sure hope of resurrection.

His breath caught. In his mind, the verses of John ran at marathon pace, finally coming to rest on chapter 11.

...Jesus called out in a loud voice, ALazarus, come out!@

The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen,

and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them,

ATake off his grave clothes and let him go.@

Fumbling with the zip of his pack, he quickly pulled out his digital camera and began shooting pictures of the ossuary and the inscription. But as he moved to shoot the full wall, he heard the ominous scraping of stone against stone. And then, but for the weak beam of his overworked penlight, all went dark.

CHAPTER ONE: Art for Art=s Sake

Arthur James West had spent the summers of the last quarter century knee-deep in ancient sandsCfrom Israel to Turkey, Jordan to Greece. As a young doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins, drafting his dissertation on AThe Relevance of Artifacts for the Study of New Testament History,@ he had been inspired to attend that institution because of the work of W.F. Albright, one of the progenitors of American archaeology.

Unfortunately, Albright died in 1971, but his writings and work served as a living legacy pushing West to explore the interface between NT studies and archaeology. His thesis raised a few eyebrows by exhibiting an expansive grasp of early Jewish and Ancient Near Eastern as well as Greco-Roman history. Through the aid of a family friend, Professor John Bright of Princeton, Art was offered a place on a dig in the early 1980=s.

It was on that dig while sifting sand in the nether layers of a tel that he looked up and saw, much to his surprise, one of his archaeological heroes C Yagael Yadin, the father of modern Israeli archaeology. It was only a brief encounter, for Yadin was just visiting the site during a break in his final year of serving in political posts prior to retirement. Apparently West had been born just a little too late to work with the real legendary figures in the field.

Nevertheless, this auspicious career beginning led first to a post-graduate stint at St. Andrews in Scotland and ultimately to faculty positions at two prestigious schools of divinityCVanderbilt and Duke. He managed to sidestep the first roadblock of academia, Apublish or perish,@ by having his dissertation accepted by the Cambridge monograph series, and by authoring a humorous Adigging on a dime@ journal piece which came to the attention of the Discover Channel. And now, after more than twenty years in the field and in the classroom, West could add Atelevision host@ to his vita. “Biblical History”, much to the delight of his producers, had developed a loyal following that crossed demographic lines. With the grace of a seasoned scholar, Art moved effortlessly between the hallowed halls of the ivory tower and the paneled walls of family rooms across America. Older audiences appreciated his scholarship, while younger viewers saw what his students sawCa man who could tell really cool stories and make sorting potsherds sound fun.

With years came experience, rock-solid credentials and a sterling reputation. Art was ready to venture out on his own. In 2004, he secured permission from the IAA (Israeli Antiquities Authority) to begin digging in the small village of Bethany, situated just a few miles outside Jerusalem.

What the years had not brought was a wife or family. That first professional dig had sealed his bachelorhood, whether or not he knew it at the time. He once likened archaeology to a pick-up game of sandlot baseballCthe one 8-year-old boys dream aboutCthe one in which you just happen to be hangin= out with Carl Yastremski, and Ted Williams drops by wanting to Ahit a few.@ He=d been seduced that summer of =81Cby the heady must of newly unsealed tombs, by the intellectual magnetism of the mentors that would become friends, and by the thrill of the laborious but delicate search for artifacts. As with most jokes, there was some truth in the adage that an archaeologist=s life is constantly in ruins. Art, with little premeditation, chose the ruins, and thus filled his life with centuries-old dust rather than decades-old regrets.

He also pursued his work with the vigor of anyone answering a call from God, for that=s what archaeology was to him. Summers were spent traipsing through the Judean and Galilean regions in search of the breakthrough find that would revolutionize the study and understanding of the Bible. West was not only a researcher, but also a devout evangelical Christian.

Just this morning, he selected Psalm 112 for his morning devotion: AEven in darkness light dawns for the uprightY.Good will come to him...who conducts his affairs with justice.@ But a clutter of prayer requests had jumbled his mind. For the first time in his career he arrived at a dig site without funding. The third quarter NASDAQ dive had left the usual coffers empty. Nothing short of a preeminent find would secure a major grant.

Right now, all that shined down upon him was the 89 degree, 7.30 am sun. When scouting locations for this year=s dig, he first setup an extensive series of conversations with Mustafa el Din, the property steward of the nearby Church of Mary and Martha, home to the oldest known graveyard in Bethany. He had spent the previous week surveying the south end of the Kidron valley, honeycombed with graves and tombs stretching from the Mount of Olives to this tiny berg. Yesterday he settled on the site. Today, before the temperature climbed to its usual 95 degree high, he hoped to complete a preliminary inspection and choose a tel. Approaching the site, his eyes fell upon a small mound. Giving it an optimistic once-over, he offered up one last thought, AMaybe, just maybe, God, you=ll shine the light of Providence on me today.@

Unlike the Orthodox Jews of the region, Art had no real qualms about poking around old graveyards, no fears about violating the ritual laws regarding the impurities of corpses. Instead, removing a spade from the large duffel bag he carried, West eyed the variety of limestone rocks and slabs that surrounded the mound. With a deep breath, he selected a spot and, using all of his 6=2@, 195 pound frame, began the hard labor that defined the beginning of any dig. He worked methodically, alternating between his collapsible pickax and spade, until he encountered a stone much larger than usual. With sweat pouring from his brow, he finally managed to budge the boulder just enough for it to slip to the bottom of the sandy tel. Dropping the spade and mopping his head, Art estimated that he could probably squeeze himself into the opening -- head first.

Switching on his flashlight, he first peered into the hole and discovered a surprisingly large chamber. Too symmetrical to be a normal hole in the ground, the room appeared to be surrounded by carved walls. Shadows cast by the flashlight hinted of niches here and there. West noted that this was no place for a claustrophobe. Throwing caution to the wind, he thrust his head, then his shoulders, into the dark, dank space.

Slithering on his belly, he thought back to his youthful days as a Boy Scout. While spelunking in the North Carolina Appalachian caves, he=d nearly gotten trapped in a narrow crevice. Hoping for a less harrowing experience this go-around, West pushed and shoved a little quicker. Finally in, he tried to unfold himself to his full height, only to bang his head on the limestone ceiling.

AArt, Art, Art,@ he muttered, as he rubbed the rising welt where he once had hair, AYou=re a man of modern times -- not a five-foot ancient!@ As he informed his often surprised students, most people of the first few centuries, even the men, grew no taller than 5=4 or so, a fact demonstrated long ago by ancient skeletons discovered and measured by the Israeli archaeologists of this region.

He turned his attention to the back wall. Sure enough, there was a niche, a niche with some sort of stone object lodged within. Crawling towards it on his knees, he immediately recognized the object as an ossuary, a bone box used for ancient reburial.

As periodically explained in episodes of “Biblical History”, the practice of osslegium, or the disassembling and storing of a skeleton in an ossuary, probably began about twenty years before the turn of the common era and continued in the Jerusalem area until the fall of the city in AD 70. Scholars debated the origins of the practice, but West was sure that the rise of the Pharisaic movement in early Judaism had played a hand. As in all cultures, burial practices reflected the societal conceptions of the afterlife. Drawing on the famous Adry bones@ story in Ezekiel 37, Pharisaic Jews believed that God would one day raise the righteous from their graves and so it made sense that they would rebury the bones intact.

He grasped the end of the stone box and pulled. From its size he determined it to be a one person adult ossuary. Because only a minority of ancient Jewish ossuaries bear inscriptions, he was a little surprised to see the encrusted Aramaic letters.

Eliezer, son of Simon

Though a common name, readers of the English translations of the Bible were familiar with the famous Lazarus of Bethany, whose Hebrew name was actually Eliezer. Trying unsuccessfully to check his excitement, he reminded himself that an inscription alone does not an identification make.

A quick scan of the wall with his flashlight revealed two other small, but empty niches. However, just above the compartment that contained the Eliezer ossuary, the light fell upon a protruding rock, approximately 3-feet in width. Centuries had taken a harsher toll on the rock than on the ossuary. Pulling out a small brush from his backpack he whisked away the top layers of dust. Then, holding the flashlight in his mouth, he poured some water from his canteen onto the limestone facing. As the letters came to light, his heart beat accelerated. He saw the wordsY

Twice dead...

And was that next word Aunder@?

Twice dead under...

Pilatus.

As if the limestone facing knew an encore was expected, the inscription continued:

Twice born of Yeshua, in sure hope of resurrection.

His breath caught. In his mind, the verses of John flashed by at marathon pace, finally coming to rest on chapter 11.

...Jesus called out in a loud voice, ALazarus, come out!@

The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen,

and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them,

ATake off his grave clothes and let him go.@

Fumbling with the zip of his pack, he quickly pulled out his digital camera and began shooting pictures of the ossuary and the inscription. But as he moved to shoot the full wall, he heard the ominous scraping of stone against stone. And then, but for the beam of his penlight, all went dark.

CHAPTER TWO: An Overturned Stone

Sixty-four and nearing the twilight of his career, Dr. Patrick Stone bore the bitter scars of a life that failed to meet expectations. With a doctorate from John Hopkins University in Ancient Near-East Studies and a second from Tubingen in Germany, no one could dispute his skills as a scholar. His personality and resulting personal life were another thing altogether.

Few knew of the failed romance early in his graduate days. He=d fallen as deeply and hopelessly in love as possible for a narcissist with the daughter of his master=s thesis advisor. The match, in Stone=s view, couldn=t have been more perfect. Her intellect nearly matched (without, of course, eclipsing) his own; her 5=1@ trim figure perfectly accentuated his own 5=5@ Napoleonic stature; and she understood intimately the life of an archaeology academic. And therein, as they say, lay the rub.

It never occurred to Stone that she wouldn=t want a life any different from the one from which she came. She enjoyed his company, to be sure, and she had stayed with him throughout his doctoral work. But when it became clear that he intended to pursue a fourth degree, in Germany no less, without so much as a conversation about it with her, she left.

On rare occasions, usually helped along by one glass too many of Glenfiddich, he still remembered the unkind predictions she made B based on her father=s shortcomings. AMy father B he never made department chair in all his years at Chicago!@ And, AMy father B he abandoned his family year after year, months at a time, for archaeological crumbs!@ She had no intentions of recreating that life for herself, or for the children he would never commit to fathering. All this she delivered in lieu of the Ayes@ he expected when he proposed to her with a replica of an ancient marriage band made especially for her during his last trip to Jerusalem.

Since then, he=d sworn off women -- completely. He might well have become a monk, except that monasteries were neither conducive to accumulating personal accolades, nor known for the tolerance of envy. While his work continued to draw praise, few wanted to seek him out, or even claim him as a colleague. As others in his field gained acclaim, rather than celebrate their discoveries, he fumed about being passed over.

For years Yale had been his academic home, but recently Stone began spending more of his time in Israel researching the material culture and social networks of Second Temple Jerusalem. His Yale colleagues were only too glad when Stone was granted a research position that allowed him to spend more time abroad. No one knew quite what he expected to achieve, but rumor had it that he sought nothing less than a first century A.D. document that would cast doubt on traditional Christian claims.

Raised in the South, Stone still had a mama=s boy devotion to his sole surviving parent, who lived in a Kingsport, Tennessee nursing home. He dutifully sent the monthly support for her care. Holidays were spent in Tennessee; vacations were spent in Tennessee. Summers were divided between research trips B and Tennessee. Some semblance of peace was found visiting with her and walking the woods behind the boyhood home he still maintained.

Stone=s undergraduate years at a conservative Protestant college (in Tennessee, of course) led him to entertain the notion of Christian ministry. He quickly realized, however, since he was already one of the biggest intellectual fish in his small pond, that life held the potential for something much more lucrative than ministry. So he transferred to the University of Chicago and stopped attending church altogether. Though it has often been said that there is no believer so zealous as one converted later in life, it may also be said that no unbeliever is so zealous as one dissuaded from faith as an adult. Patrick Prentiss Stone was most certainly the latter.

Over his black, unsweetened morning coffee, Stone ruminated on Art West=s return to the region. He knew his self-appointed rival had arrived several weeks previous to his own, permits in hand, to excavate in Bethany. Wanting to stay abreast of any interesting developments, he=d given his research assistant, Ray Simpson, the unglamorous (not to mention, unscrupulous) task of following the new darling of popular archaeology. AHow that guy got a TV show, I=ll never know,@ he grumbled. Every time West touted a new discovery Stone seethed with envy. Not once had the twit mentioned him or any of his books on the show.

He gave a start as his cell phone began chiming the first movement of Beethoven=s Fifth Symphony at full volume. Blinking his beady gray eyes, he reached for it, finding a very excited Raymond Simpson on the other end of the line.

AWest just disappeared into a tel! It=s got to be a tomb!@ the graduate student reported. Stone jerked to attention. ASay that again, Simpson?@

AWest just climbed into the hole he=s been digging all morning. He=s been down there for at least fifteen minutes!@

AWell, well, well. Must have found more than sand if he=s still in there. Stay put. I=m on my way. And don=t let him out of your sight!@ He rang off and hurriedly grabbed his keys from the Egyptian bowl on the hall table. ALet=s see if we can=t find an old cemetery ghost to scare Mr. Biblical History away long enough for me to get a good look in that pit.@ Stone=s mind danced with possibilities as his white Volvo sped towards Bethany.

Stephen Pfann Rules Out Mary Magdalene Ossuary

Dr. Stephen Pfann of Jerusalem University who does a lot of close work on epigraphy and other related fields has now weighed in on the so-called Mary Magdalene ossuary (Rahmani no. 701). His detailed analysis of the inscription with careful comparison to other ossuary inscriptions and textual evidence shows the high likelihood that there were two women in that ossuary, and neither one of them could be Mary Magdalene. Here below is the initial summary of his report, and his conclusions. I thank my friend Richard Bauckham for kindly sending me the pdf link. Pfann is a fine and careful scholar who is respected by the original archaeologists, Amos Kloner and Joe Zias who were originally involved with the tomb. For those wanting to read more, there is bibliography at the end of the conclusions.

MARY MAGDALENE IS NOW MISSING:

A CORRECTED READING OF RAHMANI OSSUARY 701

By Stephen J. Pfann, Ph.D.

SUMMARY POINTS OF DISCUSSION:

*The original transcription of the inscription was incorrect.

*The inscription does not read “Mariamene the Master”nor does the name Mariamene

or Mariamne appear on the ossuary at all.

*The inscription reflects the writing of two distinct scribes who wrote in different forms of

the Greek script.

*The correct reading of the inscription is “Mariame and Mara,” based on parallels from

contemporary inscriptions and documents.

*The ossuary thus contained the bones of at least two different women, interred at two

separate times, one named Mariame and the other Mara.

*No support exists for ascribing the ossuary to Mary Magdalene.

-------------------

The revised reading of the inscription based on contemporary inscriptions and documents

would leave the words MARIAME KAI MARA "Mariam and Mara." Mara, as noted by Tal

Ilan among other scholars, was a common shortened form of the Aramaic name “Martha.”

Due to the fact that (1) an ossuary would often contain more than one individual's bones and

(2) these two names are among the most common personal names of the first century, the

combination of these two names together on an ossuary is not unique.

In fact an ossuary was discovered at Dominus Flevit on the west slope of the Mt. of Olives

that has the Hebrew equivalent of the two names as a pair written three times on the same

ossuary (however, with the order reversed: "Martha and Maria"; Dominus Flevit, ossuary 7):

Multiple burial and DNA

The fact that two individuals were named on the side of an ossuary does not limit the remains

inside to be of those two individuals. There may have been others inside whose names were

not inscribed. To give us an idea as to how many individuals might have been inside a single

ossuary, there was one ossuary, also from the Dominus Flevit tomb complex (Dominus

Flevit, Ossuary 37), which bears the names of five individuals, indicating that the ossuary

contained at least five distinct burials. The named individuals buried in the ossuary were

Zacharias, Mariame, El'azar, Simon, and Sheniit(?).The variety of scripts and character of the

cuts indicate that the inscriptions were written by different individuals with distinct

instruments. There may be the skeletal and DNA remains of at least five individuals in this

box (not accounting for others who went unnamed).

CONCLUSION

The so-called "Mariamene" ossuary contained the names and remains of two distinct

individuals. The first name on the ossuary, “MARIAME.” was written in the common Greek

documentary script of the period on the occasion of the interment of the bones of this woman.

The second and third words “KAI MARA” were added sometime later by a second scribe,

when the bones of the second woman Mara were added to the ossuary. This scribe's

handwriting includes numerous cursive elements not exhibited by the first scribe who wrote

“Mariame.” In view of the above, there is no longer any reason to be tempted to link this

ossuary (nor the ambiguous traces of DNA inside) to Mary Magdalene or any other person in

Biblical, non-Biblical or church tradition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bagatti, P.B. and Milik, J.T. Gli Scavi del “Dominus Flevit”, Parte 1. Jerusalem. Franciscan

Printing Press. 1981.

Benoit, P., Milik, J.T., and de Vaux, R. Les Grottes de Murabba’at. Discoveries in the

Judaean Desert II. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1961.

Cotton, H.M. and Geiger, J. Masada II: The Latin and Greek Documents. Jerusalem. Israel

Exploration Society/The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 1989.

Cotton, H.M. and Yardmen, A. Aramaic Hebrew and Greek Documentary Texts from Nasal

Hover and Other Sites. Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXVII. Oxford. Clarendon

Press. 1997.

Ilan, T. Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part 1: Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE.

Tübingen. Mohr Siebeck. 2002.

Lewis, N., Yadin, Y., and Greenfield, J.C. The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the

Caves of the Letters: Greek Papyri; Aramaic and Nabatean Signatures and

Subscriptions. Jerusalem. Israel Exploration Society/The Hebrew University of

Jerusalem/The Shrine of the Book. 1989.

Rahmani, L.Y. A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel.

Jerusalem. The Israel Antiquities Authority/The Israel Academy of Sciences and

Humanities. 1994.

300-- The Battle of Thermopylae Pass

For those of us who grew up reading the Greek and Latin classics, the story of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans was certainly the stuff of legends. 300 men hold off the entire Persian army under Xerxes for a considerable period of time, inspiring all of the Greek city states to rise up and resist the invaders in an even more all out battle later at Platea. I have actually always wanted to see a movie about Spartan culture and its 'warrior' mentality and fierce independence, a culture that defies most modern notions of machismo by having women who were educated and trained to be as athletic and ferocious as the men, in many cases. This culture was so freedom loving and fiercely independent that they had a hard time even co-operating with other Greek city states, even when their independence was on the line.

With this story line, Frank Miller (of Sin City fame) brings to the screen an action thriller in comic book style and color (sepia tones and reds, with some scenes reminiscent of Gladiator) with larger than life action and characters and hyperbole. Surprisingly enough it works rather well. The story is only minimally diddled with, and there is very little filler, or unnecessary sub-plotting added. The focus of the movie not surprisingly is on Leonidas, a few stirring speeches he makes, and the battle scenes themselves. There are of course CG action sequences that are larger and more dramatic than life, and we have the usual gargoyles that show up in comic books, but not actually at the battle of Thermopylae. But then this was not intended to be a documentary, but rather a hyperbolic dramatization.

For what it is, this movie is stunning, especially in terms of cinematography. The scene with the prophetess on top of the mountain, or the emissary confronting Leonidas, or Leonidas confronting Xerxes are hard to get out of your brain. There are of course some gory scenes, but the movie is not gore galore, or gore for its own sake. Miller is depicting the brutality of war, especially in such a primitive form. There is too much graphic violence for young folks in this movie, and it is indeed graphic and grainy, earning its R rating for violence. My son suggested it be seen as Miller's Braveheart movie. Fair enough. That's a good analogy, though there is less pathos in this movie, and certainly more buff warriors showing off their washboard abs. And there is also far less star power in this movie, which makes it all the more effective in some ways. Particularly well done is the story telling of the relationship between Leonidas and his wife and Leondias and his leading warriors.

Clocking in at under two hours, this movie doesn't really have any dead zones or filler, and it is so visually gripping and difference that there is always something to get your attention. Don't expect this movie to win any Oscars, except for pioneering cinematography, but it is a well done movie of its particular genre. As it sits atop the movie charts at present one wonders how much this movie is meant to play to the warrior instincts or mentality in parts of our own culture. Whether it is or not, the Spartans were absolutely the Marines or their day, making ordinary warriors look weak and vulnerable. You will have to decide whether that whole approach to problem solving is itself a strength or a weakness, but no one could question these men's courage and commradry in the face of overwhelming odds.

The Ten Commandments On Blogging on this Site

We have had a lot of good and vigorous discussion in the past two weeks on this blog, and I am happy about vigor and passion and intelligent discussion, but several points need to be borne in mind:

1) No anonymous posts please. If you don't have the courage of your own convictions, then don't post. By this I mean that I don't mind what your screen name is, but if when I click on that name it doesn't lead me to a real name and a real blog or website and a real person, then you should not be posting on this site.

2) Blogs can serve a lot of different purposes but this one is not intended for mere venting, mere ad hominem arguments, and disrespectful tone or comments. I expect the discussion to be civil, even if it becomes somewhat heated. The goal is light, not heat in any case. Ask good questions-- don't try to produce a visceral response through a rude remark. I don't mind irony, tongue in cheek, and a little good-natured sarcasm, but ridicule and the like is not humane, never mind Christian.

3) Try and be concise and clear. Don't just ramble on ad nauseum. As Alexander Pope said "Perspicuity is the chiefest virtue of a style." My students often ask me what will happen if they go over the page limit on their papers. I tell them, you will find a comment on the bottom of the last expected page which says "This was a good paper, but it ended rather abruptly."

4) Save non-related and personal comments for some other means of communication, such as ordinary email. Stick to the subject at hand, or corollary subjects.

5) Read the exhortation in James 3.3-11 before posting anything. In other words, curb your tongue.

6) Normal discussions on a particular topic will run for 3-4 days, or possibly a week. Then its time to move on. If you come late to dinner, you should expect leftovers, not the main course. Nor should you expect a response.

7) If you have good information to share, share it. Showing off, show-boating, pontificating on the basis of feelings but not evidence is not helpful. It just makes you look dumb.

8) Be reflective before you post. If you are angry, compose a response. Save it. Look at it again later in an hour or so, and then if you still think it involves a good point, then post it. "Be angry, but sin not."

9) I do not mind suggested links so long as they are relevant to the discussion. I do mind info-mercials. You need to bear in mind that an awful lot of the stuff on the web is junk. And a lot of the supposed scholarly stuff on the web is either very old (and so in the public domain) bad or very tendentious information. This is why its on the web and not published in a proper journal. Remember--- "thou shalt not steal" so if you want to copy, reuse, or link the material, then ask permission.

10) Before posting say this " may the words of my mouth (or fingers) and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord." In other words, do this assuming God cares and is paying attention.

Bitterness--- a Meditation

"Bitterness is a poison you drink which does your enemies no harm, and does you no good."-- Anonymous aphorism


It's easy to become bitter about some things. Things go wrong, life is not fair, someone deceives you, you don't get the job you want. Its especially easy to become this way as untoward things pile up in your life. Like an early morning fog that permeates the whole region so that you cannot see where you are going, bitterness blinds a person to the good things in life, and takes away the ability to enjoy them.

I have noticed that so many people in this day and age have such a strong sense of 'entitlement' that this or that is owed to them in life, and when it does not happen, they become bitter. Worst of all is being bitter, like Jonah was, about something God has done which upsets your prejudices and predisposed assumptions. One of the things I have most noticed in spending time speaking to groups of college students in this day and age is the prevailing cynicism I encounter. They see the world as dog eat dog, and they are already bitter about it before they even are middle-aged. They are skeptical about political change or spiritual renewal, and there is a sense of helplessness and hopelessness that they can make any differences.

It is so different than what I encountered in the 60s and early 70s when I was a comparable age. And the parallels and differences are interesting. Then as now we were dealing with an unpopular war, a very unpopular war. There was mounting bitterness towards the President who was seen to have done a poor job and didn't get the troops out of Vietnam fast enough. Yet at the same time there was this anger, there was also tremendous altruism. Lots of young people were campaigning for candidates they believed in for public office, were joining the Peace Corp, were joining VISTA, were looking for ways to make a difference, and believed they could. They had been stirred by the speech of President Kennedy when he said "Ask not what your country can do for you [i.e. the entitlement approach], ask what you can do for your country."

By contrast with that spirit, what I see today is waves and waves of cynicism and bitterness, only slightly masked and medicated by music and drugs and other forms of 'entertainment'. It seems our country has become far more narcissistic than ever, and part of that self-centeredness is manifested in bitterness.

One person once said "Blessed are those who expect nothing from God, for they shall not be disappointed." This is of course not one of Jesus' beatitudes, but it is the attitude of even some Christians I know, including a lot of young ones. Faith, hope and love are of the essence of the Christian life, but if you give up expecting anything of God, and give up hope for a brighter future, then its easy to give up loving, give up being other-directed and self-sacrificial.

My friend and former student Joe Castillo, who is a wonderful artist, tells the story of how he finally in adulthood felt prompted to use his skills in art to draw a picture of Jesus. He ran into a Christian bookstore operator who thought it could be put on plaques and would sell. The man talked Joe into letting him do this, and he promised Joe royalties from the sales.

Well lo and behold these plaques became enormously popular all over the U.S. But a year went by and Joe heard nothing from this man. He called him up, and asked when he might get some royalties. Joe badly needed the money as his wife was dying of cancer, and the treatments were expensive, and he did not have adequate health coverage. At first when Joe called, the man enthusiastically talked about how well the plaques were selling, but then when Joe asked about the royalties the man went quiet and wouldn't say anything. He told him he had nothing to give him. He even told him "I don't remember saying anything about royalties."

Well of course Joe was angry, and that turned into bitterness when more time went by and nothing happened. He thought of suing the man, but remembered what Paul says in 1 Corinthians about Christians not taking each other to court, but rather settling the matter themselves.

So, Joe went once more to see the man. The man made him wait for hours. Finally, when he saw the man, the man had nothing to give him. Promised nothing. At this juncture Joe concluded he needed to forgive the man and move on.

But he couldn't really forgive him, though he said he did. Joe kept getting phone calls about how that plaque had really ministered to people's lives, saved a marriage, and various other things. He began to realize he needed to just forget his whole attitude of entitlement, and let it go, because it all belonged to God and God was doing good ministry with that plaque. He finally got to that place of real forgiveness, and acceptance, and he stopped drinking the poison of bitterness.

It was not long after that, that he was contacted by a company who had bought out the bankrupt man who had initially made the deal with Joe. This time Joe was offered the right to"buy the copyright on the plaque" because the previous gentlemen had copyrighted Joe's work without his knowing it. So as Joe says, "my artwork became twice mine- once I made it then I bought it back."

This reminded Joe of what our Lord has done for us--- he made us, and then he went to all the trouble of buying us back, he loved us so much. I just have to believe that when you come to a realization that that is true, and that all that you have and are and do belong to the Lord, and not to yourselves, then you realize that a Christian should never have a sense of entitlement. We have been bought with a price. We are not our own. And so, in an interesting way, one of the real cures for bitterness is knowing you twice over belong to God, and if he has forgiven you all your sins and faults and flaws, so you must do so as well with others.

It would be easy for me to get bitter about the nonsense propagated in the Jesus tomb theory. To become bitter that the other side of the story has not adequately been told. That there is an unfairness in all of this, especially since I spent years of my life dealing with the James ossuary and the remarkable implications of that, which is still a genuine relic from the family of Jesus.

But, as Joe said yesterday when he was here in chapel, I need to let it go, and just trust God. I need to forgive those that I believe have besmirched the name of Jesus, but whom Jesus already forgave, remembering he even forgave his executioners from the cross. And so I hereby let it go.

I must move on now, and just trust that the Lord of the universe will prevail and have his own day in court on his own terms, and in his own time. Its time to lay down my burden, and ask what is next. And there is no better time now than Lent, and the journey up to the cross and beyond, to do that. So I am setting my face like a flint towards Jerusalem, and trusting that the God of justice will vindicate his own name. I choose to be better, rather than bitter, to be proactive rather than merely reactive in response to all this. Jesus drank the bitter cup for me, so I would not have to imbibe the gall myself. I refuse to become what I despise, and so I must take my own medicine now, when it comes to bitterness. I need to take the high road now. I hear you can get above the fog and the view is clearer from up there.

THE JESUS TOMB SHOW--BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS REJECT DISCOVERY CHANNEL SHOW'S CLAIMS

You can tell things are coming unraveled when every Biblical archaeologist, save possibly one, interviewed either in the Discovery Channel special or in the hour long debate thereafter repudiates or is unpersuaded by the findings of the show. Both William Dever and Jonathan Reed were not merely dubious about the findings of the show. Reed actually called it archaeo-porn, the worst sort of misuse of archaeological evidence to support a tendentious theory that is so speculative it requires linking one weak hypothesis to another to another to reach a conclusion.

In addition, both Amos Kloner and Joe Zias, two of the original archaeologists involved in the project, have openly on television and in the public forum repudiated the findings of the show in strong terms. I have had a strongly worded email from Joe Zias in the last 24 hours saying that the data was deliberately manipulated at various points. I will come back to that point in a moment.

Since Charles Pellgrino, the co-author of the The Jesus Family Tomb book, is not a Biblical archaeologist at all, but rather a forensic one, and apparently has never dug a Biblical site, he certainly cannot count as an expert in this field either. This leaves only Shimon Gibson, which, if I am understanding things right (I am happy to be corrected on this), was only a young artist, a sketch artist for the original excavation of the Talpiot tomb. He says he is skeptical of the results, but then he says he is skeptical by nature. In other words, the show could not find the sort of experts in Biblical archaeology which would have lent real credence to their theory.
This stands in contrast to when Andre LeMaire was prepared to put his good reputation on the line to say that the James ossuary is genuine (and this word just in. He still thinks that, and the recent evidence presented in the trial in Jerusalem of genuine patina from the word 'Jesus' on the James box inscription provides further evidence for this conclusion).


Back to what Zias and I were discussing. It has to do with the James ossuary. First of all, the makers of this film and book were told that the tenth ossuary found in the Talpiot tomb was not missing. It was a blank, having neither ornamentation nor inscription, and so it was not catalogued with the other nine. However, on the show, mystery is concocted when the list of the nine catalogued ossuaries is presented and it is concluded one is missing, which is false.

Blank ossuaries are a dime a dozen. You can buy one in the market in Jerusalem for a very reasonable price. There never was a mystery about the 10th ossuary. One was concocted for this show. It is also the case that the makers of this film were told clearly that the tenth ossuary had no inscription and in addition did not match up with the dimensions of the James ossuary, which is the focus of the book Hershel Shanks and I wrote for Harper entitled The Brother of Jesus. More information about it can be found in that book.

There are further problems as well in connection with the James ossuary. The claim is made in the debate follow up show that Oded Golan said that somewhere around 1980 he bought the James ossuary. This is false. Golan has consistently maintained that he bought this ossuary before the Israeli law changed in 1978. In fact he claims to have bought it in the mid-70s and at the trial that continues in Jerusalem a 1970s era picture of him with the inscribed James ossuary was produced. The reason that the date is important is because after 1978 all such important artifacts found in Israel belong to the state of Israel. They cannot belong to a private collector like Oded Golan. For the reader wanting to see proof positive of this, see p. 84 of the Brother of Jesus book. The other reason that is important is it means the James ossuary could not possibly have come from the Talpiot tomb at all since it was not opened until 1980. The next feeble attempt to save the show's theory will perhaps be to claim there were other ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb that went missing from some break in. Not no. 10, but rather no 11 perhaps? Of course this will be a complete argument from silence. We do not know there were more than 10 ossuaries in that tomb ever.

Other sorts of problems that crop up from the show itself include:

1) The DNA lab in Thunder Bay was not told that they were testing alleged samples from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Why is this important? For the very good reason that the lab no doubt wishes to keep its good name, and not be associated with sensationalistic projects of dubious merit. Had they been told in advance, then at least they could have decided whether they wanted to be involved in the project. This is not how a free and open historical inquiry into a subject proceeds. It is not shrouded in secrecy until unveiled at a press conference in order to make big news, garner big ratings, and sell lots of books.

2) Ted Koppel's own correspondence with the DNA lab, and with the statistician reported in the follow up debate finds those folks doing their best to distance themselves from the conclusions of the show, and insisting that it is only a remote possibility.

3) At one juncture we are told that the name Mariamenon is found in Hippolytus a second century church historian. Two problems with this. Firstly so far as I can see, that name never occurs in the works of Hippolytus (and the name Mariamene is not the same name, see the previous post with Richard Bauckham's analysis of the names). Secondly, Hippolytus died in about A.D. 236. He comes to us from the end of the second century A.D. He could never have known any eywitnesses or even second-third generation followers of Jesus. Even if he did mention the name in question (the one on the ossuary found at Talpiot), he provides no early second century evidence for this name, much less for the theory that this name is one way of referring to Mary Magdalene. In fact the Acts of Philip, at best a fourth century document is the basis of the theory of Prof. Bovon that Mariamenon= Mary Magdalene, but nowhere in that document are the two equated. The woman referred to in that document is an evangelist in Greek who is the sister of Philip (whether Philip the apostle or the later Philip the evangelist found in Acts 8, we could debate). In other words, we have no hard evidence at all that equates Mary Magdalene with this particular name, or even with the later figure found in the Acts of Philip. There is then certainly no first or second century evidence that Mary Magdalene was every called by the name on the Talpiot ossuary, or would have been labeled this on a first century A.D. ossuary. And why again would her inscription be in Greek, and all the other ones in the tomb in Aramaic or Hebrew? We are not told.

4) Towards the end of the program itself, we discover that the intrepid amateur archaeologists, namely the film maker and his cohorts failed to even ask the IAA for permission to find and reopen the sealed Talpiot tomb. But this was an IAA controlled archaeological site now adjacent to an apartment complex. And when the IAA did find out about the snooping around in a tomb without permission, they came and put a stop to it. But the most interesting thing found when the filmmaker was in the tomb was a very large Greek inscription inside the tomb. What does this suggest? It suggests to me this is not the tomb of the Aramaic speaking family of Jesus of course!

5) Strong objection was taken in the debate program to the dramatizations in the show because they present the theory of the filmmakers as if they were facts. There are not, for example any dramatizations of other theories. What's the problem with this? Well as one professor from Virginia Seminary rightly pointed out, drama is powerful. It's a form of preaching and persuasion. If this really were an open ended historical inquiry and not an argument for a particular point of view, not a docu-drama, this sort of filming technique would not have been used.

6) No mention at all is made of the fact that though we only have a few hundred ossuaries with inscribed names, there is in fact another ossuary with the inscription 'Jesus son of Joseph'. Apparently this was not a rare combination of names at all, and in any case, as I have said Jesus of Nazareth is never called 'son of Joseph' by his family, or by his disciples. Notice how Luke pours cold water on that theory in Luke 3.21-- "Now Jesus himself was about 30 when he began his ministry, he was the son, so it was supposed/thought, of Joseph." Supposed by whom? Clearly not by Luke or the family whom Luke has just shown knew about the virginal conception of Jesus. Even the cousins knew about this miracle when Mary told Elizabeth. There can be no good reason Luke would put it this way if he knew the earliest followers of Jesus or members of his family had thought that Jesus was son of Joseph.

7) The unique theory presented in the show is that John 19 presents a conversation between Jesus on the cross and his wife Mary Magdalene, with their son being the Beloved Disciple! The problem of course with this is that Jesus is addressing his own mother, Mary. John 19.26 is quite clear--- Jesus saw his mother standing there, and spoke to her about the Beloved Disciple, who is certainly not his son. In John 13 and following the Beloved Disciple is portrayed as one of the adult disciples in the upper room. Not as a child. Here is but one more example of how normal interpretations of the Biblical evidence are ignored and rejected in favor of rewriting the text to support the theory, and much later non-eyewitness Gnostic evidence from the Acts of Philip is made crucial to the case, even when that evidence itself does not likely support the case at all!

8) An important further corollary was pointed out as well. This special is an example of film-making, not good investigative journalism. Consider for example the difference between how this project was pursued and say the efforts of Robert Graysmith, recently blogged about here, who took years and years of investigating without pay to be able to demonstrate who the Zodiac killer was. He did not present his evidence in book form until he was sure. Until he chased down all leads. Until he convinced at least some of the police he had been bugging for years to consider this or that piece of evidence and solve the case. This docu-drama falls far short of what would be called good investigative journalism.

To paraphrase a famous phrase "This is how a bad theory ends, this is how a bad theory ends, not with a bang, but a whimper."

ZODIAC—A CHILLER OF A THRILLER

What would you do if you knew who a serial killer was, but the circumstantial evidence, however strong, was not enough to bring that person to justice? What if you were dealing with a case that had gone cold some time ago, with police exhausting all their leads and options? What if only you were obsessed and persistent enough to pursue this to the end? What if you would have to lose your marriage in order to bring this person to justice? What if your obsession doesn’t find resolution?

Such is the very remarkable story of Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for a San Francisco newspaper beginning in the late 60s who would not let this matter drop and ended up writing two best selling books on the Zodiac killer. Jake Gylenhaal does a compelling job of portraying this truly obsessed man’s quest for the truth of this matter even after the police had long since given up hope.

The story begins in 1968 when there is a grisly double murder in Vallejo California, and carries on with numerous killings in San Francisco and elsewhere. The killer sends coded messages to the San Francisco Chronicle which Robert is able to decode. We are regaled with Marvin Beli the famous lawyer who goes on TV to try to talk the killer into giving himself up-- all to no avail. But an important clue is given one day when the killer calls Beli. A clue missed by the police is only much later picked up by Robert. In painfully slow fashion the evidence mounts and points in a particular direction.

If your preference is for taut thrillers, this one will seem different. The movie runs some 2 hours and 40 minutes, but every minute is worth it as David Fincher does a masterful job of letting the story slowly unfold in the same way the evidence slowly was pieced together. Some crimes cannot be solved over night, indeed cannot be solved for years and even decades. Should we care? Well of course we should because injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere, and as John Donne said “any man’s death diminishes me, for I am a part of mankind. Therefore, do not seek to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Well it kept tolling in the head of Graysmith and eventually it took its toll as he lost his job, and his marriage as well. You have to wonder if he felt called and compelled to be the relentless blood hound even long after the trail went cold.

This film is perfectly shot and those of us who lived through the late 60s and remember this story as part of the mysteries of growing up will find the music, the cars, the setting, the attitudes so familiar. Fincher gets it right. This movie does not resort to gimmicks, CG, or any of the other normal staples of 21rst century movie making. It is old school and all the more perfect for it, as if it had been shot during the period it recounts. Like Hitchcock thrillers there is one suspended resolution after another, and there are only momentary glimpses of the killing in this movie, near its beginning. The story is not driven by showing violence, unlike too many modern movies. Indeed, this is not a horror movie at all even though it is about a horrible series of crimes—it’s a crime investigation movie of the old sort with Graysmith as Sam Spade, private (and unpaid) detective.

I will not spoil this movie for you, but will tell you I found it compelling and fascinating. There are moments of high drama and tension in the plot, but this movie shows how a dialogue driven movie can be extremely interesting as we walk with Robert down the road of finding the killer and putting all the pieces together.

This is the first really excellent secular movie of 2007, with an excellent supporting cast including Robert Downey Jr. who is prominent early in the movie, but then fades from the focus of the plot when the story moves on beyond him. I honestly wish there were more movies like this which compel you to think and reason, and compare evidence. It’s a movie which sharpens the audience’s critical thinking and ability to follow evidence. And yes, there is even comic relief from time to time in this movie. It is not all dark and dank and dangerous. If you love reading good mystery novels, as I do --- this is the movie for you.

Rob Bells' 'Sex.God' Book-- a First Rate Read

The first thing we need to make clear about the title 'sex god' is that Rob is not talking about some sort of fertility deity, like the ancient near eastern fertility gods (e.g. Baal, Astarte). He is talking about the connection between sexuality and spirituality and how the former figures forth the latter in various ways. It is a profound subject, and one well worth pursuing. And let it be said that this book is certainly better written than “Velvet Elvis” either Rob’s developing his writing chops or he’s gotten more help. Either way, it reads better than the previous book. And one has to say that the pastel colors of this book are certainly more pleasant than the bright white and minimal orange of the last.

The Preface lays out the ground work for what follows, and the “this is that principle”. Rob is able to point to things like piles of standing stones, or old trophies, or the like which have little worth or significance in themselves except for what they remind us of, what they point us to. While Rob in no way wants to trivialize the reality or goodness of human sexuality (to the contrary, this book does the opposite of that) what he does want to say is that ‘sex’ points to something much bigger, larger, and spiritual about human beings and reality. For one thing it points to the fact that we are created in the image of a creative and lively God.

The first chapter entitled “God wears lipstick” is powerful in various ways in that Rob talks about the factors that reduce human beings to subhuman things, and alternately the things that humanize us. He makes the strong point of how our culture encourages us to objectify women, treating sexual persons as sex objects. Of course this sort of reductionism would never happen if fallen males did not lust after women’s body parts. It has gotten so bad that you can even see it in how men look at women. They tend to look at their breasts first, and then their faces, thinking of what they want, before thinking of who they want. When another person is used as a means to an end, a means to scratch your own selfish itch, then we are dealing with lust and not love. And of course our culture can’t easily distinguish the two. Lots of times we hear “we’re in love” but in fact what is meant is “we’re in heat”. One of the points made on p. 24 which is helpful is that unlike Gaia theologians, or even some Wicca folks, Rob rightly distinguishes between being made in God’s image (an a-sexual thing) and being made male and female. God is not a great white male in the sky. Indeed when Jesus actually finally defines God, he tells us in John 4 that God is spirit, not The Spirit, but spirit. That is, God is a non-material being, and sense genders require an embodied existence, we could hardly be ‘male and female’ in the image of God, if God has no gender in his divine essence. Of course it is true that God the Son took on a human nature at one juncture, but even his divine essence is not engendered. God, the Biblical God, in the divine essence is not male or female.

I love the story of the soldier in the Gulf War who captures several soldiers that had been shooting at them, and one man runs up to him handing him a letter pleading that it be sent to his father so he will know he loves him and what happened to his son. War is always dehumanizing, always. But in this moment, the American soldier saw the human face of his enemy, and had empathy. He was a son, who had a father, whom he loved. He realized we are all human beings. Well yes, but perhaps the issue is not whether we are human beings but whether we are humane beings, the opposite of which is being subhuman in thought and behavior. The Bergen-Belsen story is equally compelling. It is amazing how something as simple as lipstick can make a woman feel human and a person of worth all over again. We need those things that protect us from the forces that strip us of our humanity in this world—and war absolutely does that. You may argue that it is sometimes the lesser of two evils, but its still evil, still destructive, still not God’s highest and best for human behavior. That much is clear, and the proof is how much it dehumanizes us all. We become numb instead of feeling and compassionate. Go see the movie “Children of Men”. It makes the point so very clearly.

Chapter Two, entitled “Sexy on the Inside starts with the interesting observation that many people who are not religious, nonetheless have this sense that things in the world are not as they are intended to be and that we are supposed to be connected to each other and the world and not treat each other poorly. This is true enough, and I have encountered this as well. I would put it down to the fact that even people who are oblivious to God are still created in God’s image and occasionally have aha moments where these kind of insights dawn on them. This chapter is largely about our sense of disconnection with the earth and with each other and how it goes back to the story of Adam and Eve where the curse involves this disconnect between us and the earth, and man and woman.

Rob offers the interesting etimology for the word sex from secare—the Latin for cut off (from which we get sect, bisect, sectarian etc.) In fact sicarri were the dagger men, the hit men amongst the early Jewish zealots, that cut off other peoples lives. He then says “our sexuality is our awareness of how profoundly we’re severed and cut off and disconnected. Second, our sexuality is all of the ways we go about trying to reconnect.” (p. 40). Rob deals with the Genesis idea that self-awareness in the case of Adam involved a sense of being cut off from God, and so focused on self. Rob actually wants to define sexuality in a broad way--- it’s all the ways we try to connect with each other, with God, even with the earth. In my view this is too broad a definition of sexuality. Our desire for oneness with God is not real a sexual desire. And indeed the sense of oneness with creation, with the earth, such as we see in Psalm 8 is not real a sense of sexuality as it is usually defined. But it is true that our sexuality is part of the larger package of aspects of human nature which prompt and impel us towards connection with the ‘Other’. This is true. I think Rob is confusing or fusing the deep sense of intimacy and oneness with some ‘other’ person or thing, with the concept of sexuality. Intimacy or communion are broader categories than sexuality, actually. And of course Rob is right that there can be lots of physical interacting, including intercourse with little or no real connection made. Or is there? Paul in 1 Cor 5-6 says that even sex with a prostitute involves becoming one flesh with her, and by that Paul means something sexual but also something spiritual is involved such that it interferes with the one spirit union you have with Jesus. But I take his point that having sex with someone you are not married to and trust and committed to can leave you alone and lonely and unfulfilled.

I like the definition of ‘feeling sexy’ as ‘feeling good to be in your own skin, your own body shape etc. But I do not agree that we must first be at peace with who we are, in order to be connected with God. This gets the cart before the horse. In fact I think when God reconciles himself to us, redeems us, that’s when we just begin to understand who and whose we are and to be at peace with who we are. Of course it is true that if we are unwilling to change our dysfunctionality and unhealthy images of self we will never fully benefit from our relationship with the Lord, never fully be whole or healed.

In Chapter three, entitled Angels and Animals, we get down to brass tacks, or better said basic instincts. Rob carefully deconstructs the myths that 1) we are just the sum of our urges or desires; 2) that abstinence is somehow a limitation of our freedom or even a way of being dishonest with ourselves; 3) that we are simply animals and that therefore we could hardly expect not to act like animals. I especially like the way he draws a contrast between lions in heat, who are so not thinking things like ‘do we have a meaningful relationship’ or ‘can I trust you’ or ‘why do you say I only want you for your body’. I quite agree that much of modernity assumes that people cannot transcend their basic instincts, and if they repress them they will be unfulfilled and indeed unhealthy people. Rob also deals with the difficulties of living in a culture where purity and chastity are ridiculed.

Rob then turns around and deals with the angel instinct, the idea that fails to acknowledge our physical and sexual nature and the way that influences our thinking and behavior, or even fails to acknowledge our sexuality is central to what makes us human (p. 54). I agree with him on this, and his basic argument is that we have to live intension between the animal and angel instinct, however there are a few flies in the ointment here. Rob is right that angels are by nature spirits. However, early Jewish tradition believed they could be male or female, and indeed that they could even have sex. For example, Gen. 6.1-4 was traditionally read as the story about angels (called sons of god here and in some other places as well) mating with human women producing a hideous hybrid between the two sorts of beings. It is precisely this gross violation of the creation order which prompts the flood according to Gen. 6. Furthermore, Jesus himself famously said that ‘we will be like the angels in heaven, neither marrying nor giving in marriage’. This refers to the act of marrying, not to having sex per se though the two are connected. His point is that we will not be starting any new marriage relationships in the next life at all. In this regard we will be like the angels, not sexless but rather without marrying. There are no married angels, according to the Jewish tradition. There is this further deficiency in the discussion about being angels. Rob says that if we don’t express our sexuality, if we just stuff our sexual feelings then we are repressed. This is of course a traditional modern psychological view of the matter. But what about the person called by God to remain a single person? He still has sexual feelings? While he may talk about them he is not supposed to act in a sexual manner. Is that repression or restraining one’s self in a healthy way by the grace of God. Paul’s advice in 1 Cor. 7 comes to mind here. He counsels an engaged couple to remain as they are, keeping his virgin as a virgin, but if he can’t restrain himself he should go ahead and marry. Better to marry than to burn with passion. But clearly Paul believes that persons like himself can and do restrain themselves, that there is a place for being single and not sexually active, though it requires God’s grace to remain chaste, and he would hardly call this sexual repression. Nor I think would Jesus. I do however very much like the way this chapter ends--- namely with the remark that we are always in the process of creating order out of chaos. The creation process is still an ongoing thing, and we have something to contribute to it.

Chapter Four is provocatively entitled Leather, Whips, and Fruit, and deals with the sordid topic of lust, which as Rob says, promises what it cannot deliver. One of Rob’s theses here is that lust comes from a deep sense of dissatisfaction with one’s life or situation. He contrasts it with gratitude. There is something to this. It would have helped to distinguish between lust and desire. The former is always sinful, desire is not necessarily so. In the process of a useful discussion Rob tells us that the word epthumia means in the mind. Actually not. It means “in fury” or “in rage”(i.e. enraged) and refers to deep feelings, not deep thoughts. I like the definition of freedom on p. 75—it isn’t being able to have what we crave, but rather freedom is being able to go without what we crave and be fine with it. The basic advise that is given is to channel our desires, our energies into positive and good things. This is very common advice indeed, but wise advice. For example, being obsessive-compulsive can be a bane or a blessing. Channeled in the right direction a person can get a lot done, well, in order, and on time. But channeled in the wrong way it can lead to greed, the need to have all of this set of books, or CDs or the like. I like Rob’s exposition on stealing. The thief is given the opportunity to rechannel the life force so that their rush comes from giving things, making things with their hands and doing good. Hands are mentioned in this passage in Ephesians because a thief steals with his hands, for the most part. Life is not about toning down our energies, but in fact about letting our desires be absorbed into a higher and greater desire, enterprise, opportunity. This is very true.

Chapter Five is perhaps the best chapter yet. It is an exposition on love, and there is a very effective spinning out of the story of Song of Songs. Rob also explores the love of God for us, focusing on how God grieves, his heart aches and is pained, and as it says in Gen. 6 God regrets having made humans. One of the more helpful and profound insights in this chapter is on p. 98—love is a giving away of power a becoming vulnerable. Is that true of God as well? Rob says yes--- look at Jesus. Here is an excellent para.--- “Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.” There are two very striking implications to this: 1) if it is true, then love is never a power move, never irresistible, even when we are talking about God. That pretty much rules out John Piper’s view of love and God right there. Love does not demand its own way says Paul (1 Cor. 13), and Jesus shows us that is the way God loves us; 2) this definition of love also means that we are to sacrifice and put the other person first in our marriages. My wife is so much better at this than I am. I must confess. But this definition of love rules out the same old patriarchal stuff. When Christian love appears on the scene its all about mutual submission as Ephes. 5.21 says, mutual sacrifice and so one. We need to keep in mind that Paul in the household code is trying to push an existing patriarchal situation in a more Christian direction. We get glimmerings of where it’s all going in places like Ephes. 5.21 where we see the highest and best way the relationship can work. But what Paul believes is the leaven of the Gospel is being put into the Christian community and its relationships so that things will move away from the fallen patriarchal world order to a more egalitarian one.

Rob brings out quite well how love is risky for God as well, because of course we may respond negatively. Rob stresses that the death of Jesus reflects a condemnation of the domination systems in place that oppress people. In this he sounds a bit like Dominic Crossan, but I think he is at least partially right about this. We have a catchy phrase at the end of the chapter: “God can do anything—that’s what makes God, God. But God can’t do everything. God can’t make us love him--- that’s our choice.” (p.109). Well, God could have set up the whole system differently and made us respond positively to him, but I take it that Rob’s point is that then that response, however little it seemed coerced, would not be love. Love can neither be predetermined nor coerced is Rob’s point. I agree. And it is not an accident that the NT never says God is power (the noun) though it does say God is almighty (the adjective). On the other hand it absolutely does say that God is love. The essence of who God is love. This is why Jesus is the clearest, highest, most effective, and powerful revelation of the divine nature. God has deliberately limited himself in order to take on flesh,take on suffering, take on death in the person of Jesus, and be a love letter to humanity. I am reminded of the powerful poem by Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy “The Sorrow of God”, which in essence says that God suffers when we suffer. We see this in Jesus’ words to Saul on Damascus road “Saul why do you persecute me?” We see this in Jesus’ words “inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these.” God does not merely empathize with us, he knows our pain and suffers with us in some mysterious way.

In Chapter Six “Worth Dying For” may be the best chapter in either of Rob’s two books. He understands very well the difficulties in discussing the submission passages, but he handles it like a pro. He rightly stresses that mutual submission is what Ephes. 5.21 is calling all Christians to in relationship to each other, and a particular illustration of that is found in the relationship of Christian wife and husband. The husband indeed is called the head, but the job descriptor for headship is to take the lead in serving, sacrificing, loving just as Christ did. If this is not a form of self-emptying and submitting I don’t know what it is. Rob says on p. 117 “The husband’s waiting for his wife to submit is actually a failure to lead….If he really thinks he is the head, then he would surrender his desires and wants and plans. He would die to his need to be in control and do whatever it takes to serve her….He would die to himself so that she could live.” Exactly so--- you nailed this one Rob. Enough with the non-Christian nonsense about unilateral submission of women to men in the church, in marriage, in ministry, in general. Rob then adds “In marriage, you’re talking about power and control only when something central to the whole relationship has fallen apart.” (p. 119) Yes, that’s right, or at least the two persons have never come to fully give themselves, fully trust each other, and so they are still negotiating the landscape and boundaries of the relationship. And one or the other or both of them is insecure, and afraid the relationship is getting out of their control—hence the power move.

I like Rob’s exposition of 1 Cor. 7 as well—the bodies of husband and wife belong to each other, not to themselves. Amen to that, and this means that ‘conjugal rights’ are more like ‘conjugal obligations’--- we are called to freely give ourselves up to the other, not demand our right to the other’s body, our right to sex on demand. A true lover gives up their rights, and abandons themselves in trying to please the other--- never demanding anything. And so on p.119 Rob answers the question of who has the authority in this relationship by saying--- ‘yes’, they both have authority over each other’s body. In Paul’s world this would have clashed with the sexual double standard that wives needed to stay chaste while husbands were allow to visit the prostitutes.

The exposition of agape love on pp. 119-20 is helpful as well. Agape is unconditional love, not love that is bestowed only when someone is worthy. “Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful.” (p. 120). Just so, that’s what God’s love does. “People are loved into their futures.” (p. 121) their future best selves. Rob tells women “You don’t need to use your body to get what you need. It’s a cop out for not being a certain kind of woman—a woman of dignity and honor.” (p.122).

I was blown away by p. 123--- Rob talks about how women trade sex for validation, affection, affirmation that they are worth something. “Sex becomes a search. A search for something their missing. A quest for the unconditional embrace. And so they go from relationship to relationship, looking for what they already have…But sex is not the search for something missing. It’s the expression of something that’s been found. Its designed to be the overflow, the culmination of something that a man and woman have found in each other.. It’s a celebration of this living breathing thing that’s happening between the two of them.”

Rob goes on to add a strong paragraph on where our worth comes from. It comes from being created in God’s image, being loved by God unconditionally. It does not come from your body, your mind, your work, what your produce or put out. It doesn’t come from whether you have a spouse or a girlfriend or boyfriend or whether people notice you, or whether you are famous. Your great worth comes from your creator. (p. 124)

I cannot praise this chapter enough. Its right on target. If you can only read one chapter in this book for now, read this one. This is certainly a better and more mature book than “Velvet Elvis”, which shows that Rob is happily growing into this ministry more and more.

Chapter Seven, “Under the Chuppah” is about having enough sense to keep various things in your married life between the two of you. A Chuppah is a canopy under which the bride and groom, and no one else, stand in a Jewish wedding. Only they are under the canopy of God’s eye of protection for that particular relationship and there are things in that relationship which should be between them and God, and no one else. There is a useful discussion in this chapter of the OT material where God’s relationship to his people is described as being like the relationship of husband and wife—actually the latter is modeled on the former to some extent. The analogy in Hosea is especially fully developed. It is interesting how Rob sees the ten commandments as like the ketubah, the wedding contract agreeing to love no one but God the spouse alone, along with other stipulations. This is an interesting way of looking at the ten commandments. The problem with it is that a marriage covenant and its stipulations is different from a covenant between a king and his vassals, and in fact the OT covenants are more like those ANE treaties than like marriage contracts.

Pp. 134-35 are a bit odd. Here Rob is telling us that in Jewish marriage law a couple is not married until they have sex. He talks about the wedding canopy being put up over the marriage bed, they have sex, while the guests wait outside (!) and then they all come out and having the wedding party now that they are fully married. The problem with this analysis which is partially right, is that the marriage contract, which was decided on well before the marriage was binding long before the consummation of the union. This is why in Matthew Joseph had thought to ‘divorce’ Mary before they had come together. One can say that the contracting is the beginning of the marriage, not merely an engagement period with no legal force, and the consummation is the conclusion of the act of marrying someone. Unlike our way of doing it--- it takes a long while, not 20 minutes in a chapel.

From pp. 136-37 it becomes clear that Rob has a healthy sense of progressive revelation. He talks about how in Jewish law, a man who has sex with a woman is then required to marry and take care of her, which is light years ahead of the practices in the ANE where she is permanently shamed by such an act and simply discarded and the man has no obligation to her. As he says, this is a higher view of what sex creates—a one flesh union, not a lower one. Then in the NT we go a big step further in which men are commanded to lay down their lives for their wives and engage in mutuality of sacrifice and submission.

The exclusiveness of the relationship of marriage is important. The giving of one’s self totally to another person is gripping in a wedding service--- it is the exclusivity of it that makes it special and powerful. Rob adds that we must guard that, because when we have given it away to someone else, you no longer have it, and no longer share that unique kind of sharing meant for husband and wife. Rob stresses when you take sex out of marriage it cheapens it, all you are left with is mechanics, not love. Sex taken out of its God-intended context loses its mystery and specialness. It leaves nothing to the imagination.

Rob is always full of surprises. And on pp. 151-52 we have a few more. For one thing we learn that the Hebrew language has only about 7,000 words where as English has 200,000. Well I take it he means that Hebrew has about 7,000 word roots (he got this from a Prof. Rufus at Stellenbosch in South Africa, where I have lectured. But I don’t know him. The count may be accurate). Rob is focusing on the word echad or one. This word means a oneness that is made up of more than one member—it is thus applied to the one flesh union of husband and wife, but also it is the word for ‘one’ in the Shema, in reference to the divine nature. From this he infers that God’s oneness is complex, made up of several factors, parts, members united as one.

And this is where we finally get the punchline as to why this book is called Sex. God--- because the oneness experienced in sex points beyond itself to the oneness that exists in God. This is that or better said, this refers to, alludes to, symbolizes, foreshadows that. Rob sees marriage as a picture of the oneness we all seek and yearn for with each other as well. His exposition on “they were naked and felt no shame” is useful—complete acceptance as the other is, without embarrassment on either side. Indeed without much self-consciousness. He stresses that nakedness of body should only be shared with one whom you share nakedness of soul. Being naked means peeling back the layers and letting down the defenses of body and soul—those two things should be done together, in harmony. If you share your body but not your soul it’s like having and holding and sharing the wineskins but not the wine.

The last chapter “Whoopee forever” rounds out the discussion. Rob points to the places in the teaching of Jesus and Paul where the goodness of remaining single is stressed, and the temporary nature of human marriage is also stressed. It is a this world institution meant for our earthly and temporal and temporary good. Not something eternal. Marriage brings hope, and oneness and continuation of the race to this world, but in the next one there will be no new acts of marrying. I suppose in a sense it will be like we are all married to each other in the kingdom the communion or koinonia will be so grand. “If sex is about connection, what happens when everybody is connected with everybody else?” (p. 167). What happens at the eschaton when all are one in God’s presence. Rob asks if sex and its moments of ecstasy a picture of heaven. Well some have compared it to the mystical ascent called the beatific vision of God, but Rob is comparing it to our eschatological experience of God in due course. Sex and marriage as a picture of heaven on earth--- sort of like what Jesus describes as preparing for his disciples in John 14.2-4. The Epilogue finishes with a reminder about relationships that fail, and the forgiveness and healing that is possible thereafter—a realistic pastoral note.

This is really an excellent beginning primer on Sex, marriage, and God, written in beguilingly simple terms. While I might quibble with a few things here and there, overall this is a fine piece of work—very clear, and reflects a maturing in Rob’s writing. We will look forward to what comes next.

THE SMOKING GUN---TENTH TALPIOT OSSUARY PROVED TO BE BLANK

Joe Zias is a fine archaeologist of long standing and good reputation. He is the person who catalogued the ten ossuaries from the Talpiot tomb, and personally catalogued the tenth ossuary. He worked with Amos Kloner as part of the team who made the original discovery. In two emails this morning to someone I have been talking to he made crystal clear that the tenth ossuary was blank, certainly was not the James ossuary at all despite the assertions of those involved in making the Discovery Channel special. These emails have been sent along to me, and I will let them speak for themselves, except I have edited out the personal and extraneous stuff.

Joe Zias jezias@yahoo.comTo: Subject: Re: Jesus Tomb Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2007 6:02 AM

"Amos Kloner is right as I received and catalogued the objects, the 10th was plain and I put it out in the courtyard with all the rest of the plain ossuaries as was the standard procedure when one has little storage space available. Nothing was stolen nor missing and they were fully aware of this fact, just didn't fit in with their agenda." ShalomJoe



From: Joe Ziasjezias@yahoo.com To: Subject: Re: Jesus Tomb Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2007 4:31 PM

"There was no photo of the 10th ossuary as there was no reason to photograph it, plain white ossuaries, basically once you have seen one you have seen them all. time is money and it would be a waste of time to waste resources on something which was put out in the courtyard. Remember these are large, and heavy not to forget that Kloner has the measurements. They knows this from me personally. The conspiracy idea fits in well with their agenda of hyping the film as well as his/their book."
Joe

In short, the tendentious agenda of this film becomes so very clear when confronted with the naked truth.


To this I can now add the following fuller, more considered report from Richard Bauckham. I have left it entirely as he has written and endorse it as being careful and very likely right in all the particulars. There are small details we differ on, but they are inconsequential for these purposes. The crucial bit is the last line-- there is no way Mariamenou is Mary Magdalene. No way at all.

The alleged ‘Jesus family tomb’--- Prof. Richard Bauckham

"As I understand it (I have not yet seen the film itself) the Discovery Channel programme “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” claims that a tomb discovered in the Talpiot area of Jerusalem in 1980, containing ten ossuaries, is the tomb of Jesus’ family and contains some of the remains of Jesus himself. If my memory serves me correctly the same claim was made in a British television programme, fronted by Joan Bakewell, just a few years ago. However the Discovery Channel programme claims to have new evidence and arguments.

The basic arguments concerning the names on the ossuaries seem to be two (1) The names, including ‘Jesus son of Joseph,’ ‘Judah son of Jesus,’ Yose, Mary and Matthew, are the names of key figures in the New Testament Gospels. Some statistical arguments are alleged to show that the odds are hugely in favour of the view that the names on the ossuaries in fact refer to the figures known from the New Testament. (2) The form of the name Mary (in Greek) is the distinctive Mariamenou. This, it is claimed, is the same form of the name as Mariamne, which is the name of the sister of the apostle Philip in the fourth-century Acts of Philip, presumed to be Mary Magdalene.

I wish to stress at the start that the issues raised by this proposal are complex and difficult. My first reactions to what I was told about it by journalists were too little considered and I had not then had time to track down all the relevant evidence and study it carefully. So I made some mistakes. (I recommend that no one pronounce on this matter without having the relevant pages of Rahmani’s catalogue of ossuaries actually in front of them. My initial lack of access to them misled led me at some points, even though I was told quite carefully what they contain. They can now be seen on the Discovery Channel website.) I am fairly confident of what I’m now saying here, but ossuaries and onomastics are technical fields, and I’m open to corrections from the experts. I’ve no doubt that refinements of the argument will result from further discussion of the issues.

I shall divide my discussion into the matter of the names on these ossuaries in general, and a longer consideration of the name alleged to be Mary Magdalene, since this requires quite careful and detailed consideration. (I have refrained from using Hebrew and Greek script, and have tried to make the argument intelligible to people who know no Greek. Unfortunately at the moment I don’t have a functioning transliteration font: hence the overly simply transliteration of the names that I’ve had to use.))

The names in general

The six persons named in the ossuary inscriptions (Rahmani 701-706) are:
(1) Mariamenou-Mara ( the first name is a unique form of the name Mariam, Mary, and will be discussed separately below).
(2) Yehuda bar Yeshua ¢ (Judah son of Jesus)
(3) Matia (Matthew)
(4) Yeshua ¢ bar Yehosef (Jesus son of Joseph)
(5) Yose (a common abbreviated form of Yehosef)
(6) Maria (a form of Mariam, Mary)
All the inscriptions are in Aramaic except the first, which is Greek.

We should note that the surviving six names are only six of many more who were buried in this family tomb. There may have been as many as 35. The six people whose names we have could have belonged to as many as four different generations. This is a large family tomb, which would certainly have been used for quite some time by the same family. We should not imagine a small family group. Some members of the family of Jesus we know lived in Jerusalem for only three decades (from the death of Jesus to the execution of his brother James in 62). None of our other evidence would suggest that there were so many of them as to require a tomb of this size.

Only three of the six named persons correspond to the names of known members of the family of Jesus: Jesus son of Joseph, Maria (Jesus’ mother or his aunt, the wife of Clopas), Yose (Jesus’ brother was known by this abbreviated form of the name Joseph: Mark 6:3). In a family tomb only members of the family (members by birth or, mostly in the case of women, marriage) would be interred. The fact that one of Jesus’ close disciples was named Matthew has no significance at all for identifying the person in the ossuary labelled Matthew. We shall discuss Mariamenou-Mara below, but it cannot be stressed sufficiently that there is no evidence at all for the conjecture that Jesus married Mary Magdalene (and note that an extra-marital affair, which some postulate, though again without evidence, would not qualify Mary Magdalene to be in the tomb of Jesus’ family). Similarly, there is no evidence at all that Jesus had any children. (If he really had a son named Judah, would he not be mentioned somewhere in the ancient literary evidence? He would have been a useful figure for a Gnostic wishing to claim esoteric teaching of Jesus handed down from someone close to him, but he goes unmentioned in the Gnostic Gospels that do make such claims for other figures and unmentioned also in the church fathers who relay information about Gnostic claims.)

All of the names on these ossuaries were extremely common names among Jews in Palestine at this period. We have a great deal evidence about this (the data is collected in the enormously useful reference book: Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, part 1 [Mohr-Siebeck, 2002], and also analysed in chapter 4 of my recent book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses [Eerdmans, 2006]). We have a data base of about 3000 named persons (2625 men, 328 women, excluding fictional characters). Of the 2625 men, the name Joseph (including Yose, the abbreviated form) was borne by 218 or 8.3%. (It is the second most popular Jewish male name, after Simon/Simeon.) The name Judah was borne by 164 or 6.2%. The name Jesus was borne by 99 or 3.4%. The name Matthew (in several forms) was borne by 62 or 2.4 %. Of the 328 named women (women’s names were much less often recorded than men’s), a staggering 70 or 21.4% were called Mary (Mariam, Maria, Mariame, Mariamme). (My figures differ very slightly from Ilan’s because I differ from a few of her judgments for technical reasons, but the difference is insignificant for present purposes.)

I am not a mathematician and do not know how to get from these figures to calculations of odds. I must leave the assessment of Feuerverger’s case to others. But it seems to me incredible.

The name Mariamenou-Mara

The Hebrew name Mariam was very popular among Palestinian Jews at this period, though hardly used at all in the diaspora. It was usually rendered in Greek in one of two forms: Maria and Mariamme (or Mariame). It could, of course, be simply written as Mariam in Greek characters (and this is the practice of the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, when referring to Mariam the sister of Moses, called Miriam in English Bibles). But we know only four cases in which this was done with reference to a living person of the early Jewish period. (One of these is Luke 10:39-42, referring to Mary the sister of Martha, though there is a variant reading Maria).

Much more popular were the forms Maria (the form used everywhere in the New Testament, except Luke 10:39-40, for all the various Maries it refers to) and Mariamme/Mariame (used, for example, by Josephus). Both give the name a more Greek form than the simple transliteration Mariam. Palestinian Jewish women who themselves used a Greek form of their name as well as a Semitic form (a common practice) would be likely to have used Maria or Mariamme. This accounts for the fact that the Greek form Maria is often found on ossuaries transliterated back into Hebrew characters as Mariah. (Odd as this practice might seem , there are examples for other names too.) This is what has happened in the case of the woman called Maria (in Hebrew characters) on one of the ossuaries we are studying.

It is worth noting that this Greek form of the name Miriam has nothing to do with the Latin name Maria, which also existed. The coincidence is just a coincidence. It was, however, a coincidence that Jews living in a Latin-speaking environment could have exploited, just as Jews in Palestine exploited the coincidental near-identity of the Hebrew name Simeon and the Greek name Simon. The woman called Maria in Romans 16:6, a member of the Christian community in Rome, may have been a Jew called Mariam in Hebrew (an emigrant from Palestine), or a Gentile with the Latin name Maria, or a Jew living in Rome who had the name Maria precisely because it could be understood as both Hebrew and Latin.

In the Gospels Mary Magdalene’s name is always given in the Greek form Maria, which is the New Testament’s standard practice for rendering Mariam into Greek, except for Luke 10:39-42. As we have noted it is standard Greek form of Mariam. However, from probably the mid-second century onwards we find some references to Mary Magdalene (often identified with Mary of Bethany and/or other Gospel Maries) that use the alternative standard Greek form Mariamme (or Mariame). These references are all either in Gnostic works (using ‘Gnostic’ fairly loosely) or in writers referring to Gnostic usage.

We find the form Mariamme in Celsus, the second-century pagan critic of Christianity, who lists Christian sectarian groups, including some who follow Mary (apo Mariammes). These may wll be the group who used the Gospel of Mary (late 2nd century?), a Greek fragment of which calls Mary Magdalene Mariamme. This form of her name also appears in the Coptic (a translation from Greek) of the Gnostic Work the Sophia of Jesus Christ (CG III,4). The usage may have been more widespread in Gnostic literature, but the fact that we have most Gnostic works only in Coptic makes it hard to tell.)

This tradition of using the form Mariamme for Mary Magdalene must have been an alternative tradition of rendering her name in Greek. It most likely goes back to a usage within the orbit of Jewish Palestine (since the name Mary in any form was very rare in the diaspora and Gentile Christians would not be familiar with the name Mariamme ordinarily). But so does the usage of Maria in the New Testament Gospels, at least one of which is at least a century earlier than any evidence we have for giving her the name Mariamme. It would be hazardous to suppose that Mariamme was the Greek form of her name used by Mary Magdalene herself or the earliest disciples of Jesus.

The Gnostic use of Mariamme is also reported by Hioppolytus in his Refutation of All Heresies (written between 228 and 233). He says that the Naassenes claimed to have a secret teaching that James the brother of Jesus had transmitted to Mary (5.7.1; 10.9.3). What is especially significant is that the manuscript evidence is divided between two forms of the name: Mariamme and Mariamne (note the ‘n’!). It is probably impossible to tell which Hippolytus himself wrote. However, it is easy to see that, in a milieu where the name Mariamme was not otherwise known, the usage could slip from Mariamme to Mariamne.

These variant readings in Hippolytus are the first known occurrences of the form Mariamne (which the Discovery Channel programme claims is the same name as that on one of the ossuaries). Since it occurs in Hippolytus as a variant of Mariamme, and since the latter is wll attested in Jewish usage back to the first century CE, it seems clear that the form Mariamne is not really an independent version of the name Mariam (independent of Mariamme, that is). But a late deformation of the form Mariamme, a deformation made by Geek speakers not familiar with the name. This must also then explain the usage in the apocryphal Acts of Philip (late 4th or early 5th century), where Mariamne is consistently and frequently used for the sister of the apostle Philip, apparently identified with both Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany.

We can now turn to the inscription on the ossuary, which has, in Greek: MARIAMENOUMARA. The two words Mariamenou and Mara are written consecutively with no space between. This makes it rather unlikely that two women are named here. But Rahmani takes a small stroke between the last letter of Mariamenou and the first of Mara to be a Greek letter eta (long e). He takes this to be the relative pronoun he Ieta with a rough breathing), reading: ‘Mariamnenou who [is also called] Mara.’ (Note that this is different, it seems, from what the Discovery Channel do when they read the eta with a smooth breathing, meaning ‘or’.) There are parallels (I gather from Rahmani) to this abbreviated way of indicating two names for the same person.

The form of the name on the ossuary in question is Mariamenou. This is a Greek genitive case, used to indicate that the ossuary belongs to Mary (it means 'Mary's' or 'belonging to Mary'). The nominative would be Mariamenon. Mariamenon is a diminutive form, used as a form of endearment. The neuter gender is normal in diminutives used for women. But the name Mariamenon is found only here in all our evidence for ancient Jewish names. It is, of course, a specifically Greek formation, not used in Hebrew or Aramaic.

This diminutive, Mariamenon, would seem to have been formed from the name Mariamene, a name which is attested twice elsewhere (in the Babatha archive and in the Jewish catacombs at Beth She’arim). Mariamene is an unusual Greek form of Mariam, presumably invented because it has a rather elegant hellenized form. When I first looked at this issue I was rather persuaded that the form Mariamne was a contracted form of Mariamene (which I think is what the Discovery Channel film claims), but I then found that the second and third century evidence (reviewed above) makes it much more plausible that the form Mariamne is a late deformation of Mariamme that occurred only in a context outside Palestine where the name was not known. So the Discovery Channel film’s claim that the name on the ossuary is the same as the name known to have been used for Mary Magdalene in the Acts of Philip is mistaken.

But we must also consider the rest of this inscription. The Discovery Channel film proposes to read Mara as the Aramaic word ‘the master’ (as in Maranatha). But, since we know that Mara was used as an abbreviated form of Martha, in this context of names on an ossuary it is much more plausible to read it as a name. This woman had two names: Mariamenon and Mara. It could be that the latter in this case was used as an abbreviation of Mariamenou, or it could be that the woman was known by Mariamenon, treated as a Greek name, and the Aramaic name Mara, conforming to the common practice of being known by two names, Greek and Semitic.

If the woman, for whatever reason, is given two different names on the ossuary, it is very unlikely that she would also have been known as Mariamene, even though this is the form of which Mariamenon is the diminutive. One other point can be made about Mariamenon. As a term of endearment it would be likely to have originated in the context of her family. But in that case, we probably need to envisage a family which used Greek as an ordinary language within the family. This does not mean it did not also use Aramaic, which would probably be the case if the names on the other ossuaries are those of family members closely related to Mariamenon. The family could have been bilingual even within its own orbit. Alternatively, the ossuaries in Aramaic could come from a branch of a big family or a generation of the family different from that of Mariamenon, such that their linguistic practice would be different. In any case, it is unlikely that the close family of Jesus would have spoken Greek within the family, and so it is unlikely that Mariamenon belonged to that close family circle.

The conclusion is that the name Mariamenon is unique, the diminutive of the very rare Mariamene. Neither is related to the form Maramne, except in the sense that all derive ultimately from the name Mariam. There is no reason at all to connect the woman in this ossuarywith Mary Magdalene, and in fact the name usage is decisively against such a connexion."