Talpiot Tomb

The Talpiot Tomb (or Talpiyot Tomb) is a rock-cut tomb discovered in 1980 in the East Talpiot neighborhood, five kilometers (three miles) south of the Old City in East Jerusalem. It contained ten ossuaries, six inscribed with epigraphs, including one interpreted as "Yeshua bar Yehosef" ("Jeshua, son of Joseph"), though the inscription is partially illegible, and its translation and interpretation is widely disputed.^[1] The tomb also yielded various human remains and several carvings.

The Talpiot discovery was documented in 1994 in "Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel" numbers 701–709, and first discussed in the media in the United Kingdom during March/April 1996.^[2] Later that year an article describing the find was published in volume 29 of Atiqot, the journal of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

A controversial documentary film, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, was produced in 2007 by director James Cameron and journalist Simcha Jacobovici, and was released in conjunction with a book by Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino titled The Jesus Family Tomb. The book and film make the case that the Talpiot Tomb was the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth, members of his extended family, and several other figures from the New Testament—and, by inference, that Jesus had not risen from the dead as the New Testament describes. This conclusion, while weakly supported by a statistical analysis of the names involved,^[3] is rejected by most archaeologists, theologians, linguistic and biblical scholars.^[1]^[4]^[5]

^ ^a ^b Heiser, Michael. "Evidence Real and Imagined: Thinking Clearly About the "Jesus Family Tomb"" (PDF). pp. 9–13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-13. Retrieved 2022-04-20.
^ "The Times Tomb Story".
^ Kilty, Kevin. "Probability, Statistics, and the Talpiot Tomb".
^ Cite error: The named reference milstein was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Kloner, Amos; Gibson, Shimon (2013). "The Talpiot Tomb Reconsidered: The Archaeological Facts". In Charlesworth, James H. (ed.). The Tomb of Jesus and His Family?: Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem's Walls. Eerdmans. pp. 29–75. ISBN 978-0-8028-6745-2.

[heiser-1] Heiser, Michael. "Evidence Real and Imagined: Thinking Clearly About the "Jesus Family Tomb"" (PDF). pp. 9–13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-13. Retrieved 2022-04-20.

[2] "The Times Tomb Story".

[kilty-3] Kilty, Kevin. "Probability, Statistics, and the Talpiot Tomb".

[milstein-4] Cite error: The named reference milstein was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[5] Kloner, Amos; Gibson, Shimon (2013). "The Talpiot Tomb Reconsidered: The Archaeological Facts". In Charlesworth, James H. (ed.). The Tomb of Jesus and His Family?: Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem's Walls. Eerdmans. pp. 29–75. ISBN 978-0-8028-6745-2.

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