in 1980 a tomb was discovered in jerusalem recently the documentary the lost tomb of jesus claimed that these two bone boxes found in the tomb contained the bones of jesus christ and his wife but what does the evidence say was jesus married have his bones really been found see for yourself here on expedition bible [Music] [Music] in our search for answers to this serious challenge against christianity the team traveled to jerusalem where we met with one of the tomb’s original excavators dr shimon gibson um quite frequently people will say to me well have you heard about this this tomb of jesus which is being found in talpiyah what do you think about it could it be the tomb of uh of jesus and the first thing i said to two people as well i actually excavated at that tomb and they sort of they look look at me in a very puzzled way and they say so is this then the the the tomb the family tomb offered of jesus uh was jesus buried there have his bones being found [Music] so the tomb is down here this is it this is the place see this is a slab which is above the shaft which leads down to the so-called family tomb of jesus and i emphasize so-called dr gibson drew the original plan of this tomb back in 1980 from his drawings we were able to reconstruct what this tomb looked like in ancient times [Music] this stone bench is where a body would have been laid out in burial after about a year once the body had decomposed the bones would then be gathered and placed inside a limestone bone box called an ossuary and placed inside one of these smaller chambers that are carved in the walls of the tomb in some cases a name would be inscribed on the side of the ossuary to identify the person or sometimes people whose remains were contained inside [Music] so what would the implications be for christians if they really have found the bones of jesus here i think if the bones of jesus were actually found then that would imply that jesus of nazareth did not rise from the dead that the earliest disciples were either massively deceived or massive deceivers themselves and that therefore christianity is basically a sham i would cease to be a christian i would give up christian belief because i think it’s absurd to believe that someone is risen from the dead and therefore immortal and and glorious when in fact he’s died and rotted away that would be pure mythology and i don’t believe in mythology since the implications of the claim that the bones of jesus were found here are so serious for christians it’s important that we understand exactly what was found in this tomb dr amis cloner who was in charge of the excavation of the talpia tomb along with dr gibson take us back to their experience in 1980 when the tomb was first discovered one evening i received a call from dr amos klona saying to me there’s a tomb which yosef ghat is excavating would you be willing to pop along and investigate help him record the tomb i asked shimon gibson to draw the plan and prepare a sketch a section of the cave i went the following morning arrived at the site there were 10 arteries all in all and such i recorded onto my plan i would say that this is a common jewish tomb from the first century ad um with oshawas they belong to the family members and they scrolled on the sides of them family member names and that’s about it generally speaking the the tomb at the time look a common one a an ossuary burial place in this case 10 ossuaries with 6 inscriptions this is considered a common tomb because the names inscribed on the ossuaries are common names epigrapher dr stephen fawn studies the inscriptions on the hundreds of ossuaries stored in this israeli warehouse [Music] this is one of the talpio tomb ones we have joined dr faun on this particular day because he will be pulling aside the ossuaries from the talpia tomb to further study their inscriptions in front of us we have three of the six ossuaries that were inscribed in the uh talpio tomb of these inscriptions the most controversial reads yeshua barrios which translates into english as jesus son of joseph as yeshua the son of joseph the following clip from the lost team of jesus sensationalizes the importance of this inscription and on one of the ossuaries discovered in the talpiot tomb written in aramaic was an astonishing name yeshua bar yosef they’ve evaluated this from the standpoint of the common person on the street rather than according to what the common person on the street let’s say 2 000 years ago would understand if you saw that there was a jesus son of joseph these were very very common names and it’s kind of making the mountain of them out of a molehill type type of thing there were at least two other ossuaries on which the name yeshua barrios were found during the 20th century one of them was found in 1945 the headlines of the newspapers were half of the page that the remains of the family of jesus were found by a jewish archaeologist in jerusalem etc but i’m not surprised at all because these are the most common names this is really a very common set of names that you’re going to expect to find in just about any family five percent of the population would have the name jesus 10 of the population would have either the name joseph or mary in fact might be more like 15 for the name mary in fact in jerusalem at the time of jesus there was a very small variety of names in common use scholars have estimated that a pool of only 16 names accounted for nearly 75 percent of the population of the time all the names found in the talpia tomb come from the list of these most common 16 names of the period mary maria is found twice in the in the tomb yosef or yose the short form is found found twice in the tomb we have judas yuda found on on the tomb certainly we have uh mara martha we have jesus yeshua and we have matai found in that and these are all quite common in fact these are in the the top 12 names found in the in jewish names of that day since the talpia tomb contains common names it is very difficult if not impossible to identify with any one family because the names could easily represent practically any family living at the time to highlight the talpia tomb from around a thousand other first century tombs that have been found in and around jerusalem you would have to argue that the inscribed names found inside were somehow unique this is exactly what certain filmmakers and authors have attempted to do the following clip from the lost tomb of jesus is a good example of this [Music] then on a fifth ossuary they uncovered another inscription the inscription has two parts the second part reads mara well the first part is a diminutive of mariamne let’s say in this very tomb of talpiot the second mary right was clearly identifiable as mary magdalene let’s say right what would you be reaction then along inside this cluster it would be fascinating and certainly draw much more attention and raise many more questions but is there any reason to connect this inscription with mary magdalene here look right here we have this the squared script m-a-r-i-a-m-e mariame this is merely miriami it is no unique name it’s the most common name used for the formal form of maryam or mary on the inscriptions of that day from the first century and therefore it is taken out of the loop in terms of some significant name for identifying that tomb the connection between mariamene and maria magdalena is is insufficient at all this is why the filmmakers went looking for another unique name in the tomb that’s why they started pursuing yose and as it turns out it’s just another desperate attempt to try to link this tomb with the family of jesus you have a whole bunch of unique things yosa which you find in this tomb and that specific variation of the name you only find in the gospel of mark as a brother of jesus only in this tomb the the name jose is being merely the informal form of of joseph is not unique to this tomb the word yossas is found several times on other ossuaries two ossuaries were found in the talpiot tomb that bear the name jesus one is jesus son of joseph and the other reads judah son of jesus this means that the jesus that was buried here was the son of joseph but he was also the father of judah this would disqualify this tomb as the family tomb of jesus of nazareth as there is no evidence that he was married or had children yet this clip from the lost hymn of jesus makes both these claims judah son of jesus the new testament doesn’t say that jesus had a son but perhaps in this instance archaeology forces us to throw a different light on the new testament from a purely historical standpoint i don’t think there’s any reason at all to think that jesus of nazareth was married or had children quite the contrary in fact you know the inscriptions that are on these ossuaries of course are not at all um what they purported them to be and they those misinterpretations were used by the filmmakers to try to support a theory that is untenable that this is the family tomb of jesus i believe that this burial chamber has nothing to do with the family from nazareth the tomb itself merely has common names it did before and it does today during the making of this uh television documentary uh the lost tomb of jesus uh the director asked me very openly do i think this is the tomb of jesus is the talpiat tomb the family tomb of jesus and my answer was no the filmmakers now utilize forensic archaeologist stephen cox to remove bone samples from two of the talpia tomb ossuaries in the documentary my expertise was used to collect material that was found in the ossuaries despite the scholarly conclusion that the ossuary inscribed jesus son of joseph has no connection with jesus of nazareth the following clip from the lost tomb of jesus heavily insinuates that it does it’s just one of those moments where you’re struck to a kind of silence knowing that you’re holding the chemical history from the ossuary that may actually have contained the remains of jesus of nazareth stephen cox also took a sample from the ossuary inscribed mary omni the two samples were then dna tested the results showed that these two individuals did not share the same mother from this the film concludes that these two individuals must be husband and wife it was concluded that these people must have been married this is a huge jump in logic dr carney matheson the scientist who performed the dna test is quoted as having told the discovery channel there is a statement in the film that has been taken out of context while marriage is a possibility other relationships like father and daughter paternal cousins sister-in-law or indeed two unrelated individuals are also possible my conclusion is that they are not maternally related you cannot genetically test for marriage the testing of dna is a good test but when we enter into the forensic conclusion arena that’s where this movie fails and fails miserably and so perhaps jesus and mary magdalene were married as the dna results from the talpiot ossuaries suggest to conclude that these two people were husband and wife in this documentary is preposterous no writings throughout history until recent filmmakers has there ever been anyone who has stood up to say that jesus was married that’s not within the realm of christian historiographers nor in the realm of those who are pagan antagonists of christianity has it ever been implied that jesus was married it would be inconceivable i think that if jesus of nazareth had left behind a widow in the early church that there would be no mention anywhere in any of the documents of such a person when i was invited to be involved with the documentary it was not a direction to identify anyone at that point or to make a relationship between a jesus and america and i think these are terrible things to try and convince or dupe an audience into believing that are not substantiated by any form or fact whatsoever another example of this involves the most famous brother of jesus of nazareth james an ossuary appeared on the antiquities market some time ago that bears the controversial inscription james son of joseph brother of jesus the lost tomb of jesus filmmakers begin their desperate attempt to get this ossuary connected to the talpiot tomb by emphasizing that one of the ten ossuaries recorded by dr gibson is missing somehow somewhere one of the talpiot ossuaries went missing and it is with this missing ossuary that a new mystery begins perhaps the ossuary was stolen [Music] maybe a worker at the site in 1980 had light fingers professionally i’m insulted believe me we are we are doing our best way to document all the findings in the right way they appeared and the tense ossuary was a plain one but to blame us that we have smuggled or we have didn’t pay attention or allowed to steal it that’s a real blame and i will not accept it yet the original excavators dr cloner and dr gibson both told us that the tenth ossuary from the telpia tomb was broken undecorated and uninscribed and therefore recorded but not stored in the main antiquities warehouse the tenth ossuary being plain one it was left with many other undecorated and un inscribed ossuaries in the courtyards the filmmakers and writers on this subject then claim that this missing ossuary must have been the james ossuary but the evidence clearly contradicts this claim it will be enormous leap to go from a broken uninscribed and undecorated tenth uh archery from the tapioc tomb to that of the james archery which is complete decorated and inscribed so i don’t think there’s any connection between the two i think it’s a bit of a nonsense but there you are there is no way that we can actually connect the james ossuary with that tomb and it the evidence should just end right there all we had to do was scratch the surface we found so many errors and so many manipulations that the lost tomb of jesus ends up falling into the realm of what one would consider to be a hoax let’s look at an example of such a manipulation in the clip you are about to see the filmmakers try to convince their audience that this symbol on the entrance to the talpia tomb is an early symbol of the followers of jesus by matching it with these scratch marks on an ossuary in another tomb you’re not gonna believe it i’m imagining it can you see no i see it’s a it’s a symbol symbol from the from the tomb on an oscar this is incredible because the angle and and the thing is identically identical the dot is deliberately inside the inverted v with the dot in the middle the symbol from our tomb raider dot dot dot dot that’s dot all over the surface so that dot is just a dot the other thing is that that uh there’s a triangular triangle is also on the lid he doesn’t show the lip directly this is the same ossuary that was used to make this point in the lost tomb of jesus documentary in the lost tomb of jesus they’re trying to convince the viewer that this is an early christian symbol the lid to this bone box or this ossuary is removed for the documentary but when we put the lid that’s next to it on then we see very clearly that this is a mason’s mark there’s a mason’s mark on the box itself there’s a mason’s mark on the stone lid to show how that lid is to fit onto the ossuary now what does this mean why wasn’t the lid there for the shooting it was there for years in this case during the shooting somehow the lid disappeared was it not necessary was it in the way was it perhaps going to lead some people to believe that this was simply a mark made by the masons stonemasons and certainly not by followers of jesus here again you can see which direction to put put the lid this is one on the side of the box you see this little cut here it matches the one on top and you can see here in order to know that you when you put the bones inside with everybody standing around at that one-year ceremony that this lid is actually going on the right direction because if it isn’t because it’s actually cut by hand the lid can fall down inside and break the bones but you can see here that they’ve made this little this little chisel or a scratch zigzag up on the top to match the zigzag on the box itself so you know which direction the lid should go on this is gets into the realm of of journalism in which if you have to modify the environment to make the case for something it means that your case is very weak to try to undermine science undermine historiography undermine religion without having their facts straight that’s obviously what happened in this case i am not interested in arguing with the dvd because if i will have to relate to it and also to the book i will use impolite words it’s it’s not a joke at all all of the scholars in the film take each one of them have retracted themselves from what they said earlier or heavily modified what they said and in most cases they felt that they were manipulated into making certain statements and made to say something that helped to support a premise that they didn’t even know lay behind the work of these filmmakers you can take anybody and you can edit their words so that they can be seen to be supporting something they don’t necessarily believe in i saw the way that my interview was cut up into pieces that bits and pieces were used to follow a pre-designed conclusion and i was very upset with that i’m really irritated by the way that science was was used here i think it’s horrible it’s not based on any any facts much of the evidence shown there and written in the book is incorrect simply facts were touched were changed it’s not in many cases it’s not the real truth even though some of the scientific challenges that the lost team of jesus documentary presents about what was found here or new the historical and the theological challenges have been around for two thousand years the overwhelming majority agree that jesus of nazareth died by crucifixion under roman authority that he was buried by joseph of arimathea in a tomb that that tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers on the sunday morning after the crucifixion that various individuals and groups of people saw appearances of jesus alive after his death and that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that god had raised jesus from the dead so the real debate isn’t over those facts those are largely agreed upon the real debate is how do you best explain them is the best explanation a resurrection hypothesis or some naturalistic hypothesis the books and films that support the claim that the bones of jesus have been found argue for a naturalistic hypothesis the following clip from the lost tomb of jesus is a good example of this [Music] if the bones of jesus were to be found in an osteoary in jerusalem tomorrow and without doubt let’s say they are definitely agreed to be the bones of jesus would that destroy christian faith it certainly would not destroy my christian faith i leave what happens to bodies up to god for cross and there is no objective truth about the way the world is or about these religious matters there is no objective reality to god or the resurrection or any of these spiritual interpretations they’re just subjective imaginative personal constructs so for him it’s easy to confess that if the bones of jesus were found it wouldn’t bother his faith of course not because his faith is anti-realist it’s not connected to objective reality if you take a naturalistic approach whereby miracles are impossible god does not intervene in history then of course the resurrection cannot have occurred the ascension cannot be a physical event of course you will say that all of this was legendary or fictional and so forth but then it will not be a conclusion based on the evidence the following clip from the lost team of jesus presents the hypothesis that jesus’s disciples stole his body and placed it in another tomb it was rumored that jesus’s disciples secretly took their master’s body presumably to give him a permanent burial the problem with the hypothesis that the disciples secretly took jesus body in order to give him a permanent burial is that it’s just a non-starter with respect to explaining the origin of the christian movement it wouldn’t do anything to establish or evoke a movement founded upon belief in the resurrection of the dead man the fact that a group of jesus’s disciples would know that he did not really rise from the dead that he didn’t ascend into heaven bodily to go about the roman world of his day of that day and for nearly every single one of those disciples to actually suffer martyrdom for a story that they knew wasn’t true i think it’s sloppy historiography now you might say well lots of people have been willing to die for a lie yeah but only if they thought it was the truth this hypothesis suggests that they knew it was false they knew it was a lie and yet they were willing to go to horrible tortuous deaths for it and that is just i think historically preposterous from this side as a historian i have to give a great deal of credibility to the story as it stands where do you believe archaeologically there’s the most evidence for where jesus was um buried do you believe uh the east talpio tomb or the garden tomb or the church of the holy sepulchre definitely the church of the holy sepulchre i think in the end we have to accept that the tradition relating to the position of the tomb of jesus situated under the church of the holy sepulchre is the actual spot so this is the traditional tomb where jesus was resurrected and this is easter morning it’s been a very telling experience this morning this is easter morning and we’ve visited both the traditional tomb of jesus in the old city of jerusalem as well as the talpio tomb and in doing so in contrast with one another it’s very very evident which one is attached to tradition which one is attached to the historical events surrounding the death burial and resurrection of jesus christ ah [Music] oh [Music] [Music] ah when i weigh the historical evidence pertinent to the resurrection of jesus and the various competing hypotheses to explain this evidence then i’m convinced objectively and honestly that the best explanation of this evidence is the hypothesis that the original eyewitnesses gave that god raised jesus from the dead and for that reason i think that this was a historical event [Music] you