New Evidence on the James Ossuary and its Probable Connection to the Talpiot Jesus Tomb

My grandmother was named Minnie Greifer, and my father's original name was Elisha Greifer. He was born in New York City in 1925, I believe. For some strange reason, there was another lady named Minnie Greifer (I am not sure about the spelling of the either lady's first name) in New York City, who also had a son named Elisha Greifer, who was born in 1924.(He was a professor whose obituary I found.) I am guessing that the birth of one of them was probably announced in the newspaper and that name went into the other set of parent's mind somehow, and when they had a child, they gave it the same name. I don't know how that happened, but how can two people with uncommon names living in the same city around the same time name their sons the same uncommon name?
The names you dealt with are much more common, so it doesn't prove much to me.

Kenneth, the issue of the significance of the inscription "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" (assuming authenticity) and its likelihood of referring to THAT Jesus has been thoroughly explored now with many of the statistical materials archived on this web site. In terms of the James ossuary the most extensive work was done by Camil Fuchs. I would suggest you take a look at his findings, which are quite balanced and critically presented if this subject interests you. For purposes of this new publication the connection of the ossuary or the tomb to Jesus of Nazareth is irrelevant. Soil chemistry knows no names...it is a single question--can we establish the probably provenance of the ossuary--what tomb did it come from?

"can we establish the probably provenance of the ossuary--what tomb did it come from?"

Not only can we, it would seem that we have so established the probability.

Soil chemistry knows no names; yet the fact remains, there are names attached to the tomb from which these soil samples were taken, and if memory serves me correctly, the patina samples taken from the "bone boxes" within the Talpiot Tomb matched the patina tested on the James Ossuary which, in and of itself, ups the probabilities significantly, does it not?

In a nutshell, from a lay-woman's perspective, what do we have here:
Soil match.
Patina match.
The right time frame.
Names mistakenly considered "common" (particularly when it comes to an extremely rare nick name such as Joses - I'm not going to touch Mariamene ), and that are that are familiar to us through the New Testament writings and their relationship to one another.

The question remains, where do we go and what do we do from here to further establish this tomb, its occupants, and their relationships to one another?

It's my understanding that the ossuaries have been removed from the tomb, and what pieces and parts of whatever human remains contained within them were removed and buried? I could be mistaken, so please do correct me if I am.

It troubles me deeply that our scientific and religious communities aren't scrambling to unveil the secrets Talpiot holds and has held for some 2,000 years, though I can well understand why they don't - or won't.

Hi, James.
I knew I would find you here.

Carolyn, thank you for your vote regarding my expertise, but in fact I just like to engage with people who think deeply and offer what insights I can about their concerns. In this case I could offer a updated likelihood calculation pertaining to the tomb being that of the Jesus family.

I did not use the word "should" as a expression of propriety or obligation, but rather an auxiliary of condition -- in the sense of "if it should come to pass". I would love that someone would happen upon the metallic objects which must have been in the James ossuary. However, this topic you brought up about "where do we go..." gives me a second opportunity to speak of where else we may go for additional physical evidence. Something crossed my mind after my response to your comment, which is that to my knowledge we have done nothing with the physical measurements of the James ossuary.

I read in one of James Tabor's posts that the missing tenth ossuary and the James ossuary have physical size close to one another. Ossuaries are manufactured items, made by a small group of craftsmen, and perhaps to particular sizes subject to manufacturing variation. It is not possible to decide if this "closeness" of physical measurements is significant or not until one has a look at the distribution of dimensions of typical ossuaries. I suppose that measuring ossuaries is standard procedure for the IAA, and might even be done according to some standard process. At any rate, a thorough examination of dimensions would constitute an independent attack on the problem of provenance.

Thanks for your thoughtful contributions to this fascinating topic.

Dear sir did you just test 25 caves like it said in your paper the owner of the james ossary said you said have done 200 to 300 caves for testing

In layman’s terms would you say this is the ossuary of Jesus brother ?

I am new to what has recently been done to verify the ossuary.

Thank you

Mike

I sincerely doubt your investigation will ever give you the "answer" you desire. However, when you die, you will discover that you have a soul that will live forever. My viewpoint comes from an out of body experience related to the book of Revelation. Should you want to investigate, go to Amazon and read Secrets, never heard until now - of the book of Revelation by John Zachary

In contrast with what I term Twilight Zone stories, scientific dating Daniel's 70-weeks prophecy using the exact science of astronomy should provide you information you are more likely to enjoy, or perhaps more appropriate, be challenged. Watch video #5 as it is a quick overview. If you want the details, I have created four more videos. I am actually working on video 7, which is how I read your viewpoint.

Where is your evidence that jesus and mary were married please dont say DNA that is a joke that could have been related through the father half brother and half sister they could have been cousins she could have been married to Jose matthew or the son of jesus which would have made them father in law and daughter in law and no Thomas was not the undercover son of jesus.

This still fails to explain a lot. You suggest that the talipot tomb and James Ossuary are related in the sense that the James Ossuary came from the Talpiot tomb. Well this is hardly plausible for many reasons:
1. The names given on the talpiot tomb are too common. All of the names given were common in ancient Israel. Especially Mary and Joseph. As for Jesus, Josephus mentions 10 other notable Jesus’s living during the time of Jesus. Also you claim that Mary Magdalene is in the tomb being the wife of Jesus. Well that might work expect according to historians Mary died in Turkey. Also there are other names that shouldn’t belong if this is solely the family tomb, names like Matthew. You’d have to claim that somehow Matthew was apart of this tomb which would be ad hoc since Matthew died in Italy. Also you claim Jose’s is the son of Jesus. Well this goes back to the idea of Jesus being married. Nearly all scholars agree the historical Jesus wasn’t married or had children.
The early church could have even used it to make Jesus more like David as David had multiple children. Also when Paul is arguing as to if Corthinans can marry he writes: “Do we not have the right to the company of a believing wife, like the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?”‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭9:5‬. If Jesus was indeed married and had children it would have certainly been mentioned and modeled.
2: According to Amos Kloner, there is no way the James Ossuary and can be connected to the talpiot tomb because of the differing dimensions. Granted, there are some dissimilarity among tombs that have been found to be related. Yet Kloner notes that theses dimensions are too unrelated.
3: Scholars also note that people buried in tombs outside of Jerusalem were known by their place of origin. We know of many people in the Bible according to their origin, people such as Mary Magdalene, Saul of Tarsus even Jesus of Nazareth. If the tomb truly was the or Jesus Christ then we could expect to find a place if orgin mentioned on the tomb. But of course we don’t find that. Plus it wouldn’t make sense not to call Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth on the tomb since he is called Jesus of Nazareth dozens of times in acts, and the gospels.
4. Lastly, the talpiot tomb was known to have wealthy owners. According to the Bible and scholars the early Christians were poor and persecuted. They rarely had the funds for food and had to share liberally. The ide of buying a tomb for a dead messiah lacks explanatory power.
Regarding the Isotope correlation of the talpiot tomb and the James Ossuary. I believe other theories are more plausible. The first I would purpose is that the relation was caused by chance due to dust storms in Israel. The owner of the James Ossuary even has a photo of himself with the Ossuary before the talpiot tomb was found. Though this may seem implausible, I believe it has more explanatory power and is less ad hoc.
The second theory is the James the brother of Jesus was buried with fellow Jewish Christians in Jerusalem that shared common names. Just as I argued earlier the names in the tomb are too common and don’t match the family of Jesus.

Overall, the idea of finding the historical Jesus and his family’s tomb is unlikely. There’s too many factors that point to this not being the tomb of Jesus like common names, dissimilar dimensions, lack of orgin name, early church not mentioning Jesus son, and the early church not being wealthy. I doubt poor fisherman would fabricate a story of a rising messiah and then give
up their lives for something they knew to be wrong.

I've been following these discoveries for a while now and understand why the comparisons of the "Patina" is important as to the relative locale of the "James Ossuary" to the Jesus Talpiot tomb, but regarding the DNA testing why has there not been testing of DNA residue from the "Jose" Ossuary compared to the "Mariamene" DNA results previously done on her and Jesus' ossuary? Would that not be significant as to the relationship of mother and child and would go to the credibility of "Mariamene" being the mother and probable wife of Jesus?