Our Book Has Come Out In Italy!

The book that Professor James Tabor and I recently wrote (The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity) just came out in Italy! It deals with the evidence gathered over 10 years demonstrating, I believe, conclusively that Jesus and most of his family were buried in what is now a suburb of Jerusalem called Talpiot.

Their tomb has been found! It was found in 1980, ironically, at Passover time i.e., around the time that Jesus was crucified. It has a unique and strange symbol over its entrance.

Inside the tomb, were ten limestone coffins called “ossuaries”. At least six of them had inscriptions. One says, plainly, “Jesus, son of Joseph”. But the naysayers say: “it’s not that Jesus”. Jesus was a common name, they say, so was Joseph. We pointed out that John is a common name today, and so is George, but there aren’t that many people called “John son of George”. Once you have two names in combination, you narrow down the field. We went to a world renowned statistician who came out in our favour, but that didn’t help. It’s some other “Jesus, son of Joseph”, they say. Next to Jesus there were two “Marys”. Yes, two Marys! No one disputes this, they just say “Mary was a common name”. One Mary is literally called “Maria”. You guessed it, it’s not that “Maria”. The second Mary’s name is written in Greek – “Mariamene” – which in the entire corpus of Greek writings is associated only with Mary Magdalene. So what did the naysayers do? They challenged the original published spelling of this Greek name – which had stood for some 30 years. Suddenly, it wasn’t a very special Mary – it was just another Mary. Another name in the tomb is the Hebrew “Yose”, “Joses” in English. This is a nickname specifically associated in two of the Gospels (Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55) with one of the brothers of Jesus. You guessed it, it isn’t that “Yose”, it’s another one who must have worked in a bakery run by a “Jesus, son of Joseph”. There was even a “Matthew” in the tomb. One ossuary went missing, apparently looted.

In any event, to ascertain whether the people buried in Talpiot were Jesus of Nazareth and his family, or some other family with a cluster of identical names, we built a robotic arm and investigated a still sealed tomb underneath a building some 60 meters from the controversial Jesus family tomb. And, what do you know? We found the earliest Christian symbol ever discovered, the “Sign of Jonah”, an image of a fish spitting out a stick figure of Jonah.

The Gospels refer to the “Sign of Jonah” as a symbol of resurrection! (Luke 11:29 and Matthew 12:40 and 16:4). And next to it there was a cross, and next to that the only statement of resurrection faith found on any ossuary in Jerusalem. So how could anyone deny that we are literally at Ground Zero of the birth of Christianity? Well, the naysayers say that the image of the fish spitting out Jonah isn’t really a fish spitting out anybody. First, they said it was a “column”, then they said it was a “perfume bottle”, and now they all seem to be in agreement that it’s an “amphora”. As for the cross, it’s not a cross, it’s a door. And the statement of resurrection faith? Well, all Jews believe in resurrection so it has nothing to do with Christianity.

But the evidence has now been documented in two books. The first I wrote with Charles Pellegrino (The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History) and the most recent I co-wrote with the world renowned scholar and Chair of the Department of Religion at the University of North Carolina, Professor James Tabor. And now it’s been translated into Italian. In Rome, the birthplace of post-Jesus Christianity, Italians can now pick up our book and weigh the archaeological evidence that attests to the historical Jesus.