Gibson said the original team "viewed [the tomb] as a normal family tomb of a Jewish family from the 1st century... All the names were well known. None of them seemed to us to be unusual." The authorities lacked the capability to do the kind of analysis that would be possible now, he said, and he hoped that such further research would be permissible.
Simcha Jacobovici.
Photo: Courtesy
Back in Jerusalem, by contrast, Israeli archeologists were firmly dismissive, reiterating that the similarity of the names found inscribed on the ossuaries to those in the Jesus narrative was coincidental since many of those names were commonplace in the first century CE.
"Yeshua was such a popular name during the Second Temple Period," said Israeli archeologist Danny Bahat, who is currently with the University of Toronto. "The fact that you have such similar names is due to the fact that these were the prevalent names during that time," he said.
Bahat added that, like The Da Vinci Code, the new documentary was pure fiction that took "two correct facts" and mixed them with "gibberish," such as the assertion that the "James" ossuary originated in the same cave.
Kloner, who had previously dismissed the documentary's claims as "impossible" and "nonsense," said Monday that having now viewed the film he had previously taken it "too seriously," and stood by every word of his stinging criticism.
Kloner noted that when the ossuaries were found nearly three decades ago, most of the bones inside were badly decomposed.
Amos Kloner.
Photo: Courtesy
Due to haredi pressures put on the Israeli government, no anthropological tests were ever carried out on the remains, he said, with the bones transferred to the Religious Affairs Ministry for immediate reburial along with assorted other remains found in various construction projects and digs.
The location of the bones, which were then interred by the Jewish burial society, is not known.
At the press conference, Gibson had recalled a similar process, though he said an anthropologist had normally examined bones in the numerous ossuaries that were being recovered at the time from various caves at construction sites in the then-expanding Jerusalem.
The IAA looks after 30,000 known archeological sites in Israel, including thousands of burial caves; most such sites are sealed, and closed off to the public.
The slab that seals the Talpiot tomb is located at the bottom of a stairway between buildings, and any future opening of the site to the public would likely require the relocation of some residents.
The alleged burial site, which has been contested by scholars and church officials alike, is several kilometers from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City where many Christians believe Jesus's body lay for three days.
According to the New Testament, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion, and the fact that Jesus had an ossuary would contradict the core Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven. Still, members of the film team suggested on Monday that some Christian traditions could be reconciled to the notion of a "spiritual" resurrection.
The New York press conference ended on a semi-humorous note, when the panel was asked if there was enough DNA remaining in the ossuary to clone Jesus. "Some experiments shouldn't be done," one of the film team responded.
Then Tabor said conclusively that there was "no intact cellular DNA" and so no possibility of cloning
