Jesus Family Tomb In the News
Jesus Tomb Scholars Retrace Their Steps
04/11/2007
Several of the experts interviewed for the Lost Tomb of Jesus documentary findings have now altered their conclusions, including a statistician who stated that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the East Talpiot, Jerusalem tomb being the tomb of Jesus and his family, a new study has found.
These findings were compiled by Stephen Pfann, an epigrapher at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem. The paper, entitled “Cracks in the Foundation: How the Lost Tomb of Jesus story is losing its scholarly support”, is a sixteen page report which brings to light dramatically revised statements by several of the experts featured in the Jesus tomb documentary.
One of the most startling of these revisions is that of Andrey Feuerverger, professor of statistics at the University of Toronto. Feuerverger now states that the ratio he provided in the documentary refers to the odds of a cluster of names appearing together. Feuerverger’s revised statement appears on the Discovery Channel’s website as follows: "It is unlikely that an equally surprising cluster of names would have arisen by chance under purely random sampling."
Israel archeologists had stated at the onset of the controversy that the names found inscribed on the ossuaries uncovered in the tomb were purely coincidental, asserting that the names were common during the first century.
In addition, DNA evidence included in the documentary has now also come under fire by the very expert who provided it. Doctor Carney Matheson, the DNA scientist who supervised the analysis of the ossuaries believed to belong to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, had stated in the documentary that "these two individuals, if they were unrelated, would most likely be husband and wife". However, Matheson later revised his statement, saying that "the only conclusions we made were that these two sets were not maternally related. To me, it sounds like absolutely nothing."
Pfann’s report is expected to incite further debate and discussion about the Jesus tomb findings.
Source: The Jerusalem Post
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