Entrevistas MP

Interview with Simcha Jacobovici
Made by MysteryPlanet: 07/11/2007

Date: 07/11/2007 .·. BACK TO MAIN

	Name: Simcha Jacobovici.
	Country: Canada.
	Profession and/or Occupation: Filmmaker
	Published Books/Researches: “The Jesus Family Tomb”.
	Web Site: www.jesusfamilytomb.com Or www.apltd.ca
	Topics covered in the interview: The Lost Tomb of Jesus.

Question: First of all, we would like to know what your personal opinion about Jesus is. Did he really exist as a historical character? If so, who was him: a man, a god-man, a messiah, a spiritual master, a prophet?

Answer: I think there is no question, historically speaking, that Jesus existed. A story like that cannot be fabricated out of nothing. The earliest Gospel was written within 50 years or so of his life. He is mentioned in Josephus and in the rabbinic Talmud. So there is no question that there was a historical Jesus. At the same time, in various cultures, e.g. Roman, Jewish, Alexandrian etc., he was “re-packaged”, so to speak, to appeal to that specific culture. It is in this context that myth and history start getting intertwined. As for what he was, it is clear from the Gospels that he was a Jewish Rabbi (he’s called “Rabenu”, i.e. “our Rabbi” by his followers), and it is also clear that he and some of his followers believed that he was the long awaited Messiah. Mainstream Judaism rejected this claim. In some cultures, his Messianic claim was re-interpreted as claims to Divinity.

Question: What lead you to get involved in this project of finding the lost tomb of Jesus?

Answer: In 2002 I was doing an investigation into a bone box, or ossuary, that made international headlines. On its side there is an inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”. If authentic, this was the first hard archaeological evidence of Jesus of Nazareth. While I was investigating the story behind that ossuary, I learned of the Talpiot tomb and the six inscriptions found in it. I was amazed that a cluster of names such as “Jesus, son of Joseph”, two Marys, and a “Yose” (the precise nickname given by the Gospel of Mark for one of Jesus’ four brothers) could be totally ignored. I then started a five year investigation. In the process, I rediscovered the tomb, which had been thought destroyed, and I identified the connection between one of the Marys and Mary Magdalene. We further conducted statistical and DNA investigations. By the end, I became convinced that this is a story that has to be shared with the world.

Question: If the tomb was discovered in 1980, why wasn’t at the time anybody concerned about investigating on the possibility that it could be the tomb of Jesus? Why was the tomb closed again after the recent re-discovery? More so, if being your theory true, the implications would be quite important.

Answer: Good question. You tell me. If someone finds a first century coffin with the name “Jesus, son of Joseph” on it, even if he believes that it couldn’t possibly be Jesus of Nazareth, why doesn’t he look into the coffin and check the bones for marks of crucifixion? That would settle the issue and there would be no controversy. Instead, no one is quite sure what happened to the bones and there is no forensic bone report in the Israel Antiquities archives.

Question: Can you make a list of the evidence aiming at the possibility that the tomb belonged to Jesus and his family?

Answer: I recommend that people see my film (available at Amazon.com “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”) and/or read my book (“The Jesus Family Tomb”, also on Amazon). You can also go to my website (www.jesusfamilytomb.com).

In sum, out of thousands of ossuaries that have been found, only two bear the name “Jesus, son of Joseph” and only one —this one!— has been found in its archaeological context. In the same tomb, you have a “Maria”, a name universally recognized as appropriate for the mother of Jesus, and a “Mariamene”, a Greek version of the Hebrew Miriam that has been linked for at least 1600 years with Mary Magdalene. Beside them, there is a “Yose”, a nickname given by the Gospel of Mark —the earliest Gospel— for one of the four brothers of Jesus. No other ossuary has ever been found with this particular version of the name “Yose” on it. Is this all a coincidence? Statistics say no. In addition, mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the “Jesus” and “Mary Magdalene” ossuaries. They do not match, suggesting that these two were related by marriage, not blood.

When you add up the textual evidence, the archaeological evidence, the statistics, the DNA and the patina test conducted on the ossuaries, you are left with very compelling evidence that what we are looking at is the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and some of his family.

Question: One of the religious matters which may be affected by the discovery would be that regarding the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. What would the new interpretation of the gospels be according to this finding and seeing that they deal with this “fact”?

Answer: I’m not a Christian and I’m not a theologian. But, on the one hand, if one is a Christian who believed in the physical resurrection of Jesus prior to this discovery, I suppose one can continue to believe that. He could have been moved on Saturday night, risen on Sunday morning and then —40 days later— ascended to Heaven, leaving his body to be buried in Talpiot. Meaning, a physical resurrection is not necessarily challenged by this tomb. But a physical ascension is. But I’m not sure that the original followers of Jesus believed in a physical resurrection. Mark —the earliest Gospel— ends when Mary Magdalene (his wife?), Mary the mother, and Salome, his sister, discovering the empty tomb on Saturday night. A youth tells them that he has been “lifted” out and that they will be able to see him in the Galilee. Later, the text was amended and several paragraphs were added about his appearances and his ascension. So I’m not sure that the original followers actually believed in a physical resurrection and ascension. They may have, however, still believed in his Messiahship.

Question: Amos Kloner, the Bar Ilan University professor who led the initial work on the tomb’s excavation, noted the Talpiot cave was a typical middle-to-upper-class Jewish family’s tomb from the Second Temple period, which lasted from about 538 B.C. to A.D. 70. Did Jesus’s family have resources enough as to have a family tomb in Jerusalem (not in Galilee)?

Answer: First of all, everyone agrees (including Professor Kloner) that secondary burial was only used in Jerusalem from about 30 BCE to 70 CE (AD), i.e. the destruction of Jerusalem. Professor Kloner does not mean that there is a 600 period in which this tomb can fit. Rather, it is called a “second temple” tomb, to differentiate it from a, say, earlier burial site.

Second of all, I heard many people say that Jesus could not have afforded a tomb such as this. They must have access to his bank account. I don’t. What I do know is that the Gospels say that many of the apostles were wealthy, e.g. tax collectors. There is also a Christian tradition that Mary Magdalene was wealthy. The Gospels are explicit that Joseph of Arimathea, a follower of Jesus, was “a wealthy man”. The idea that a leader of a movement such as the Jesus movement couldn’t be buried in a middle class tomb is silly.

Others have said that any family tomb would be in Nazareth, not Jerusalem. But let’s just stick to the facts. What do we know from the Gospels? We know he was buried in a tomb in Jerusalem. Now the question is which tomb?

Question: What does the tomb symbol which has an inverted “V” with a dot in it (the chevron and the circle) mean? Does it have any relationship with the masonry or the Templar Knights?

Answer: In the book we speculate that the symbol may be related to the Templars. I don’t have definitive proof, but if they did discover this tomb, they might have removed some objects from it, e.g. a skull, and they may have adopted the chevron with a circle as a symbol because it is on the façade of the tomb. This symbol may have evolved into the symbol of the pyramid with the eye in it, which became a Masonic symbol. Interestingly, the Templars were accused of worshipping a skull. But this is speculation and more investigation has to be done.

Question: In the documentary it is said that Jesus mother’s name is “Miryam” but in the ossuary it appears a Latinized version: “Maria” which would be how Latin-speakers followers of Jesus called her (and thus the Latin version was written in the ossuary). Why did they write the Latin form in Hebrew characters in a 1st century ossuary? If this one was the Latin form, why didn’t they write the characters in Latin? And why did the Latin-speakers followers of Jesus, who were even many kilometres away, have influence on the way the name should be written in the ossuary?

Answer: Judea was a Roman province. Latin was not unusual. Miriam was a common Hebrew name, so common that Hebrew speaking Jews adopted various variations of the name to differentiate between one Miriam and another. So, it’s entirely possible that someone who became known as “Maria” would be called that by the people who knew her. The fact is that it is a Latin version and it is written in Hebrew, so I don’t really understand the point of the question. Obviously, Hebrew speakers called some Miriams, “Maria”. Also, this is not the only “Maria” ever found. It is rare but not unheard of. What makes it very special is that it was next to a “Jesus, son of Joseph”.

Question: DNA tests have shown that Jesus and Mariamene (Mary Magdalene) weren’t related by blood (matrilineally) and the possibility that they were husband and wife really exists. Have another tests been made, for example to the Merayah ossuary, to determinate if she was Jesus’ mother?

Since mtDNA (mitochondrial dna) is only transferred from mother to child, “Jesus” could have very well been Mariamene’s father (or any other relative on the paternal side), and the mtDNA testing would then indicate that they were “not related”. Why is it that, if Jesus and Mariamene were not matrilineally related, the conclusion that they were husband and wife abruptly appears, instead of considering the possibility that they could have been related by their fathers.

Will a nuclear DNA analysis be considered in the future to determine if “Jesus” and Mariamene were truly related?

Answer: They tried to get nuclear DNA but failed given the antiquity of the sample. Maybe in the future the experts will be more successful. Usually, grown women were married and when they died, they were buried with their husbands, not their fathers. So it’s unlikely that this Jesus was the father of Mariamene. One can think of all kinds of patrilineal connections. But that’s not the point. The point is that for thousands of years Jesus and Mary Magdalene have been linked romantically, e.g. the Gnostic Gospels. I didn’t make that up. The fact is that for thousands of years a Greek version of Miriam has been linked to Mary Magdalene, e.g. Church Father Origen, Church Father Hippolytus and the Acts of Philip. I didn’t make this up. When you take those two things together and add them to the DNA results, all the evidence seems to suggest that these two were related by marriage, not blood.

Question: Some slanderers have said, trying to attack the persons and not the facts, that all about the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” was only a thing to profit with and to attempt to discredit Christianity. They also mention that the timing of the Discovery's special, right before Christianity's Easter Week was not by accident. They also say that last year something similar occurred with the National Geographic's Gospel of Judas special on the high Christian holiday of Palm Sunday. What is your reply to such claims?

Answer: When people attack other people personally, that means they don’t have anything substantial to say. Which means that they have weak arguments and we have strong ones. With respect to the air date, it was purposely moved by Discovery out of the Easter period. But what’s the difference when you air something? It doesn’t affect the facts.

Question: Do you believe the Bible could be taken as a historical document? Are there scripts in the Bible which support the Lost Tomb of Jesus’ Family idea? Are there scripts which not?

Answer: I believe the New Testament has a lot of history embedded in it. I also believe that the texts that were not included in the New Testament, e.g. the Gospel of Peter, also have history in them. The trick is to separate fact from fiction, metaphor from history. So when the Gospel of Peter tells me that two young men went into the tomb, and three emerged —one leaning on the other two— that sounds like history. When it tells me that they were followed by a talking cross, that sounds like metaphor. In this instance you have to look at the tomb and at the Gospels together.

Here we have a tomb halfway between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. It’s not proof but it certainly fits the story. Here you have a man called “Jesus son of Joseph”. Maybe it’s another Jesus, but it certainly fits the story. Here you have a Maria. She’s not unique but it certainly fits the story. Here you have a Mariamene. Unique. Fits the story. She’s called the “Master” on this ossuary. Certainly compelling. Here you have a Yose. It’s not proof but it’s the only ossuary of its kind and it perfectly fits what Mark tells us about one of the brothers of Jesus. Taken all together, i.e. the archaeology, the New Testament, the Gnostic Gospels, the DNA, the statistics etc., you end up with a very compelling argument in favour of this tomb being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and some of his family.

Question: Thank you very much, Simcha. Would you like to give us an advance on future researches or leave any last message to the people interested in this topic?

Answer: See my film “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”, read the book “The Jesus Family Tomb”, go to our website www.jesusfamilytomb.com and only then make up your mind. First the evidence, then the theology, not the other way around.