# Is this reasonable evidence that Jesus lived? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 22, 2002, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340 "2002-10-22T05:46:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2002, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/61 "2002-10-25T16:46:37Z")
> [@](#): > > That box IS evidence- but not conclusive- but it doesn’t really matter. However, proving or disproving the box does not lend credence or doubt to whether or not Jesus was the “Son of God”. Even if the box is false- doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t exist, and even if the box is 100% legit- doesn’t mean that Jesus is the Messiah. Well, that much is true. However, you’re making one additional tacit assumption that is not valid – that the Iakov whose bones were buried in that ossuary is the particular Iakov referred to in the Gospels and Acts as “James the Brother of the Lord.” And the best verdict we could come up with on that assertion is “there’s some likelihood it might well be, but it’s not proven.” ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2002, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/62 "2002-10-25T17:35:57Z")
And in running the stats, a statistician never claims to have proved something true. There are always outliers. So even if these names were rare enough that the statistical calcuation claimed their would likely be only one box in Judea with that inscription, a statistician would say “but who really knows - maybe that was Second Temple equivalent of the year Love Story came out and everyone named their girls Jennifer, but all the other boxes from that period were lost in the Crusades.” One of the big kickers is that we don’t know the history of this box - where has it been for 2,000 years. Where was it found originally. You will never be able to PROVE that this was the box of THE James. But every bit of data makes that more convincing. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2002, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/63 "2002-10-26T17:51:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose \* > **We don’t have any information at this point about possible naming patterns among Jews in 1st Century Jerusalem, so where apparently Lemaire and Shanks would say, “Let’s go ahead and assume that a baby named James had just as much chance of having a brother named Joshua as he would of having a brother named anything else”, I would prefer to say, "We don’t have enough information to speculate."** In societies where the name of one individual is dependent (in probability terms) on another family member’s name, doesn’t that typically mean it’s LESS likely to have 3 different names within the family–i.e., accounting for the higher probability of naming a son after a father, naming a brother after a recently deceased brother, etc.? In other words, if the assumption of independence is incorrect, wouldn’t that mean there was probably _less_ than 20 instances of a man names James with a brother named Jesus and a father named Joseph? Doesn’t your point actually strengthen Lemaire’s argument that there wouldn’t have been many combinations like this (even if it is still inconclusive)? There may have been naming patterns that would have made this a very common combination, but without knowing that, isn’t it more reasonable to base assumptions on the expected individual percentages within the population? This sets the statistical upper limit of how many James-Joseph-Jesus combinations there would have been (accepting that there was probably less, for the reasons noted above). Again, nothing is conclusive (that goal is lost at the start). But that doesn’t mean it’s a meanigless extrapolation. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2002, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/64 "2002-10-26T18:11:48Z")
The independance of the variables was the first thing I thought about. Because in today’s society, the names of family members is NOT independent. Not even close. For instance, my first name is ‘Dan’. My brother’s name is ‘Tim’. How much would you like to wager than the number of Dans in the world who have a brother named Tim is much higher than a random sampling of the number of Tims in society would suggest? Obviously, because people who name one child after an Old Testament book are much more likely to name a second child after a different Old Testament book. You can find naming threads like that all through society. All it would take would be for a popular figure named Joseph to name a son James, and pretty soon you’d find a higher percentage of other Josephs also naming their son James. If we cannot document that society well enough to know such factors, then all you can really do is lower your confidence interval to account for unknown, but still likely to exist, interactions. Jesus was apparently descended from the line of David. Would the number of James, Josephs, and Jesuses be higher in the line of David than in other groups? ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2002, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/65 "2002-10-26T18:21:06Z")
—You can find naming threads like that all through society.— But that’s part of the problem. That naming seems deliberate and linked in the anecdotal level is no guarantee that it’s non-random at the population level. Of course everyone has intentions as individuals: the question is whether the effects are any more likely to affect one set of names vs. others. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2002, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/66 "2002-11-04T01:57:03Z")
Just noting that the box was shipped to Toronto to be exhibited, but arrived with cracks through the inscription. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle\_east/2393209.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2393209.stm) > [@](#): > > Official’s from Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum said new cracks had appeared in the ancient burial casket when it was unpacked after being shipped from Tel Aviv in Israel via New York. > > Dan Rahimi, the director of collections management, said: "In transit there must have been further impact to the piece, or some kind of damage… > > “We can’t really tell, but incipient cracks grew and other cracks appeared.” > > He said the box - which is about 50 centimetres (20 inches) long and valued at $2m - was still intact but there was concern that the new cracks, bigger than a hairline, could make it unstable. > > One of the cracks - which can be treated - runs through the inscription which is a key part of the ossuary being considered as evidence for the existence of Jesus. Is it time to start talking about whether the whole think is an arrant fake? How–_convenient_–for cracks to appear, possibly interfering with any future tests…I’d sure like to know exactly who packed it in Tel Aviv. You’d think that serious antiquities people would know how to pack something like that so as to make sure it arrived intact. I mean, they do this sort of thing all the time, with millions of dollars of irreplaceable artwork at stake. And the whole export license thing seemed…odd…somehow, at the time, but I didn’t think it was worthwhile bumping the thread just for that. [http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/27/jesus.inscription.ap/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/10/27/jesus.inscription.ap/index.html) > [@](#): > > Israel allows scholars to take relic abroad > Sunday, October 27, 2002 Posted: 5:00 PM EST (2200 GMT) > > JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel said Sunday it has granted a four-month export license for an ancient burial box that may be the oldest archaeological link to Jesus. > > The ossuary, whose existence was revealed last week, is in the hands of a private Israeli collector and is expected to be exhibited in Toronto, Canada this fall, at a gathering of religious scholars. > > The export license was granted before Israeli officials understood the nature of the find, and to examine it they will now have to wait until the ossuary returns to Israel by the end of February. > > The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) will then examine it for up to 90 days and, if deemed authentic, may try to buy it from the collector, Uzi Dahari, an IAA official, told The Associated Press. My conspiracy theory so far: they find a 1st century A.D. ossuary, adds an inscription, get it to this private collector, who invites Lemaire to dinner, very casually brings out the ossuary, has it “correctly” identified by a gullible Lemaire as “James’ ossuary”, and then they plan on using Lemaire’s official ID to sell it to some other really rich private collector, using the press release to generate interest in “certain circles”. And they have the export license all ready ahead of time so they can get it out of the country quickly, to Toronto, where they’re planning on having it stolen, to be resold on the black market, except that some serious archaeologist or government official starts making waves about having the thing really tested once it gets to Toronto, and they’d have to steal it as soon as it got off the plane, instead of waiting until after it was on display at the museum, so they arrange to have it poorly packed and trust to the forces of Nature to make it un-testable by the time it arrives in Toronto, or at least to obscure the issue. Or is that just too paranoid? 😃 Well, here’s a simpler version: it’s a fake, and they can’t afford to let the IAA examine it next February, so they arrange to have it poorly packed in Tel Aviv, and sure enough it arrives in Toronto just cracked enough to obscure the issue. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2002, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/67 "2002-11-04T06:31:03Z")
There’s no such thing as too paranoid 😉 I guess it all depends on what sort of checks they can and would make to it. I can’t think of any way in which the existence of a crack through the inscription whould make it more difficult for an expert to examine - unless a large chunk flaked off. In fact, if the thing were a very recent fake it could be counterproductive to have a recent crack on the thing as well (because it would give the expert a recently-exposed surface to compare with the recently-exposed surface of the inscription, if they were trying to figure out if it was weathered enough to be 2000 yrs old) On the other hand this business of shipping it straight off to Canada for a royal tour does strike me as a little odd. Sort of in the same ballpark as the “cold fusion” guys announcing their discovery in the newspapers rather than serious peer-reviewed journals. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it manages to get back to Israel in 4 months time, or if it mysteriously disappears into the hands of a private collector first… ---
**Author:** ![RexDart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b77776/32.png) [@RexDart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RexDart)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2002, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/68 "2002-11-04T07:57:43Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DrDeth \* > \*\* > > If you chose to beleive in Jesus as the Son of God- all the lack historical evidence in the world won’t make a difference. If you chose to not beleive in Him- then even a copy of Pilates diary won’t convince you He is really the Messiah. \*\* Hmmmm… > [@](#): > > Dear Diary, > > Nothing important happened today. > > P.S. That bastard Caiaphus is really getting on my frickin’ nerves. Now _that_ would be particularly cool evidence. Too bad they didn’t have LiveJournal in ancient Judea. ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2002, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/69 "2002-11-05T01:03:22Z")
I was wondering about the dating techniques. From what I’ve read the box itself has been dated to the first century. Is there a way to determine the age of the inscription itself? Here’s what I’m thinking. If the box was made and inscribed (I assume the inscription was carved out?) at approximately the same time, the surface of the incised area would have been exposed to air as long as the remainder of the surface. If on the other hand it was carved centuries later it wouldn’t have been. So, is there any way to measure changes in the surface, such as pollution contaminants or discoloration by light, of the stone? If so, maybe a difference in age would show up. Maybe that’s been done. I don’t know, maybe it’s not possible either. Just a thought. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2002, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/70 "2002-11-05T03:05:21Z")
Huh. My thinking runs as follows. **Major Alternative I:** It’s a hoax. \*\*Sub-Alternative I-A: \*\* The box is a fraud perpetrated during the First Century C. E. This possibility fits the first-century style of the inscription. **Variation I-A-1:** Someone found an ossuary of a Ja’akov bar-Josef, and added “brother of Jeshua” to it. (Just one of many ways it might have gone.) \*\*Sub-Alternative I-B: \*\* The box is a fraud just now concocted to get into the news. The same scholarship necessary to prove that it’s plausibly the ossuary of the biblical James (hereafter referred to as “James the Just”) allows it to be fraudulently manufactured. \*\*Sub-Alternative I-C: \*\* The box is a fraud concocted by careful imitators of first-century ossuaries at some point between the First Century and today. \*\*Sub-Alternative I-D: \*\* There is no box. Its very existence, or at least the scholarship that claims to support its age, is a hoax. (A relatively easily falsifiable alternative.) **Major Alternative II:** It’s a genuine first-century ossuary with a legitimate inscription. \*\*Sub-Alternative II-A: \*\* It belonged to someone other than James the Just, who coincidentally lived in roughly the same period & had a (relatively) famous brother named Jeshua. Entirely possible, considering how many notorious Jeshuas of the period there were of whom we still have some record. \*\*Sub-Alternative II-B: \*\* It belonged to James the Just, more or less. **Variation II-B-1:** As leader of the Jerusalem church, James was understandably identified as “Jesus’s brother,”–after all, his brother Jesus founded the church. **Variation II-B-2:** As leader of the Jerusalem church, James pretended to be Jesus’s brother. This was not true, but as Jesus’s real family was back in Galilee, & didn’t get along with the Movement anyway, he got away with it. (A dubious possibility.) **Variation II-B-3:** As leader of the Jerusalem church, James claimed that he had had a brother whom God had _raised from the dead._ This “Jesus” never actually existed, but his supposed existence was key to the cult’s aspirations. (An appealing possibility for those who dislike Christianity, but this sort of fraud seems rather difficult for early church leaders to have pulled off.) **Major Alternative III:** It’s a genuine ossuary with a legitimate inscription, but all this talk of the ossuary’s distinctive first-century style is overstating things–perhaps due to wishful thinking. It belonged to someone other than James the Just, who had a (relatively) famous brother named Yeshua, but did not live in quite the same period. ~ ~ ~ Which possibility do I favor? I refer you to page 2317 of my book, _How Should I Know?_ ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2002, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/71 "2002-11-05T03:20:21Z")
As for the naming incidence digression, we’re talking about a culture in which one man often had upwards of four sons, & a lot of people basically drew from the same small pool of masculine names. In the absence of a “name rulebook” saying, “Men named Joseph are encouraged to name their sons Judah, Jehoshuah, & Jacob, but never Ehud, whereas men named Simeon are encouraged to name their sons Calel, Saul, or Ephraim, but never Caleb,” I’m going to accept a relatively straightforward statistical average. I mean, really, almost everybody had at least a cousin called Jacob, Jehoshuah, Simon, or Judah. Oy. ---
**Author:** ![phoenix\_rising](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e68b1a/32.png) [@phoenix\_rising](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phoenix_rising)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2002, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/72 "2002-11-05T07:39:54Z")
But then we would have to assume that there were no other families with a father named Joseph having sons named James and Jesus. So the question is, are we talking about THE Joseph/James/Jesus as opposed to A Joseph/James/Jesus? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2002, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/73 "2002-11-05T12:13:21Z")
I like the question, “Where has it been for nineteen centuries?” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2002, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/74 "2002-11-05T21:21:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > \*\*I like the question, “Where has it been for nineteen centuries?” > > 😃 \*\* Right. Remember the Hitler diaries, folks? That was certified authentic by an expert without an axe to grind. Even I can read the letters on that box (and my Hebrew School was a long time ago.) It beggars the imagination that no one has mentioned it all this time. It is also a bit too pat. “James son of Joseph” would not be convincing enough, “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus the Messiah” would be too obvious. I personally think Jesus did exist, but only because I don’t think they invented fictional characters in those days, but that lots of stuff got added onto a not very exciting story, just as people in my day learned that Washington threw a dollar across the Potomac. Nonetheless, I smell a rat here. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2002, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/75 "2002-11-06T15:03:14Z")
Urban Ranger - I also like that question. Its not like the knights of Europe didn’t spend half the Middle Ages scouring the Holy Lands for relics. Not that I’m a skeptic or anything, but this does seem “convienent.” ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2002, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/76 "2002-11-06T15:59:08Z")
Well, a plausible hypothesis is that it was lost for most of the period since it was made, and only recently recovered. Still, if we’re expected to take it seriously, we’d like to be told how it was recovered, and where, and by whom, and what they were looking for at the time, and what else was found at the same site, and what has been done to or with the box since it was recovered, and . . . oh, _lots_ of other questions. ---
**Author:** ![quixotic78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/3ab097/32.png) [@quixotic78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quixotic78)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2002, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/77 "2002-11-07T06:30:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by foolsguinea \* > Huh. My thinking runs as follows. > > **Major Alternative I:** It’s a hoax. > Variation I-A-1: Someone found an ossuary of a Ja’akov bar-Josef, and added “brother of Jeshua” to it. (Just one of many ways it might have gone.) Well, that’s what [this page](http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enZone=Views&enDisplay=view&enPage=ViewsPage&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article%5El1569) seems to indicate. Granted, I have no way of ascertaining whether this guy knows what he’s talking about, but it’d seem to be fairly easy for someone in the know to call bullshit. Quix [sub]Originally spotted by me on Fark[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2002, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/78 "2002-11-07T12:29:51Z")
The next question would be “when they found it, did they find all my missing socks?” ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2002, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/79 "2002-11-25T20:43:15Z")
Don’t any of you understand? This ossuary, it’s a radio! for talking to GOD! ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2003, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340/80 "2003-06-19T04:15:19Z")
An update to our discussion: a panel of experts has been unanimous in declaring that the ossuary is actually a careful fraud: the ossuary itself is authentic (though it may not have come from the right region), but the “brother of Jesus” addition is not. The person from whom it came has also proved to be a somewhat suspicious character. Amazingly close to Duck Duck Goose’s “paranoid” scenario. 🙂 > **[Experts Say Burial Box for 'Brother of Jesus' Is a Forgery (Published 2003)](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/18/international/middleeast/experts-say-burial-box-for-brother-of-jesus-is-a.html)** > > Israel's archaeological experts declared today that an ancient limestone burial box, which bears an inscription suggesting it held the remains of Jesus' brother James, is a modern forgery. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-reasonable-evidence-that-jesus-lived/133340.md?page=5)