The Most Controversial Archaeological Discovery - The Lost Tomb Of Jesus - Archaeology Documentary

now the most famous death in history is the death of jesus of nazareth two thousand years ago in first century jerusalem he was crucified by the romans the gospels tell us he was buried in a tomb and two days later mary magdalene one of his closest disciples found the tomb empty [Music] but according to the gospel of matthew there was another story circulating after jesus's death and though the gospel calls it a lie it was rumored that jesus's disciples secretly took their master's body presumably to give him a permanent burial if this is true according to first century burial practices in jerusalem jesus body would have been taken to a rock human family too given that he was crucified for insurrection the re-burial would have been done in secret by his closest disciples jesus's body would have been shrouded and left to decompose one year later his disciples would have returned this time joined by his family for the final burial ceremony mary jesus's mother would have attended the ceremony mary magdalene would also have been there his brothers simon joseph judah and james would have prepared jesus bones for the final burial placing them in a limestone coffin called an ossuary [Music] jesus name would have been inscribed on the side his ossuary would then have been placed in a niche in the inner chamber sealed away forever deep inside his family too [Music] is in the spring of 1980 in talpiyot south jerusalem construction blasting exposed the entrance to a burial tomb it was two thousand years old as on the sunday morning under pressure from contractors a team of archaeologists was called in to excavate they had only three days before the tomb was to be sealed and cemented over i could see this uh large slope with tractors and and bulldozers and trucks uh trundling in different directions and right in the center of this slope was this gaping hole which turned out to be the entrance to the tapioca tomb above the entrance was a unique facade a carefully crafted chevron and circle that mystified the archaeologists there's no doubt about it that those symbols which are on the facade of the talpio tomb meant something it's unlikely that the person or the family that came to carve out the tomb just carved these things at random they had to symbolize uh something what they symbolize i don't know but it's quite rare to find that kind of ornamentation on a simple tomb shimon gibson a young surveyor at the time was one of the first inside it was his job to record the layout it was great it was very exciting me entering into the tomb which is being cut into into rock it has a central chamber it has arcasolia ventures in the walls for the laying out of their bodies it has um these loculi extending in different directions it was incredibly important to get as much archaeological detail as possible onto plans gibson's detailed plan recorded every inch of the tomb's interior [Music] extending out from a large inner chamber were six deep cavities called loculi or kohim in hebrew and inside these cohen the archaeologists found 10 small limestone coffins also called ossuaries ossuaries were quickly transferred to jerusalem's rockefeller museum under the direction of the israel department of antiquities the bones and remains found inside were bagged and boxed and put aside for re-burial certain decisions were made by the israeli antiques authority that they would heed to the requests of the ultra-orthodox jewish community in jerusalem and give over bone material which have been analyzed and and examined by anthropologists for we burial and then they began the process of cataloging the ancient bone boxes by 1980 over 1 000 ossuaries had been found but only 20 of them bore the names of the dead here it was discovered that six out of the ten ossuaries had inscriptions they are not monumental inscriptions they're not intended to be seen and viewed by everybody and they're not there to commemorate the dead they are there so that when family members come in and start shifting the boxes around so they can put a new one in they know which one is which and which belongs to who the archaeological record shows that the custom of using ossuaries for burial in jerusalem only lasted for about 100 years ending around 70 of the common era when jerusalem was destroyed by the romans and so the discovery of inscriptions on stone coffins like these provide archaeologists with a catalogue of names specific to the time of jesus and on one of the ossuaries discovered in the talpiot tomb written in aramaic was an astonishing name yeshua bar yosef yeshua or jesus son of joseph yeshua bar yosef now when this was found uh i think the archaeologists weren't too excited about it the public would have been very excited but they didn't hear about it you found a jesus son of joseph ossuary but it wasn't really talked about today the jesus son of joseph ossuary is in the hands of the israel antiquities authority or iaa as are the rest of the stone coffins taken from the talpiot tomb most of them have been locked away and stored in this massive warehouse but why we've assembled a team of scientists scholars and journalists to investigate the 10 ancient bone boxes to find out why they've been ignored this is it felix yeah this one is five four three this is it this is this jesus son of joseph today it takes an expert in ancient writing like world renowned harvard professor frank moore cross to examine the inscription because even though it is one of the plainest ever found on an ossuary its letters are so informal that it's very difficult to read this being quite informal and this particular one quite messy academics describe it as a graffiti so cursory it's almost as if it was meant to be read only by intimate family there's a x here before the name and then the name yeshua then the father's name is perfectly clear yahoo safe the son of joseph i have no real doubt that this is to be read yeshua and then the yeshua bar jehoshaphat is jesus son of joseph jesus son of joseph professor cross's examination of the photograph has now shown us exactly what to look for on the actual coffin jesus son of joseph it's quite amazing amazing is not not the word for it can this stone coffin be linked to jesus of nazareth to answer that question we have to examine all the archaeological evidence uncovered in this family too does it fit with christian tradition does it challenge certain articles of faith if the bones of jesus were to be found in an estuary in jerusalem tomorrow and without doubt let's say they are definitely agreed to be the bones of jesus would that destroy christian faith it certainly would not destroy my christian faith i leave what happens to bodies up to god it seems that christians can accept the possibility that the remains of jesus were transferred to a family tomb thereafter he could have risen and appeared to his followers as the gospel's report according to christian faith jesus then ascended to heaven in theory the ascension could have been spiritual leaving his body behind in fact those who take a strictly historical approach to the gospels would expect to find jesus's remains in his family too when he's first buried it's in a temporary tomb and later unless he somehow magically disappears and goes to heaven which is a position of christian faith but if you're going to be historical and realistic he was put in a would be put in a permanent place a permanent place of barrel as a good jew okay well the tomb you have to have a family tomb [Music] the family tomb of jesus the ossuary found in the talpion tomb marked jesus son of joseph did at one time contain the mortal remains of jesus then all the ossuaries in that tomb would have to belong to members of the jesus family on the other five ossuaries reported to have inscriptions we should only expect to find names from the family tree of jesus jesus was the son of mary and joseph but what many people don't know is that according to christian tradition he had two sisters miriam and salome and the gospel of matthew tells us he had four brothers simon judah james and joseph his adoptive father joseph was descended from king david but joseph most likely died in nazareth and would have been buried there not in jerusalem jesus mother mary maria in antiquity was also of davidic descent but unlike joseph according to later christian tradition she died in jerusalem [Music] and within the same tomb as jesus son of joseph a second name was discovered first of all it's an oshawa found in jerusalem the ossuary is now housed in the basement of the israel museum as you can see the script is very simple the hebrew letters that create this name are mem mem is for m presh like r you'd can be i or y and hey in hebrew it's like h in latin english that makes maria [Music] and it's one of the rare examples of that name onoshwari in israel berea mary found in the same family tomb as jesus son of joseph could this be the virgin mary's ossuary [Music] throughout history from the first greek writings of mark the earliest gospel the virgin mary's name has come down to us in only one form maria it is a latinized version of the hebrew miriam after jesus death mary continued with his teachings and must have gathered a large following in those times of religious transition roman converts also began to follow jesus and so as her popularity grew amongst his followers mary's name was latinized that is why the new testament records her name as maria written in hebrew the name maria is very rare but it's exactly what was found on the ossuary in the talpia tomb if in 1980 archaeologists had considered even for a moment that they had discovered the ossuary of the virgin mary what other family members might they have expected to find next to her look matthew bless you mt you'd which is a short form a nickname if you wish of matitya or matityahu which is where we in english got the name matthew matthew the name at first doesn't seem to fit with the jesus family the new testament is made up of the writings of four gospels attributed to matthew mark luke and john matthew the evangelist was a disciple of jesus but scholars don't believe he was a blood member of his family however there is reason to believe that there were many matthews within the jesus family tell you something very interesting the two genealogies of jesus everybody reads the formal genealogy of joseph his adoptive father it's basically all the kings of israel and on down well-known great historic names but the other genealogy is embedded in luke uh people don't notice it much it's luke chapter three you gotta turn a few pages it's mary's genealogy the mother and in her genealogy guess what you have five six seven eight matthews mataya matthias it's a maccabean ashmanian name it's a fierce name of a sort of a kingly family it's a priestly name remember mary is related to elizabeth the mother of john the baptist who's a priest so she's got some priestly connections there as well as judah which is the tribe of the davidic messiah so i don't think it's odd that we would have a matthew in in this tomb at all in fact it's sort of one more congruence and fitting together in fact unlike matthew many biblical names like isaac or jonah would have virtually disqualified the tomb as the jesus family tomb because they do not appear anywhere in jesus's genealogy there isn't a single name that doesn't fit the gospel story each name and the same tomb connects every single one of these names is gospel related there isn't like any name like daniel or something else it just doesn't fit on three ossuaries four names had been uncovered joseph jesus mary and matthew and then on an ossuary found deep within the tomb another name was discovered this inscription says yosa with a hay in the end and it's a it's a dimunitive of yourself there is no question about it as an ossuary inscription this would probably be quite unusual if i'm publishing in english i said okay there's a hey joseph well there's not just the joseph it's yo say now in hebrew yo see in israel today is quite common yo see you see joseph like joey but yo say you will never hear and you didn't hear it in the ancient world either the yod the e becomes a a guess where we know that name in the gospel of mark jesus has a brother people don't all know that jesus had brothers most scholar you know the roman catholic church says they were cousins and other people they were step brothers but most of the historians and the biblical scholars had pretty well now admitted jesus said brothers they're named in the gospels the four brothers james joseph jude and simon but the joseph in mark only in mark our earliest gospel it's not joseph it's jose [Music] jose or josie in english was the brother of jesus but the gospels don't tell us much more than that he disappears after three brief citations what happened to jose is a mystery but if the ossuaries from the talpya tomb belong to the jesus family then jose has finally been found of all the ossuary inscriptions ever discovered there is only one with this unique spelling of the nickname jose look it's clear as days josie and that's an incredible thing because according to jewish law if someone has a nickname you have to put their nickname on their tombstone or casket and it's the nickname that appears here right next to jesus son of joseph the brother was known as josie not joseph and it's exactly in the same configuration right here josie yosa in 1980 archaeologists were cataloging ossuary names in lists of hundreds and from this tomb they now had jose a rare nickname given to the brother of jesus maria a rare latinized version of mary used in the gospels to refer to jesus as mother matya a version of matthew that as it happens was common in mary's family and jesus son of joseph [Music] all found together in a family tomb all cleaned and catalogued all bone material reburied together here in an especially consecrated grave outside jerusalem all the ossuaries were then crated and stored for decades on warehouse shelves why didn't anyone take notice of these names you remember that the 1970s um and the early 1980s was the boom period for the excavation of tombs in and around jerusalem so there was certainly enormous quantities of osha has been brought back to the the rockefeller museum the headquarters of the israel department of antiquities and these inscriptions were deemed to be common these are the most common names among jews in the first century common era these are exceedingly [Music] popular names in the period all the facts that we have is that there is a cluster of names that resemble many of the names that we find in the new testament the other fact is that we find these names in many other places so suggesting that this tomb was the tomb of the family of jesus is a far-fetched suggestion and we need to be very careful with that you know all the tombs around jerusalem unfortunately with construction are slowly getting exposed and in some cases destroyed so it's not so far-fetched that a construction crew would have uncovered the tomb of jesus you know i mean it can happen i think we have to consider it while the statistical probabilities have been argued they have never been examined by statistical experts until now andre feuerberger is a professor of mathematics and statistics from ossuaries and other sources he's gathered every name known from the time of jesus by noting how often each name occurs he can statistically evaluate the names discovered in talpiyat one of the things that's fairly interesting about this particular tomb site is that from a lay point of view if one looks at the specific names that occur in the cluster and if one focuses just on the names individually one can very well come away with the impression that there is nothing the least bit unusual about this particular cluster but the correct way to analyze this is to look at all of the names in unison according to statistics if we were on a crowded street in ancient jerusalem and called out the name jesus four percent of the men would most probably answer if we were to call out the name mary 25 of the women would probably respond they were both common names but what foyer berger explains is that if we were to call out for a jesus with a father called joseph a mother named mary and a brother called jose the odds that such an individual would respond are quite low from a statistical point of view we don't actually look at the incidences of the individual names where we say that each one of them is a very common name we look at the way in which the factors combine with each other so sure a father by the name of joseph is not a rare name a son by the name of yeshua is not a rare name but when you combine those two together it's rarer so it really is a possibility that this particular tomb site is in fact the one of the new testament family it is a possibility that i think needs to be taken seriously [Music] taking the possibility seriously means that we must try to uncover more evidence and one way to do that is to find the talpion tomb but more than 25 years ago the tomb was re-buried sealed and cemented over a huge complex of apartments was built on top even if the tomb can be located it may well be impossible to get into it sitting under meters of concrete and foundation [Music] pouring over architectural plans decades-old and cross-referencing the iaa archaeology reports our team believes they've discovered the underground location of the talpiyat tomb the talpiyat side is perfectly situated halfway between ancient jerusalem and bethlehem the two cities most important to jesus and his family it would have been an ideal location for his family tomb considering that surviving members would have traveled from both cities to visit the burial site if you think about it it's perfect it's right between jerusalem over there where ethios and bethlehem is over there this is where if i was a member of the jesus family this is where i would want to be buried okay so we know that there's a tomb right over here right our research shows that in 1980 two tombs were discovered on the talpiot site the roof of the second tomb had been partially destroyed by construction but it was sealed up again and not excavated because of time constraints and pressure from religious groups to keep it undisturbed the archaeological reports show that the second tomb is 20 meters north of tomb number one the apartment blueprints show that tomb number one is located under a patio and beside a bedroom wall this we believe is the tomb we're looking for now we know that one of the tombs is under the patio we know that there's pipes coming out that's where you come in crude iaa sketches suggest that both tombs may have had access pipes installed before building continued above them it's common for pipes like these to be added at the request of rabbis in response to the orthodox belief that spirits need a clear passage from a tomb we're going to go down however many feet it is until we hit the bottom i mean once we're down there if the drawing is accurate and we've got that curve in that pipe the camera's going to go down the curve we're going to see what's there my concern is that those pipes are bogus that whoever built it just build pipes there to make rabbis happy oh yeah the souls can move and there's nothing there ideally you stick your camera down that thing yes confirm that there is a tune that there's a space in between the tomb and the bedroom if you will i don't know how deep it goes we cut a hole in the bedroom wall boom we're in [Music] okay let's do it and then food fast neighbors getting interested in what we're doing we've obtained permission from the tenant to give us access to the topia department we pinpointed in the blueprints you know i can't i can't believe anybody would live over anyways we've only been given two days this is it this is it yeah this is it listen we need a tape measure that one this is the real thing some resistance but that's not the bottom there's more what's blocking man this isn't a dummy place bill tarrant is our expert with probe and remote operated cameras even if the access hole is as small as a quarter of an inch bill can get a camera inside this is the video pro very light and you see your face in it look at how clear that is see the camera's in the tip the lights in the tip yeah we're going to we're going to see wherever this camera's pointed that's what we're going to see what can i do it's articulating i'm moving all directions that'll be able to keep us in the center of the pipe so that we can actually look and see what we're doing okay very good so i'm going to center it and i'm going to insert it into a pipe okay okay take a look so watch it with you i'll move the camera as we go down try to keep it in the center see how we're going down it's still pretty clean and we're moving now we're down about 10 feet no debris what's that color change changing color because uh looks like they use different color pipes when they put this thing in how long is your camera 25 feet oh i see something not good not good see that there it looks like some sticks i see plastic and i see some wooden pieces some debris or something you know what this is a pretty serious block that you got here [Applause] i think people are reluctant to think that you could come upon the jesus family tomb and yet there's a caiaphas the priest who had jesus crucified his tomb was found by a bulldozer south of jerusalem a few years ago in december of 1990 construction workers uncovered an ancient burial cave from the first century inside there were 12 ossuaries two of them bore the name caiaphas this one the most ornate ossuary has the inscription joseph son of caiaphas carved into it twice joseph son of caiaphas was the high priest of the temple who according to the gospels prosecuted jesus from his point of view jesus was a dangerous false messiah [Music] who was leading the jewish masses into a confrontation with israel's rulers in rome the caiaphas ostrich was found so it's not as though no famous you know you say well it couldn't be anybody no matter what we find couldn't be anybody important why not it seems to me there's a double standard you say that kaifus is in all probability the high priest who prosecuted jesus according to the gospels whereas this entire cluster is dismissed well this is just common jewish names i mean how are you so convinced that this is the caiphus you find more ossuaries in that same tomb less fancy with the name kaifas not joseph son of kaifas but with the name kaifas on it so it's definitely the tomb as all tombs were of a clan this is the tomb of the kaifast clan one of them could have been should have been joseph son of caiphas the one that we know from the new testament and the adornment on the ossuary shows you very clearly that it is of a different standard so a fancy decoration convinces you that this is the caiaphas of the caiphas is not that common name it's not a common as common name as jesus joseph john or mary it is a rare name it's a name that we know from both jewish sources and from the new testament and it is a good in in dating and timing for that period and it could be that one the fact is that we have never found anywhere else an ossuary with the name joseph son of caiphus anywhere else on the other hand you have a whole bunch of unique things yosa which you find in this tomb and that specific variation of the name you only find in the gospel of mark as a brother of jesus only in this tomb no other as rare as caiphus in fact rarer because in the kaifus family tomb you found several caiphases yosa appears once period out of all the thousands of ossuaries that have been found yet nobody says in all probability it's probably the brother of jesus of nazareth nobody does that the fact that the probabilities in caiphas are very high does not say in all certainty that this is the one there was no inscription inside saying i have crucified jesus we don't know for 100 we never know for 100 in archaeology but the experts do seem 100 comfortable connecting some ossuaries directly to famous names in the gospels as long as they steer clear of the jesus family at the fifth station on the via dolorosa the path jesus walked carrying his cross we find a dedication to simon of cyrene [Music] it is here that there was a moment both historic and intimate between jesus and a man called simon according to the gospels jesus stumbled on route to the crucifixion and simon who was visiting jerusalem from cyrene helped him carry his burden [Music] simon and his son alexander became early followers of jesus experts agree that their ossuary has been found strangely it sits ignored under an archival shelf in the back of a university building well we have a nice ossuary that was found in 1941. one of the inscriptions clearly says alexander son of simon alexandros simonos that one that's clearly incised is right here shimon you can see it very clearly right and apparently the chalk which is on the other side and is essentially faded does have the two names alexander at the top simon below which would indicate that both of these individuals were put in this sanctuary on the lid of this ossuary the place named cyrene in modern libya is inscribed simon of cyrene is mentioned in the new testament helping jesus with his carry his cross if scholars have generally agreed this is his bone box this is it then this is one of the most important artifacts in christendom why is it sitting under somebody's table part of it is that it was found many years ago in 1941 that was long before there were even popular magazines on biblical archaeology for the layman so it escaped the popular attention you have to have a publicist you have to have somebody that says boy this is something let's put this out right so it ends up sitting in a store room it ends up sitting in a storeroom maybe we'll be able to see that char that char green charcoal if we get the light over here on this and be able to read it this time okay some more oh good yeah bring that over oh look at this simka come here look at this forget the green for a minute look this is incisor oh my i don't think that's published it's not published is it it's not in any of the publications on the ossuary of simon of cerrini the man who helped carry jesus's cross we found the same symbol that is carved over the entrance to the telpyot tomb the tomb that housed the ossuary inscribed jesus son of joseph i mean i've never heard this anyway i'm in shock wow well i didn't expect it i was trying to read the green letters i wasn't looking for signs of early christianity signs of early christianity is this a symbol that predates the cross is it possible that the symbol marking the talpia tomb became the symbol of the jesus movement it is if the tomb belongs to jesus and his family nothing look at nothing forgiven i think it's the plastic you know i'll tell you it's a very serious blockage that's uh you know we're at the point now i think we got to call on a plumber we're gonna we're gonna break into the tomb with the plumber you got a better idea [Music] italia we need a plumber no no nobody will come now it's almost 9 p.m so call him now and bring him to more this is crazy we start with the plumber what else we got to do [Music] over 25 years ago archaeologists discovered four ossuaries linked directly to jesus and his family then on a fifth ossuary they uncovered another inscription the inscription has two parts the second part reads mara well the first part is a diminutive of mariamne and although no one had ever seen this name on an ossuary it was translated as just another version of mary mary also known as mara but would it make sense to find in the jesus family tomb two ossuaries with the name mary first maria the name used in the gospels to refer to the virgin mother and the second a unique spelling of both mary and the name mara it might make sense if the second mary this mariamne was mary magdalene mary magdalene comes down to us in the new testament as not just a name but a name and title according to scholars she is mary from magdala mary magdalene magdala was an important trade center close to the sea of galilee the people from magdala would have spoken greek as well as aramaic christian traditions suggest that mary magdalene and her brother philip were preachers to the greek speaking jews and it's quite likely that mary magdalene's family and followers would have written her name in greek the mariamne ossuary is the only one found in the talpia tomb with a greek inscription let's say in this very tomb of talpiot the second mary right was clearly identifiable as mary magdalene let's say right what would you be reaction then along inside this cluster it would be fascinating and certainly draw much more attention and raise many more questions but it isn't we don't have mary of magdalena in that tomb if one of the oswarys had said mary magdalene i would say wow and i would be a lot more impressed if it will be written maria maria coming from migdal or maria magdalena i must say very interesting if the mariamne inscription could be connected to mary magdalene it would be more than interesting it would be statistically compelling because we could create a combined probability equation for the talpid cluster that includes mariemony what happens when you do that is that the individual probability factors even though they're not terribly small in any one particular case when you multiply them all together it actually starts to build up a picture that the overall thing that you've seen is actually a very rare event because foyer burger takes a conservative approach he eliminates matea altogether since he is not a known member of jesus's immediate family foyerburger also divides the probability outcome by four so as to compensate for any unintended biases in the historical data and he further divides the number by one thousand representing all first century jerusalem tombs by the end his model concludes that there is only one chance in 600 that the talpia tomb is not the jesus family tomb if mariamne can be linked to mary magdalene but can she one of the most famous tales associated with mary magdalene is in the gospel of john where jesus stops the stoning of a woman punished for adultery but there is no indication in the text that the unnamed woman is magdalen it's a later christian tradition that has linked the adulteress to magdalen just as it has linked her to the tale in luke of another unnamed woman specifically labeled a sinner who anoints the feet of jesus drying them with her hair [Music] today scholars believe that mary magdalene and the two unnamed women in luke and john are all different women the tradition of linking mary magdalene to these so-called sinners can be traced back to a turnaround in the church of later centuries when women were excluded from being consecrated as religious leaders previous to that time women were ordained and in many early christian writings mary magdalene is highly respected as a missionary i think that mary magdalene was an extremely important person in the jesus movement so important that i think this is my opinion i know i'm not representing anybody else in this but i think that she actually is the real founder of christianity mary of magdala was a major apostle on a par with peter at the time of jesus but later after the new testament we say she's a prostitute so the opposition to mary of magdala inside the new testament and after the new testament is the surest proof for me that she was very very important the strong leadership displayed by magdalene would have been regarded as suspect by an evolving male-dominated church so from the second century when church fathers began suppressing dozens of early christian writings the church rejected two texts that held mary magdalene in highest regard the gospel of mary magdalene and a text describing her brother's ministry the acts of philip for centuries only fragments of these texts remained and some sections had been considered lost forever in 1974 in an ancient monastery on mount athos in greece a harvard university professor francois bovonne uncovered a 700 year old manuscript it was the most complete copy ever found of the 4th century text the acts of philip in it beaumont claims to have discovered an early description of mary magdalene unmarked by later christian tradition in the act of philip she is completely there is no mention of her previous life she is seen positively as a christian missionary so she is completely the same level as male missionaries she preaches she teaches she baptized she carries even the title apostle if in the early christian movement mary magdalene was an apostle then the unique alias mara on mariamne's ossuary could be pointing to something extraordinary in aramaic mara means master mara the master even today if you go to the armenian quarter the archbishop or one of the priests would be like mar samuel or mar whatever lord master you can still hear it so it's a sign of respect for a rabbi for a teacher related to the mara the lord the master it is clear in the acts of philip that mary magdalene is respected as a preacher baptizer and apostle strong and faithful and close to jesus it would make sense then for her followers to refer to her as mara master but what about the spelling of the first name in the inscription the unique mariamne never found before or since on any other ossuary in the acts of philip mary magdalene's name is spelled m a r i a m n e mariamne mariamne is the same woman as mary of magdala or mary magdalene in the synoptic gospels and in some non-canonical texts like the gospel of mary busi sofia etc the acts of philip seem to explain all the mysteries behind this inscription [Music] but if this is really the ossuary belonging to mary magdalene then there's one more thing that needs to be investigated the common held belief based on medieval tradition is that after the death of jesus the disciples were expelled from judea and scattered to many lands traveling and spreading the word of god after some time mary magdalene ended up in france where she spent the last of her days following this later christian tradition it would be impossible to discover mary magdalene's coffin in talpiya jerusalem however in the acts of philip written in the 4th century the oldest known account of mary magdalene's travels she does not die in france [Music] according to the acts of philip at the end of the story mariamne is said supposed to go home to israel to the jordan valley and the author has an illusion that where she would die and be buried the acts of philip clearly tell us that mary magdalene jesus's most trusted apostle dies here in jerusalem [Music] would it really be that implausible to find her buried beside jesus in the tomb of the jesus family the statistical probabilities are compelling the cluster of names in the talpia tomb extraordinary the connections to the gospels too strong to dismiss armed with this new knowledge our team may now be able to uncover new clues inside the talpia tomb if we can just get inside let's hook up our stuff and see what he did okay so let's see what we got now that we've got the plumber cleared it all out for us this is it i still dread the idea that maybe the blockage was the bottom of it [Music] here's about 14 feet here's the blockage we're at the point now yeah and it's not the bottom which is good now we're still going no it's not the bottom that's good this is deep this is really deep it's 20 feet you're already 20 feet down you know that's great look look look that's the bottom i think what is that can you see the bottom finish we hit another blockage or we're at the bottom i'll move the camera what happened to i thought it's supposed to curve i'm going to switch the camera let me pan around see if we can find something can you we don't see anything i'm panning left okay so i saw it yeah yeah yeah there it is there's an opening absolutely there it is there it is we're there this is it this is it we're in the tomb we got the tomb we got the tumor right in front of the facade there it is that that's the that's the tomb you know what that's not the that's not the entrance to the tomb we're in the tomb you're in the tomb yes man we got the two we found our two but where's the gable itada you know the gable the the yeah well i think that's it isn't it is that an estuary wait wait that's ossuaries those are ossuary yes yes oh my goodness there's good news and there's bad news here the nausea are there well what does that mean which means we're in the wrong tomb our tomb is empty [Music] you know what this may be the second tool the one we thought was 20 meters north we're in the second tomb right our tomb is 20 meters south of here good news is no one's ever been seen a tomb from the time of jesus in in pristine condition [Music] although we found ourselves in the wrong tomb perhaps these finely crafted ossuaries so close to the talpia tomb are somehow connected to jesus or his followers hey what's next we gotta find the tomb the holy family tone gotta be looking 20 meters south it's going to be on the other side of this building this way [Music] where are you going where the heck are you going that's the parking lot shouldn't be a big deal south is south 20 meters takes us in the garden 20 meters is not much we're okay [Music] in 1980 the iaa catalogued four of the ten ossuaries from the talpia tomb as bearing no names but these ossuaries were far from plain several displayed ornamental rosettes on their sides and on the rear panel of the ossuary catalog 80-506 they found a large cross mark okay look at this look at it some kind of mark it looks like a cross to me looks like a cross but this cross mark was immediately dismissed as a mason's mark it is theorized that mason marks were scratched onto ossuaries by the coffin carvers as signatures or marks indicating how lids should be aligned to boxes this one has nothing to do with christianity it's just a scratch it's very common it's just a sign of the maison i believe and that's because simply you can't accept the process on any archaeological maybe it was even before fourth century the common belief among archaeologists and historians is that there is almost no archaeological evidence of early christianity until the 4th century 300 years after the death of jesus this is when the roman emperor constantine the great legalized christianity essentially allowing an underground movement acceptance into general civil society its popularity exploded across the empire and constantine became known as the first christian emperor but it's hard to believe that an early christian movement strong enough to last 300 years of persecution and then sweep the roman empire would have left no archaeological evidence of its existence before its legalization you know what i noticed on the core of my eye yeah across inside a circle what is that that's great i i love that question because this is not a cross this is four centuries before the cross was established as a christian symbol this is a rosette the most common design on oscars of the first century other ossuaries have also crosses on them but there are masons marks to fit the placement of the lid to the box itself to prove the point that the cross was used as a christian symbol in first century you need much more evidence than one poorly executed rosette today the cross is immediately associated with crucifixion but that is a reference that would have been horrific during the years directly following jesus's death [Music] for anyone in the first century to wear a cross around their neck would like someone today wearing a little electric chair it was disgusting it was a symbol of torture and it was only when crucifixion was stopped that the human imagination was able to move from the reality to the symbol but perhaps people did use crosses as religious symbols at the time of jesus crosses that had nothing to do with crucifixion in the bible ezekiel there's a place where god says go to the city and put like we would say an x or a cross on the forehead of all the righteous people before this is a cross people are doing x's or crosses but they're not thinking of jesus the cross at all what they're thinking of is it's the end the idea of finalizing right stamp sealed delivered and it took on an apocalyptic meaning then it the last letter means that you're sealed up that you're finished that you're okay that you're waiting maybe for the resurrection you know let's mark the people that are prepared with the ex or the tav the tav the last letter in the hebrew alphabet or tau in aramaic in the book of revelation jesus declares i am the alpha and omega the first and the last the beginning and the end alpha and omega are the first and the last letters in the greek alphabet jesus would have declared i am the aleph and the tau as he spoke in aramaic and in his time the symbol tau was drawn as a cross on the ossuary marked jesus son of joseph directly before the name jesus is a deliberate inscription of a towel that course is absolutely part of the original inscription it's the same depth and style of the inscription plus the mineral vaporization clearly going deep into all the letters if this symbol this tau was a mark of righteousness at the time of jesus it may very well have been adopted by his earliest followers centuries later it would evolve into the christian cross it's a terrible thing when a culture is wiped out and yet you know there's a sense in what in which that's happened to jesus and his followers and that sounds very shocking somebody says what jesus and his fathers they became christianity they're not wiped out but that original movement the way they originally were as jews right here in this area believing in their own version of the jewish faith but also following jesus that sort of disappeared and i think it's disappeared for theological reasons even though i think the material evidence is around if we'll just open our eyes and see it could it be that there was a movement made up of jews who saw jesus as their messiah not their god and because this movement largely disappeared from history we are blind to the archaeological evidence they've left behind if there is evidence for this movement of judeo-christians the logical place to look for it is here according to tradition this is the view jesus had when he walked up the mount of olives and gazed upon the jewish holy temple where the muslim gold dome of the rock now stands was once the holy of holies there the ark of the covenant was housed according to luke jesus looked at the temple foresaw its destruction and wept where he wept is here dominus flevit a holy site on which franciscan monks built this monastery in 1891 this spot would have been the perfect place for a judeo-christian cemetery overlooking the temple they were sure jesus would come back to rebuild that's going in 1953 while renovating the franciscans discovered a 2 000 year old cemetery this ancient necropolis was partially excavated by a well-known archaeologist named bellarmino bhagati bhagati claimed that these ossuaries belong to some of the earliest followers of jesus if this is a early judeo-christian cemetery then that means that our tomb is not sitting in some kind of archaeological vacuum it's really part of a network of cemeteries this can provide an archaeological context for our tomb in this network of tombs the franciscans discovered a bone box with an inscription naming one of the most famous early christians simon bariona i don't know if everybody will recognize that immediately but jesus said to simon peter who's venerated later as the pope and the head of the church you are simon barjona blessed are you peter see his name is not peter that's a greek word name is shimon shimon bar yona today only a piece of the ossuary remains the franciscans have stored it in a small museum beside their church it bears an indisputable inscription the only one ever found spelling the name simon bariona simon was one of the twelve original apostles of jesus according to the gospels jesus renamed him peter in aramaic kefa which means rock he's considered a saint by many christians and the first pope by the roman catholic church according to tradition simon peter was crucified and buried in rome so how could his coffin be here in jerusalem the fact is there has never been any credible archaeological evidence found in rome underneath the vatican that points to simon bariona and here sits an ossuary discovered at dominus flevit bearing his name so if this is a judeo-christian necropolis it is part of a network of cemeteries and tombs that belong to the early followers of jesus including jesus's family okay you're not gonna believe this you're not gonna believe it i'm imagining can you see no i see it's a it's a symbol symbol from the from the tomb on an oscar this is incredible because the angle and and the thing is identically identical the dot is deliberately inside the inverted v with the dot in the middle the symbol from our tomb right on an ossuary from what is suspected an early cemetery of the followers of jesus to find this symbol displayed on an ossuary here in the necropolis abdominis flevit directly connects it to what is believed to be some of the earliest evidence of christianity as to who may have been buried in this ossuary and whether or not he knew the simon of cyrene who displays the same markings on his bone box or the jesus son of joseph whose tomb has been emblazoned with the same symbol we can only speculate [Music] but when it comes to forensics modern science doesn't allow for much speculation by studying ancient dna in bone fragments and human residue left behind in ossuaries scientists can now determine familial relationships between the various people in the talpiyah tomb stephen fan is the director of the center for the study of early christianity and he's assisting stephen cox a forensic archaeologist from new york state they have discovered valuable material inside the ossuaries inscribed mariamne and jesus son of joseph inside this ossuary we've got some material that's adhering to the surface of the stone in a uh very interesting circular pattern it's worthy of picking out and taking uh taking a look at it and see what its composition is the pattern end or material could give us a big clue as to who what when and where it seems outlandish that these samples might contain the dna of jesus and mary magdalene but if there is enough material these tests may shed a new light on jesus and his family this is sample 80-500 the samples have been numbered and sent to this dna lab in thunder bay canada one of only five labs in the world that specializes in ancient [Music] dna the scientists don't know that the samples belong to a jesus son of joseph and a woman who might be mary magdalene [Music] so [Music] if these bone samples truly do belong to mary magdalene and jesus of nazareth we would expect the tests to show that they are not genetically related we would expect to find dna representing two individuals with no familiar ties and that would be an extremely rare discovery in a family tomb unless the individuals were husband and wife [Music] okay so we received the samples that you sent up and when we first examined them they didn't look very good very dry very desiccated very small and very fragmentary and so for that reason it was going to be very difficult for us to do the analysis we then went on to process or start to process the samples and try to understand the quality of the dna is it going to be viable for analysis in this particular case we found the dna was fairly degraded fairly damaged and for that reason it limits what type of work we can can do the question now is there enough dna material to create a significant profile to obtain the maximum amount of information the biologists will try to recover what they call nuclear dna from the bone cells the extraction analysis showed that nuclear dna was very difficult to recover we have then focused on the mitochondrial dna the mitochondrial dna being inherited from mother to child and maternally inherited means that we can only identify those types of relationships the bone material is too degraded to recover dna from the nucleus of the cells and so the dna extraction is now focused on the bone cells mitochondria mitochondrial dna can only tell us whether or not jesus son of joseph had the same mother as mariamne whether or not they were brother and sister [Music] if the biologists cannot recover mitochondrial dna from the bone cells the test will have to be aborted and we will never know the true relationship between jesus and mariamne we have indeed been able to achieve results we got the mitochondrial dna it was very fragmented very small amounts of dna we're able to amplify it we're able to sequence it we then went on to clone those sequenced dna fragments and by cloning the dna we're able to then compare many many copies together and that increases the validity of the work and that way we're able to compare the sequences between that one individual and the other individual and that's essentially what we've done and i can show you the results here today okay so what we have here is we have two sequences just representative sequences one from each individual and what i'm going to show to you here is some of the variations between the two individuals and so we have a polymorphism here this g and the a a polymorphism is a variation between this sequence and another sequence or a variation between this sequence and the reference sequence we use a polymorphism to indicate or identify a mitochondrial profile and this polymorphism shows one difference between the the two individuals we also have another polymorphism here where we have a t and a c showing another polymorphism difference so we have a number of polymorphisms that show differences between the two sequences we can then conclude that these two individuals they're not related or at least not maternally related they do not share the same mother it can't be mother and child it can't be brother and sister so for these particular samples because they've come from the same term and we suspect it to be a familial term um these two individuals if they were unrelated would most likely be husband and wife [Music] for centuries people have speculated on mary magdalene's relationship to jesus mary magdalene appears with more frequency than other women in the canonical gospels always a close follower of jesus her presence at the crucifixion and jesus's tomb is consistent with the role of a grieving wife and widow and so perhaps jesus and mary magdalene were married as the dna results from the talpiot ossuaries suggest [Music] and perhaps their union was kept secret to protect a potential dynasty a secret hidden through the ages a secret we may be able to uncover in the jesus family tomb [Music] we've finally been able to contact one of the original builders of the talpion apartments efraim remembers the tomb but is a little okay he says it's right between these two buildings between the apartment complexes is a large garden with high terraces and it's in this area that ephraim states the tomb is located but on which terrace is the question and point out an inconspicuous cement slab on the lower terrace is but he's interrupted by an almost prophetic visit from a blind woman who's [Music] that's all we needed if we could remove this inconspicuous cement slab we just might find ourselves staring into the entrance of the jesus family tomb so [Music] just trying to raise felix you realize we're rolling the big stones i mean i'm pinching myself i can't believe it okay come on come on picture and compare man what's your first step [Music] okay okay no this is definitely it look there's the chevron it's beautiful it's just gorgeous this is red look just like in a book just like in the picture look at it felix we found it we actually found it i'm going in okay let's go [Music] the opening of the tomb 26 years after it was found coincides with another twist in the story one of the talpiet ossuaries has disappeared counting these one two three four five six seven eight nine ten we have ten archeries here each but the visits to the bet shimish warehouse have turned up a strange error in the records i went to the the storms of the israel antiquities authority in bat chemist they provided me with this computer sheet which indicates that from this tomb there are nine items says here quite clearly number of items nine and it has the description of these these archeries and where they're located in the storerooms somehow somewhere one of the talpiad ossuaries went missing and it is with this missing ossuary that a new mystery begins perhaps the ossuary was stolen [Music] maybe a worker at the site in 1980 had light fingers ossuaries can fetch fairly high prices in the antiquities market and in october 2002 a chalky limestone ossuary surfaced from a private collection [Music] it bore the inscription james son of joseph brother of jesus a well-known collector stated that he had bought the ossuary from an arab antiquities dealer in the old city of jerusalem decades before but had been unaware of the significance of the inscription it was among the first oscars that i have in my collection i didn't put any special attention to this social world because the three names which are mentioned on the oshawa which are yakov yosef and yeshu yeshua a very common name in the first century and therefore i couldn't even think that it could belong to the family of jesus and at the same time i never knew that jesus had a brother or siblings of any kind after jesus death his brother james took over his ministry and gathered a large following as the undisputed leader of the jesus movement later christian writings tell us that he was respected by early christians as well as the jewish pharisees [Music] and first century jewish historian josephus spends more time on james than on jesus but just like his brother jesus it was fear of his religious popularity and influence that led to his death in what was widely viewed as an act of judicial murder the temple high priest ananus condemned james and had him executed in jerusalem by stoning the numerous accounts of james's life show an early christian of such importance that if it was at all possible he would most certainly have been laid beside jesus in death [Music] [Music] it wasn't until 2002 that a highly credited scholar viewed oded golan's collection and suggested that the james ossuary might belong to the family of jesus of nazareth and so began what is now a famous controversy a battle of scholars and science over the authenticity of the james ossuary the james ossuary where did it come from the collector who owned it odedgalon well publicized says he got it around 1980. sometimes he said before or after but hey around 1980 our tomb was discovered in 1980 there's a missing ossuary the israeli antiquities can't find it now maybe they'll find it in the back of a warehouse but i checked the dimensions i was just curious the missing australia was catalogued as just gone the dimensions of that ossuary the same as the james ossuary now a lot of people have concluded experts that the james oshawa is a forgery but nobody says it's all a forgery and the position now of the israel antiquities authority is that it originally said james son of joseph i would be fine with that i mean you think about it we've got these six names if the james son of joseph forget brother of jesus see what the oshawa says james son of joseph brother jesus some people say well the brother of jesus maybe that was at it it wouldn't matter obviously it'd be the brother of jesus you got a jesus a joseph a james son of joseph if it were from this tomb now we're speculating but the time is right the name is right and that i think would really make it fairly clear that this is a jesus family but what would it take to determine whether the james ossuary originated in the telpyot tomb the date and the recorded dimensions are extremely suggestive but it's the patina that should prove the case one way or another over time in a tomb minerals and sediment accumulate on ossuaries this accumulation is called patina and it could be scientifically analyzed to produce a chemical and mineral fingerprint specific to an ossuary or tomb every ossuary discovered in a particular tomb will have the same patina fingerprint the samples taken from the james ossuary show certain trace materials such as titanium and iron that are unique to the james ossuary if the james patina matches the ossuaries from the talpiyat tomb it will be strong evidence that the james ossuary is the missing bone box and belongs to the family of jesus dr charles pellegrino has come to the bet chemist warehouse in israel to collect patina samples from the talpiya ossuaries i can get a lot of the debris from here that would be good yes excellent this is 8503 the inscription of jesus son of joseph it's just one of those moments where you're struck to a kind of silence knowing that you're holding the chemical history from the ossuary that may actually have contained the remains of jesus of nazareth at dr pellegrino's request we commissioned the collection of random patina samples to determine whether the talpia 2 patina is really distinct this muscle patina and that is plenty for charlie to work in on the on electron microscope if the random samples do not match the talpid ossuaries while the james samples do then the statistical probabilities that the jesus family tomb has been found will be overwhelming if we're possible to obtain evidence that the james ossuary might be this missing ossuary then this would have a very strong additional degree of evidentiary value um i would say that that would be an absolute slam dunk if that were in fact shown to be the case the suffolk crime lab is a leading american csi lab involved in solving modern day crime mysteries today it will use its forensic expertise to determine how the patina from the james ossuary and the patina from the random samples compare to the talpiot ossuaries [Music] did you see that piece it had sort of like that tunnel running through it yes do you want to take another sample out of this uh container or is that yeah i think that's enough all right yeah i think that'll do yeah mount it just as is so that piece will be good to look at right now we're just uh taking other samples of the accretion from inside the ossuary iron is part of the signature that gives the soil that distinctive color we now have it from this tomb we have it from the ossuaries from this term we're just taking other samples and we're going to look at them under the scanning electron microscope and ping them with the electron microprobe [Music] what we're looking at here now is the spectrum of the patina sample that we just analyzed this is predominantly a limestone material correct charlie yeah that's why it's called the jerusalem chalk it's a very soft limestone but what i find interesting is the small trace materials that we are locating here as opposed to the general limestone properties that you would expect to find we're noticing iron titanium potassium phosphorus magnesium so far the elemental composition that we analyzed with this particular section of patina is consistent with the trace materials that we found in the james ossuary the signature is the same it matches the patina samples from the talpia tomb match with the james ossuary but what about the random samples as it turns out none of them match talpyat the same chemical and mineral spikes as that of the talpiya tomb are exhibited only by the james patina this is key evidence indicating that the ossuary inscribed james son of joseph brother of jesus is the missing ossuary from the talpia too when the james ossuary is included in our statistical model the probability factor changes from 600 to 1 in favor of the tomb to thirty thousand to one strongly suggesting that this tomb belonged to the family of jesus of nazareth [Music] so so oh my god oh my goodness awesome isn't it yes it's like one two three these niches the two here two here two here exactly six all in all look two death natures where you lay out the body jesus's body mary's body would have been there look at this and then look over here hey this is it this is absolutely a jewel of a tomb look at that it's pretty deep man yeah does kohimo very deep i didn't realize that look at that felix what is that there's an incision there's an inscription here this is greek it's an s that's an n green n is and what's this we need an epic reference this is old two three four five six letters it's either greek or light and wood certainly not hebrew looking around we noticed that we were sitting on mounds of decomposing pages of scripture what is that shine that there shine it down look at that phoenix this is this is full of holy books disintegrating holy books according to jewish law biblical books cannot be discarded they have to be buried like humans it seems that in the weeks following the removal of the ossuaries and before the tomb was resealed a local rabbinical school filled the tomb with damaged holy texts among them we found a book that jesus refers to as the key to his ministry it's the book of jonah jesus says in the gospel if you want to know his apostle say what are you up to master and he says you want to know what i'm up to read the book of jonah that's that's the code and right here we have the book of jonah the gospels record that jesus constantly spoke in parables and codes not surprising for a leader of what today would be labeled an anti-government movement a man destined for crucifixion and those who speak in codes often harbor great secrets [Music] during their rushed excavations in 1980 archaeologists removed from the talpia tomb the last ossuary with an inscription the ossuary belonged to a child at the iaa rockefeller museum the inscription was translated yehuda bar yeshua comes into english as judah son of jesus judah son of jesus the new testament doesn't say that jesus had a son but perhaps in this instance archaeology forces us to throw a different light on the new testament could this bone box have once held the remains of the son of jesus and mary magdalene if judah was their son his existence would most certainly have been kept secret since jesus was perceived to be a pretender to the royal throne jesus's son would have been a target of arrest and crucifixion by roman [Music] authorities it was a time of great persecution anyone associated with jesus ministry was threatened his cousin john the baptist beheaded james the brother of jesus stoned to death simon another brother crucified if they were parents jesus and mary would have known that leaking knowledge of the birth of their child would have put the child at terrible risk so perhaps the unnamed beloved disciple referred to in the book of john is actually the son of jesus [Music] who remains unnamed in the text to conceal the child's lineage in john 19 26 jesus asks the beloved disciple at the base of the cross to behold his mother he then says to mary [Music] woman behold your son traditionally this scene has been understood as jesus addressing mary his mother [Music] but can this be later theology could it be that jesus was talking to mary magdalene his wife asking her to protect their sons [Music] on the other hand maybe the fact that there was a sun in the talpia tomb means that the jesus found in this tomb is not jesus of nazareth accordingly we would have to believe that living around the same time in the same place there was another jesus who also had a father named joseph and two close male relatives named james and jose and two women in his life one called maria and the other mariamne [Music] oh what's that noise i think they're getting upset that we're in here i'll go i'll go talk about [Music] one of the tenants in the talpia departments works for the israel antiquities authority and even though we have permission from the tenant board talpio department owners who out of concern for their children's safety arranged for this tomb to be sealed a tomb that the iaa had left open in 1980 obtaining permission from the iaa to open the tomb they never sealed seems unnecessary but despite our pleas yes we were asked to cover it again okay let's go reckless the tomb that arguably once held the remains of mary the mother of jesus matthew from mary's family line jose and james the brothers of jesus mary magdalene her husband jesus and judah their son is sealed up again [Music] who knows what secrets are still inside and for how long they will be kept hidden under the tapiat apartments [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 103min 22sec (6202 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021