Josiah Concept Ministries

It has been a long time in coming, but I am finally ready to post part 3 of my response to the Jesus Family Tomb documentary that aired on Discovery Channel last month. The reason for the delay is the lack of good source information about chemical patinas.

I have noted that there are essentially three prongs to the argument that the tomb discovered in the Talpiot suburb of Jerusalem is the family tomb of Jesus Christ. The first is the statistical grouping of the names. The second is that one of the names, Mariamne, is actually Mary Magdalene of the gospels. The third is that the patina evidence from the James ossuary matches the patina sample from the Jesus family tomb ossuaries, but more significantly, does not match 100 random patina samples from other tombs.

What, exactly, is patina evidence? Although I’m loathe to use Wikipedia as a source, here is the Wikipedia definition of a patina:

Patina is a chemical compound formed on the surface of metal. Patinas form on metal from exposure to the elements. They are often deliberately added by artists and metalworkers. Patinas may be used to ‘antique’ objects, as a part of the design or decoration of art and furniture. [source]

That means that the filmmakers are scraping samples off the surface of the ossuaries, and testing them against each other. The assumption is that if one has the same patina composition as another, then they must have resided in the same tomb, or at least in the same general area as the one they matched with.

Because the patina evidence allows Jacobovici and company to place the James ossuary in the Talpiot tomb, they can then add “James” to the statistical analysis and that makes the numbers jump through the roof. The James ossuary is thought to legitimately be the ossuary of James the brother of our Lord and author of the New Testament epistle bearing his name by many scholars. This evidence alone bolsters the case for this tomb beyond a reasonable answer by the Christian apologist.

But, there are a number of problems with accepting this answer as legitimate. Most of the experts associated with this film have since come forward and offered context to their comments on camera that usually torpedo that part of the case. Robert Genna, director of the Suffolk County New York State Crime Lab, the expert consulted on the patina evidence, is no exception. He had this to say about the patina conclusions quoted in the film:

The elemental composition of some of the samples we tested from the ossuaries are consistent with each other. But I would never say they’re a match… No scientist would ever say definitively that one ossuary came from the same tomb as another…We didn’t do enough sampling to see if in fact there were other tombs that had similar elemental compositions…The only samples we can positively say are a “match” from a single source are fingerprints and DNA. [source]

This alone is enough to refute the patina evidence offered in the film. This statement, from the film’s own expert, raises enough doubt to close the book on the patina evidence.

What about the entirety of the case of the Jesus Family Tomb? Well, we’ve seen that there are serious doubts about the methods used to obtain the names, using the gospel accounts on one hand and then dismissing them out of hand when they don’t support the case. The name “Mariamne” is never associated with Mary Magdalene, and that inscription was likely read incorrectly. The DNA evidence is almost completely useless. The patina evidence is questionable at best. The entirety of the case, I’m afraid, must be dismissed for lack of evidence.