From Ben Witherington’s blog:
THE SMOKING GUN—TENTH TALPIOT OSSUARY PROVED TO BE BLANK
Joe Zias is a fine archaeologist of long standing and good reputation. He is the person who catalogued the ten ossuaries from the Talpiot tomb, and personally catalogued the tenth ossuary. He worked with Amos Kloner as part of the team who made the original discovery. In two emails this morning to someone I have been talking to he made crystal clear that the tenth ossuary was blank, certainly was not the James ossuary at all despite the assertions of those involved in making the Discovery Channel special. These emails have been sent along to me, and I will let them speak for themselves, except I have edited out the personal and extraneous stuff.Joe Zias xxxx@yahoo.comTo: Subject: Re: Jesus Tomb Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2007 6:02 AM
“Amos Kloner is right as I received and catalogued the objects, the 10th was plain and I put it out in the courtyard with all the rest of the plain ossuaries as was the standard procedure when one has little storage space available. Nothing was stolen nor missing and they were fully aware of this fact, just didn’t fit in with their agenda.” ShalomJoe
Read it all!
(Via Ben Witherington.)
2 thoughts on “Witherington Reports: Zias says 10th Ossuary is blank.”
In 2002 Ben Witherington said this about his phony James Ossuary:
“This is probably going to be the biggest New Testament find in my lifetime, as big as the Dead Sea scrolls.”
In 2007, James Cameron said this about HIS phony ossuaries:
“This is the biggest archeological story of the century. It’s absolutely not a publicity stunt.”
It’s true that a prophet has no honor in his own country. The press in Witherington’s native Kentucky have delicately raised the issue of the pot calling the kettle black, I mean, the pot calling the ossuary cracked in Witherington’s overheated (the gentleman protests too much) protestations against the latest “biggest New Testament find” in his lifetime.
See: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/nation/16791591.htm
Joe, a very fair point. I am also not as confident as BW regarding the Shroud of Turin. I was actually far more interested in what the folks that BW cites have to say.