reads like a page-turning detective novel.I said in the title of this article, the "rediscovery" of the so-called tomb of Jesus' family

d from the dead, then His claim to be God manifest in human flesh would be true, and people should trust the Lord Jesus as their Savior and then follow Him as they seek to live by His principles and teachings. The Discovery of the Ossuaries In June of 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunified after the Six Day War. Since then there has been extensive building activity in the suburbs surrounding Jerusalem. On occasion, building contractors would come across ancient burials of the First and Second Temple periods and other archaeological remains. The contractors had a decision to make: Do the burials and other archaeological remains get reported to the Department of Antiquities, or do they get blown up or plowed under? Unfortunately, many were not reported and were destroyed.In March of 1980, a bulldozer exposed part of a Second Temple burial cave on Dov Gruner Street in the neighborhood of East Talpiyot, south of the Old City of Jerusalem. Fortunately, this one was reported to the Department of Antiquities and a salvage excavation took place. A double-chambered loculi and arcosolia tomb was excavated by Yosef Gath (permit number 938), with the help of Amos Kloner and Eliot Braun. Shimon Gibson drew the architectural plans of the burial cave. This excavation was conducted from March 28 to April 14, 1980. The reason for the lengthy excavation was that there was over a meter of terra rosa soil in the tomb. This burial cave contained ten ossuaries, six of which had inscriptions bearing the names of individuals on them, and pottery from the Herodian period.An initial report of this important discovery was first published in Hebrew by Yosef Gath in the Israel Antiquities Authority’s (IAA) periodical, Hadashot Arkheologiyot (1981: 24-25), so it was not readily available to the English-speaking world. The ossuaries were not published in English until a catalogue of ossuaries in the collection of the State of Israel was released in 1994 (Rahmani 1994a: 222-224). In this catalogue, the nine ossuaries are numbered 701 to 709; the 10th ossuary, a plain broken one, was not published (1994a: 222b). The burial cave was finally published in English by Amos Kloner, one of the excavators of the cave, in the IAA publication ‘Atiqot 29 (1996) 15-22. Kloner also documented the tomb in his archaeological survey of the southern sector of Jerusalem (2000: 84*, 136; designated [106] 76.2-8/3). In a reworking and updating of his 1980 doctoral dissertation from Hebrew University, Kloner again published the Talpiyot tomb in a book entitled The Necropolis of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period, this time in Hebrew (Kloner and Boaz 2003: 207, 208).Ossuaries and Secondary BurialsDuring the Second Temple period, Jewish burials included stone objects called ossuaries. These limestone boxes contained the bones of a deceased person after the rite of secondary burial was completed, about a year after the death of the individual (Rahmani 1994b: 191-205). In the newspaper articles and blogs concerning the Talpiyot tomb, sometimes the ossuaries are called coffins, chests, caskets, etc. This article will refer to them by their technical name, ossuaries.It would be helpful if the Jewish burial practices were described in order to put this discussion into proper perspective. When a Jewish person died during the 1st century AD, they were usually buried in a rock-hewn tomb or a trench in the ground before sundown, or at least within 24 hours of death. The only exception was the Sabbath: in this case, burial took place after sundown.The dead body would be left to decompose. The family would have a seven-day period of mourning called shiva. The initial mourning period was followed by a less intense period of mourning for thirty days called shloshim. However, the entire mourning period was not over until the body had decomposed, usually about a year later. The Jerusalem Talmud states: “When the flesh had wasted away, the bones were collected and placed in chests (ossuaries). On that day (the son) mourned, but the following day he was glad, because his forebears rested from judgment (Moed Qatan 1:5).



In Tractate Semahot (“Mourning”) it states
Rabbi Eleazer bar Zadok said: ‘Thus spoke father at the time of his death: “My son, bury me at first in a fosse. In the course of time, collect my bones and put them in an ossuary; but do not gather them with your own hands”’” (12:9; Zlotnick 1966:82). This practice of gathering the bones and placing them in ossuaries was called ossilegium (Rahmani 1994b: 53-55).The Ossuaries of the East Talpiyot TombTen ossuaries were found in the Talpiyot tomb, six of which had inscriptions. Let us examine the six inscriptions. The first ossuary was given the registration number IAA 80-500 by the Department of Antiquities. Rahmani listed it as 701 in his catalogue of ossuaries in the State of Israel collection (1994a: 222b, 223a). This ossuary was decorated and had an inscription in Greek with the name “Mariamene, who is (also called) Mara” on it (Rahmani 1994a: 222b). Kloner points out: “The name Mariamene [is] a variant of the name…(Miriam, Maryam) and…(Marya). [This English Rosetta Stone