About a week ago there was a press release from the Third Princeton Symposium which clearly had Simcha Jacobovici’s hands on it (he’s the guy he made the multi-million dollar video-claim in the first place). Though I had no personal knowledge of the conference, I could smell deceit (well, it wouldn’t be the first time he tried to pull a fast one), so I ignored it here. Others did not (including JPost), so if you were one of those who bought his line that most scholars thought there’s a good chance that Jesus’ tomb was in fact discovered, you should be aware of the scholars that are denying his claim.
The two places to go are the NT Gateway Weblog for a statement by a dozen scholars, and The View from Jerusalem blog by Stephen Pfann that includes the individual statements of other scholars.
In short, there may be a handful of scholars who think that this might be the tomb; the rest of the scholars are rushing to deny the possibility and denounce the misleading press release. For the record, many scholars don’t accept a bodily resurrection of Jesus, but they just don’t think the evidence that this is the tomb is compelling. Hopefully, I’ll never need to say anything else about it here.
Update (1/26): The Jerusalem Post has a lengthy editorial on the conference. The Biblical Archaeology Society has compiled a list of statements from various scholars.
Update (1/28): Organizers of the symposium, have posted a statement on the Princeton Theological Seminary website. They note that the conference papers will be published in 2 volumes by Eerdmans.
Update (2/14): James Charlesworth has an article on “Rebutting Sensational Claims Concerning a Symposium in Jerusalem” on the SBL site. Charlesworth was the symposium organizer and moderator.
