The Jesus Tomb and the Acts of Philip II
The argument for the identification of the Mariamne e Mara of the Jesus Tomb with Mary Magdalene based on the Acts of Philip is clarified by Simcha Jacobovici in a short video on Youtube and an article in the Jerusalem Post. Perhaps “clarified” is too strong. Jacobovici appeals to the 1970 edition of Acts of Philip by Francois Bovon in which, Jacobovici claims, Mary is referred to as “Mariamne” and is characterized as an apostle, a healer, and a leader. The Post article also mentions Bovon’s edition:
Francois Bovon, professor of the history of religion at Harvard University, says that "Mariamene, or Mariamne, probably was the actual name given to Mary Magdalene," and that this is the name given to Mary Magdalene in a non-canonical text called the "Acts of Philip," which mentions the apostles and Mariamne, sister of the apostle Philip.
The excerpt from the Acts I posted (HERE), in which the only Mariamne identified is Mary of Bethany and sister of Philip, is from M. R. James’ edition. I do not have Bovon’s at hand but can anyone clarify this? Are both the Post and Jacobovici misrepresenting the text?
I checked Bovon’s “Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles” (1999) yesterday, which included one article on the newly discovered copy of AoP but it makes no reference to Mary Magdalene in the entire volumne. I have only read the M. R James edition that you reference. Mariamne and Martha do seem related. Bovon’s comments about the Apocraphyal Acts existing for homiletical purposes rather than for other purposes is interesting. The AoP extols Philip. Mary, whoever she may be, appears to be a support role — at least in the translation of James.
I see that there is an Acta Philippi under Bovon’s name in the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum, vol 11. But it is dated 1999, not 1970. One wonders if this is the referenced edition. I see also that Bovon has written something (2006) called Les Derniers jours de Jésus, also in English as The Last Days of Jesus. Perhaps someone with immediate access could sneak a peek into one or both of these? It sounds as though Bovon has frequent flier miles from the Magdalene hay-ride.
After all the hubbub of the past week, it should be pretty clear that the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” film is essentially a hoax.
To begin with, the name “Jesus” is not legible on the so-called “Jesus son of Joseph” ossuary, as any serious semitics scholar will tell you if you show him the tracing. The original transcriber himself (see the Israeli Catalogue of Ossuaries) put a question-mark after, and two dots over, the “Jesus” part of the name, thus indicating in standard fashion that he was making a conjecture (in this case one that is obviously remote). The film’s producer, however, has carefully omitted this fundamental point from his statements to the press, instead asserting that the reading had been “conclusively confirmed” by unnamed experts. For details, see http://jesus-illegible.blogspot.com/
So I started to poke around to try and understand the mechanics of this hoax.
What I found, somewhat astonishingly, is that James Tabor — the religion professor who is promoting the Cameron film — is the same character at the center of the recent claim that the finding of undatable feces near the site of Khirbet Qumran supports the now widely disputed thesis that a sect of Essenes lived there in antiquity and authored the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Tabor is also involved in the current exhibits of the Dead Sea Scrolls traveling around the country, which have been criticized as presenting a biased and misleading picture of the current state of Scrolls scholarship. For details, see http://jesus-crypt-fraud.blogspot.com/ and the other postings published by the authors of that blog.
For Tabor’s “Essene latrine” efforts (also based in part on a misleading use of DNA evidence), see K. Galor and J. Zangenberg at http://www.forward.com/articles/led-astray-by-a-dead-sea-latrine/, or the most recent article by N. Golb on the Oriental Institute website, http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/scr/).
Professor Jim Davila’s blog (March 6, 2007) http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/ quotes Tabor as asserting to him in an email: “I have never excavated even one tomb, and I am not even an archaeologist and have never claimed to be such.”
Yet Tabor himself, in an article published in the Charlotte Observer, excerpted on the same paleojudaica blog a year ago (February 13, 2006), wrote: “As an archaeologist, I have long observed and experienced the thrill that ancient discoveries cause in all of us. The look on the faces of my students as we uncover ancient ruins from the time of Jesus, or explore one of the caves where the scrolls were found, is unmistakable.”
Tabor’s Ph.D. was awarded to him by the University of Chicago’s Department of New Testament and Christian Literature (which is housed in that institution’s Divinity School building). The title of his dissertation was “Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise”. He clearly has no training as an archaeologist, historian, or semitics scholar, and we will no doubt be left to wonder at the motivations that led him to become involved in these phony scams.
Hello, great article.