Has the tomb of Jesus really been found?

Question

Okay, I was watching a show on discovery channel this weekend about the tomb of Jesus. I was listening to all the contriversy about it and I dont know. Have they really found the tomb where Jesus was born? I think it is up to each person to decide if it was really it or not, but I cant decide. I do think however that if it was Jesus' tomb that they should have left it alone. Actually I think any tomb should have been left alone. I believe it is very desrespectful to move the remains of people that have lived before us. I know that if someone was to dig up my dad's grave and move him, I would be pissed. Let them rest in peace. But I really dont know, what you you think? According to what you have heard, do you believe they have found the tomb of Jesus?

Opps, I see I made a boo, boo, I said the tomb where Jesus was born, I meant buried. Sorry. :)

Answer 1

The tomb was discovered. It was empty. The site is still visited.

Answer 2

There are some other obvious problems with this documentary:

First, these were extremely common names.
Dr. Amos Kloner (who led the excavation in 1980) said, “The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time.”
Dr. Craig Evans indicates that approximately 100 tombs have been discovered in Jerusalem with the name “Jesus,” 200 with the name “Joseph,” and the name “Mary” is on far more.
It has been said, “This is the ancient equivalent of finding adjacent tombs with the names Smith and Jones.”

Also, how do we know it was a family tomb in the first place? There were only six niches in this tomb, but there were 10 ossuaries in the niches. Each of the niches could have held a different family. We don’t know the niche locations of the specific ossuaries. This could easily have been a tomb shared between families. And since there are three different languages on these ossuaries (Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek), some believe this indicates they were not from the same family or not buried in a similar time period.

Another problem is, what is a poor family from Galilee doing with a upperclass tomb in Jerusalem, since it was the custom to bury the dead in their home town?
Dr. Jeff Kloha said, “...the tomb clearly belonged to a wealthy family. Its architectural style matches that of tombs of other wealthy families from the period. It seems highly unlikely that a carpenter from Nazareth, or his son, made it big in Jerusalem, especially when the available evidence shows that the first followers of Jesus were not accepted within the power circles in Jerusalem, and in fact the book of Acts portrays them as being persecuted and driven out.”
Dr. Jodi Magness (Archaeologist and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) said, “Jesus’ family, being poor, presumably could not afford a rock-cut tomb, as even the more ‘modest’ ones were costly. And had Jesus’ family owned a rock-cut tomb, it would have been located in their hometown of Nazareth, not in Jerusalem . . . In fact, the Gospel accounts clearly indicate that Jesus’ family did not own a rock-cut tomb in Jerusalem—for if they had, there would have been no need for Joseph of Arimathea to take Jesus’ body and place it in his own family’s rock-cut tomb!”

And there are other problems along this line. Dr. L. Y. Rahmani (an Israeli archaeologist who compiled a catalogue of all of the ossuaries in the collections of the state of Israel) said, “In Jerusalem’s tombs, the deceased’s place of origin was noted when someone from outside Jerusalem was interred in a local tomb.”
And Dr. Joe Zias said the same: “The important thing to remember here is that individuals outside of Judea, buried in Judea were named according to their place of origin, whereas in Judea this was not necessary. Had the names been Jesus of Nazareth, Mary of Nazareth, Joseph of Nazareth, etc., I would have been totally convinced that this may be the family tomb, but as none of the names have place of origin, they are all Judeans.”

Another problem is, why was the “Jesus” ossuary not decorated like some of the others?
Dr. Stephen Pfann said the ossuary ascribed to Jesus was very plain compare to some of the others found in the cave. He said, “The idea that the originator of a religion like this would end up in such a plain ossuary is kind of telling as to whether this is really potentially the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth or not.”
And as Dr. Darrell Bock has said, “They had to secretly buy the tomb space from someone, prepare an ossuary over a year’s period and then choose to adorn this ossuary of Jesus with graffiti-like script to name their dead hero. Surely if they had a year to prepare honoring Jesus, whom they had highly regarded, they would have adorned his ossuary with more than a mere graffiti like description.” And he talks about how some of the other ossuaries in the tomb are quite adorned.

And yet another problem is simply the way the documentary was made. As Ted Koppel said to Simcha after the documentary aired, “Visual imagery caries a certain power that even the spoken or written word does not. You put into this documentary recreations—recreations in which you show Jesus and Mary Magdalene, recreations in which you even show the son of Jesus. You don’t say we know for sure that it happened, but by depicting it that way, you lend a power to the theory that it wouldn’t otherwise have.” And later Ted Koppel called it an “artificial credibility.” You always have to be careful about a documentary like that—if it’s a little too entertaining.

It’s also important to note that this is not a recent discovery. As I said, the site was unearthed in 1980 and it, along with its contents have pretty much been ignored by archaeologists—they haven’t though it was anything special.
Now in 1996, BBC did a documentary on the ossuaries (giving this suggestion), but the documentary was not a success; it was pretty much ignored, and there was no follow-up. That’s probably what put Simcha and these guys on to this idea.
As Dr. William Dever (an expert on near eastern archaeology and anthropology) said, “The fact that its been ignored tells you something. It would be amusing if it didn’t mislead so many people.”
And Dr. Amos Kloner said, “Their movie is not serious. They are ‘discovering’ things. But they haven’t discovered anything. They haven’t found anything. Everything had already been published. And there is no basis on which to make a story out of this or to identify this as the family of Jesus.”

In my research, I’ve found that the vast majority of archeologists (Jewish, Christian, and secular) have completely dismissed this documentary as “impossible,” a “publicity stunt,” “nonsense,” and so on.
Dr. Jodi Magness said the same: “[They] have set it up as if it’s a legitimate academic debate, when the vast majority of scholars who specialize in archaeology of this period have flatly rejected this.”
Dr. William Dever said, “I’m not a Christian. I’m not a believer. I don’t have a dog in this fight, I just think it’s a shame the way this story is being hyped and manipulated.”
And then you get the ones like Dr. Jonathan Reed that said, “It’s what I would call ‘archaeo-porn.’” And Dr. Joe Zias who said, “He’s pimping off the Bible.”