Israel-born Simcha Jacobovici and James Cameron have prepared a film, claiming that they have found the Tomb of Jesus Christ and his family, at Talpiot in a suburb of Jerusalem . The basis of their tall claim is deciphering and reading of the wedge-shaped cuneiform marks scratched on the ossuaries made of lime mortar. Both of them are not experts in the science of reading ancient Semitic scripts, like Aramaic, Kharooshti, Syriac, Siniatic or Arabic. The net result has been that they have jumped to pool their intentional conclusions.

I, the author of a Search for the Historical Jesus (www.amazon.com.) and the Fifth Gospel (www.bluedolphinpublishing.com) would like to draw the attention of the archaeologists, historians and the Bible scholars to the following:

1. In March 1980, during construction of a building the archaeologist found 10 ossuaries and 3 skulls. The skulls and the bones were buried quickly by the Jewish authorities. As such, all the 10 limestone empty boxes remained in charge of the Israeli authorities, up till now.

2. In 1996, BBC produced a film on these ossuaries, but it could not incite any reaction, from the academic field. Now in March 2007 the $ 4 million film (Jesus Family Tomb) was shown on Discovery Channel.

3. The above would reveal that for the last 27 years none from the academic world made any claim to have deciphered the name of Jesus Christ, on any ossuary.

4. The ossuary said to belong to Jesus Christ is made of lime mortar, and given shape into small rectangular box, with imprinted design and pattern on the top lid only, as detailed below:

i) An engraved fringe at the sides

ii) 2 circles bifurcated by a fringe, each containing 6 triangles in the shape of a flower.

iii) 2 circles divided by 3 strips of s fringe decorated by 3 small circle each.

5. There is no inscription engraved on the 6 sides of this lime plastered box. It only carry scratches to look like a inscription, which has been done some time after the manufacture of lime box, by the use of some sharp-edged iron tool.

6. Out of the 10 ossuaries, 6 carry cuneiform scratching or marks. These cuneiform scratches can be assumed to read as incibed alphabets from Kharoshti, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic.

7. The claim made by the film makers that the words on one ossuary can be read as in Aramaic Yeshn bin Yossef is totally rejected due to the following reasons:

a) Bin is used by the Arabs, depicting parentage. As such the relatives of Yeshu or Jesus knew only Aramaic and not Arabic.

b) It is possible that some a curio dealer has got etched these words on the lime plaster, for the sake of money.

c) Jesus was never known as Yeshu, nor his father was never known as Yossef during their life time.

d) The so called inscription Yeshu son of Yossef shows that the alphabets have been altered on the right side, for it shows deeper inside incised cuts. In fact the last 3 alphabets have been changed in a crude way by first marking it with ink, then water and then erased with a sharp edged tool. Thus, it is a mutilated inscription.

e) On the left, the deep horizontal asterisk mark and the two dots down side have also been made by the use of water and a steel spoke.

8. Jesus belonged to a poor family of Nazareth and it was not possible for his descendants to build a family Tomb in Jerusalem , far away from the town of his birth.

9. Roman Paganism prevailed in Roman Empire ( Palestine included in it ) till 312 AD. Jesus at the time of his meeting with Paul, in 36 AD. 6 years after his crucifixion, tells him that the Romans are persecuting him (Acts 9:3-4). How could the Roman allow Jesus to be buried in a tomb in Jerusalem , when they were searching him in later years.

10. The Jewish brain has exploited archaeology for political ends to overthrow the Muslim presence from the Temple site in Jerusalem . It is yet to be proved that the etchings made on the lime ossuaries are as old as the ossuaries itself. The film maker is a Jew. The question arises as to why have they waited for 30 years to prove that it is Jesus Christ’s family tomb. There is some political agenda behind this wild claim.

11. when the Tomb is supposed to belongs to one family, then why the inscriptions have been made to appear in Latin in case of Maria, in Greek in case Mary, and in Aramaic in case of Jesus who lived in the same period i.e., first century AD.

12. My study tells me that the genuine parts of etchings and scratching pertain to pre-Christ period, sometime between 330-559 B.C. It will take sometime for me to decipher and read these names.

Professor Fida Hassnain