JERUSALEM /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A recently completed study by an Israeli geologist has greatly increased the probability that an ancient tomb on the outskirts of Jerusalem is the final resting place of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

The new findings by Dr. Aryeh Shimron have linked an ossuary, or bone box, inscribed with the phrase “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” by its chemical “fingerprint” to a tomb encased in a rose garden between a group of nondescript apartments in Talpiot, a Jerusalem suburb. The tomb, discovered during construction in 1980, housed a remarkable collection of ossuaries upon which were inscribed several names associated with the family of the New Testament Jesus.

Although the names in the Talpiot Tomb, (which included “Jesus, son of Joseph,” “Maria,” “Mariamene,” “Yose,” and others) were common in first-century Jerusalem, a cluster of names associated with Jesus in one location is statistically compelling, and unique in the archeological evidence of his life. If yet another name associated with the New Testament family can now be sited at Talpiot, it becomes a kind of statistical snowball and creates a near-certainty that the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth has been found.

“I think I’ve got really powerful, virtually unequivocal evidence that the James ossuary spent most of its lifetime, or death time, in the Talpiot Tomb,” Shimron told the New York Times.
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