That is exactly why, in the Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries where the tracing of the inscription was first published, the transcriber carefully puts a dot over the letters yod and shin, indicating in standard fashion that his reading is conjectural, and a question-mark after the entire name Yeshua, indicating that he is doubtful of the entire transcription of that name. He was clearly groping, because the letters vav and ayin are also not discernable and he should have put a dot over that part of his transcription as well. As everyone knows, there is another ossuary with the name Yeshua bar Yosef legibly inscribed on it, and it seems that the transcriber may have been influenced by that one in trying to figure out what this one says.

James Tabor, the religion professor promoting the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” film, is the same character at the center of the claim that an “Essene latrine” has been found near the site of Khirbet Qumran, where so-called traditional Qumranologists (including, it would appear, Tabor himself) continue to insist, in the face of mounting contrary evidence, that a sect of Essenes lived. Tabor is also involved in the current biased and misleading exhibits of the Dead Sea Scrolls traveling around the country.

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 Unalterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise”. He clearly has no training as an archaeologist or historian, and we are only left to wonder at the motivations that led him to become involved in these phony scams.

there is actually a shrine in Turkey near Ephesus that is commonly held to be the deathplace and burial site of Mary. Maybe we should attempt to gatehr some DNA from that location and compare against anything found in the “Jesus” ossuary.

The fact that the Turkey site is a well-known tourist attraction strengthens the argument that IF the Jerusalem tomb site were genuine, or even suspected as genuine, it probably would not have been overlooked all these years, and would have been a popular pilgrimage location in it’s own right.

Why don’t they compare the DNA to Joseph Smith’s ?:) TH That should verify everything!