BIBLICAL scholars and archaeologists in Israel yesterday dismissed suggestions in a BBC religious programme to be screened shortly that caskets stored in a Jerusalem warehouse and bearing the names of Joseph, Mary and Jesus may belong to the family of Jesus Christ.
The limestone 1st century caskets, which were discovered at a construction site in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Talpiot in 1980 and stored, were recently uncovered by BBC researchers preparing a programme to be broadcast on Easter Sunday.
According to the programme's directors, a search through the catalogue of excavated Jewish bone caskets known as ossuaries revealed that this was the only time the three names appeared together.
The Cork born Dominican theologian, Father Jerome Murphy O'Connor, professor of New Testament studies at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, dismissed the revelation as "pure coincidence".
Speaking yesterday to The Irish Times, Father Murphy O'Connor explained that Joseph, Mary and Jesus were names that were "extremely common" in antiquity.
"What's more," he said, "the common conclusion among historians is that Joseph is buried in the Galilee." After Jesus's circumcision, he pointed out, there is no mention of Joseph having ever been in Jerusalem again. Second century texts, he added, point to Gethsemane, across town from where the caskets were found in Jerusalem as the burial place of Mary.
Suggestions that Israel may have tried to cover up this information, Father Murphy O'Connor said, were "very unfair. The caskets were found, recorded and stored.
Officials at the Israeli Antiquities Authority have also dismissed the suggestions as baseless. "In other excavations," said the authority's spokesman, Mr Motti Neiger, "caskets with the same names have been found." Any assertion that the caskets belonged to Jesus and his family, he insisted, "was in the realm of mere speculation on the part of the BBC".
Israeli archaeologists also argued that an "X", which was found inscribed on one of the caskets, was not a cross, which was only used as a symbol of Christianity from the 4th century onwards.