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Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media Proceedings of the Duke University Conference, April 23–24, 2009

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Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media Proceedings of the Duke University Conference, April 23–24, 2009 Offprint from: Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media Proceedings of the Duke University Conference, April 23–24, 2009 Edited by Eric M. Meyers and Carol Meyers Winona Lake, Indiana Eisenbrauns 2012 © 2012 by Eisenbrauns Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. www.eisenbrauns.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Archaeology, bible, politics, and the media : proceedings of the Duke University conference, April 23–24, 2009 / edited by Eric M. Meyers and Carol Meyers. pages ; cm. — (Duke Judaic studies series ; volume 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57506-237-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Archaeology in mass media—Congresses. 2. Archaeology—Political aspects—Congresses. 3. Archaeology and history—Mediterranean Region—Congresses. 4. Archaeology and state—Congresses. 5. Cultural property—Protection—Congresses. I. Meyers, Eric M., editor. II. Meyers, Carol L., editor. CC135.A7322 2012 930.1—dc23 2012036477 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the Amer- ican National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ♾ ™ Contents List of Contributors . viii Introduction . 1 Eric M. Meyers and Carol Meyers Part 1 Cultural Heritage The Media and Archaeological Preservation in Iraq: A Tale of Politics, Media, and the Law . 15 Patty Gerstenblith Part 2 Archaeology and the Media Fabulous Finds or Fantastic Forgeries? The Distortion of Archaeology by the Media and Pseudoarchaeologists and What We Can Do About It . 39 Eric H. Cline Dealing with the Media: Response to Eric H. Cline . 51 Joe Zias The Talpiyot Tomb and the Bloggers . 56 Mark Goodacre From Ossuary Epigraphs to Flickering Pixels: A Response to Mark Goodacre . 69 A. K. M. Adam The Power of the Press: The Effects of Press Releases and Popular Magazines on the Antiquities Trade . 73 Morag M. Kersel History and Fiction: Comments on Morag M. Kersel’s “The Power of the Press” . 84 Annabel Wharton v vi Contents Confessions of an Archaeologist: Lessons I Learned from the Talpiyot Tomb Fiasco and Other Media Encounters . 89 Jodi Magness Popular Media, History, and the Classroom . 96 Chad Spigel Scholars Behaving Badly: Sensationalism and Archaeology in the Media . .101 Byron R. McCane The Future of the Historical Documentary: Scholarly Responses to “History Channel Meets CSI” . 109 Milton Moreland An Ancient Medium in the Modern Media: Sagas of Semitic Inscriptions . 123 Christopher A. Rollston Part 3 Archaeology, Politics, and Local Communities Walk about Jerusalem: Protestant Pilgrims and the Holy Land . 139 Tony W. Cartledge Community and Antiquities at Umm el-Jimal and Silwan: A Comparison . 161 Bert de Vries Response to Bert de Vries, “Site Preservation in Jordan: The Case of Umm el-Jimal” . 187 S. Thomas Parker Archaeology, Identity, and the Media in Cyprus . 189 Thomas W. Davis Response to Thomas W. Davis, “Archaeology, Identity, and the Media in Cyprus” . 197 Donald C. Haggis The Quest for the Temple Mount: The Settler Movement and National Parks in Israel . 202 Eric M. Meyers On Tourism and Politics in Israel: A Response to Eric Meyers . 216 Rebecca L. Stein Contents vii Part 4 Voices of the Media Responses from a Television Producer . 223 Ray Bruce Areas of Concern as We Go Forward . 229 Moira Bucciarelli Scholars at the Limits of Science and the Borders of Belief: Finding Proof for Faith. A Journalist’s Perspective on the Oded Golan Case . .233 Nina Burleigh Not Another Roadside Attraction: The Holy Land Experience in America . 245 Mark I. Pinsky Part 5 The Media: A View from Jerusalem How It Looks from the Other Side . 261 Ethan Bronner Index of Personal Names . 271 Offprint from: Meyers and Meyers, ed., Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media: Proceedings of the Duke University Conference, April 23-24, 2009 © Copyright 2012 Eisenbrauns. All rights reserved. The Talpiyot Tomb and the Bloggers Mark Goodacre An Early Success When the sensationalist documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus was first broadcast, in a two-hour slot on the Discovery Channel at 9:00 p.m. on March 4, 2007, several bloggers “live blogged” the event (Good- acre 2007b), commenting on the documentary as it aired. By this point, Discovery’s publicity machine had already been in full force for several days. The project was launched with a dramatic press conference and two major Web sites, the snazzy “official” site (Talmor Media 2007) as well as Discovery Channel’s own site (Discovery Channel 2007–10). Bloggers began commenting on this material as soon as it went public, with all the speed that the still-young medium encourages (Williams 2007a). 1 By the time the documentary aired, the bloggers had already put major question marks against the claims being made by Simcha Jacobovici and the other program makers. One of the most prominent criticisms, right at the beginning, related to the use of statistics. The case for the identification of the Talpiyot Tomb with the family of Jesus of Nazareth is based largely on statis- tics. The cluster of names found in this tomb is said to correspond to a remarkable degree with the names of Jesus and his family. Before the documentary had aired, I was highly sceptical of the statistical case (Goodacre 2007a), not least because it appeared to rely on a dubious identification between the name “Mariamēnē” and Mary Magdalene while at the same time failing to take seriously important contrary evi- dence, “Judas son of Jesus,” and ignoring the non-match “Matia.” Simcha Jacobovici had hired a top statistician, though; and surely, he argued, his expertise should be taken seriously. The statistician in 1. A companion book for the series was released at the end of February 2007 (Ja- cobovici and Pellegrino 2007), but it made no impact on the blogosphere in this early period. The instant and immediate access to the key materials made possible on the internet effectively marginalized the book’s contribution, though in due course highly critical reviews of the book did appear; see especially Reed 2007. 56 The Talpiyot Tomb and the Bloggers 57 question was Dr. Andrey Feuerverger, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Toronto. I wrote the following: Clearly he knows a lot more about statistics than most of us, and I would not dream of trying to second guess him. But he revealed a very important piece of information at the press conference, that he is not an expert on the New Testament or archaeological data, so he was working with the data given to him by the programme makers. The relevance of this is that a significant and fatal bias was introduced into the analysis before it had even begun. One can view the data that was given to Feuerverger on the Discov- ery Web site, in the PDF packet of documentation, where the grounds for the statistical analysis are given. It is clear from this that the task he was given was to work out the probability of a certain cluster of names occurring, where in each case all known examples of the given name in the given period were divided into all known naming possi- bilities in the given period. And the names he worked with were Jesus son of Joseph, Mariamne, Maria and Joseph. The name Matia was ini- tially factored in too, and then removed “since he is not explicatively mentioned in the Gospels”. But the problem is not just that Matia is not mentioned as a family member in the Gospels, it is that the greater the number of non-matches, the less impressive the cluster becomes. Or, to put it another way, it stops being a cluster of strik- ing names when the cluster is diluted with non-matches. Mariamne needs to be taken out of the positive calculation and instead treated as a non-match; Matia needs to be treated as a second non-match; Judas son of Jesus needs to be treated as contradictory evidence. These three pieces of data together detract radically from the impressiveness of the given cluster. (Goodacre 2007a, referencing Discovery Channel 2007–10) In an attempt to make the point by extending and reapplying an analogy that Simcha Jacobovici was fond of, I continued: At the risk of labouring the point, let me attempt to explain my con- cerns by using the analogy of which the film-makers are so fond, the Beatles analogy. This analogy works by saying that if in 2,000 years a tomb was discovered in Liverpool that featured the names John, Paul and George, we would not immediately conclude that we had found the tomb of the Beatles. But if we also found so distinctive a name as Ringo, then we would be interested. Jacobovici claims that the “Ringo” in this tomb is Mariamēnē, whom he interprets as Mary Magdalene and as Jesus’s wife, which is problematic (see Mariamne and the “Jesus Family Tomb” and below). What we actually have is the equivalent of a tomb with the names John, Paul, George, Martin, Alan, and Ziggy. We might well say, “Perhaps the ‘Martin’ is George Martin, and so this is a match!” or “Perhaps John Lennon had a son called Ziggy we have not previously heard about” but this would be 58 Mark Goodacre special pleading and we would rightly reject such claims. A cluster of names is only impressive when it is a cluster that is uncontaminated by non-matches and contradictory evidence. In short, including Mariamne and leaving out Matia and Judas son of Jesus is problematic for any claim to be made about the remaining cluster. All data must be included. You cannot cherry pick or ma- nipulate your data before doing your statistical analysis.
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