ANOTHER "TOP TEN" LIST of archaeological discoveries pertaining to the New Testament, this one by Ben Witherington III in Christianity Today. It's a rather different list from the one produced by Crossan and Reed (the link is currently down while Blogspot fixes something). I imagine Witherington is going to get a lot of flack for including not only the "James Ossuary," but also the Shroud of Turin. He calls into question the C-14 dating of the latter, but there are more indications that it's a medieval forgery. (See my earlier post for a genuine first-century shroud from Jerusalem.) Witherington suggests looking for bone fragments in the ossuary and then testing their DNA against the stains on the Shroud. Well, we'd have nothing to lose by trying it, but I wouldn't bet on the exciting result he hopes for. Nor would I bet that those determined to find the Shroud genuine (and I'm not putting Ben in that category, but there are plenty of them) would be deterred by a negative result.

He also argues that the "James Ossuary," if it's genuine, proves a belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Well, maybe. The "honor and shame culture" argument seems simplistic to me. Jesus' followers could also have believed that Jesus was a martyr or that Jesus had been vindicated in heaven with much the same result.

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre comments on the article.

UPDATE: Since my archive is down, here is the link to the abstract of Shimon Gibson's paper "A First-Century Burial Shroud at Akeldama in Jerusalem, the Turin Shroud and the so-called �James� Ossuary" at July's International SBL meeting in Cambridge (scroll down to session 23-12). And here's more on the Jerusalem shroud. And here's an article on it from the Telegraph. And here's my summary of his Cambridge paper just after I heard it (rescued from Blogspot oblivion via the Google cache):

Shimon Gibson spoke on "A First-Century Burial Shroud at Akeldama in Jerusalem, the Turin Shroud, and the So-Called 'James Ossuary.'" (See abstract at SBL site - see Saturday's last post for a link.) Read the abstract, but note the following additional items. Gibson reports that he has reason to believe that the "James Ossuary" was looted from this tomb in 1998. (Incidentally, I hear from more than one source that Mr. Golan, the owner, has been arrested.) He also reports that the shroud is quite different from the Shroud of Turin, but matches the description of Jesus' shroud in one of the Gospels (John, I think).

John 20:6-7.