Jesus Dynasty Blog

The Name Yoseh on the Talpiot Tomb Ossuary
09/02/2007

By Dr. James. D. Tabor
April 2, 2007, @ 8:45 am

I want to initiate a series of posts on the names on the six inscribed ossuaries found in the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb. There has been quite a bit of discussion of these on the Web, and more recently in print, and I hope I can offer some helpful discussion on a number of issues that have been raised. I have found the work of Stephen and Claire Pfann to be particularly helpful and provocative, though as readers will see below, and in subsequent posts, their conclusions and my own are quite different. Clearly, any case made for this tomb being that of Jesus of Nazareth, in the end, will turn on these inscribed names, how they are to be read or deciphered, and what possible correspondence they might have to the named family of Jesus as known to us in various textual sources.

Ossuary 80.504 in the State of Israel collection (no. 705 in the Rahmani Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries) is a case in point. It is a plain or undecorated ossuary with the following clear Hebrew/Aramaic inscription, namely the letters Yod, Vav, Samech, and Heh. It is properly read or pronounced in English as Yoseh. It is a shortened form of the full name Joseph/Yehosef, the most common male Jewish name in the period…

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