Professors: James H. Charlesworth

Professor James H. Charlesworth is a well-known New Testament expert from Princeton Theological Seminary. Charlesworth has authored and edited more than 30 books on the New Testament, Dead Sea Scrolls, and other Jewish literature.

He is currently the chief editor of Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project. This project involves translating all the published Dead Sea Scrolls from Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic into English.

Third Princeton Symposium (2008)

Professor James H. Charlesworth organized the Third Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins at Mishkenot She'ananim in Jerusalem. The conference running for four days from Sunday, January 13th to Wednesday, January 16, 2008, brought together more than 50 archaeologists, statisticians and experts like Professor Israel Knohl, archaeologist Shimon Gibson and others who specialize in DNA and ceramics and ancient languages, to discuss whether the tomb of Christ in Talpiot's hills was excavated by Yosef Gat's archaeology team in 1980.

This issue about whether the Talpiot tomb belongs to Jesus Christ received global attention in the media a year ago when Canadian investigative journalist and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici produced the documentary: The Lost Tomb of Jesus.

After vigorous debate, the panelists at the conference kept their differences in opinion. Opinions varied from "not possible" to "very possible". According to Charlesworth, the tomb at Talpiot is from a Jewish family from the time of Jesus. He also noted that the names on the ossuaries were written correctly as "Jesus, son of Joseph". However, Charlesworth still has his doubts. This is because the writing on the ossuaries were scribbled on like graffiti and the tomb, if the people believed Jesus was the Son of God, was missing the necessary ornamentation.