Time for another roundup of posts on the Jesus/Talpiot Tomb debate. First, a press release (“Ten Reasons Why The Jesus Tomb Claim is Bogus”) was issued by a number of scholars (Ben Witherington, Darrell Bock, Craig Evans, Gary Habermas, Paul Maier, Joe Zias, and Amos Kloner) a couple days ago that I have yet to mention. The press release really doesn’t have any discussion, but provides news agencies with a list of contacts for further information.

With some of the initial knee-jerk reactions behind us, there is more substantial discussion happening around the blogosphere.

• Ben Witherington has a couple more posts, the first of which interacts with some of the evidence brought forward in the book The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History (HarperCollins, February 2007; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). His second post should clear up the identity of the tenth ossuary. According to Joe Zias, who actually personally catalogued the item, the tenth ossuary was a blank ossuary that didn’t mysteriously go missing, it was just of little significance because it was blank. This should settle once for all that it was not the James ossuary.
• Richard Bauckham has weighed in on the subject in a guest post over at Chris Tilling’s Chrisendom. His post, “The alleged ‘Jesus family tomb,'” is a lengthy discussion of the the names on the ossuaries that is well worth a read.
• Chris Heard has ignored his own advice and decided to tackle the issue of the DNA evidence in relation to the ossuaries.
• Mark Goodacre has picked up on Chris’s discussion of the DNA evidence and adds his own thoughts. In another post he also tackles the issue of how the statistics are being used in the whole debate.
• Steven Notley also has a good post on the issue in the Synoptic-L list.

In regards to news sources, there are also a number of good articles being published:

• Bill Dever, among others, are cited in a Washington Post article by Alan Cooperman, “‘Lost Tomb of Jesus’ Claim Called a Stunt.”
• The Associated Press has a feature by Karen Matthews entitled, “Scholars Criticize Jesus Documentary,” also is worth looking at (from the Washington Post).
• Christianity Today has an article dismissing the views of Jacobovici and Cameron (and they even mention me and some other bloggers as well).

Well, that’s about it for today.