The Jesus Family Tomb

The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History () is a controversial book by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino (with a Foreword by James Cameron) published in February 2007. It tells the story of the discovery of the Talpiot Tomb on Friday March 26, 1980 and makes an argument that it is the tomb of Jesus Christ and his "family."

The book is a tie-in with the documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which was released on the Discovery Channel in early March 2007.

The tomb in Talpiot, excavated in 1980 during salvage archaeology, originally contained ten ossuaries - bone boxes for secondary burial. Of the ten, one vanished - presumably stolen - right after it had been catalogued. This may be the James Ossuary the brother of Y'shua, although the such claim is refuted by the professor who oversaw the archaeological work. Of the other nine, six were inscribed with names. As translated in The Lost Tomb of Jesus and The Jesus Family Tomb, they read as follows:

The authors present a case for the ossuary of James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus (Yakov ben Yosef akhui diYeshua). This controversial relic, accepted as legitimate by some, is believed by others in the field as fraudulent. Prominent among those who believe its authenticity is Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. An ongoing forgery trial in Israel has failed to disprove its authenticity. These doubts are the result of the ossuary being unprovenanced - that is, not found in a legitimate excavation. The book presents what the authors purport to be firm scientific evidence that the James ossuary is the missing tenth ossuary from the Talpiot tomb.

The film makers from The Lost Tomb of Jesus had the outside layer of dirt tested against the other 9 ossuaries that were found in the tomb, and the dirt on the outside of the James ossuary was proven to be made up of the same minerals as the other 9 ossuaries. In the documentary they stated that this was nearly impossible if not from the same tomb.

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