A biblical archaeologist has dismissed claims of the discovery of a tomb containing the remains of Jesus Christ and his family, calling them sensationalist.
Geologist Arye Shimron told NBC News on Tuesday that the Talpiot Tomb in East Jerusalem holds evidence that Jesus Christ was buried there with his wife and son.
This evidence, the Christian Post said, revolves around a centuries-old ossuary containing human remains. This ossuary is incribed in Aramaic with the words: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."
Shimron claimed that soil and mineral samples in the Talpiot Tomb match those in the James Ossuary.
"The evidence could not be stronger than what I have," the geologist told NBC News.
The Jerusalem Post also revealed that Shimron and filmmaker-journalist Simcha Jacobovici conducted over 150 chemical tests in the Tomb, which was first excavated in the 1980s. According to the Jerusalem Post, the two men claim to have reached a "scientific breakthrough with theological implications."
Scott Stripling, the chair of the Humanities and Foreign Language Department at Wharton County Junior College, told the Christian Post that he had interviewed one of the archaeologists at the site and concluded that there is "no evidence that Jesus or his family members were buried there, certainly not his supposed wife and son."
He then accused those behind the announcement as trading in "sensationalism, not archaeology."
Stripling also dismissed Shimron's claims on the James Ossuary and its inscription, stating that such names were common during the first century.
"(V)irtually every family in the first century had members with the names Jesus, Joseph, James, and Mary," Stripling maintained.
He then maintained that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the true burial place of Jesus of Nazareth.
"There is abundant evidence which supports the Church of the Holy Sepulchure as the actual site of the culmination of the Passion of Jesus," he told Christian Post.
