The Talpiot discovery was documented in 1994 in "Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel" numbers 701–709, and first discussed in the media in the United Kingdom during March/April 1996.

[2][3][4] This conclusion, while weakly supported by a statistical analysis of the names involved,[4][7] is rejected by the overwhelming majority of archaeologists, Christian theologians, linguists, and biblical scholars.

It was reopened in 2005 by Jacobovici, without permission from the Antiques Authority, during filming of his documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, and resealed by officials shortly thereafter.

In 2008, Ruth Gat, the widow of the archaeologist who supervised the original excavation, claimed that her husband kept the discovery a secret until the mid-1990s because he feared a wave of antisemitism would ensue if the tomb's existence was made public.

According to Jacobovici, Cameron, and religious studies professor James Tabor, one of the unmarked ossuaries later disappeared when it was stored in a courtyard outside the museum.

[10] At that time, Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the claims of a connection to Jesus did not hold up archaeologically, adding "They just want to get money for it."

[18] Following a symposium ("Third Princeton Theological Seminary Symposium on Jewish Views of the Afterlife and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism: Evaluating the Talpiot Tomb in Context") held in Jerusalem in January 2008, the media interest in the Talpiot tomb was reignited with most notably Time[19] and CNN[20] devoting extensive coverage, hailing the case as being reopened.

In particular Simcha Jacobovici is reported to have issued statements to the press saying the symposium has reopened the case and that he felt "totally vindicated".

Several scholars, including significantly all of the archaeologists and epigraphers, who had delivered papers at the symposium issued an open letter of complaint claiming misrepresentation, saying that Jacobovici and Cameron's claims of support from the symposium are "nothing further from the truth" and also "that the majority of scholars in attendance—including all of the archaeologists and epigraphers who presented papers relating to the tomb—either reject the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to Jesus’ family or find this claim highly speculative" and that "the probability of the Talpiot tomb belonging to Jesus’ family is virtually nil".

The conference, primarily devoted to the problem of afterlife in Second Temple Judaism, was useful in airing the latest views on ancient Jewish burial practices and modern science.

Apart from a handful of participants, the large majority of the assembled scholars consider the theory that the Talpiot ossuaries contained the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family as unlikely after the conference as it has been before.

[27][28][29] Princeton Theological Seminary issued a letter following the controversy and reiterated concerns that: the press following the symposium gave almost the exact opposite impression (of the symposium's results), stating, instead, that the conference proceedings gave credence to the identification of the Talpiot tomb with a putative family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.

As is abundantly clear from the statements to the contrary that have been issued since the symposium by many of the participants, such representations are patently false and blatantly misrepresent the spirit and scholarly content of the deliberations.

[30][31] At the end of the symposium, Charlesworth stated that “Most archaeologists, epigraphers, and other scientists argued persuasively that there is no reason to conclude that the Talpiot Tomb was Jesus’ tomb.”[32] An edition of the scientific journal Near Eastern Archaeology (Vol.

3/4, Sep–Dec 2006), published by The American Schools of Oriental Research contains several articles concerning the Talpiot Tomb, including an overview over the controversy.

[34] Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner, who was among the first to examine the tomb when it was first discovered, said the names marked on the coffins were very common at the time.

Experts such as Richard Bauckham,[37] David Mavorah[38] and Amos Kloner[38] have asserted the commonness of archaeological inscriptions bearing the name "Jesus".

[59] The frequency distribution for names prevalent during the period of time during which ossuary burials took place was inferred by studying two key sources: According to Prof. Feuerverger, the goal of the statistical analysis is to assess the probability level of a null hypothesis:[58] A 'null hypothesis' can be thought of here as asserting that this cluster of names arose purely by chance under random sampling from the onomasticon.

[62][63] Feuerverger's conclusions have been called into question: Stephan Pfann (president of Jerusalem's University of the Holy Land) points out that the commonality of these names suggests that the probability is much lower.

[52] Feuerverger noted in his rejoinder to comments that this false understanding so perturbed his calculation that this means that we cannot (on the basis of our RR procedure) say that the Talpiyot find is statistically significant in any meaningful way.