Statistical analysis of an archeological find

TL;DR

This paper applies statistical analysis to an archaeological find in Jerusalem, assessing the likelihood that the tomb belongs to the New Testament family based on name distributions and a measure of surprisingness.

Contribution

It introduces a statistical approach to evaluate the probability of the tomb's connection to the NT family using name data and a novel measure of surprisingness.

Findings

The name distribution analysis shows a high surprisingness score under certain assumptions.

The approach provides a quantitative method for archaeological hypothesis testing.

Results depend on specific assumptions about name frequency and historical context.

Abstract

In 1980, a burial tomb was unearthed in Jerusalem containing ossuaries (limestone coffins) bearing such inscriptions as Yeshua son of Yehosef, Marya, Yoseh--names which match those of New Testament (NT) figures, but were otherwise in common use. This paper discusses certain statistical aspects of authenticating or repudiating links between this find and the NT family. The available data are laid out, and we examine the distribution of names (onomasticon) of the era. An approach is proposed for measuring the ``surprisingness'' of the observed outcome relative to a ``hypothesis'' that the tombsite belonged to the NT family. On the basis of a particular--but far from uncontested--set of assumptions, our measure of ``surprisingness'' is significantly high.