Since the Titanic, James Cameron hasn’t done much as a director. But this week he produces a new documentary that has stirred a ton of controversy: The Tomb of Jesus airs on the Discovery channel this weekend. The documentary claims that Jesus’ tomb was found with his family – including his wife, Mary Magdalene and their son. Is this true? And what does it mean, if so?
Ramifications: Who Cares if the Tomb of Christ is found?
Before we examine the claims, it’s important to understand what the claim means. What are the ramifications if the tomb of Jesus has been found? Here are the big ones:
- The Bible is false. The central claim of the Bible is that Jesus was physically raised from the dead after three days, rather than entombed. If this claim is proven false, the Bible cannot be believed as a honest account of the events of Jesus’ life.
- The Catholic Church is false. For 2,000 years the Catholic Church has taught that Jesus rose bodily from the dead in accord with Scripture. If His tomb was found, she is wrong and her claim to infallibility is gone. In addition, her teachings on the Resurrection saving us are wrong, which means . . .
- All of Christianity is dead. The Christian faith claims that Jesus died for our sins as the perfect sacrifice and that this sacrifice is what allows us to go to heaven. If Jesus died like regular men, then He is not God and thus cannot save us from our sins.
Our faith is based upon the pillar of Christ’s death and resurrection. If His body is found, then He was not resurrected as we have been told. All of our faith would then be in vain.
Evidence: What does the Documentary Claim?
The documentary claims that a tomb found by Amos Kloner 27 years ago contains the remains of Jesus of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene, and their child, among others. They base much of their evidence on numbers: the statistical chances that a tomb would contain Jesus’ name along with other graves containing those believed to be Jesus’ family during that time.
The proof from Cameron’s point of view lies in possibilities: what is the possibility of a tomb containing a grave labeled “Jesus” from that time period. He extrapolates this to be proof of Jesus’ remains.
So did James Cameron find Jesus’ Tomb?
Since James Cameron is a movie director, let’s look at what historians and archeologists tell us rather than what James Cameron tells us. One tell-tale sign from the start is that not one single respected archeologist from the region will support Mr. Cameron’s theory. Not one. And Amos Kloner, who found the original tomb, calls these claims both “impossible” and “nonsense.” Only the writer of the book (that the documentary is based on) named Simcha Jacobovici agrees with Mr. Cameron. Father Jonathan Morris on FoxNews writes what James Cameron should have said:
We really got scared when people like Joe Zias, who spent 25 years as an archeologist at Rockefeller University in Jerusalam, called into question our integrity. I think he said publicly “Simcha has no credibility whatsoever.” And even though the great archeologist, Amos Kloner, tried to rain on our party when he said, “The claim that the burial site has been found is not based on any proof, and is only an attempt to sell.”
But why? What is the evidence that this claim is not true? Let’s start with the claims of the name. From US Today:
The claim rests on a statistical analysis of the inscribed names on the ossuaries in the tomb, which was first uncovered during construction in 1980, and a DNA analysis of the remains in ossuaries inscribed with the names "Jesus son of Joseph" and "Mariamene e Mara." The analysis suggests the two were not blood kin and thus perhaps married.
The statistical analysis set odds of about 600-to-1 that the combination of names on the ossuaries didn't belong to the family of Jesus.
Shimon Gibson of the Albright Institute in Jerusalem, one of the three archaeologists who first explored the "middle-class" tomb, appeared with Cameron at the announcement and pronounced himself "skeptical but open-minded" about the possibility that Jesus' family tomb has been found.
But others were less charitable.
"These were very widespread names at the time, and finding a family tomb with ossuaries inscribed with them proves nothing," says biblical scholar Robert Eisenman of California State University-Long Beach.
Burials show 21% of women in Jesus' era were named Mary, says Richard Bauckham of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.
Jesus, Joseph, Judah and Mara (Martha) were also among the top 10 names.
Several archeologists have also suggested that the names were translated incorrectly, since Hebrew is notoriously difficult to decipher in cases like this. The Wall Street Journal also points out some of the issues:
The "Jesus tomb" explorers trot out statistics on ancient Hebrew names, claiming that the ones in the tomb sound too much like known Jesus family members for the similarity to be a coincidence. But since we've only excavated a minority of archaeological and tomb sites even in Jerusalem, most ancient names are still buried in the earth, making meaningful statistical analysis difficult. What we can say for certain is that most of the names found in the Talpiot tomb on the outskirts of Jerusalem have been seen in many places elsewhere--in texts, on potsherds, in inscriptions, in the Bible itself. They are not rare even by the standards of the limited evidence we do have.
Any good scientific theory must account for all the evidence--in this case, all the names we find in the Talpiot tomb and not just the ones that match the holy-family theory. For instance, we have a Matthew in the tomb, but Jesus had no brothers named Matthew. And where are brothers like Simon, or the sisters mentioned in Mark 6, and where especially is brother James? We actually know that James was buried within sight of the Temple Mount, and Talpiot is miles from there. Eusebius, the fourth-century church historian, saw the tomb and the standing inscribed slab in front of it.
You also have to ask yourself: Why would most of the holy family from Galilee be buried in a middle-class tomb several miles outside of Jerusalem in some sheep pasture? They were, in fact, poor and could not afford an ornamental tomb like this one. This family was from Nazareth, too, with connections in Bethlehem. Why wouldn't its members be buried in one of those places?
We also know that crucifixion was considered the most shameful and hideous way to die, a blow from which one's family honor did not soon recover, if ever. So shamefully did Jesus die that his first followers and even most of his family abandoned him: He was not buried by family members or by the Galilean disciples. He was put in a tomb near the old city that did not belong to any of them.
We live in a day and age that any claim against Christianity, no matter how ridiculous, is taken seriously. James Cameron can make up any stories he likes – he even ignores much of the evidence in this case – and the Discovery channel will run it. Not because it is scientifically valid (since when has the Discovery channel cared about science?), but because James Cameron has the money to widely publish his claims. If we but knew more – as the Wall Street Journal also points out:
In a surreal moment on "Larry King Live" earlier this week, the film's producer, James Cameron (of "Titanic" fame), told us with a straight face that we should all be thankful that we now have tangible evidence that Jesus existed. Actually, no serious historian of biblical antiquity has ever doubted that there was a historical Jesus. Yet it tells us a lot about the state of our culture that Mr. Cameron's remark, backed by pseudo-science, could be seriously made on national television and that the film's companion book has already shot up to No. 5 on Amazon's rankings. We are a Jesus-haunted culture that is so historically illiterate that anything can now pass for knowledge of Jesus.
Our ignorance lines the pockets of those who, like Mr. Cameron, seek fortune over reality.
Is this real? No. Last year we had The Da Vinci Code and this year we have The Tomb of Christ. As long as our populance is so ignorant of history the will be money made with pseudo-science and rewritten history – anything that trieds to contradict Christianity. And why not? After all, materialists can sleep easy if they find that there is no judgment after this world.
God bless,
Jay
