History or heresy?
Acclaimed director's new documentary alleges bones in ancient tomb belong to Jesus Christ, his wife and their son.
BY STEVEN SNYDER
[email protected]
February 27, 2007, 12:48 AM EST
If James Cameron proved anything with "Titanic," it was that he knew how to create a spectacle.
And Monday at the New York Public Library, he once again attracted the attention of the world's media with the unveiling of two ancient stone boxes that, some experts say, might once have contained the remains of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.
Cameron, producer of the documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" which airs Sunday on the Discovery Channel, appeared with a half-dozen filmmakers, theologians and scientists to announce the discovery of a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb that may have been the last resting place of Jesus and his family.
"It's the biggest archaeology story of this century," Cameron said. "I've never doubted there was a historical Jesus 2,000 years ago, but there has not been a shred of archaeological evidence -- until now."
Cameron's filmmaking team has been analyzing this evidence for the past three years, and while Monday they stopped far short of calling their discovery definitive, they said they were confident their facts -- as proven by archaeological records, forensic analysis and biblical study -- could have profound ramifications.
Those facts are this: In 1980, a tomb was unearthed amid a construction frenzy in Jerusalem. Ten limestone bone boxes, called ossuaries, were discovered in the tomb, six bore inscriptions (markings used to prevent the inadvertent mixing of bones).
As the ossuaries were removed from the tomb and placed in storage by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the Hebrew inscriptions were recorded. Three of the six were easily translated as Mary, Matthew and Joseph.
It was the last three names, however, that caught the attention of "Lost Tomb" filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici: A faint inscription which translated to "Jesus son of Joseph," a second inscription reading "Judah son of Jesus" and a third ossuary with the name "Mariamne," which in the "Acts of Phillip" -- a recently-discovered fourth-century work -- was revealed to be the real name of Mary Magdalene.
Given the statistical improbabilities of these names being buried together, the crew took the next step of extracting partial DNA samples from the Jesus and Mariamne ossuaries, which later proved they were not maternally related.
For religious scholars, the implications of these findings -- if true -- are profound: Given that this is a family burial place reserved for spouses and blood relatives, the DNA tests suggest that Jesus and Mary Magdalene may have been married, and that together they may have been the parents of a child named Judah. If this is indeed Jesus' actual burial location, the entire concept of Jesus' resurrection would be called into question.
Even before Monday's news conference, critics had taken to the Web and the airwaves, deriding Cameron and Jacobovici's conclusions.
"I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this," said Stephen Pfann, biblical scholar at Jerusalem's University of the Holy Land and one of the several skeptics interviewed in the documentary. "How possible is it? On a scale of one through 10 -- 10 being completely impossible -- it's probably a one, maybe a one and a half."
But on Monday, Cameron and Jacobovici said they were not presenting this evidence as fact.
"We've been at this for three years," Jacobovici said after the news conference. "And everything we've thrown at these facts to disprove them didn't disprove anything, so it's gotten to the point where we need to say, 'OK, here's this stuff, and now it's time to pay attention and start the debate.'"
In 2003, Jacobovici directed the much-discussed documentary "James, the Brother of Jesus," which featured the analysis of a bone box that bore the inscription, "James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Later that year, the IAA declared that bone box a forgery.
This story was supplemented with an Associated Press report.
Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.
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