Cameron's 'The Tomb of Jesus' Sinks Like Titanic
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 11:58AM “I regard Christianity as the most fatal, seductive lie that has ever existed.” —Adolf Hitler, quoted in Larry Azar, Twentieth Century in Crisis (1990), p. 155.
On March 4, the Discovery Channel will air a James Cameron/ Simcha Jacobovici documentary called “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”. The special attempts, with these new “findings”, contradict the idea of Christ’s resurrection and takes massive liberties with other areas of Holy Scripture, Sacred Tradition and basic Christian belief.
Not wanting to waste a perfectly good opportunity to contradict 2000 years of evidence to the contrary, Cameron and the usual suspects raise questions about Jesus’ marital status and family status; enter Mary Magdalene and their son Jude. Right……..
The Catholic League issued this statement:
February 26, 2007
JESUS’ TOMB DISCOVERY IS TITANIC FRAUD
“Titanic” director James Cameron and TV-director Simcha Jacobovici are claiming they have evidence of a Jerusalem tomb that allegedly houses the remains of Jesus and his family. Commenting on this is Catholic League president Bill Donohue:
“Not a Lenten season goes by without some author or TV program seeking to cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus and/or the Resurrection. Last April, NBC’s ‘Dateline’ featured the wholly discredited and downright laughable claims of Michael Baigent, and two years ago ABC treated us to a special that questioned every aspect of the Resurrection. Now we have the Cameron-Jacobovici thesis.
“Israeli archeologist Amos Kloner was in charge of the 1980 investigation of the tomb that Cameron-Jacobovici have seized on 27 years later to make their allegations. ‘The claim that the burial site has been found is not based on any proof, and is only an attempt to sell,’ Kloner says. He adds, ‘I refute all claims and efforts to waken a renewed interest in the findings. With all due respect, they are not archeologists.’ Indeed, Kloner has branded their claims ‘impossible’ and ‘nonsense.’ Moreover, he says there is ‘no likelihood’ that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. ‘It makes a great story for a TV film,’ he concludes.
“Joe Zias, who spent a quarter-century as an archeologist at the Rockefeller University in Jerusalem, said that ‘Simcha has no credibility whatsoever.’ Zias isn’t shooting from the hip: Jacobovici’s credibility explodes when one considers that he still believes the 2002 tale about an ossuary with the inscription, ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’ On June 18, 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) condemned this claim as a modern forgery—this was the unanimous decision of a 15-member IAA committee. Agreeing with this decision were Harvard’s Frank Cross and Tel Aviv University professor Edward Greenstein.
“The Discovery Channel aired the 2002 hoax and now it’s back with the Titanic fraud. It’s time the Discovery Channel discovered ethics and stopped with the sensationalism.”
Dr. Ben Witherington, a Protestant Biblical scholar, has excellent and comprehensive commentary on his blog, to include:
THE JESUS TOMB? ‘TITANIC’ TALPIOT TOMB THEORY SUNK FROM THE START
First of all, I have worked with Simcha (Cameron’s filmmaker cohort). He is a practicing Jew, indeed he is an orthodox Jew so far as I can tell. He was the producer of the Discovery Channel special on the James ossuary which I was involved with. He is a good film maker, and he knows a good sensational story when he sees one. This is such a story.
1) The statistical analysis is of course only as good as the numbers that were provided to the statistician. He couldn’t run numbers he did not have. And when you try to run numbers on a combination name such as ‘Jesus son of Joseph’ you decrease the statistical sample dramatically. In fact, in the case of ‘Jesus son of Joseph’ you decrease it to a statistically insignificant number! Furthermore, so far as we can tell, the earliest followers of Jesus never called Jesus ‘son of Joseph’. It was outsiders who mistakenly called him that! Would the family members such as James who remained in Jerusalem really put that name on Jesus’ tomb when they knew otherwise? This is highly improbable. My friend Richard Bauckham provides me with the following statistics…….
2) There is no independent DNA control sample to compare to what was garnered from the bones in this tomb……
3) Several of these ossuaries have very popular and familiar early Jewish names. As the statistics above show, the names Joseph and Joshua (Jesus) were two of the most common names in all of early Judaism. So was Mary. Indeed both Jesus’ mother and her sister were named Mary. This is the ancient equivalent of finding adjacent tombs with the names Smith and Jones.
4) The historical problems with all this are too numerous to list here: the ancestral home of Joseph was Bethlehem, and his adult home was Nazareth…. Why in the world would be be buried (alone at this point) in Jerusalem? ….We have no historical evidence of such a son of Jesus, indeed we have no historical evidence he was ever married. ….the name Mary is about the most common of all ancient Jewish female names…. By all ancient accounts, the tomb of Jesus was empty— even the Jewish and Roman authorities acknowledged this… Implicitly you must accuse James, Peter and John (mentioned in Gal. 1-2— in our earliest NT document from 49 A.D.) of fraud and coverup. Are we really to believe that they knew Jesus didn’t rise bodily from the dead but perpetrated a fraudulent religion, for which they and others were prepared to die? Did they really hide the body of Jesus in another tomb?
5) One more thing of importance. The James ossuary, according to the report of the antiquities dealer that Oded Golan got the ossuary from, said that the ossuary came from Silwan, not Talpiot, and had dirt in it that matched up with the soil in that particular spot in Jerusalem. In fact Oded confirmed this to me personally when I spoke with him at an SBL meeting….
6) What should we make of James Tabor’s being co-opted into this project? You will remember his book which came out last year The Jesus Dynasty. In that book he had quite a good deal to say about the Talpiot Tomb, and about Panthera being the father of Jesus, and about Jesus being buried in Galilee, and of course nothing about a ossuary which claims that Joseph is the father of Jesus.
And:
PROBLEMS MULTIPLY FOR JESUS TOMB THEORY
At the risk of being accused of shooting the messengers, James Tabor (who collaborated on The Tomb of Jesus) authored The Jesus Dynasty and is part of a long lineage of Christian conspiracy theorists. Simcha Jacobovici is a practicing Jew. James Cameron has long been critical of Christianity and despite the success of Titanic was widely ostracized for his many artistic and historical liberties taken in that epic film. This is a man, married five times, who sustained an ongoing affair with Titanic actress Suzy Amis (old Rose’s granddaughter) while married to Linda Hamilton. Personal conduct aside, it’s fair to say he has no vested interest in preserving any historical context in his newest “documentary”.
Essentially, these attacks on the faith and fidelity of Christ are par for the course. Every year during Lent, some sensational piece of conjecture raises its ugly head in an attempt to discredit the basic foundations of Christianity: the resurrection, deity of Christ and his sexuality. Last year it was The DaVinci Code and The Gospel of Judas. NBC’s Will & Grace aired an episode starring Britney Spears called “Cruxi-fixin’s” on April 13 , just before Good Friday. Around the same time, ABC’s Desperate Housewives ran a Catholic smear campaign.
Jesus was on trial as Italian atheist Luigi Cascioli, who marketed “The God Who Wasn’t There”, brought suit against the Catholic Church for perpetuating a fraud, questioning the existence of Jesus . He lost, Jesus won.
What’s going on is very much like that final scene in “The Passion” when Jesus died and Satan was left to be tormented by his own failure to defeat the Lord. These little pot shots at Christ inevitably fail because docudramas cannot compare with billions of Christians over 2000 years and the immeasurable impact they have had on history.
OTHERS BLOGGING: Captain’s Quarters Below the Beltway Get Religion Donna’s AC
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Reader Comments (19)
They just won't give up, will they? Eventually, all of these anti-Jesus findings end up collapsing under their own weight.
I will give them an E for effort though.
Excellent commentary Amy, and I appreciate the facts and references you have shared as well. Jesus said the world would hate us as it hated Him, and sadly, that's pretty apparent. I find it laughable that these filmakers would pass off this old find as evidence of Jesus Christ, when the archaeologists, etc disagree with them.
Hmmph! Interesting claims made for obvious PR reasons. Cameron has said, he puts it out there to further the debate. Why does something so ludicrous and lopsided (likely) in documentary format qualify as further fuel for "debate?"
Further fuel for debate like; "Fahrenheit 911" or "An Inconvenient Truth?"
For the sake of entertainment and seeing archaeological ruins etc., all strike me as good enough reason to watch. But with so many stretches please do not conclude "this" is worthy of debate.
I'm going to watch (probably), but when first revealed and the claim that DNA evidence was used pretty much made my jaw drop; simply, where does one get DNA evidence of Jesus.
As I've said before, look to Oscar night 2008....
This is an event that happened well over 2000 years ago and without the right conditions nothing will last 2000 years. How does James Cemeron know he found the location of Jesus tomb?
Even if there are remains in this tomb, how would they know if they belonged to Jesus for sure?
They will never give up this ridiculous quest to renounce Christ's resurrection. They explain it or even come close to comprehend it. So, they thrive on blind ignorance to destroy it.
Sadly, there will be many more people deceived by this so-called "evidentiary documentary" just because it is on the Discovery Channel.
We know the truth and that truth will set us free!
Donna, liberal politics and liberal religious agendas are very similiar. They start with their objective as the end result and work backwards from there.
The fact is that no one has ever found Jesus' bones and it's insulting to suppose that people 2000 years ago were too dumb to locate the site and excavate the bones. All corroborative sources point to an empty tomb.
This is a cheap shot at making money at Lent.
I ran across a blog by accident (trust me, I wouldn't go there on purpose) by some person claiming this new documentary will crucify Christianity. Right, just like Satan, Nero, Herod, Stalin and millions of others have tried to do.
It's going to take far more than these Bozos to ruin my Lent and Easter season. Ignore them and let Discovery Channel know why you will not be watching any more of their fiction.
Facts aside, they seem to have a particularly poor concept of what actual faith is. Something tells me they just wouldn't understand at all. Many of us see and hear with our heart as well as our brains.
And obviously, some of us are incapable of this as well. Faith is a gift, let us never forget that. Those of us who have it rejoice and are thankful. Those of us who do not evidently attack those who do.
Their lame attempt effects me no more than an annoying gnat buzzing around. I frankly just don't care what they are selling, I'm not buying.
Thanks for this information, Amy. You are helping keep the word out that this is just the seasonal attack on Christianity. It has become totally predictable just as you said.
Peace be with you and let me be the first this year to tell you that He Is Risen!
Amelia
Amy,
Perhaps you have already seen this, but it appears that this is not the first time that the name "Jesus son of Joseph" has been found on an ossuary.
Jesus, son of Joseph
Anytime I read or hear about someone especially those in the public eye, trying to find anything they can to discredit Jesus/God it gives me the creeps.
Mwalimu Daudi, thanks for the link! Ben Witherington's entry had this:
And:
That was interesting info in the last comment, Amy. I always like hearing about the cultural customs and nuances that you don't pick up when you read the Bible today. It gives you a better understanding of what's going on and the significance of situations. I help lead a Bible study and we're doing a course on the Covenants, and I've learned a lot of things I never picked up on before.
Amy,
Believe it or not, I'm with you on this one. This "find" is nothing but old, debunked, crap recycled to make a buck. When I first saw the "story" I said to myself, "didn't I see this junk about 5 years ago?".
There are plenty of reasons to question the historical fact of the resurrection, but this ain't one of 'em.
My favorite part? The Da Vinci Code's portrait of Jesus is irreconciliable with this latest conspiracy theory. They can't even get the lies to match up with each other!
Still, you do have to admire their indomitable spirit. Nevermind that the Romans kept watch on the tomb for three continuous days! They, uh, must've forgotten where Jesus was buried. Um, or something. Also nevermind that neither they nor the Pharisees ever disputed that Jesus rose from the dead either, they must've just never gotten around to it.
As fantastic as it may sound, resurrection is the only explanation that can account for what happened in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Every other explanation has holes you can drive a Mack truck through.
These specials come out every Christmas and Lent/Easter/Passover/Resurrection Day/whatever to increase their visibility. It's a marketing effort, nothing more.
"The Da Vinci Code's portrait of Jesus is irreconciliable with this latest conspiracy theory. They can't even get the lies to match up with each other!"
Well, contrary to your paranoia, "they" are not exactly an organized conspiracy.
grumpy said:
I always like it when you comment in some agreement. I will say though that religion by its nature takes faith. I disagree that Christianity is in dispute with historical fact. Cameron's piece of crap aside, there are no bones of Jesus or Mary his mother (or Moses, Elijah) that have ever been found. The evidence is overwhelming for a "missing Christ" if you will after the burial and quite a lot of proof for His reappearance afterwards when he taught the disciples for 40 days after his resurrection and before his ascenion. There were thousands of eye witnesses to both.
That's just an example. Not everything that is historical fact is contained in the Bible alone... that's why the Church holds Holy Tradition/Oral Tradition in high esteem. There's plenty of evidence that did not make it into the Bible to support these things.
It's easy for a skeptic to be, well, skeptical, because things like a resurrection and ascension, as well as other miracles, are humanly impossible. That's why it centers around God because with Him, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE. If you do not believe in God, it suffices to say you'd doubt historical evidence.
Cameron's research on Titanic was lauded. If he had applied to that film the same level of research he did on his Jesus tomb story, he would have had the ship sailing uneventfully into New York's harbor at the end of the movie.
Thanks for your post, Amy.
:)