They’re at it again…

Hollywood will have a lot to answer for. Now I don’t know how successful their repeated attempts at ‘disproving’ Bible-believing Christianity are at causing people to turn away from Christ, but at any rate they’re at it again.

James Cameron (Director of Titanic) is this time at the fore-front, seeking to release a film that examines a tomb found near Jerusalem in 1980. The Israeli Antiquities Authority found 10 bone boxes there, and stored them in a warehouse. Some bore inscribed names: Jesus, son of Joseph; Maria; Mariamene e Mara; Matthew; Judas, son of Jesus; and Jose. Each name with the exception of Mariamene seemed common to their period, and it was only in 1996 that the BBC made a film suggesting that given the combination, it might be that family. The idea was eventually discounted, however, because, as University of St. Andrews (Scotland) New Testament expert Richard Bauckham asserted in a subsequent book, the names with Biblical resonance are so common that even when you run the probabilities on the group, the odds of it being the famous Jesus’s family are “very low.”

But some have been fascinated with the thought ever since, particularly Simcha Jacobovici. Jacobovici has pursued the idea that this is the tomb of the earthly family of the Lord Jesus, and he has influenced some along the way.

Cameron said the combination of names found on the tombs convinced him of their heritage, and he’s now unveiling his documentary ‘The Lost Tomb of Jesus‘. The documentary asserts that tests on samples from two of the coffins show Jesus and Mary Magdalene were likely to have been buried in them and were a couple.

The film-makers used this finding to claim that the coffin marked “Judah son of Jesua” contains the son of Jesus and Mary.

Now in case any of you are nutcases, and you’re ready to swallow this, it’s not ‘evidence’ in the slightest. In fact 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.

Here are just some of the difficulties associated with the claims of the documentary -

• If “Jesus” and “Mariamene” weren’t related matrilineally, why jump to the conclusion that they were husband and wife, rather than being related through their fathers?
• The first use of “Mariamene” for Magdalene dates to a scholar who was born in 185, suggesting that Magdalene wouldn’t have been called that at her death.
• St. Andrews’ Bauckham defends his probabilities, noting that Jacobovici was comparing his name-cluster to the rather small sampling of names known to have been found on bone boxes, while his own basis for comparison, which adds names from contemporary literature and other sources, makes the combo far less unusual.

Darrell Bock, a professor at the conservative Protestant Dallas Seminary, whom the Discovery Channel had vet the film two weeks ago, adds another objection: why would Jesus’s family or followers bury his bones in a family plot and “then turn around and preach that he had been physically raised from the dead?” If that objection smacks secular readers as relying too heavily on scripture, then Bock’s larger point is still trenchant: “I told them that there were too many assumptions being claimed as discoveries, and that they were trying to connect dots that didn’t belong together.”

Whatever next?

[sources - here and here]

Want to read other articles? Try these...

• Mary J. Blige - A Christian?
• Who Are They?
• The Blessing Of Being In A Universal Family

Want to pray intelligently for this preacher? Go here to learn more!