The Lost Tomb of Jesus

The Discovery Channel is set to air a special produced by James Cameron (of “Titanic” fame) about the supposed “family tomb” of Jesus.

This “discovery” of the tomb and ossuaries is actually about ten years old. The “new” evidence seems to be a DNA analysis, which proves only that the remains in the “Jesus” and “Mary” ossuaries were not related. Unfortunately, the Discovery Channel’s publicity gives the impression that the tomb and ossuaries are newly discovered — they are not — and that the DNA evidence proves Jesus Christ’s body was in the tomb — an obvious impossibility, as there are no remains of Jesus with which to run a DNA comparison.

Darrell Bock offers a good critique of the film on his blog. This, in particular, seems quite strong:

Third, we have to accept that as they scrambled to steal the body and yet preach an empty tomb and resurrection when they actually knew that Jesus was not raised. They had to SECRETLY buy the tomb space from someone, prepare an ossuary over a year’s period and then choose to adorn the ossuary of Jesus with graffiti-like script to name their dead hero. Surely if they had a year to prepare honoring Jesus, they would have adorned his ossuary with more than a mere graffiti like description. Not to mention that some of the family died for this belief, when they really knew Jesus had not left the tomb empty. This scenario seems quite implausible.

It would seem quite absurd for the first Christians to perpetuate, on pain of persecution and death, a false resurrection story, while at the same time housing Jesus’ body in a family tomb in an ossuary with his name emblazoned on it — and stranger still to leave the ossuary in situ with all the other family ossuaries where it easily could have been discovered by anyone.

Note also in Bock’s comments that several of the key experts associated with the film reject the hypothesis that this is really Jesus’ burial place:

Seventh, if one pays close attention to the special one will see that when the subject of the connection is raised with the most well known of these experts, they all say the connection is NOT credible because the names are so common. These experts have known about this locale for decades. NONE of the most well known experts are actually cited as embracing the claim of the special. Surely they asked them this question about a specific connection, did they not? In other words, the silence on such a lack of endorsements for the figures brought in to corroborate certain details is deafening.

Bock makes a number of other compelling arguments concerning the presence of the name “Matthew” on one of the ossuaries and concerning the name Mariamne.

Another good review of the film can be found on Ben Witherington’s blog. There is also an AP story in which a number of archeologists, including the person who first examined the site, criticize the film.