Interesting side note on the Lost Tomb special: I got the current Biblical Archeology Review in the mail today, which of course went to press after all this and doesn’t cover the Lost Tomb question. There is, however, a thick two-page cardboard stock ad for the Discovery Channel Book Club. For $5.99 plus shipping and handling, one can receive the “Beyond the Bible” collection — consisting of five Bart Ehrman books, including “Lost Christianities,” “Lost Scriptures,” “Misquoting Jesus,” “Peter, Paul & Mary Magdalene,” and “The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot.” Ehrman is a leading proponent of the view that there was no center of orthodoxy in the early church, and that the Gnostic sects in particular were genuine heirs of the early Christian tradition before they were stomped out by the patriarchy. A key notion in the Lost Tomb special is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child. One can’t help but notice that Discovery Channel is riding the DaVinci zeitgeist for all it’s worth.
Note — if you’ve never seen Biblical Archeology Review, it’s a fascinating magazine. It is not about proving the Bible through archeology, as the title might seem to imply. In fact, many of the articles are written by “minimalists” who reject Biblical history altogether. Because there is sometimes a minimalist slant, you have to read the articles critically, but it is an excellent source for the state of academic archeology in the Holy Lands.