As you may know, a documentary entitled “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” aired on the Discovery Channel yesterday and discussed the possibility that ancient ossuaries discovered near Jerusalem held the remains of Jesus and his family (including wife Mary Magdalene and a son named Judah). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to watch the documentary but have heard a great deal about it.
As the release of the Da Vinci Code and the books analyzing it illustrated, anything published on the topic of Jesus possibly being married is going to be controversial. This documentary, however, appears to be even more controversial than any other time the matter was brought up – not because it attacks Christianity, but because there is even more debate about the material being used than usual.
James Cameron (the documentary’s producer), Simcha Jacobovici (the documentary’s director), and other people involved with the project claim that Jesus was likely buried in the ossuaries with his family members because it is almost statistically impossible to get the combination of names found engraved on the caskets without it actually being the Jesus who Christians believe to be the son of God. Most scholars, however, strongly disagree with the conclusions that were reached during the preparation of the documentary.
I understand that the statistics here would make it a very good chance that this is actually Jesus’s grave and I can also see how one can argue that if he “raised back to life” from one grave, why couldn’t he have done it from this one. What I do question, however, is why this discovery (which was supposedly made in 1980) wasn’t mentioned (or at least extremely rarely) during all the hoopla that resulted from the Da Vinci Code being published. One would think that finding a grave marked with the names of Jesus’s family (including that of a son) would be an extremely good piece of evidence to use towards proving that Jesus was married. Nonetheless, the grave wasn’t a focus of significant discussion because there are very few scholars who actually agree that the ossuaries hold the remains of Jesus.
So I suppose the real question is now, did anybody actually get to see the documentary. And if so, what did you think of it?
Filed under: Virginia Politics
I saw it and it was weak.
Before you make up your mind on the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” you need to see and hear the rest of the evidence.
For a comprehensive and scholarly rebuttal of the film’s evidence please visit ExtremeTheology.com.
Read and hear the evidence for yourself.
See also:
http://confirmedword.blogspot.com/
“I understand that the statistics here would make it a very good chance that this is actually Jesus’s grave…”
Actually, the statistics say that it is very UNLIKELY. Joseph, Mary, Judah, and Joshua (Jesus) were the most common names in ancient Judea.