Fri March 2nd, 2007
Christian and Muslim leaders strongly condemned a TV documentary which claims that the bones of Jesus Christ were found in a Jerusalem tomb.
Earlier this week, the Discovery Channel held a news conference to announce the TV documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which contradicts the basic tenets of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
The film's director, James Cameron, and his colleague Israel-born Simcha Jacobovici claim that they discovered the tombs which contain the bones of Jesus Christ, his alleged wife Mary Magdalene and their alleged son in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980.
The documentary, to be aired on the Discovery Channel on March 4, drew condemnation not just from religious scholars but also from leading archaeologists around the world.
A biblical anthropologist whose work has focused on the Middle East, Joe Zias, dismissed Cameron's claims as "dishonest".
"It has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus, he was known as Jesus of Nazareth, not Jesus of Jerusalem, and if the family was wealthy enough to afford a tomb, which they probably weren't, it would have been in Nazareth, not here in Jerusalem," he said.
The very fact that Jesus Christ had an ossuary would contradict the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven.
It also contradicts Muslim and Christian beliefs that Jesus Christ never had an earthly family a false idea that has been alleged in the book and movie "The Da Vinci Code".
The new documentary "contradicts the religious principles and the historic and spiritual principles that we hold tightly to," said Attallah Hana, a Greek Orthodox clergyman in Jerusalem.
In the U.S., R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, branded the film a "farcical documentary" full of "really far-fetched claims."
"The DNA testing is to me the most laughable aspect of this," he said. "You have to have the basis of a DNA sample that would make any sense
No one has the DNA of Mary."
Igor Kovalevsky, general secretary of the Russian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said such "sensational" publications appear every year in the run-up to Easter to take advantage of people's religious ignorance.
"That is what happened with the Judas Gospel and the screen version of the Da Vinci Code, and now we have a new sensation," the priest said.
Hakim Abdullah post from New York
"The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries small caskets used to store bones discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel.
One of the caskets even bears the title, "Judah, son of Jesus," hinting that Jesus may have had a son, according to the documentary. And the very fact that Jesus had an ossuary would contradict the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven.
Cameron told NBC'S "Today" show that statisticians found "in the range of a couple of million to one in favor of it being them." Simcha Jacobovici, the Toronto filmmaker who directed the documentary, said the implications "are huge."
"But they're not necessarily the implications people think they are. For example, some believers are going to say, well this challenges the resurrection. I don't know why, if Jesus rose from one tomb, he couldn't have risen from the other tomb," Jacobovici told "Today."
Most Christians believe Jesus' body spent three days at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City. The burial site identified in Cameron's documentary is in a southern Jerusalem neighborhood nowhere near the church.
In 1996, when the British Broadcasting Corp. aired a short documentary on the same subject, archaeologists challenged the claims. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television.
"They just want to get money for it," Kloner said.
Cameron said his critics should withhold comment until they see his film.
"I'm not a theologist. I'm not an archaeologist. I'm a documentary film maker," he said.
The film's claims, however, have raised the ire of Christian leaders in the Holy Land.
"The historical, religious and archaeological evidence show that the place where Christ was buried is the Church of the Resurrection," said Attallah Hana, a Greek Orthodox clergyman in Jerusalem. The documentary, he said, "contradicts the religious principles and the historic and spiritual principles that we hold tightly to."
Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight.
"I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this," Pfann said. "But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."
"How possible is it?" Pfann said. "On a scale of one through 10 10 being completely possible it's probably a one, maybe a one and a half."
Pfann is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name "Hanun." Ancient Semitic script is notoriously difficult to decipher.
Kloner also said the filmmakers' assertions are false.
"It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave," Kloner said. "The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time."
Archaeologists also balk at the filmmaker's claim that the James Ossuary the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.
"I don't think the James Ossuary came from the same cave," said Dan Bahat, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. "If it were found there, the man who made the forgery would have taken something better. He would have taken Jesus."
Islam Clarifies
Muslim leaders also slammed the documentary, because it contradicts their belief that Jesus wasn't killed, but was raised instead to heaven by Allah (SWT) without being put on the cross.
Reports about Jesus Christ's "remains" were "pseudo-sensation", according to Damir Gizatullin, deputy head of the Russian Mufti Council.
"We think it (the documentary) is one of those cases when people want to attract attention at all costs," Gizatullin added.
According to the holy Qur'an, Allah (SWT) transformed another person to appear like Jesus to deceive the Romans and make them believe that Jesus died.
"And their saying: Surely we have killed the Messiah, Isa son of Marium, the messenger of Allah (SWT); and they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it appeared to them so (like Isa) and most surely those who differ therein are only in a doubt about it; they have no knowledge respecting it, but only follow a conjecture, and they killed him not for sure. Nay! Allah took him up to Himself; and Allah is Mighty, Wise."-- Qur'an, 4:157-158, Surat An-Nisaa (The Women).
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