Interrupting the Party to Rant

Yes, rant. I can’t believe the gullibility of the media to give credence to director Simcha Jacobovici and producer James Cameron’s new “documentary” film, The Lost Tomb of Jesus (which appeared on the Discovery Channel on March 4th).

Aren’t documentaries supposed to be fact? How in the world, then did this piece of fantasy get made, put on TV, and publicized? Might as well call The Da Vinci Code a documentary.

In a recent blog post, Christian science fiction author James Somers humorously exposes one of the fallacies of the film’s claims.

In another article by a reputable (and non-Christian) archaeological scholar (Jodi Magness—the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Archaeology and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has participated in more than 20 excavations in Israel and Greece, and currently directs excavations in the Roman fort at Yotvata, Israel. Her publications include an award-winning book on The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls [Eerdmans 2002] and an article entitled “Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James,” Journal of Biblical Literature 124 [2005]), the entire premise of the film is debunked. Here’s the conclusion of the excellent, informative article “Has the Tomb of Jesus Been Discovered?”:

The identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus and his family contradicts the canonical Gospel accounts of the death and burial of Jesus and the earliest Christian traditions about Jesus. The claim is also inconsistent with all of the available information—historical and archaeological—about how Jews in the time of Jesus buried their dead, and specifically the evidence we have about poor, non-Judean families such as that of Jesus. It is a sensationalistic claim without any scientific basis or support.

The last line is why I’m ranting. Why are we, the American public, so quick to give ear to sensational claims?

Without all the studied information Dr. Magness gives in her article, any reasoning person can realize this story is bunk just by reading the Bible.

First point. If you believe the Bible, not just for its historical value but as inspired Scripture, you realize at once there ARE no bones of Jesus’ body. He pretty much took them with Him in His resurrected body.

Second point. If you believe the Bible, even at only the historical value level, you realize that if Jesus’ tomb existed with such clear identification, then this “notion” of Him raising from the dead would have been squelched back in the first century, for certainly SOMEONE would have thought to say, “Uh, no, his body is buried right here. See? His name and that of his parents, his wife, his son, are inscribed right here.” That DID NOT HAPPEN? Why? Because there was NO SUCH TOMB, not with the bones of Jesus of Nazareth, the only begotten Son of the Living God.

OK, sorry for all the shouting. I warned you though that I would be ranting. And this ludicrous claim calls for forceful debunking.