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Lost Tomb of Jesus
I’m guessing the majority of you have heard about the documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” that aired on the Discovery Channel. It was all over the internet last week. If you haven’t heard of it, here is a link to the article i first read early last week. I recommend reading it.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1593893,00.html
Basically it goes like this: in Jerusalem in 1980 a tomb that contained ten separate ossuaries (bone boxes) was uncovered while building an aparment complex. 6 of the boxes had names on the side. The documentary claims that these names are of the family of Jesus, including Jesus himself. This of course would mean that Jesus never did rise from the tomb nor appear after his death before ascending to heaven. The documentary also claims they found a box with the name Mary Magdalene and a box for the son of Jesus. Of course meaning that they found out that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and they had a baby. For more information read the article, because i don’t want to go through it all.
Hopefully you tuned into to watch the documentary last night, if not for the entertaining purposes, then just to watch and fully understsand what’s being presented to the public. I personally think that it was perhaps the first documentary I’ve seen that relied more on “what ifs” than “here’s how.” It really showed a lack of respect to the art form of documentaries. Anybody who watched could see that the “ifs” were stacked to support one hypothesis, that of course being that this must be the family of Jesus, and these must be Jesus’ bones. As an example of how far the director would go, at one point they put a tube camera underground only to discover they were in the wrong tomb. The director, the eternal optimist, says “although we found ourselves in the wrong tomb, perhaps these finely crafted ossuaries, so close to the talpiot tomb (the one they were looking for), are somehow connected to Jesus or his followers.” In other words, because this is Jesus’ tomb, the nearby tombs are likely those of his followers and because those nearby tombs are likely those of his followers, this must be the tomb of Jesus.
During the documentary they also suggest they have DNA evidence that says Jesus and Mary Magdalene were not related through the mother…therefore they must be man and wife. What?? Why not through the father? Why not cousins? I think there are a few more explanations. How come they didn’t take this a step further? For example, if Y-chromosome samples from Joseph and Jesus showed no genetic link between father and son, then the discovery channel could take credit for proving the virgin birth. How come they didn’t test everybody’s DNA? Other than the obvious answer which is it wouldn’t have made for good television.
And wait a second…how did they get the DNA? If you watch the documentary they say the bones were quickly reburied after the discovery in 1980. So they say they got the DNA from the boxes themselves. Susan Sheridan, a Bioanthropologist at the University of Notre Dame said this in an article.
The DNA could have come from a variety of sources, Sheridan said, and most likely came from people who handled the boxes. What it probably did not come from are the bones originally found in the boxes.
“Getting ancient DNA out of bones, i mean we’ve got four big skeletal collections here from the near east … We have really excellent bones, and we can’t get dna out of them. … You have to be very careful about contamination control,” Sheridan said. “and a lot of times, even in the bones we have from Jerusalem that are about 500 years younger than (the ones mentioned in the film), some fungus has moved in and destroyed our ability to get DNA.”
And all they discovered was that the two sources were not related through the mother. They must have been married.
Other archaeological experts are speaking out against the documentary as well, including the man who did the original excavation of the tomb back in 1980.
This is from another article:
William Dever, who the Washington Post describes as one “who has been excavating ancient sites in Israel for 50 years and is widely considered the dean of biblical archaeology among U.S. scholars” has responded to the film by saying,
“I’m not a christian. I’m not a believer. I don’t have a dog in this fight … I’ve known about these ossuaries for many years and so have many other archaeologists, and none of us thought it was much of a story, because these are rather common Jewish names from that period,” he said. “It’s a publicity stunt, and it will make these guys very rich, and it will upset millions of innocent people because they don’t know enough to separate fact from fiction.”
The Washington Post added that similar assessments came yesterday from two Israeli scholars, Amos Kloner, who originally excavated the tomb, and Joe Zias, former curator of archaeology at the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Kloner told the Jerusalem Post that the documentary is “nonsense.” Zias described it in an e-mail to the Washington Post as a “hyped up film which is intellectually and scientifically dishonest.”
One part of the documentary that i felt was particularly funny was when they said “Maria is the latin form of Mary, and is how Jesus’ mother was known after His death as more Romans became followers.” How do the filmmakers know that Jesus’s mother was known after his death by a latinized form of her name “as more romans became followers”? Are they ignorant of what was going on during that time? And do they not see the obvious contradiction here? People became followers of a crucified and risen savior, not a middle-class resident of Jerusalem. If Jesus was walking around Jerusalem with a wife and kids, there would be no followers, Roman or otherwise, to be calling her Maria.
I have to admit, as a Christian I’m not mad or offended at this documentary. I’m actually entertained and happy that they released it. To me, it shows how far people will go to try and disprove Christianity, and it still hasn’t been done. Unfortunately, I do believe it will hurt many people. I think there are many people out there who maybe were questioning christianity and were questioning the validity of the claims, and then to have this movie come around…who knows. Hopefully they will see it as the joke it really is.
I do have to say one final thing though, and i’m saying this not as a Christian, but as a person who is intereested in history. Something major happened in 33 ad, the year of Jesus’ death. Something that changed the world. What was it? Jesus’ followers said he was raised three days after the crucifixion and ascended into heaven. They said this in the same town that it happened. Christianity began in Jerusualeam, the same country that Jesus was crucified. It’s not like they started spreading rumours in a different country. And if they were lying…why? For money? Fame? These people were martyrd for their beliefs. Put to death in gruesome ways, some stoned, some crucified upside down. I would like to think that if they were lying, at least one of them, when faced with death would say, “ok, ok…just joking.” I know i couldn’t die for what I knew to be a lie. And if it wasn’t true you’d think they would find evidence that it wasn’t…and this documentary wasn’t it…
The truth is, the “Jesus” industry makes a lot of money, and there is no end to where speculation can take you…as long as it can be used to attack the christian faith, anyway. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s an end in sight and we can expect more of this in the future.
Also, Dr. Joe E. Zias published a viewer’s guide to ‘The Lost Tomb of Jesus’ that you can find on his website. Dr. Zias is a member of the science and archaeology group at the Hebrew University. “This group is composed of scientists from various disciplines, attempting to bring diverse fields of scientific inquiry to archaeology, anthropology and research on the dead sea scrolls.” In the guide he says way more than i could say to show how far off the filmmakers are. If you’re interested it really is good reading.
Here is the link: http://www.joezias.com/tomb.html
