James Cameron, director of the movie “Titanic,” and Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici are producing a book and a TV documentary titled “The Jesus Family Tomb.” They say the book and documentary will present what may be the real tomb of Jesus.

Not the traditional tourist site, this cave located near a modern Jerusalem apartment building contained limestone ossuaries that Cameron and Jacobovici say may have held the bones of Mary Magdalene, mother Mary, Jesus himself, and a man named Judah, whom the filmmakers claim may be the son of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. 

This morning (February 26) on NBC’s Today show, co-anchor Meredith Vieira interviewed Cameron and Jacobovici. They were soft-spoken and sounded like reasonable men as they presented as much of their case as they could in a short TV interview. Vieira sounded a little more breathless as she offered her opinion: “It may be the biggest archaeological find ever . . . If this is correct, the implications are huge!”          

Well, yes, and that could be said of most any hypothetical statement you could come up with. If the temperature rises 30 degrees in the next 30 years, the implications are huge. If Iran drops a nuclear bomb and vaporizes Baltimore and Washington, the implications are huge. But then, if those things do not turn out to be the case, there are no implications at all. That’s the way it is with hypothetical statements.          

So what is actually new in the work of Cameron and Jacobovici? Not a lot, the way it sounds to me. The cave was discovered at a construction site back in 1980. The BBC made a documentary about the discovery in 1996. At that time, a range of experts dismissed the story as pretty much meaningless. Yes, the cave included limestone boxes of bones with those names on them, but literally every fourth woman in Palestine was named Mary back then. Jesus and Judah were also extremely common names. Furthermore, this type of tomb would not be the burial place for poor people like Jesus and his family. His family would probably have been buried in Nazareth any way, rather than in Jerusalem.          

What Cameron and Jacobovici have added to the story is scientific terminology: forensic evidence, DNA testing, statistical analysis. They say, for example, that while these names were indeed common, the probability of them all being together in one place is statistically much less likely than the individual appearance of the names. Well, okay. It’s less likely. I’m not sure that proves anything.           

The bones are no longer in the limestone boxes (apparently the original archaeologists removed and buried them), but forensic experts were able to collect enough residue from the boxes to perform tests on mitochondrial DNA. They discovered that the person with the bones in the box marked Jesus could not have been related to the person whose remains were in the box identified as Mary Magdalene’s. So if they weren’t blood relations, conclude the filmmakers, they must have been married. Well maybe, but I guess I’m not overwhelmed by the iron-clad logic of that conclusion.          

Things like statistical analysis and DNA testing sound impressive, but they are only valuable if the conclusions to which they lead are important. So far, I’m missing what’s truly important in the conclusions.    

Jacobovici said in the interview that this may be the first physical evidence directly linked to the Biblical story of Jesus. He also said he doesn’t see why people are afraid it will challenge the story of Jesus’ resurrection. Well, if someone thinks Jesus’ bones are still around, it does seem like that would call into question the Biblical account of Jesus’ bodily resurrection and eventual ascension to heaven. But again, I don’t see much in this story that should be taken seriously.          

I think the most remarkable thing about the story is that, 2,000 years after Jesus walked the roads of Palestine, people still care so much about Him that this became top-of-the-hour news on nearly every TV network in the country. I have to ask, what other ancient historical event is so significant that new information about it could have “huge implications” in 2007? Yet that is the power of the story of Jesus. Historian Thomas Cahill has written: 

As everyone knows, he preached a message of mercy, love, and peace and was crucified for his trouble. This unlikely character has long been accounted the central figure of Western civilization. Even now, as we cross to the beginning of the third millennium since his birth, we count our days by his appearance on earth; and, though our supposedly post-Christian society often ignores and even ridicules him, there are no serious suggestions for replacing him as the Icon of the West (Desire of the Everlasting Hills, page 8 ).          

In the planet’s history there have been many spiritual leaders, but all except Jesus claimed nothing more than to be pointing in the direction God or the light or whatever their version of truth was. Muhammad, for example, claimed simply to be the messenger of Allah. Only Jesus claimed to be God Himself. It’s an utterly audacious claim. It is either true or the world’s most successful fraud. The amazing spectacle of the cross and the resurrection fit the spectacular nature of Jesus’ claim. The fact that nearly all of Jesus’ apostles were martyrs lends credibility to the resurrection account (Who would die for a fraud?). Generation after generation of Christians in the years immediately following were willing, in large numbers, to go to their death for Christ. Nothing gives credibility to a story like people dying for it.

Just 300 years after Christ, Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. In the cause-and-effect interplay of history, huge effects have huge causes. If the story of Jesus is just a tale not based on fact—like Homer’s Iliad, for example—it is impossible to imagine it could have that kind of impact on history. The history of western civilization only makes sense if the story of Christ is true.           

The apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth:  

If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. . . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17-20 NIV). 

I haven’t heard anything lately that would make me change my mind about agreeing with Paul. 

B.W.                 

For other views on the story go to: http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=says_scholar_whose_work_was_used_in_the_&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&ref=rss

http://www.playfuls.com/news_0005725_DNA_and_Statistics_in_Tomb_of_Jesus_Effectively_Debunked.html