Legacy Matters

The Tomb of Jesus

What to make of the claim by moviemaker James Cameron that he found the lost tomb of Jesus and his provocative claims that Jesus married  Mary Magdalene and together they had a child named Judah - DNA testing proves it.

Hogwash.

Who would publish such claims?  No scholarly peer-reviewed journal for Cameron, he choose the Discovery channel for his 'documentary".

John Miller says it falls into the genre of conspiratorial advocacy.

The Anchoress says We must be getting close to Easter, same time last year we were treated to the Gospel of Judas and the opening of the DaVinci Code.

Ben Witherington in Tomb of the Still Unknown Ancients writes
Many people, though, are simply beguiled by the "obsolescence factor" in our technologically driven society--the "newer" must be "truer" and "better." This outlook, when applied to a subject like the historical Jesus, attracts all sorts of unbridled speculation, and worse.

He scoffs at Cameron's claim that we now have proof that Jesus existed.
Actually, no serious historian of biblical antiquity has ever doubted that there was a historical Jesus. Yet it tells us a lot about the state of our culture that Mr. Cameron's remark, backed by pseudo-science, could be seriously made on national television ...We are a Jesus-haunted culture that is so historically illiterate that anything can now pass for knowledge of Jesus.
--
Any good scientific theory must account for all the evidence--in this case, all the names we find in the Talpiot tomb and not just the ones that match the holy-family theory.
--
We actually know that James was buried within sight of the Temple Mount, and Talpiot is miles from there. Eusebius, the fourth-century church historian, saw the tomb and the standing inscribed slab in front of it.

You also have to ask yourself: Why would most of the holy family from Galilee be buried in a middle-class tomb several miles outside of Jerusalem in some sheep pasture? They were, in fact, poor and could not afford an ornamental tomb like this one. This family was from Nazareth, too, with connections in Bethlehem. Why wouldn't its members be buried in one of those places?

We also know that crucifixion was considered the most shameful and hideous way to die, a blow from which one's family honor did not soon recover, if ever. So shamefully did Jesus die that his first followers and even most of his family abandoned him: He was not buried by family members or by the Galilean disciples. He was put in a tomb near the old city that did not belong to any of them.

The central claim of Christianity is the Jesus was the Son of God, the Incarnation and after his crucifixion rose from the dead.  Without the Resurrection, there would be no Christianity and certainly no Church that has lasted 2000 years,   

Why didn't the Romans who were afraid of the cult surrounding the followers of Jesus come forward with any evidence?  The Captain thinks along the same lines in Jesus Buried in Plain Sight.

The archeologists who worked on the dig and discovered the tomb  of 10 ancient ossuaries- small caskets used to store bones in 1980 called Cameron's claims "dishonest", "bunk" and "nonsense" but admit it's a great story for TV.

The DNA proof?  It doesn't identify Jesus or Mary Magdalene but only that one male and one female in the tomb were unrelated and probably married.

The cross next to the name?  Use of the cross during the first two centuries was rare.  Christians used the fish symbol to covertly identify each other says Texas Rainmaker in Tales from the Crypt.

Mark Shea has gathered together under the title Shocking Revelation that Shakes Christianity to its Very Foundations. Again.links to other shocking revelations.  The ones I never heard include Jesus was a woman, a Mormon, a magician, a space alien buried in Japan, never existed, was never executed, survived his execution and is buried in Kashmir.

I like the take these high school researchers who claim that James Cameron is Actually Un-Dead and Buried in Biloxi.  Tombstone rubbings by the class at a local cemetery revealed that James Cameron lived from 1830-1907.  Said the coroner of the find,
I mean, the guy's got the same name and the bones have human DNA.  What more do you need?