Tomb could be of Jesus, wife and son: directors

[RedHorse]

NEW YORK - A new documentary by "Titanic" director James Cameron claims Jesus had a wife and a son, citing evidence from his alleged burial site that contradicts the Bible's account that the Christian son of God was single.

Cameron and his co-filmmaker Israel-born Simcha Jacobovici said Monday their research suggested Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a son, Judah, who were buried with him in the Israel cemetery.

The claims in the documentary "The Lost Tomb of Christ," to be shown Sunday on US cable television, inject new controversy into the concept of Jesus's resurrection after he was crucified, a central tenet of Christian belief.

If they hold substance, they could reignite questions about Jesus' earthy family life popularized in the hit book and movie "The Da Vinci Code."

But representatives of the Catholic and Protestant churches in the United States quickly denounced the claims made by Cameron and Jacobovici.

"It's good hype," David O'Connell, the president of Catholic University told CNN television.

Cameron and Jacobovici, an award-winning documentary director, based their film on a tomb called Jesus's unearthed in Talpiot, Jerusalem, in 1980 by a construction crew developing an apartment complex.

They cite evidence of names etched on ossuaries, or limestone bone boxes, dug up at the site, DNA evidence they hold, and other technical analysis.

"I am not an archeologist or a Bible scholar," Cameron told a press conference Monday.

But "as a documentary filmmaker I should not be afraid of pursuing the truth," he said.

"I know they will say that we try to undermine Christianity. That is far from the case. This investigation celebrates the real existence of these people."

Five of the 10 boxes discovered in the Talpiot tomb were inscribed with names believed referring to key figures in the New Testament: Jesus, Mary, Matthew, Joseph and Mary Magdalene. A sixth inscription, written in Aramaic, translates to "Judah son of Jesus."

"Such tombs are very typical for that region," Aaron Brody, associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion and director of California's Bade Museum, told Discovery News, which will carry the documentary on its cable channel.

In addition to the "Judah son of Jesus" inscription, another limestone burial box is labeled in Aramaic with "Jesus son of Joseph." Another bears the Hebrew inscription "Maria," a Latin version of "Miriam," or, in English, "Mary."

Yet another ossuary inscription, written in Hebrew, reads "Matia," the original Hebrew word for "Matthew." Only one of the inscriptions is written in Greek. It reads, "Mariamene e Mara," which can be translated as, "Mary known as the master," the television network said.

Jacobovici, director, producer and writer of the film, argued that a statistical analysis of the names being found together makes it extremely unlikely that it would be anyone else but the biblical family of Jesus.

He and his team also obtained two sets of samples from the ossuaries for DNA and chemical analysis. The first set consisted of bits of matter taken from the "Jesus Son of Joseph" and "Mariamene e Mara" ossuaries. The second set consisted of patina, a chemical film encrustation on one of the limestone boxes.

The human remains were analyzed by Carney Matheson, a scientist at the Paleo-DNA Laboratory at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. Mitochondrial DNA examination determined the individual in the Jesus ossuary and the person in the ossuary linked to Mary Magdalene were not related.

Since tombs normally contain either blood relations or spouses, Jacobovici and his team say the DNA results suggest Jesus and Mary Magdalene could have been a couple.

"Judah," the alleged son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the filmmakers meanwhile argue could have been the "lad" described in the Gospel of John as sleeping in Jesus' lap at the Last Supper.

US religious leaders ridiculed the claims, comparing them to those of "The Da Vinci Code."

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 told CNN.

"You have to have the basis of a DNA sample that would make any sense," he said. "No one has the DNA of Mary."

Israeli archaeologist and professor Amos Kloner, who documented the tomb as the Jewish burial cave of a well-off family more than 10 years ago, is adamant there is no evidence to support claims that it was the burial site of Jesus.

"I'm a scholar. I do scholarly work which has nothing to do with documentary film-making. There's no way to take a religious story and to turn it into something scientific," he told AFP in a telephone interview.

"I still insist that it is a regular burial chamber from the first century BC," Kloner said, adding that the names were a coincidence.

"Who says that 'Maria' is Magdalena and 'Judah' is the son of Jesus? It cannot be proved. These are very popular and common names from the first century BC," said the academic at Israel's Bar Ilan University. AFP

[Helios]

He better do a pretty good job of making this film a blockbuster adventure movie like the DaVinci and the Passion. it would be better if he repackage this as a sequel to one of the two for marketing purposes.

[Zeus]

OT: Science and Religion(religious belief) always contradict e Yung plagues sa Egypt during Moses time, inexplain sa Discovery channel e

[pup2]

OT: Science and Religion(religious belief) always contradict e Yung plagues sa Egypt during Moses time, inexplain sa Discovery channel e

I believe it is theologically correct to also interpret miracles as unusual events happening at just the right moment(s). Jesuits are one of the main proponents of science NOT necessarily contradicting religion.

[pup2]

My theology teacher once said gnosticism is, has been (for a looong time), and will remain to be, the greatest threat to christianity. Succintly, he said it was because it sounded reasonable -- and who doesn't like earthly pleasures and a self-serving interpretation of everything??

[GasJunkie]

so is a virus, no???





:fly:

[niky]

It will be interesting. Strange, I've never though of Cameron as a conspiracist (not like Stone).

[yebo]

mali siya! dun sa bayan namin nakalibing si jesus saka parents nya. meron dun nitso, ang name sa stone e jose maria jesus xxx.

dun naman sa bayan ng tatay ko nakalibing ang 11 apostles. sa isang family plot andun sila pedro, jaime 1, juan, mateo, lukas, marko, felipe, bartolome, tomas, jimmy, simon ... si judas lang ang wala.

[Asus700]

obviously riding on the da vinci platform.

piece of crap. why not make a film on buddha or mohammed, their tombs are certainly occupied. Only Jesus' tomb is empty! He's the only one who rose from the dead

[onat_1]

more:popcorn: and :soda: please :grin2:

[GasJunkie]

mali siya! dun sa bayan namin nakalibing si jesus saka parents nya. meron dun nitso, ang name sa stone e jose maria jesus xxx.

dun naman sa bayan ng tatay ko nakalibing ang 11 apostles. sa isang family plot andun sila pedro, jaime 1, juan, mateo, lukas, marko, felipe, bartolome, tomas, jimmy, simon ... si judas lang ang wala.

do they charge entrance fee???







:hysterical:

[empy]

maukhang nasobrahan ng basa ng movie scripts itong si Jimmy ah :screwloose:

mali siya! dun sa bayan namin nakalibing si jesus saka parents nya. meron dun nitso, ang name sa stone e jose maria jesus xxx.

dun naman sa bayan ng tatay ko nakalibing ang 11 apostles. sa isang family plot andun sila pedro, jaime 1, juan, mateo, lukas, marko, felipe, bartolome, tomas, jimmy, simon ... si judas lang ang wala.

:bwahaha: meron pa kayang tao na may pangalang judas?

[GasJunkie]

^^^^^^^^^


I hear lots of people still follow it down low though. :evil:





:rofl01:

[silverbx986]

maukhang nasobrahan ng basa ng movie scripts itong si Jimmy ah :screwloose:


:bwahaha: meron pa kayang tao na may pangalang judas?

meron.......yung biyenan ko. :aray:

[BlueBimmer]

mali siya! dun sa bayan namin nakalibing si jesus saka parents nya. meron dun nitso, ang name sa stone e jose maria jesus xxx.

dun naman sa bayan ng tatay ko nakalibing ang 11 apostles. sa isang family plot andun sila pedro, jaime 1, juan, mateo, lukas, marko, felipe, bartolome, tomas, jimmy, simon ... si judas lang ang wala.

ayan naman pala, mystery solved!!! :rofl01:

[eggman]

mali siya! dun sa bayan namin nakalibing si jesus saka parents nya. meron dun nitso, ang name sa stone e jose maria jesus xxx.

dun naman sa bayan ng tatay ko nakalibing ang 11 apostles. sa isang family plot andun sila pedro, jaime 1, juan, mateo, lukas, marko, felipe, bartolome, tomas, jimmy, simon ... si judas lang ang wala.

Ok yan ha...

[GasJunkie]

this




:fly:

[niky]

Why? it's so easy to piss off Islamic Fundamentalists. Make a cartoon of Muhammad and they're in the streets.

In the same vein, it's really easy to piss off Catholic fundamentalists. Any change or challenge to the dogma of the Catholic Church, even if it isn't in contradiction to Christ's teachings, is taken as heresy. (Case in point: Women Priests)

The Da Vinci Code was pure fiction and conspiracy theory gone wild. This? I'll reserve judgement till I see the documentary.

[rj_tim]

A Jerusalem Post story, with this good quote. The interesting thing here is that the original archaeologist sees nothing of any interest to the story of Jesus of Nazareth, and this has all been hauled out before.

But Bar-Ilan University Prof. Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. “It makes a great story for a TV film,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “But it’s impossible. It’s nonsense.”

Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and the fact that such apparently resonant names had been found together was of no significance. He added that “Jesus son of Joseph” inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years.

“There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb,” Kloner said. “They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE.”

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

[rj_tim]

Did They Really Find Jesus’ Bones?
By Dr. Craig L. Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament


What will they think of next? Dan Brown writes a novel (The DaVinci Code) that fictitiously garbles Christian history and millions of people believe it is based on fact. The end-of-the-second-century Gospel of Judas is unearthed and the normally scholarly National Geographic Society produces a documentary so biased than even skeptics like Bart Ehrman have to debunk it.

Now various news sources and websites, accompanying a Discovery Channel documentary, tout the possibility of scholars having discovered Jesus’ family tomb. Ossuaries (small bone boxes into which people were re-buried after their corpses had rotted and their skeletal remains were exhumed) in a Jerusalem tomb allegedly contain the Hebrew names for Joseph, Mary, Matthew, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Judah son of Jesus, with space for perhaps one more mini-coffin. DNA tests now demonstrate that the second Mary does not share any DNA with the remains found in the Jesus ossuary. Given the frequency of burying extended families together, it makes sense to think of this person as a wife of one of the other men, and given the location of her ossuary next to the one of Jesus, perhaps she was his wife.

One writer declares, “We’ve disproved the resurrection.” Another boasts, “At last, the first indisputable evidence that Jesus of Nazareth actually lived.” A third announces, “See, Jesus was married to Mary and they had a son named Judah.” Mighty wishful thinking on all three counts! Consider the following observations that also emerge as one reads the stories carefully.

(1) There is doubt about what some of the letters in the names’ inscriptions really say, particularly the name supposedly corresponding to Jesus. (2) The tomb (in the Talpiot neighborhood) is nowhere near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, a highly likely candidate for the original site of Jesus’ death. Given ancient Jewish burial practices, the likelihood of Jesus having been buried anywhere other than close to where he was crucified is small. (3) Dan Brown’s fiction notwithstanding, there is not a shred of historical evidence to suggest that Jesus was married and much that says he was single. (4) The second Mary’s name isn’t Magdalene; it is actually three Greek (!) words that could be translated Mary the Master. But that is not a known title or form of address for the Magdalene anywhere else in antiquity.

(5) Normally when the information from tombs doesn’t match existing literary information about ancient people, the assumption is made that we haven’t found their tombs. For the sake of argument, let’s say that this tomb does contain the remains of a Joshua (the actual Hebrew) and a Miriam who had a son named Judah. That information alone virtually disproves that this tomb had anything to do with the “Holy Family,” since the Bible and serious Christian tradition unanimously agrees Jesus was unmarried and celibate.

(6) Speaking of reading carefully, most of the reports acknowledge that this tomb and all these ossuaries and their inscriptions were first discovered in 1980. And the information was made public then; there was no cover-up. So if there was any likelihood that these ossuaries had anything to do with Jesus of Nazareth, one would expect to find all kinds of hoopla in the scholarly literature and popular news releases from that day. In fact there was none. People in 1980 realized that the evidence didn’t add up.

Ah, but now we have two new pieces of scientific data, we are told. Besides the “Jesus” and “Mary” DNA being tested and found unrelated, some patina (a fancy word for the encrustation of junk built up on the surface of an object made of wood or metal over the centuries) from the ossuaries appears to match that found on the famous James ossuary that came to light just a few years ago and that was at first highly touted as belonging to “James, son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus.” That is, until it was pointed out that the inscription adding “brother of Jesus” appeared to be in a different form of handwriting and to have come from a later date. So if the James ossuary did come from this “Jesus family tomb,” that would probably be one more reason (7) for not believing it had anything to do with the famous characters by those names.

For the coup de grace, however, the sensationalizers trot out statisticians who compute some astronomically miniscule likelihood of all these names being found together in one place and having them all correspond to the biblical names associated with Jesus’ family. Of course, nothing is said about (8) the missing brothers and sisters of Jesus from this tomb. Nor does (9) any plausible explanation emerge for why one (and only one) disciple, Matthew, unrelated to this family, would show up in their tomb. Be all that as it may, unless you know something about (10) the frequency of ancient Hebrew names in Israel during the centuries surrounding the birth of Christianity, to have Joseph, Mary, Jesus, another Mary, Matthew and maybe James all crop up in one place seems just too unlikely to be coincidental.

It’s time to do some real historical research. In 2002, the Israeli scholar Tal Ilan wrote the book that will never be a bestseller (at $220 even through Best Buy) but becomes an invaluable resource in debates like this: Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I: Palestine 330 BCE—200 CE (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck). Richard Bauckham’s outstanding 2006 volume, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)—which is affordable and which I have reviewed in the Denver Journal, accessible from the seminary’s homepage—provides the excerpts most relevant for New Testament studies.

For example, Bauckham reproduces the 99 most popular male names among Jews in Israel throughout this period from every known inscriptional and documentary source preserved or recovered. Here’s the list of the top eleven, in order, beginning with the most frequent: Simon, Joseph, Eleazar (Lazarus), Judah, Yohanan (John), Joshua (Jesus), Hananiah (Ananias), Jonathan, Mattathias/Matthias (Matthew), Menahem (Manaen), and Jacob (James). The names in parentheses are the English equivalents of the Greek versions of the Hebrew names that precede them. Notice anything interesting? Indeed, every male ossuary name from the Talpiot tomb is on the list, in positions 2, 4, 6 and 9, respectively, and, if James belonged there, too, he is number 11. Or, to use raw numerical data, we know of 218 Josephs from this period, 164 Judahs, 99 Joshuas, 62 Matthews and 40 Jacobs. And, of course, only the tiniest fraction of ancient evidence has survived the centuries.

What about the women you ask? Mary is number one! Then come Salome, Shelamzion, Martha, Joanna, Shiphra (Sapphira), Berenice, Imma and Mara. So two Marys in an extended family calls for about as many raised eyebrows as a modern Hispanic family with two Marías. For that matter, would anyone bat an eye if that same family had a José (Joseph) and a Jesús as well? Would this prove that such a family included the long lost descendants of Jesus himself?

Or take a more chronologically relevant example. Scholars have long known about (and tourists can still visit) the tomb in Bethany where inscriptions were discovered referring to Mary, Martha and Lazarus (and others). But every scholar worth his or her salt, no matter how conservative, acknowledges that those names were just so common that even to find them together in one tomb in the very town that the Bible says the three New Testament characters by those names lived proves statistically insignificant. It’s entirely possible that it happened completely by chance. There may easily have been a whole bunch families in Bethany with lots of children, including three with those names, in an age when parents had as many children as they could in hopes that a few might survive to care for them, if necessary, in their old age,

The same approach must be taken with the cluster of names in the Talpiot tomb. In fact, Bauckham’s tables extracted from Ilan’s monumental reference work add one very interesting footnote. The Hebrew woman’s name listed as ninth most common (actually tied for eighth with Imma) was Mara, like the form announced to have been found with the second Mary in the Talpiot tomb. Not only does Mara not mean Magdalene but, although it could be the Grecized feminine equivalent to the Aramaic masculine mar or “master,” it actually appears on one ossuary, discovered elsewhere in Israel much longer ago, as an alternate form of the name Martha. And the feminine form of “master,” in a highly patriarchal culture, was not used nearly as often as the masculine form. So the “Mary” that may have been a spouse to this Joshua/Jesus more likely was named Mary Martha, not Mary Magdalene, and not Mary the Master.

(continued...)