The Lost Tomb of Jesus
The film was released in conjunction with a book about the same subject, The Jesus Family Tomb, issued in late February 2007 and co-authored by Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino.
The documentary and the book's claims have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of leading experts within the archaeological and theological fields, as well as among linguistic and biblical scholars.
The James Ossuary's authenticity has been called into question, and Oded Golan, one of its past owners, was charged with fraud in connection to the artifact, but exonerated on all counts of forgery.
Also, Joe Zias, former curator of the Rockefeller Museum who received and catalogued the ossuaries, refuted this claim on his personal site [citation needed].
The top length of the James Ossuary, not the base, which is trapezoidal in shape, according to the latest re-measurement carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority, is 57.5 centimeters (22.6 inches.)
[12] Based on these tests, the makers of the documentary suggest that "Jesus" and "Mariamne" were probably married "because otherwise they would not have been buried together in a family tomb,"[13] but the remains were not dated using radiocarbon to further sustain this supposition.
Additionally, scholars argue that the DNA tests only prove that they did not have the same mother and they could easily have been father/daughter, cousins, half brother/sister, or any number of possibilities that do not include a matrilineage line.
The film's suggestions contradict[15] the basis of the faith[16] and may be considered blasphemous by Christians:[17] The claim that Jesus was married also undermines the theological metaphor of the Church being the "Bride of Christ" (found in the writings of the New Testament).
[19][20] The film's religious consultant James Tabor stated that the fact that Jesus' tomb was discovered does not put in doubt biblical accounts of his resurrection, which he said could have been spiritual.
[24][25] Following the March 4, 2007, airing of The Lost Tomb of Jesus on the Discovery Channel, American journalist Ted Koppel aired a program entitled The Lost Tomb of Jesus—A Critical Look, whose guests included the director Simcha Jacobovici, James Tabor, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who served as a consultant and advisor on the documentary, Jonathan Reed, Professor of Religion at the University of La Verne and co-author of Excavating Jesus Beneath the Stones, Behind the Text, and William Dever, an archaeologist with over 50 years experience in Middle Eastern archaeological digs.
"[29][30] Early Christianity scholar R. Joseph Hoffmann, chair of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) charges that the film "is all about bad assumptions," beginning with the idea that the boxes contain Jesus of Nazareth and his family.
[31][32] When interviewed about the upcoming documentary, Amos Kloner (Bar-Ilan University), who oversaw the original archaeological dig of this tomb in 1980 said: Newsweek reports that Joe Zias, the archaeologist who personally numbered the ossuaries dismissed any potential connection: Stephen Pfann (University of the Holy Land) also thinks the inscription read as "Jesus" has been misread and suggests that the name "Hanun" might be a more accurate rendering.
[35] The Washington Post reports that William G. Dever, who has been working as an archaeologist in Israel for 50 years, offered the following: Asbury Theological Seminary's Ben Witherington III points out some other circumstantial problems with linking this tomb to Jesus' family:[11]
"[37] Archeologist and biblical scholar Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, (École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem) dismissed the movie as a "commercial ploy".
[39] In a 2015 article for the CNN website Joel S. Baden (Yale Divinity School) and Candida Moss (University of Notre Dame) dismissed Jacobovici's and Shimron's theory, stating that "the evidence is faulty, and the story doesn't make sense.
"[40] Speaking to the Catholic website Aleteia, Mark Goodacre (Duke University) stated that "I don’t think there is any merit in the identification of the Talpiot Tomb with Jesus and his family.
They simply used DNA testing to prove that the "Jesus son of Joseph" and the "Mariamne" in this tomb were not maternally related (i.e. that they did not have the same mother or grandmother).
The New York Times article of February 27, 2007, (reprinted in full on many websites) states: The documentary's director and its driving force, Simcha Jacobovici…, said there was enough mitochondrial DNA for a laboratory in Ontario to conclude that the bodies in the "Jesus" and "Mary Magdalene" ossuaries were not related on their mothers' side.
Such tests may have revealed that none of the ossuaries are related—hence defeating the underlying presupposition that the crypt was in fact a family tomb, and thereby eliminating any valid basis at all for producing and showing the film."
"[36] Jodi Magness, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, notes that at the time of Jesus, wealthy families buried their dead in tombs cut by hand from solid rock, putting the bones in niches in the walls and then, later, transferring them to ossuaries.
In Jewish tradition of the time, after one year, when bodies in rock-cut tombs were decomposed, bones were collected, cleaned and then finally placed in an ossuary.
[53] Lawrence E. Stager, the Dorot professor of archaeology of Israel at Harvard, said the documentary was "exploiting the whole trend that caught on with The Da Vinci Code.
By going directly to the media, she said, the filmmakers "have set it up as if it's a legitimate academic debate, when the vast majority of scholars who specialize in archaeology of this period have flatly rejected this.
"[36] Joe Zias, former curator of archaeology at the Israeli Antiquities Authority, described it in an e-mail to The Washington Post as a "hyped-up film which is intellectually and scientifically dishonest.
In a letter to the Society of Biblical Literature, he wrote:[55] As I was interviewed for the Discovery Channel's program The Lost Tomb of Jesus, I would like to express my opinion here.
François Bovon, Harvard Divinity School Following a symposium at Princeton Theological Seminary in January 2008 media interest in the Talpiot tomb was reignited.
The conference, primarily devoted to the problem of afterlife in Second Temple Judaism, was useful in airing the latest views on ancient Jewish burial practices and modern science.
Apart from a handful of participants, the large majority of the assembled scholars consider the theory that the Talpiot ossuaries contained the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family as unlikely after the conference as it has been before.
As is abundantly clear from the statements to the contrary that have been issued since the symposium by many of the participants, such representations are patently false and blatantly misrepresent the spirit and scholarly content of the deliberations.
[63][64] At the end of the symposium, Charlesworth stated: “Most archaeologists, epigraphers, and other scientists argued persuasively that there is no reason to conclude that the Talpiot Tomb was Jesus’ tomb.”[65] On March 15, 2007, Discovery Channel released a DVD of the documentary with a listed running time of two hours.
