Film crew claims to have found Jesus' family tomb

To determine whether or not the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene were in two limestone boxes discovered in a Jerusalem suburb, the filmmakers of a new documentary turned to statisticians.

Some religious scholars and archaeologists, however, have apparently not been convinced by the numbers.

Filmmakers showed the two boxes yesterday while promoting their documentary, The Lost Tomb Of Jesus, produced by Oscar-winning director James Cameron and to be broadcast on the Discovery Channel on March 4.

It argues that 10 first-century bone boxes, called ossuaries, discovered in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family.

One of the boxes bears the title, Judah son of Jesus, hinting that Jesus had a son. The claim that Jesus had an ossuary contradicts the Christian belief he was resurrected and ascended to heaven.

A panel of scholars who joined the filmmakers yesterday at the New York Public Library addressed that criticism and others.

James Tabor, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said that while literal interpreters of the Bible say Jesus’ physical body rose from the dead, “one might affirm resurrection in a more spiritual way in which the husk of the body is left behind”.

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said Christianity “has always understood the physical resurrection of Christ to be at the very centre of the faith”.

Mr Cameron, who won an Academy Award for directing Titanic, said he was excited to be associated with the Jesus film, which was directed by Toronto filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici.

“We don’t have any physical record of Jesus’ existence,” he said. “So what this film…shows is for the first time tangible, physical, archaeological and in some cases forensic evidence.”

He said that to a layman’s eye “it seemed pretty darn compelling”.

Mr Jacobovici and archaeologist Charles Pellegrino also are the authors of The Jesus Family Tomb, newly published by Harper San Francisco.

Mr Jacobovici said that a name on one of the ossuaries, Mariamene, was a major support to the argument that the tomb was that of Jesus and his family. In early Christian texts, Mariamene is a name of Mary Magdalene, he said.

Most Christians believe Jesus’ body spent three days at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City. The burial site identified in the documentary is in a southern Jerusalem neighborhood nowhere near the church.

In 1996, when the BBC aired a short documentary on the subject, archaeologists challenged the link to Jesus and his family. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea failed to hold up by archaeological standards, but made for profitable television.