New Jesus documentary mired in controversy
March 1st, 2007 by Zsofia
“The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” produced by Oscar-winning director James Cameron, has the whole world talking ahead of its Discovery premiere on March 4. The documentary film asserts that Jesus’ remains have been found in a Jerusalem suburb, together with those of Mary Magdelene and possibly their son, Judah.
Cameron, who won an Academy Award for directing “Titanic,” told CBS he was excited to be associated with the film. “We don’t have any physical record of Jesus’ existence […] so what this film shows is for the first time tangible, physical, archaeological and in some cases forensic evidence.”
Documentary director Simcha Jacobovici said they had statisticians calculate the likelihood that any other family in first-century Jerusalem would have had the cluster of names that were found on the caskets. The probability is very low, apparently only “one in a couple of million”.
Naturally, the film’s assertions have already been discredited by religious scholars and historians. Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed for the documentary, said the film’s hypothesis holds little weight. “I don’t think that Christians are going to buy into this. But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear.”
Biblical anthropologist Joe Zias, has dismissed Cameron’s claims as “dishonest”. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus, he was known as Jesus of Nazareth, not Jesus of Jerusalem, and if the family was wealthy enough to afford a tomb, which they probably weren’t, it would have been in Nazareth, not here in Jerusalem,” he said. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television.
After Discovery, the documentary will be shown on Canada’s Vision, Channel 4 in Britain and Channel 8 in Israel. 
