Discovery Channel Documentary Claims to Have Found Jesus’ Tomb

February 26, 2007

25-Feb-2007

Written by: Jeannine Coppola

The Discovery Channel is to air a documentary titled Lost Tomb of Jesus, which claims to have discovered the burial site of Jesus, in Jerusalem, alongside Mary Magdalene and possibly their son, Judah. More details of the film will be announced on Monday at a New York press conference.

The film also probes the mystery of "James, Brother Of Jesus" ossuary, which made headlines in 2002 after being found among Israeli antiquities belonging to collector Oded Golan. The "James" ossuary was quickly labeled a farce by the Israel Antiquities Authority, but has many defenders.

According to the Discovery Channel's website for Lost Tomb of Jesus, the documentary was made by Simcha Jacobovici, who gathered scientific evidence, along with his colleagues, to back up his findings. They claim that a "DNA analysis was conducted at one of the world's foremost molecular genetics laboratories," to determine that a 2,000-year-old cave in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem contains the remains of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and what could be their son, Judah.

However convincing the scientific evidence may appear to be, Professor Amos Kloner, a Jerusalem archeologist, who oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980, told the Jerusalem Post, on Saturday, that the documentary's claims are "impossible,nonsense," and that there is "no likelihood" that Jesus and his relatives shared a family tomb.

The tomb supposedly holds ten ossuaries, five of which bear the names of relatives believed to be associated with Jesus, Mary, Jesus' relative, Matthew, his brother, Joseph, and Mary Magdalene. The sixth inscription translates to "Judah, Son of Jesus," according to the documentary. Nine of the inscriptions on the tombs are in Hebrew or Aramaic, while the remaining one is written in Greek and states "Mariamene e Mara," which means "Mary known as the master." Francois Bovan, professor of the history of religion at Harvard University, says this most likely refers to the name given to Mary Magdalene in the "Acts of Philip," which references the sister of the apostle Philip.

The DNA samples taken from the "Jesus" and "Mariamene" tombs were analyzed by Carney Matheson, a scientist at the Paleo-DNA Laboratory at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. The analysis concluded that the individual in Jesus' tomb was not related to the person in Mary Magdalene's. Normally, a family burial plot does not contain non-relatives, so it became Jacobovici's theory that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were a couple and may have had a son.

Kloner also stated in the Jerusalem Post that no inscribed ossuary has ever gone missing from the Talpoit tomb, but filmmakers had Andrey Feuerverger, Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at the University of Toronto, explain "that the odds are at least 600 to 1 in favor of the Talpiot Tomb being the Jesus Family Tomb. In other words, the conclusion works 599 times out of 600."

Although executive producer, James Cameron, and director, Jacobovici, are formally launching the documentary tomorrow at the press conference, Lost Tomb of Jesus will air on the Discovery Channel worldwide, next week. Academy Award winner, Cameron, made a statement to the press, commenting, "It doesn't get bigger than this. We've done our homework; we've made the case; and now it's time for the debate to begin."