Lost Tomb of Jesus Buried To Avoid Controversy, page 1

I can't help but be disappointed by what happened as a result of the Discovery Channel special. I watched it from start to finish. The film makes a very strong case, has some very compelling evidence, and the fact that it was universally panned before it even aired should be a good indicator of how little "real" consideration it was given by the press.

Since many people missed "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" under the rightful assumption it would probably be aired many times, and they'd have the chance to catch it again, I'll summarize.

A tomb was found wherein the ossuaries (stone bone boxes) inside were labeled as follows:

Jesus, Son of Joseph

Joseph

Mariah (Romanized, as Mary's would have been after Jesus's death).

Mariamene (how Mary Magdalene's name would have been spelled)

Judah, son of Jesus

Jose (extremely rare name of the brother of Jesus)

James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.

Obviously they weren't spelled out in English, those are the translations. Each one was properly Romanized, or Greeked, or Aramaic, depending on the expected peculiarities of the lineage, and historical documents. For instance, Mary, who survived the death of Jesus, went on to evangelize his word among Romans, and as such, needed to Romanize her name to fit in. Mary Magdalene was Greek, and her name is inscribed, on the ossuary, in Greek as "Mariamene e Mara," which can be translated as, "Mary known as the master." In this case, "master" would have referred to a well-respected religious figure, which historians and biblical scholars agree Mary Magdalene certainly was, as she was extremely evangelistic in spreading Christianity.

Additionally, there was a very distinctive Chevron over the entrance to the tomb that also appeared on other evangelists of Jesus. Finally, there was a mitochondrial DNA test between a bit of tissue found in both Jesus and Mariamene's ossuaries to determine they could not have been maternally related (this did not rule out the possibility that they shared the same father).

Does all this spell certainty that it was Jesus's family tomb? The odds are staggeringly compelling. The absolute weakest statistic, based off the removal of "James, son of Joseph" ossuary for reasons of possible forgery, places the odds that, 600 to 1, it is the tomb of Jesus's family, just upon the grouping of the names alone. The James ossuary, bumped it up to something like 32,000 to 1 that it was definitively so.

Additionally, this particular method of burial was used for less than 100 years, and the location is the same area Jesus's family would have settled in. Together with some of the oldest non-canonical books, like The Pistis Sophia and The Gospel of Philip, these all make a very compelling case.

And yet it is being panned, everywhere, as nothing more than circumstantial evidence. It is the critical equivolent of listening to an entire well thought out argument and responding with "nuh-uh!"

Now, it's very quickly being buried. You'll be hard pressed to find any news articles that want to touch it with a 15 foot pole, and even fewer people who are willing to risk their careers by even so much as admitting that the film brings up some very interesting questions. As soon as the tomb had been open for only a short time, a member of the Israeli Antiquities Authority showed up and demanded the tomb be re-sealed. Discovery has pulled the plug on any repeats of the special. The story that it even existed is rapidly disappearing.

Does Simcha Jacobovici's findings prove absolutely that it is the tomb? No, of course not. He's a filmmaker, not a scientist. Does it raise some serious questions the Christian community needs to seriously address? Yes. Does it provide ample evidence to at least examine the case further? Absolutely.

What could be one of the most important discoveries of archeological history is quietly being swept under the rug, for fear of offending anyone... Currently, the only way to see the special is either to find someone who taped it, or to get it here.

www.tvweek.com
(visit the link for the full news article)