Cruci-fiction?
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/jesus-burial-cave-found/2007/02/27/1172338582662.html
New York
February 27, 2007 - 8:13AM
The findings of a controversial documentary claiming that a cave found 26 years ago in Jerusalem held the remains of Jesus Christ have been unveiled in New York.
The documentary, titled The Burial Cave of Jesus, follows years of research by world-renowned archaeologists and experts in ancient scripts, according to the film's producers.
The 2000-year-old cave was first discovered in 1980 in Jerusalem's Talpiyot neighbourhood. It contained 10 coffins, six of which bore inscriptions which - translated into English - included the names "Jesus son of Joseph," twice "Maria", and "Judah son of Jesus."
The second Maria is believed to be Maria Magdalene, while the tomb bearing the name Judah suggests Jesus had a son. DNA has reportedly been extracted from remains found in two of the coffins.
"To a layman's eye it seems pretty darn compelling," executive producer James Cameron, the Canadian director of the movie Titanic, said at a press conference in New York.
"This is the biggest archaeological story of the century."
Cameron and Israel's Simcha Jacobovici, who directed the film, displayed two of the coffins - on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) - which they said may have contained the bones of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
But the documentary, to be aired Sunday on the Discovery Channel, Britain's Channel 4, Canada's VisionTV and Israel's Channel 8, has sparked a swirl of debate in Israel and around the world.
A senior Israeli archaeologist who thoroughly researched the tomb after its discovery, and at the time deciphered the inscriptions, cast serious doubt on the documentary's claim.
"It's a beautiful story but without any proof whatsoever," Professor Amos Kloner, who had published the findings of his research in the Israeli periodical Atiqot in 1996, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Friday.
"The names that are found on the tombs are names that are similar to the names of the family of Jesus," he said.
"But those were the most common names found among Jews in the first centuries BCE and CE," he added.
Kloner dismissed the combination of names found in the cave as a "coincidence."
Professor Juergen Zangenberg, an expert on the New Testament at the Dutch University of Leiden, said the documentary's claim was unrealistic, and more likely "about money and headlines".
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which is keeping the caskets in its archive in the town of Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem, declined to comment on the documentary, saying it had not researched the caskets and that its duty was only to safeguard them.
Alberta Nokes, executive producer for Canada's VisionTV, defended the documentary and praised Cameron and Jacobovici's work.
"By investigating whether or not the Talpiot Tomb was in fact exactly what it seemed to be, rather than dismissing that possibility as others had, Simcha and James Cameron have made a compellingly strong case that it is the Jesus family tomb," Nokes said.
"Now it's up to scientists and archaeologists to examine their evidence further."
How exciting! Certainly supports some of the research I've read over the years. No doubt this will cause uproar, but I like a good controversy.
i read about this yesterday. it's damn interesting.
I just heard this story on the radio. The odds of finding a tomb with all those names is about 1 in 600.
it's probably an elaborate viral advertising campaign for a new cologne
"The odds of finding a tomb with all those names is about 1 in 600."
Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kuro. Forty percent of people know that.
hahaha!
I did a quick google to see what the online Christian community thinks about it.
They pretty much agree that James Cameron will burn in hell. Funny how people pass judgement before knowing anything about the doco. I guess that's why it's called "faith".
It can't be Jesus' tomb. Every one knows Jesus ascended to heaven and never had a son.
The whole Christian faith would have to be built on a myth for this to be true.
my imaginary friend is better than your imaginary friend.
According to many legends, the child was a girl named Sarah. Perhaps another case of Chinese Whispers.
I'll hold back until I see the doco, but I'm quietly beside myself at the discovery. Pet subject of mine.
> The whole Christian faith would have to be built on a myth for this to be true.
Myths, lies, half truths...whatever floats your boat really.
It can't be Jesus' tomb. Every one knows Jesus ascended to heaven and never had a son.
The whole Christian faith would have to be built on a myth for this to be true.
goldfot... you just might be the funniest man in the world
i wonder if we'll ever find odin's tomb? there's a few norsemen i'd like to taunt over that one!
or azaria chamberlain's ...
man, that'd be good
What's the Tom Robbins book that this reminds me of?
i wonder if asterix and obelix had a tomb. i reckon dogmatix would've been put in with them.
was it 'tom robbins sells crack to toddlers' goldie?
You wouldn't think it would be too difficult to find Buddhas tomb.
aloha, you've given me an idea...
praise jebus!
you're going to buy me some asterix and tintin comics so i can relive my youth?
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yeah, i was just reading that ... wonder why they can't/don't do it for satellite, weird
Watched it intermittently. It's biggest flaw was its reliance on the very text they were disproving for anecdotal evidence. I agree with its basic premise that the odds are strongly in favour of this being the Hey Zeus family tomb. Some of the political history and explanations of the origins of Christianity were oversimplified to the point where they weren't really correct, but at least they weren't overly shy about pissing people off. I imagined all the Catholics squirming on their lounge suites and that made me smile.
i had a wonderful time watching this, it was hilarious
i managed to catch the fifteen minute tortured explanation of Joseph...Yoseph....yo sei... yossey...jospeh. Name origination and took myself off to bed.
Nah. Jesus moved to Tibet after the crucifixon anyway.
Weren't they just making a point, exactly the same as saying ''Mary was a very common name''?
It's like if I said ''half the people on this site hate you, horse'' I don't actually mean exactly half hate you, I mean a few do and most of them probably don't hate you, they just think you're a dickhead.
Exactly Ark, they were using analogies that stupid people had a chance of grasping. If you use straight stats, the plebs start hyperventilating and switch over to Sports Tonight.
but fya, if the point is that 1/4 people on the street were named mary, why did they then use 1/300 (or whatever) as the statistic in the calculation .. why not 1/4 ??
it just came out of nowhere
Didn't they use that figure as part of the statistical liklihood of person A being related to person B? I was running between the kitchen and the lounge to work on my lasagne.
The idea of looking for physical evidence of a metaphorical legend is quite amusing.
Modi, there's far too many inconsistencies for JC NOT to be a real dude. If they were gonna write the whole thing from scratch, they would have got it right in the first place.
i wonder if those flats have turned into a shrine yet?
it obvs isn't the real jesus, or he'd have woken up and been all ''im the king of the world!''
Try writing a history of Winston Churchill today with only word of mouth and no written references, and that would be about as accurate as this story is, not to mention the multiple authors, long period of writing, and relatively recent ''final edition'' version of the story, and the hope of anything even approaching the ''truth'' being available to the public is infinitesimally small.
The idea that the more inconsistent the story is, the more likely it is to be true sticks in my craw, too.
those gnostic texts are such a winner for the modern day church.
what I really liked about the show was the humanising quality that seeing the actual chambers/caskets from the period brings to the story of Jesus. That's the good shit in archeology. all of a sudden 2000 years of history is right in ya face. when you see that stuff, it aint hard to think about the life of jesus, or the whole bit with this religion. the story's etc. when you think of Jim morrison or other rock stars in the modern world Jesus was a rock star that needed no guitar or amp.
and he was better than bono.
''and he was better than bono.''
then why isn't he alive now ?
bono has one up on him
Not sayin it's (the bible) true at all, just saying there's a seriously good chance that he existed. From my own research, he was a militant anti-Roman political figure who went out of his way to ''fulfil prophesy'' about being the messiah who would save the Jews from Rome. He was never considered divine by his contemporaries. I am willing to entertain the idea that it's all made up, I just think it's unlikely. But I've said this stuff waaaaay too many times. A quote of interest:
''It has served us well, this myth of Christ'' - Pope Leo X
ahh horse, but he IS alive.
and Bono aint really livin.
It's almost certain there is a basis in reality for the figure of Jesus, but the story has been manipulated beyond recognition by more recent players to suit their own agendas. I find that more interesting.