Posted on 03/02/2007 1:18:35 PM PST by presidio9
Director James Cameron’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Titanic was a documentary about the wreckage of the doomed ship. The film contained so many shots of Cameron in a deep-sea submersible that one critic named him “Captain Nemo.”
Well, Captain Nemo has surfaced again.
In an upcoming Discovery Channel special, Cameron claims to have found an ossuary containing the bones of Jesus. How does he know? Through a combination of Sesame Street and The DaVinci Code.
The ossuary is inscribed “Joshua, son of Joseph”—names that are not exactly rare among first-century Jewish males. So Cameron also points out the nearby ossuaries bearing names of people associated with Jesus—most importantly, “Mary,” as in “Magdalene.”
Actually, it doesn’t say “Mary” but “Mariamne,” which—according to some people—was what other people called the Magdalene. This is good enough for Cameron, who considers it natural that Jesus would be buried alongside his so-called “wife.”
See what I mean about The DaVinci Code? If do, you are not alone. Archaeologist Amos Kloner, who “did extensive work and research on this very tomb and its ossuaries” ten years ago, said “it’s a beautiful story but without any proof whatsoever . . . ” Lawrence Steigler of Harvard told National Public Radio that Cameron’s claim “sounds rather preposterous.”
When even Harvard and NPR call your bit of revisionism “preposterous,” you know that you are way out on a limb. Then again, Cameron is far from the first person to dash his credibility to pieces against the stone that was rolled away that first Easter.
Like others, his ultimate explanation for what happened that Sunday morning is a cover-up. Like others, he has no explanation for why the Apostles would be willing to die for what they presumably knew to be a lie. I know a thing or two about cover-ups and conspiracies: No conspirator willingly dies for what he knows to be untrue—or, in the case of Watergate, even go to jail. The closest men around the president of the United States testified against him to save their own skins. You’re going to tell me the Apostles maintained their story at the cost of their lives? Impossible.
What’s worse than Cameron’s “preposterous” claims is the credulous reaction of the media.
At the website Get Religion (which analyzes the media’s coverage of religion), Daniel Pulliam put it this way: Many “news organizations [are] reporting [Cameron’s] words as gospel truth.” He’s right. A headline in the New York Times’s blog read “Raising the Titanic, Sinking Christianity?” Time followed, proclaiming that “this time, the ship [Cameron’s] sinking is Christianity.”
While Newsweek magazine did manage to quote Cameron’s critics, as Pulliam pointed out, “their words [were treated] as equal to that” of the moviemaker—who, by the way, admits he’s not a “theologist or an archaeologist,” just a filmmaker.
Pulliam is right when he says that “at this point” the coverage of this story “is an embarrassment to reporters.” And they wonder why they are held in low esteem among believers?
Stories like this and the fuss over the “Gospel of Judas” are slickly packaged revisionism. After the revisionism has been shredded, the only thing sinking beneath the waves is the media’s credibility.
Then I guess no one is interested in Moses' bones, which I have in an old Maxwell House Coffee can in my garage...
The Discovery Channel has just started advertising showing this debacle. As I don't watch much of that channel I won't make too much difference when I dont' happen by while this is showing.
(I've already seen the pix of the box)
As someone said on Fox last night, they can't even prove who is the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby, and there they have the baby, the mom, many dads, and a body, all nice and new and some of them still alive and pictures and records and everything.
But they know Jesus was in that grave 2000 years ago, even without a modern evidence trail.
Larry King's already proclaimed this "the end of the road for the Easter Bunny".
Really. I'm not kidding.
Reminds me of a kid saying the alphabet. Starts out with "A", "B", "C", "G", "M", "Q", and "Z".
Screwtape would be proud of our Media.
This "Geraldo Moment" of Cameron's will keep him in the public's eye for quite some time - he's just another Hollywood Liberal meddling with something he doesn't understand.
Faith, Salvation and the Hope of Man aren't found in a burial box; I hope he learns that one day.
lol, that's what I was thinking!
Simple for me .... get a sample of God's DNA then compare it to the bones he found ......
I mentioned this in a previous thread about the but, the more I see about the "science" behind this alleged documentary the more I am reminded of Steven Wright's story of about a friend of his who spent an "amazing" amount of money to discover who built the pyramids. After many years of research his friend finally concluded that "he was pretty sure it was some guy named Eddie."
"Cameron is full of it."
Dan Brown
/sarc
He didn't find it. This site was dug up decades ago. There are six coffins, but only three sets of bones. The guy who did find the site has called Cameron's conclusions preposterous.
Hey! That's exciting and novel!
Up to the very moment you posted, no one knew where Moses is buried.
Maxwell House? Good coffee. I'm sure Moses appreciates it.
Ever notice these two things?
1) These people (Such as Cameron and Brown) who are fiction writers and admittedly not Christians can suddenly and with Media-Generated 'credibility,' attack and are said to "disprove" a faith that has survived much stronger opponents for 2000 years;
and yet,
2) When a Christian reads the CORRECTLY TRANSLATED WORDS, in context, of the Koran to expose the violence inherent in Islam, that Christian is instantly attacked as not being 'a scholar of Islam' and as such couldn't possibly know enough to say anything critical of Islam?
Can anyone tell me why (short of the American Media hating the Truth) there is such a blatant double-standard?
Seriously, is there any other explanation?
The vow you are thinking of is a "Nazerite" vow.
Scripture says Jesus was a "Nazarene"
Different thing.
Good thinking, though. And I am impressed by your self-correction, it shows class.
Keep it up, we need the discussions...
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