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Joe Zias is a fine archaeologist of long standing and good reputation. He is the person who catalogued the ten ossuaries from the Talpiot tomb, and personally catalogued the tenth ossuary. He worked with Amos Kloner as part of the team who made the original discovery. In two emails this morning to someone I have been talking to he made crystal clear that the tenth ossuary was blank, certainly was not the James ossuary at all despite the assertions of those involved in making the Discovery Channel special. These emails have been sent along to me, and I will let...

Were the final resting-places of the family and disciples of Jesus discovered 30 years ago and then hidden as part of a religious-political conspiracy? The archaeological controversy swirling around two Roma-era burial tombs in Jerusalem refuses to die. Indeed, it has become something of an ugly academic slugfest. In one corner stands the Israeli archaeological establishment represented by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor Amos Kloner of Bar-Ilan University, backed by various respected archaeologists and scholars. In the other stands Simcha Jacobovici, the filmmaker and self-styled “Naked Archaeologist,” backed by another group of respected archaeologists and scholars.In 1981, Prof Kloner...

The Jesus Dynasty Excerpt: 'The Jesus Dynasty' by James D. Tabor New Book Challenges Christian Philosophy April 7, 2006 -- James Tabor is the chairman of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His book challenges many of the beliefs that Christians hold dear, maintaining that Jesus is neither the son of God nor the son of Joseph but most likely the child of a Roman soldier named Pantera. Jesus, Tabor maintains, became the head of the household when Joseph died and looked after his six half-brothers and sisters. When Jesus died, his brother James took over...

Jesus 'Tomb' Controversy Reopened Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008 By TIM MCGIRK/JERUSALEMThe Talpiot tomb. Discovery / EPA When the Discovery Channel aired a TV documentary last year raising the possibility that archeologists had found the family tomb of Jesus Christ in the hills behind Jerusalem, it caused a huge backlash among Christians. The claim, after all, challenged one of the cornerstones of Christian faith — that Jesus, after his crucifixion, rose bodily to heaven in his physical form. The Lost Tomb of Jesus, made by Hollywood director James Cameron and Canadian investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, was shown only once on Discovery....

A group of scholars posted a statement rejecting the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to Jesus, a week after a conference in Jerusalem revisited evidence on claims presented in the controversial film "Lost Tomb of Jesus." In a statement posted Monday on the Duke University Religion Department's blog site, key figures in the discovery of the 1980 Talpoit tomb and other experts who attended the conference agreed that most scholars in attendance rejected the claims that the tomb belonged to the author of Christianity, despite the consensus being represented by the media as otherwise. "We wish to protest...

During the initial weeks of Lent 2007 in early March I avoided commenting on the sensational story of the alleged discovery of the tomb of Jesus in a Jerusalem neighbourhood. While it is true that tombs were found in Jerusalem's Talpiot section and the names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Matthew seem to have been engraved on the tombs, few people spoke of how common such names were during the first century. The media hype, though short lived, certainly put the theme of the resurrection front and centre of our Lenten and Easter journeys this year. James Cameron's documentary The...

The Lost Tomb of Jesus on the Discovery Channel was followed up by a panel discussion moderated by Ted Koppel. Koppel and two professors who are not affiliated with the documentary totally eviscerated the director of the film and one of his consultants. Koppel seemed particularly offended by the film maker's claims of being a journalist. If you get the chance to see this review of the documentary, watch it. It is very funny.

Several prominent scholars who were interviewed in a bitterly contested documentary that suggests that Jesus and his family members were buried in a nondescript ancient Jerusalem burial cave have now revised their conclusions, including the statistician who claimed that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the tomb being the family burial cave of Jesus of Nazareth, a new study on the fallout from the popular documentary shows. The dramatic clarifications, compiled by epigrapher Stephen Pfann of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem in a paper titled "Cracks in the Foundation: How the Lost Tomb of Jesus story...

MUMBAI, India (UCAN): A Catholic group's claim that its protest forced a television channel from broadcasting a controversial documentary on Jesus' tomb has resulted in the channel threatening to take legal action. Catholic Secular Forum (CSF), a Catholic group based in Bombay archdiocese in western India, said in a March 2 press release that following its protests, the Discovery Channel had agreed not to broadcast the documentary. Bombay is the old name for Mumbai. The Discovery Channel on March 4 broadcast the documentary internationally, but not in India. However, it said the protest was not the reason for the non-broadcast,...

Odds of 'Lost Tomb' Being Jesus' Family Rest on Assumptions Until two weeks ago, University of Toronto statistician Andrey Feuerverger's body of research encompassed uncontroversial topics such as medical scanning and correcting for camera blurring. ... Prof. Feuerverger calculated there is just a one-in-600 chance that those same names would have come together in a family that didn't belong to Jesus of Nazareth. ... But the one-in-600 calculation is based on many assumptions about the prevalence of the names and their biblical significance. For purposes of his calculations, Prof. Feuerverger relied on new scholarly research that links the inscription "Mariamene...

Folks, much as I am tempted to jump into the fray regarding James Cameron's and Simcha Jacobovici's (the Naked Archaeologist) documentary which purports to debunk the Lord's Resurrection, well, I will not. For I had promised that I would refrain from those kinds of posts because of Lent. Tempted as I am, I'll keep my promise. The debate is raging throughout the blogosphere, granting Cameron and Jacobovici a lot of free publicity. Every year during Lent someone somewhere comes out with some new "discovery" purporting to debunk Jesus and the Church. Last year it was the so-called Gospel of Judas....

The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ by Piero della Franscesca, c. 1463-65 The Discovery Channel will announce this week the completion of a new documentary called “The Jesus Family Tomb”, produced by none other than James Cameron of Titanic fame. The program narrates the discovery in 1980 of a burial spot in Jerusalem that contained 10 ossuaries (boxes of bones) which some have claimed hold the mortal remains of, among other, Jesus, his mother Mary, and his disciple Mary Magdalene. This sort of thing is by now sadly familiar to a world in which The DaVinci Code is taken...

Israeli authorities say they are prepared to consider opening to the public a 2,000-year-old burial tomb in Jerusalem's East Talpiot neighborhood which is said by the makers of a new documentary to have likely been the final resting place of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother, partner Mary Magdalene, son, and other members of his family. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), responsible for the tomb - which was first uncovered during construction of the neighborhood in 1980 - said it would be up to the Jerusalem Municipality to make such a decision. And municipality spokesman Gidi Schmerling told The Jerusalem Post...

'TITANIC' director James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici, a filmmaker-archaeologist, are set to unveil three coffins this week that they say are those of Jesus, Mary and Mary Magdalene. In an coming documentary, Cameron and Jacobovici cite "scientific evidence" that the resurrection of Jesus never happened and that Jesus fathered a son named Judah with Mary Magdalene. Such claims should, and surely will, be met with overwhelming skepticism. For example, the filmmakers use DNA tests to build their case - but whose DNA is being compared with whose? Did they swab the Holy Ghost? -snip- But prominent Christian clergymen won't issue...

AL Capone's vault has met its match. I'm no scientist, but after watching a bunch of people who are scientists sift through the dust and bones of a 2000-year-old family burial chamber in Jerusalem, I have to offer this unscientific conclusion: There ain't no way them bones belong to Jesus. Or, if they are his bones, they don't come anywhere near proving it in "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," the Discovery Channel documentary that is supposed to rock Christianity to its very foundations. Well, I have some good news for Christianity: Your foundations are safe. Why were they going to...

Year after year in spring, a new crop of religious dandelions pop up in our post-Christian culture. Like the real ones growing in my yard, they make a colorful splash that briefly captures our attention, until we realize that they are only shallow-rooted weeds, not beautiful flowers planted long ago in the deep rich soil of the past, such as Easter lilies. Last year, it was the Gnostic nonsense of the "Da Vinci Code." We've had the "Gospel of Judas Iscariot," written centuries after the eyewitnesses were dead. This year it's a variation on the "Da Vinci" theme. We are...

Roman Catholics in the metropolis Friday called off their protest against the proposed screening of a controversial documentary on Jesus Christ after broadcaster Discovery Channel decided not to telecast the programme in India. The Catholics in the city had earlier sprung into action against the worldwide premiere 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus' that claims to show the burial place of Jesus challenging the basic tenets the Christian faith. 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus' is a feature documentary, directed by Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and produced by Oscar-winning director James Cameron of the 'Titanic' fame, Flex Golubev and Ric...

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...

It is the greatest newspaper story ever told, and it was told again last week. In New York the Oscar-winning film-maker James Cameron pulled back a curtain to reveal two cream-coloured limestone coffins, flown in from Jerusalem. One of them, he said, had once held the recently crucified body of Jesus of Nazareth. Another — there are 10 in the set — had held that of Mary Magdalene.“It doesn’t get bigger than this,” he said, and then claimed it did. He had evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had married and that another coffin — or “ossuary” — had contained...

It is the morning after. Those with an interest in the subject of the resurrection have already seen the film. As most of you know, today I launch into a high-spoeed book writing project to attempt to collect, collate, and present in a clear and understandable fashion the main arguments and facts regarding the Talpiot Tomb, DNA, patina, statistics, gnostic writings and the like. But at best, that book will not be out until Easter. So how about today? Rather than hope no one will ask you what you think, I believe we should be on the offensive---without being offensive....