Someone DislikesThe Jesus Family Tomb

The Jesus Family Tomb: Doubt Bomb Dud!

Lenten Season. For Christians, it’s a time to remember sacrifice and grief before the upcoming Celebration that is Easter. For Anti-Christians, it’s time to launch their bi-yearly ‘doubt bombs’ into the world of mediahype. This is usual achieved by creating a false dichotomy between a Historical Jesus and the Jesus of Faith.  Traditionally, Macleans and/or Newsweek run sensational cover stories with titles like The Gospel of Judas or From Jesus to Christ and A&E and/or the Discovery Channel air various hoaxumentaries. Look for them to stack the decks with ultra-liberal scholars (falsely representing mainstream theology) accompanied by plenty of dubious editing and key terms like ‘scholars agree‘ and ‘new evidence points to‘. In addition, expect many open-ended questions said in highly intonated voices, such as, “Did Jesus reaaaaally just… disappear?”
With the Da Vinci Code going blockbuster for the Christmas Doubt Makers, there was nowhere else to go but up for the Easter Doubt Industry. Enter no less than James ‘Titanic’ Cameron and Simcha ‘Hollywoodism’ Jacobovici, two Canadian filmmakers with no shortage of talent, an abundance of ego, and all the chutzpah needed to pursue the Holy Grail of Anti-Christendom: Jesus Bones. Simply put, if Jesus didn’t resurrect and ascend, then it would mean the death of Christianity as we know it. And if that isn’t enough manufactured hype for you, the outcry from the Christian community will rally big numbers of viewers tuning in for the spite value alone!
Launch Time: Jesus (Ossuary) Himself is wheeled into a sensational New York press conference and it is announced to public amazement the discovery of the very tomb of Jesus and his family, including his wife, Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ own son, oddly enough named Judas!
But the problem was, this was no new discovery at all; in fact, it is nearly 30 years old now. The original archeaologists were not impressed, but later attempts to create a sensation resulted in a debunked BBC documentary back in 1996. Now, ten years after that, ‘The Jesus Family Tomb: Titanic Edition’ is nothing more than a remake that capitalises on the Jesus-Mary Magdalene Theory primed up by The Da Vinci Code along with popular anacronisms like ‘DNA’ for an audience intrigued with the CSI series.
Woops - the Doubt Bomb didn’t exactly fly. Real archeologists counter-attacked fast and furiously, the secular ones beating Christians to the punch. Amos Kloner, the man who oversaw the original excavation, explained that, while it might sound exciting to find a ‘Jesus, son of Joseph’ and a ‘Mary’ among ten boxes, these names were, in fact, so common that it becomes unremarkable in the big picture. 71 Jesus’ have been found, in fact. It gets even worse with silly DNA insinuations, misinterpreted names (or even scratch-marks being included), and obvious problems explaining why Jesus would be married with children, have a wealthy tomb in Jerusalem all the while a false story of his Ascension is establishing itself as a phenominal new religion. Ben Witherington just gets started on the problems here. Probability experts followed up by simply annihilating Jacobovici’s ‘math’ and all but accusing him of deliberate deception, if not an ‘F’ in Statistics.
At the end of the day, Cameron, Jacobovici and their promoters proved out the biblical warning: “Pride goes before a fall“.  See, rather than stick to subversive but highly effective anti-christian documentaries like A&E’s ‘Mysteries of the Bible’, they got carried away in Hollywood blockbuster dreams. The result was an over-the-top doubt bomb stunt that even the secular public could see as an Emperor with no clothes. The backlash is likely to bankrupt the Doubtmaker industry for years to come…at least until next Advent, anyways.

My favourite line from playfuls.com: “What Cameron should have done is label his work as fiction and save himself from embarrassment. If this is some kind of pissing contest with Mel Gibson, Gibson won.”