Doubt shroud's Jesus' tomb

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - This Sunday, hundreds of millions of Christians will celebrate their holiest day of the year. Easter is the day that Christians all over the world celebrate their belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Christian doctrine teaches that Jesus was violently executed on a Roman cross on a day that has become known as “Good Friday,” and that he bodily rose from the dead on Easter Sunday

The Apostle Paul wrote, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Recently, the Discovery Channel made a startling announcement, which if proven true, would undermine this central tenet of Christianity.

“New scientific evidence, including DNA analysis conducted at one of the world's foremost molecular genetics laboratories, as well as studies by leading scholars, suggests a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb could have once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family,” reported Jennifer Viegas, of Discovery News.

In a widely publicized television special, producer James Cameron, famed for the movie “Titanic,” asked viewers to believe that Jesus bones had been found, that he was married to Mary Magdalene, and that they had a son together named Judah.

His story has an echo of Dan Brown's famous Da Vinci Code, and the vast majority of reputable scholars have skeptically responded that it shares another similarity with the popular book — both are works of fiction.

The producers of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” knew that by “proving” Jesus body was still in his grave, their show would generate a great deal of controversy. Scholars from both inside and outside of Christianity have lined up to debunk the purported science that Cameron and director Simcha Jacobovici unveiled on their show.

AN OLD “NEW” DISCOVERY

The “new” discovery of the tomb actually took place on March 28, 1980. A construction crew was preparing to build an apartment complex in Talpiot, Jerusalem, when they uncovered an ancient tomb. Archaeologists from the Israeli Antiquities Authority were called to the site and the tomb was excavated.

Inside the tomb were 10 ossuaries, small boxes made from stone that were used to hold collected bone fragments. The burial practice of the day called for the deceased to be wrapped in cloth — a “shroud” — and after a year, the tomb was re-entered and their bones placed in an ossuary.

Frequently, the ossuaries were labeled with the name of the deceased. The Aramaic inscription on one of the bone boxes found in the Talpiot tomb was “Jesus” and two others had a form of the name “Mary.” From these inscriptions, the filmmakers built the rest of their story. They employed DNA to “prove” that the Jesus and Mary in the tomb were not related — and concluded they were married. They employed questionable calculations to suggest that it was a statistical certainty that this Jesus and this Mary were the biblical figures. Their attempt to create proof from assumptions has been widely criticized.

EXPERTS ARE NOT CONVICED

Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land is not convinced that the name "Jesus" on the stone box was read correctly because ancient Semitic script is difficult to decipher. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site is quick to point out that the names on the boxes are the most common of all names among Jewish people of that time.

Dr. Craig L. Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary has demonstrated that the inscription that allegedly identifies the remains of Mary Magdalene is actually three Greek words that should be translated Mary the Master, a title with no connection to the biblical Mary. Biblical archaeologists and scholars from many fields have lined up to say that the cable channel, which bills itself as “the number-one nonfiction media company,” missed the mark this time.

This Easter, despite the Discovery Channel show, most Christians will continue to believe that if Jesus' tomb is ever discovered, it will be empty.

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