Filmmaker James Cameron, who hasn’t had a hit film since **Titanic **almost a decade ago, is trying to destroy **Christianity **by claiming that he has found the tomb and coffin of Jesus Christ. He also claims to have found the coffins of his wife and child. Yes, at it starts to sound a bit like The DaVinci Code at that point.
‘The Lost Tomb of Christ’, a documentary set to air on Channel Four next month, argues that ten ancient ossuaries, small caskets used to store bones, which were found when bulldozers flattened a Jerusalem suburb in 1980, may have contained the remains of Jesus and his wife and child.
One of the caskets even bears the title, ‘Judah, son of Jesus,’ which Cameron claims as evidence that Jesus may have had a son. Another coffin was said to hold the bones of Mary Magdalene, also known as ‘Mariamne’.
Cameron unveiled two of the small limestone caskets at a press conference in New York, but the director could offer little proof to support his claims, other than the mathematical probability of a tomb containing a set of ossuaries with names linked to Jesus.
Biblical scholars from Union University are quick to point out how it is very unlikely that Cameron has found anything other than the coffins of John, Jane and Jimmy.
“The names of ‘Mary,’ ‘Joseph’ and ‘Jesus’ all were very common in Jesus’ day, taken from heroes of the Jewish Scriptures,” Guthrie said. “So, it would be like us finding a tomb with the names ‘Sue,’ ‘Bill,’ ‘John son of Bill’ and ‘George.’”
Guthrie also questioned the filmmakers’ reliance on DNA evidence to draw their conclusions. “We have no remains from any of the biblical characters with which a DNA sampling from the caskets can be compared,” he said.
Guthrie argued that the best of New Testament scholarship has agreed with the New Testament literature that Jesus was not married, and said that conclusions to the contrary are “propositions built on thin air.”
The Union scholars go on to point out the contradiction of the Christian faith growing so strong during the same time based on the resurrected Christ.
“The filmmakers are therefore suggesting that the body of Jesus lay decaying in a family tomb in Jerusalem at the same time the early Jerusalem church was expanding because of its belief in a resurrected Messiah,” Guthrie said. “Yet, we have no evidence from any ancient document, Christian or non-Christian, that points even to rumors that the body or bones of Jesus were there in Jerusalem.”
Guthrie added that both biblical and extra-biblical sources point to the brothers of Jesus, most notably James, as among the Christians of the first century.
“Yet, would James and the others not known of this family tomb and the body of Jesus there?” Guthrie asked. “As believers, his family members confess the resurrected Jesus. No opponent of Christianity points to the tomb. No followers of Jesus revere the tomb. There is no evidence — beyond the circumstantial evidence of exceedingly common names — that points to this as being the tomb of Jesus’ family. The name associations are interesting, but the evidence does not bear the weight of the proposition.”
I believe James Cameron is looking for the limelight again and is probably an atheist with an agenda to put Christians in their place. We have to remember that this tomb was found nearly thirty years ago and very few people thought much about it. Cameron didn’t appear to have much actual evidence that these coffins belong to Jesus outside of the ‘very common names’ being on the coffins. Christians and proponents of Christianity from the first century have never stated that Christ’s body existed or was buried in Jerusalem. Perhaps Cameron is a bit broke after having to pay second wife (of five) Linda Hamilton nearly $63 million dollars in a divorce settlement
Hamilton had this to say about James Cameron:
“…he was an absolutely miserable, miserable, unhappy man,”
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