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Hat tip to ChuckzBlogII… great find Chuck!

You’ve maybe heard about James Cameron’s (Titanic, The Abyss, Terminator) new documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus. I’m not going to take the time to look up quotes by Cameron about it right now… but this is from the Discovery Channel website about the documentary which aired in the USA on March 4th 2007.

Has the tomb of Jesus Christ been found?

Since the 1970s, hundreds of tombs and thousands of ossuaries (limestone bone boxes) have been discovered in the Jerusalem area. These ossuaries served as coffins in first-century Jerusalem.

One of these tombs was found to contain ten ossuaries. Six of the ossuaries in this tomb have inscriptions on them. As it turns out, every inscription in this particular tomb relates to the Gospels.

In the feature documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus a case is made that the 2,000-year-old “Tomb of the Ten Ossuaries” belonged to the family of Jesus of Nazareth.

Well… that is a very explosive claim, huh?

If you are interested in burying your head in the sand about this… or mocking it… you can stop reading… but if you are interested in truth and science and history and archeology… read on a bit for an excellent resource on the web about this controversy.

I find it interesting that Christians are often thought of (and/or portrayed) as anti-science or as people whose belief in Jesus is based solely on some “blind faith” rather than on facts. One reason I find it intereting is that it accurately describes a lot of Christians, unfortunately. Another reason it is interesting is that it is completely untrue for a great number of Christians. In my case, I am a Christian primarily BECAUSE of FACTS and SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. If Christianity is true… it will prove to be so according to honest research and scholarship. If it proves untrue… why would we adhere to Christian teaching? Paul believed that if Christ did not rise from the dead that Christians are fools. I agree. I don’t have any reason to worry about this documentary because truth will stand on its own.

The resource I mentioned above can be found here: Has the tomb of Jesus been found?

“What I’m going to say here may surprise a lot of Christians, but we should be open minded about the evidence and not dismiss it in a knee-jerk reaction ossuary and say it is a hoax, or a conspiracy. If the evidence is factual and stands up to cross examination, then we need to deal with it as the set of facts they are. If Christianity is true, then it should fear no facts — and neither should its adherents.”

“However, please understand that if the archaeological evidence is verified, the ossuaries do not disprove Christianity. They only demonstrate that there is a family tomb from the time of Christ with the same names of those found in the gospel accounts — which can have other explanations, as you’ll see below, and around which many questions need to be answered. Remember, the gospels are eyewitness accounts and are substantially different in evidentiary value than empty ossuaries with biblical names inscribed on the outside. There is a huge difference between them regarding their interpretive and evidentiary significance.”

It is a great article and very fair. I hope all critics and supporters of the documentary will read it and learn. As always… love and grace will speak loudly on their own.

Has anyone seen it? I may see it soon… but not before the latest episode of 24