"There is no such thing as bad publicity" goes the trusted Hollywood adage. Well the Jesus Family Tomb documentary is getting panned in public and it hasn't even aired.
National Geographic weighs in with a series of scholarly slams at the film.
"Their movie is not serious," Amos Kloner, the Bar Ilan University professor who led the excavation in the 1980s, told National Geographic News.
"They [say they] are 'discovering' things. But they haven't discovered anything. They haven't found anything. Everything had already been published.
"And there is no basis on which to make a story out of this or to identify this as the family of Jesus."
[Worse yet - it doesn't even say Jesus on the ossuary:]
Stephen Pfann, president of Jerusalem's University of the Holy Land and an expert in Semitic languages, appears in The Lost Tomb of Jesus.
Pfann told National Geographic News that he also has doubts about the movie's claims.
"I don't think it says Yehoshua [Jesus]. It says Hanun or something," Pfann said, after viewing high-resolution images of the ossuary inscription in question.
Christian scholars are lining up to list their opprobrium for the show:
10 reasons why the "Jesus Tomb" claim is completely bogus |
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| Christian Examiner |
Dr. Ben Witherington, author of What Have They Done With Jesus? and New Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary and other leading biblical scholars and archeologists say there are at least 10 reasons why the "Jesus Tomb" claim is completely bogus:
1. There is no DNA evidence that this is the historical Jesus of Nazareth
2. The statistical analysis is untrustworthy
3. The name "Jesus" was a popular name in the first century, appearing in 98 other tombs and on 21 other ossuaries
4. There is no historical evidence that Jesus was ever married or had a child
5. The earliest followers of Jesus never called him "Jesus, son of Joseph"
6. It is highly unlikely that Joseph, who died earlier in
Galilee, was buried in Jerusalem, since the historical record connects him only to Nazareth or Bethlehem
7. The Talpiot tomb and ossuaries are such that they would have belonged to a rich family, which does not match the historical record for Jesus
8. Fourth-century church historian Eusebius makes quite clear that the body of James, the brother of Jesus, was buried alone near the temple mount and that his tomb was visited in the early centuries, making very unlikely that the Talpiot tomb was Jesus' "family tomb"
9. The two Mary ossuaries do not mention anyone from Migdal, but simply has the name Mary, one of the most common of all ancient Jewish female names
10. By all ancient accounts, the tomb of Jesus was empty, making it highly unlikely that it was moved to another tomb, decayed for one year's time, and then the bones put in an ossuary
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It simply seems like a good way to grad headlines.
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