The Statements of James Cameron About the Tomb of Christ

The movie director James Cameron lately announced that the tomb of Jesus and of Mary Magdalene would have been discovered. What may be said about that?

What's the case? The Israelian Antiquities Authority services, in 1980, operate a preventive digging in a Jewish familial tomb, which had been found during the construction of an apartment building in the neighbourhood of Talpiot, in Jerusalem. Nothing unusual was noted at the time. Like any Jewish burial cave, that one had niches or benches on which the dead was laid to rest until they be just bones. Bones, then, were collected into stone burial boxes -or 'ossuaries'- to let place for other members of the family. The archeologists, according to how they were usually operating, had the bones interred in a Jewish cemetery, and the ossuaries stored in their buildings

It's a documentary by the BBC, which, in 1996, launched the hypothesis, for the first time, that the tomb in Talpiot might be the one of Christ. The professional archeologists then had denied that. The movie director James Cameron, lately -he is the author for the Terminators movies, or the Titanic- as he had as an aide an amateur archeologist, comes back to that affair and he eventually gets to the conclusion that the tomb is one of Christ and of his family. His conclusions rest on a statistical basis, as, related to the 900 Jewish family tombs found in Jerusalem, 71 only are containing ossuaries with the name 'Jesus' inscribed on them. That occurrence is still less when one looks for tombs in which an ossuary bearing the name 'Jesus' has been found with a one with the name 'Joseph', as the odds are weaker still that an ossuary with the name 'Mary' be found in correlation with the previous. The ossuaries of the tomb in Talpiot did indeed matched all the names related to Jesus' family as it's known in the New Testament. The James Cameron's documentary hence deems that the chance to have all those names on the ossuaries in a same tomb are much weak, and remarkable. And that the tomb of Talpiot is the Christ's tomb

The religious officials, and the professional archeologists, from that, objected the demonstration. The first did on the basis of their authority only mainly. The seconds through academic arguments. A kind of synthesis of that latter approach has been published, by 2009 in Belgium ('Fidélitée' editions), 'The Discovery of Jesus' Tomb'. That study shows how Cameron's documentary is mostly romanesque and even a proponent of the plots theories (like: 'they are hidden things to us') as Cameron further is supporting the already famously developed idea that Jesus would have married Mary Magdalene. The discovery of this common tomb, when done in the 1980's was described in the specialized reviews of archeology -and further during the 1990's- as that did not trigger any debate. In the 1940's, on another hand, an ossuary bearing the words 'Jesus, son of Joseph' already had been discovered and the case already, academically settled. An academic approach of the tomb in Talpiot mostly question the romanesque approach by Cameron. Thus, Mary Magdalene is not a parent to Jesus and she then would not have had her place inside a family tomb of him. That the ADN of Mary Magdalene ossuary hints to that her and Jesus were not issued from a same mother, doesn't bring much in term of a possible mariage between her and Jesus, as, on the other hand, such ossuaries often were used for the remainings of two persons (and that was the case for the Mary Magdalene ossuary of Talpiot). The celibary of Christ, as the rabins of the time had to be married, might not be that much remarkable as some Jewish cults of the time were the proponents of celibacy, like the Essenians or the Therapeuts. Scientists, at last, are noting how the Cameron's documentary is reducing, quantitatively, the data used (other types of Jewish tombs existed at the time) or its academic approximations (a cross carved on an ossuary, at that time, likely was not a Christian sign but a mason work carving instead; or an exhaustive study performed on the names of Jews between the end of the 4th century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. is showing that, at the time of Jesus, 1 person of 24, among the whole of the Jewish population, had the name Jesus and that, compared to the 40,000-person population of Jerusalem , there was a 250 chance to 1 that a Jesus be a son of Joseph and reciprocally! 30 percent, further, of the Jewish first names were 'Jesus', 'Judas', or 'Joseph' as one fourth of the women were named 'Mary'). The statistics taken in account by the documentary are just referencing 900 tombs only and are stressing how the chance is that all those names, compared to those 900, be found inside one tomb! Cameron's points of view, at last, seem well related to a form of occultism. The broken line which is found at the top of the tomb's door, for example, is analyzed, through the Crusades, like at the origins of the Western masonry

Cameron documentary, thus, doesn't seem to really see how his documentary may be far reaching! First, of course, such a tomb of Christ, with his ossuary, would be mostly incompatible with the Resurrection. Bones mean no Ressurection! That might be bypassed however from a theological point of view as soon as one would call to the fact that St Paul is conceiving the resurrection like a spiritual resurrection and that it is not before the four Gospels that resurrection is really considered a physical one. The Resurrection is central in the Christian faith however, like St. Paul stated in 1 Corinthians, 15, 17: '[...] and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain.' In any case, unluckily, the bones, then, would be still incompatible with the Ascension. Such statements like those by such a documentary, at last, might dangerously lead to much more far questionments. As an example, what does that mean if one accepts the existence of a tomb of Christ in Jerusalem? Why not, in that case, to demonstrate that the 'Jesus Christ affair' might have been a colossal manipulation -not to say titanic! ;-). At the time indeed, Romans are finishing their conquest of the Mediterranean world and the 'Christ affair' might have taken place in the frame of the fight of those against the various Jewish clans fighting for their land to remain independent, or the contrary. Should one consider that the Romans, to facilitate their conquests, would have used some religious tricks of the people they were conquering, why would they would have not used a Christian cult -like another of the Jewish ones- to allow for an easier and definitive conquest of Judaea?! The Romans might well, for example, have used the antique opposition to Persians when they conquered Greece, or a Gallic priest favorable to them, in Gaule. Or that Pompey, the vainquor of Egypt might have used the fear, there, of the droughts of the Nile River... Hence the documentary might well pose more questions than the ones he pretends to solve. Mostly, on the other hand, such documentaries are irresponsible somehow due to that those who author them do not realize how titanic the questions raised can actually be, on the basis of what they are asserting! James Cameron, on the other hand, was seen during a meeting next to NASA's director -the agency's director is named by the US president- and sharing the most futuristic views about the space conquest. Jacobovici, at last, the aid scholar to Cameron was later known to a the James ossuary hoax and a controversial study about a translation of the Aramaic text 'Ecclesiastical History' of Zacharias Rhetor brought to the British Museum in 1847 from a Egyptian monastery, and discarded by scholars as insignificant