The Lost Tomb vs. the Empty Tomb, Part I

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - March 9, 2007

It has become a recurring pattern that every Lent and Easter season, as Christians mark the most sacred moments of their faith, they receive a full frontal attack on their beliefs by publicity-seeking producers in the entertainment industry.

First it was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were lovers and had children together — and the early Church covered it up. Then it was that Judas was a hero rather than a villain — and the early Church covered this up as well. Now it is that Jesus never rose from the dead at all, but Christians, just as the Sanhedrin claimed, stole and stashed his body in a suburban Jerusalem familial tomb — and the early Church not only covered it up, but knowingly spread the lie that he had risen from the dead.

The producers make these claims because they've learned that the response from Christians defending the faith will hype their product and dramatically increase their profits. They have also caught on that Christian leaders will not risk ignoring their claims, because they know that no matter how outlandish and unsubstantiated claims against the faith are, many in the media will still accept and report them uncritically as factual. Moreover, pastors have also recognized that so many of their people have such a weak knowledge of the underlying reasons for the credibility of the faith that they remain gullible and vulnerable to having their faith shaken by the fictional tales spun by The Da Vinci Code, The Gospel of Judas, or last Sunday's The Lost Tomb of Jesus.

Like it or not, Church leaders are needing to engage more in the defense of the faith — traditionally called apologetics — which may in fact turn out to be a propitious development. As an organ of adult formation and information, this newspaper also has a role to play locally in responding to attacks on the faith and in providing the ground for why we believe what we believe.

With regard to the latest attack, James Cameron's Discovery Channel "documentary" The Lost Tomb of Jesus is a story that would best be classified in the same category as The National Enquirer articles on Hollywood starlets' being kidnapped by extra-terrestrials.

It involves a family tomb accidentally uncovered in 1980 in a south Jerusalem suburb. Israeli archaeological experts — generally reputed to be the world's best — studied the tomb, concluded it was from the first century before Christ and said the names on the ten ossuaries found in the tomb were all common from the period. Had they found what they thought was the tomb and the bones of Jesus of Nazareth — which would have easily been the greatest discovery in the history of archaeology! — they would have acted on it. They concluded, however, that it was an ordinary find. It only became "extraordinary" 27 years later when Cameron and director Simcha Jacobivici made it the centerpiece of their tabloid science fiction.

The documentary begins by accepting only one part of the Gospel accounts about Jesus' death and resurrection: the part in which the Sanhedrin alleged that the empty tomb was proof that Jesus' body was stolen by his disciples. It doesn't state that it was a crime punishable by death under Roman law to translate a dead body, nor does it answer why the disciples would have risked their lives to move the body of someone who had obviously deceived them in thrice stating that he would rise from the dead.

The next item that viewers must accept is that the disciples fit Jesus' cadaver, less than two days old, into a tiny ossuarium no more than a couple of feet long. In order to accomplish this, Jesus' followers would have had either to boil or tear his flesh off in order to stack and fit his bones in the little casket. Needless to say, this was not a pious Jewish custom.

Then come the inscriptions. The first is an Aramaic one that says "Yeshua bar Yosef," which means "Joshua (or Jesus) son of Joseph." Cameron and Jacobivici want to conclude that this is proof that we're talking about Jesus of Nazareth, but there's the inconvenient fact that those names were so common that one out of every twenty five Jews named Joshua would have a father named Joseph.

Then there's the inscription "Maria" written in Latin on another ossuarium. Cameron asks us to believe this is Jesus' mother Mary, but why anyone strangely would have written her name in Latin rather than in Aramaic or Hebrew when there is no proof she was ever called by a Latin derivative goes unmentioned.

Next is the Greek and Aramaic inscription "mariamne mara" on another small casket, which Cameron wants to convince us refers to Mary Magdalene. The documentary tries to dance around the fact that the Gospel or early Christian writings never refer to her as "mariamne" by stating that the fourth century gnostic Pseudo-Gospel of Philip refers to her by this name. Beyond the leap of treating as more authoritative fourth century sources than first century ones, the problem is that the Pseudo-Gospel of Philip never mentions a "Mariamne"! The fourth century Acts of Philip do, but uses the name exclusively to refer to Philip's sister, who is never once identified with Mary Magdalene.

Finally, Cameron says his argument hinges on showing that "Jesus, son of Judah" and "Mariamne" were married. The way he "proved" their bond was by showing, through DNA analysis of fragments from their ossuaries, that they were not related. Not being related, for Cameron, is sufficient proof of marriage. He didn't test whether either was related to any of the others in the tomb; otherwise, he could have concluded by the same logic that they were members of a polygamous sect.

For these and other reasons, historians and archaeological experts have univocally panned the documentary as a pseudo-archaeological hoax designed simply to gain publicity and make money.

Arguments against Jesus' resurrection are as old as the Gospel. Christian counterarguments have always been based on the empty tomb, Jesus' appearances, and the credibility of the witnesses to those appearances. All Christians should be familiar with these apologetics. In an upcoming editorial, we will take them up.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.