James Cameron, film director and harbourer of the dead souls of the Titanic, is taking on the very foundation of Christianity – the divinity of Jesus – with a new TV documentary.
The Last Tomb of Christ will chronicle Cameron’s and journalist Simcha Jacobovici’s claims that they’ve uncovered the burial cave of Jesus and his family, reports the Globe and Mail.
Cameron and Jacobovici suggest that burial boxes, currently stored in a warehouse belonging to the Israel Antiquities Authority in Bet Shemesh, once contained the bones of Jesus and his family.
The theory is largely based on the names that are inscribed on the sides of the boxes: Yeshua (Jesus) bar Yosef (son of Joseph); Maria (the Latin version of Miriam, which is the English Mary); Matia (the Hebrew equivalent of Matthew); Yose (the Gospel of Mark refers to Yose as Jesus’s brother); and Mariamne (according to Harvard professor Francois Bovon, who was interviewed in the documentary, Mariamne was Mary Magdalene’s real name).
“It's a beautiful story, but without any proof whatsoever,” archeologist Amos Kloner told Deutsche Presse-Agentur last week.
Kloner wrote the original report on the Talpiyot cave findings, where the burial boxes were unearthed.
“The names…found on the tombs are names that are similar to the names of the family of Jesus,” he said. “But those were the most common names found among Jews in the first centuries BCE and CE.”
Cameron disagrees.
“I don't think this changes the fundamentals of faith," the director said in an interview last week. “But the evidence is pretty darn compelling and it definitely bears further study.”
The Last Tomb of Christ premieres on the Discovery Channel on Mar. 4 (4 & 9 p.m. ET/PT) and on Mar. 6 on Vision TV (8 p.m. & 12 a.m. ET, 5 & 9 p.m. PT, 6 & 10 p.m. MT).
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