On March 6, 2007, four million viewers watched the Discovery Channel deliver the television documentary "The Jesus Family Tomb" while the companion book rocketed to sixth place on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list. The broadcast along with the book tries to prove that located in a suburb called East Talpiot is the family plot of the religious figure Jesus Christ. Managed by an Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, and produced by "Titanic" director James Cameron, the movie is an entertaining and engaging narrative about the 1980 discovery of a first-century Jewish burial cave and 10 ossuaries (bone box coffins).
With the help of reputable archeologists, historians, DNA experts, robot-camera technicians, epigraphers and a CSI expert from New York's Long Island, Jacobovici assembles a case in which he says proves that the bones of these famous biblical figures were once entombed in this cave. James Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary consulted with Jacobovici and expressed: "A very good claim could be made that this was Jesus' clan." Not afraid of being unpopular, Jacobovici with Cameron's help secured Discovery Channel's backing and a $3.5 million budget. If it can proven, the discovery would discredit the message of Christendom and require a radically revised theology.Joe Zias, who was the curator for anthropology and archeology at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem from 1972 to 1997, who numbered the Talpiot ossuaries, said "Simcha has no credibility whatsoever." "He's pimping off the Bible ... He got this guy Cameron, who made 'Titanic' or something like that - what does this guy know about archeology? I am an archeologist, but if I were to write a book about brain surgery, you would say, 'Who is this guy?' People want signs and wonders. Projects like these make a mockery of the archeological profession." Cameron's reply: "I don't profess to be an archeologist or a biblical scholar. I'm a film producer. I found it compelling. I think we're on firm ground to say that much."
The story starts in 1980 as a construction crew unearthed an ancient tomb in Jerusalem's Talpiyot neighborhood. During the construction boom in the 80's, hundreds of tombs were uncovered and among them, thousands of ossuaries. Upon discovery, the workers immediately stopped and summoned the Israel Antiquities Authority, the government agency that controls and protects Israel's archeological treasures and runs the Rockefeller Museum. A small team of IAA archeologists arrived to catalog the site and the boxes were quickly removed and placed on shelves in a IAA warehouse, where they sat undisturbed (except for a BBC documentary in 1996) for more than 20 years.
Six of the ten coffins that Jacobovici found so powerful, had inscribed: Jesus, son of Joseph; Maria; Mariamene; Matthew; Judah son of Jesua (Jesus' son - the filmmakers claim); and Jose, a diminutive of Joseph. Although the cave was discovered nearly 30 years ago and the casket inscriptions decoded ten years ago, the filmmakers are the first to establish that the cave was in fact the burial site of Jesus and his family. The official report written by the archeologist Amos Kloner found nothing remarkable in the discovery. The cave, it said, was probably in use by three or four generations of Jews from the beginning of the Common Era. The names on the boxes were popular in the first century (25 percent of women in Jerusalem, for example, were called Miriam or a derivative). "The use of the names of the members of the biblical family," Prof Amos Kloner who oversaw the archeological work at the Talpiot tomb said, "Is just a coincidence."
