The Lost Tomb Of Jesus?

Has Jesus’ tomb been found? If you’ve been following the news, in the last week of February filmmaker James Cameron and director Simcha Jacobovici have announced that they have found the bones of Jesus. Their documentary will air on the Discovery Channel on March 4. Jacobovici has also authored a book entitled “The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History.” What are we to make of this?

If the bones of Jesus have been found, it would mean that the resurrection of Jesus was not true. The Bible teaches that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven, which leaves no room for a body. The cross and the resurrection are the central tenets of the Christian faith. Paul writes in NIV 1 Corinthians 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. So, this book and documentary are a frontal attack on the basis of Christianity. Jacobovici makes this bizarre statement, “some believers are going to say, well, this challenges the resurrection. I don’t know why, if Jesus rose from one tomb, he couldn’t have risen from the other tomb.” Not much logic here. Multiple resurrections? If Jesus was resurrected, there would be no bones or tomb at all.

Let’s look at the facts. The tomb is not new, it was discovered in 1980 by contruction workers digging in Jerusalem. Inside the tomb were ten limestone ossuaries. A prominent Israeli archaelogist, Professor Amos Kloner, who examined them at the time did not see any special signficance in them. Now, all of a sudden, 27 years later, much ado is being made over these ossuaries. What is the evidence?

The main evidence consists of the names written on the ossuaries. Some of the names are Judah, son of Jesus, Jesus, son of Joseph, Mariamene (Mary Magdalene) and Maria. These were all very common names at the time. The name Jesus appears in 98 other known tombs and on 21 other known ossuaries. So called statistical analysis is purported to indicate that the random probability of this particular association of names would be low. This is not evidence, it is simply junk science. Joe Zias, who was the curator for anthropology and archeology at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem says, “Projects like these make a mockery of the archeological profession.”

To introduce a high-tech CSI element, the authors did DNA testing. What did they test? Well, that’s not clear at all, as the bones contained in the ossuaries were buried immediately after they were found. So they scraped something out of the boxes and they found that the DNA from the Jesus box and from the Mariamene box were not related. What does that prove? Well, if you have read the fictional novel, The DaVinci Code, you would know. It supposedly supports the preposterous claim that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had a child. DNA testing in this case is completely meaningless as we don’t even have the bones anymore. In any tomb, one would expect a high probability that that the DNA of a husband and wife would not be related. More junk science.

As opposed to this junk science, what do we have to disprove it. We have multiple ancient texts written by eye witnesses that date to within a few years of the actual events. In these ancient texts, translated for us in the New Testament, we have evidence that Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead. No body was ever produced. If Jesus’ body was available, the enemies of Christianity would have produced it and that would have been the end of Christianity. However, no one could find Jesus’ body, because it didn’t exist.

For any thinking person, the evidence against the lost tomb of Jesus is overwhelming. The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is solid. Use the controversy to talk about Jesus to your friends.