Grave matters

Seemingly out of left field comes a new documentary film with two of the biggest marquee names in movie history attached to it: James Cameron and Jesus. Or, perhaps the other way around: Jesus and James Cameron.

It's difficult to figure out which one is really the star in this slick, beautifully filmed production, "The Tomb of Jesus," broadcast on the Discovery Channel Sunday, March 4.

Yes, it really is the tomb of Jesus if the graffiti on the stone coffin (ossuary) can be taken at face value. But the question is, which Jesus? Is it the Jesus of Nazareth whom we profess to believe "was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered, died and was buried"?

The film, written, directed and produced by Simcha Jacobovici with James Cameron as executive producer, is an eyeful, not unlike Cameron's epic blockbuster Titanic of a decade ago, which shattered box-office records worldwide.

What does it all add up to?

In the end, I credit the filmmakers with offering a substantial amount of skeptical debate and counterevidence to the might-be and want-to-be and surely-must-be marshaling of evidence. The contrary voices in the documentary do not come off as nutty and incredible, nor do the Indiana Joneslike researchers who plunge into a spider-filled tomb in which I certainly would not be caught dead.

But the dramatic narrative, camera work and editing is so effective as to leave the viewer in a pleasant, forgetful fog when it comes to the naysayers because the yay-sayers are very measured and suggestive in tone. They are certain that we must be open to the possibilities: that Jesus of Nazareth, and his mother, and his wife (Mary Magdalene or Mariamne), and a sibling or two, and his son are all buried in the tomb discovered in 1980 outside Jerusalem.

Once the statistician is done toting up the odds, the case seems overwhelming: 30,000 to 1 that it is the tomb of the "Jesus family."

One analyst even uses the now-debased term, "slam dunk," when a coffin gone missing from the original group is identified as the controversial "James ossuary" of five years ago, now entangled in an Israeli court case.

The questions left open at the end of the film are legion. Only some of the DNA materials in the stone coffins was tested. Why not all, especially that of the purported son? Why all of a sudden this high level of interest in this tomb when it has been known for a quarter-century? Given the strong case for forgery of the James ossuary, have tests been conducted on the inscriptions on the others that purport to link the coffins in question to persons mentioned in the New Testament?

There are many more questions than answers raised by this hugely hyped film that features some rather absurd and seductive reenactment footage. It's like "CSI" meets "The Passion of the Christ." Somebody is turning over in his grave, but we think it's not that Somebody.

[Greg Tobin is senior adviser for communications at Seton Hall University and a religion scholar and author.]

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