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ISRAEL MAY OPEN 'JESUS TOMB' TO PUBLIC
By Etgar Lefkovits and David Horovitz
The Jerusalem Post
February 27, 2007

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1171894526073

Israeli authorities say they are prepared to consider opening to the public
a 2,000-year-old burial tomb in Jerusalem's East Talpiot neighborhood which
is said by the makers of a new documentary to have likely been the final
resting place of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother, partner Mary Magdalene, son,
and other members of his family.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), responsible for the tomb - which was
first uncovered during construction of the neighborhood in 1980 - said it
would be up to the Jerusalem Municipality to make such a decision. And
municipality spokesman Gidi Schmerling told The Jerusalem Post on Monday
night that if a request were made to open the site, it would be considered.

The producers of The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which was formally launched at a
press conference in New York on Monday and is being screened in the US,
Israel and elsewhere next week, claim that six of the 10 ossuaries found in
the tomb and held by the IAA bear inscriptions that link them to "Jesus son
of Joseph," "Mary," "Jose" (a brother of Jesus), "Matia" (another relative),
"Mariamne" (said to be Mary Magdalene) and a child named "Judah son of
Jesus." The IAA loaned out the "Jesus" and "Mariamne" ossuaries to the
filmmakers for their press conference.

The filmmakers also claim that forensic tests tie the so-called "James"
(brother of Jesus) ossuary, which was "discovered" in 2002 in the collection
of Israeli collector Oded Golan, to the same tomb. The "James" inscription
has been widely branded a forgery.

The film, made by Israeli-born, Canadian-based Simcha Jacobovici, presents
what it says is overwhelming statistical evidence -- based on the cluster of
resonant names and supporting scientific research -- that the cave was the
burial tomb of Jesus and his family.

But the Israeli archeologist responsible for the 1980 excavation, Prof. Amos
Kloner, on Monday night intensified his criticism of this assertion,
lambasting the documentary as "absolute nonsense."

At their press conference, Jacobovici said he now "dreamed" of the
opportunity for the tomb to be more properly excavated. He and a colleague
were able to enter the tomb, which lies sealed beneath a rectangular slab
between rows of buildings in East Talpiot, only briefly during the filming
of the documentary, with the permission of neighbors. They were asked to
leave and reseal it by an IAA official who was called to the site.

"We rediscovered the tomb," Jacobovici noted, adding that many had believed
erroneously it was destroyed during the 1980s' construction. "The tomb is
there! There may be inscriptions in the tomb," he said, along with all kinds
of other evidence including bones that might bolster, or shatter, the
documentary's claims. "This is the beginning."

The filmmakers also expressed the hope that they would be given further
access to the various ossuaries, which might enable additional forensic and
possibly DNA and other testing. The filmmakers said they were able to
retrieve sufficient material from the "Jesus" and "Mariamne" ossuaries to
establish that they were not the bone-boxes of blood relatives; hence their
theory that Jesus and "Mariamne" were a couple, and possibly the parents of
the child "Judah."

IAA officials would not comment on whether further such access to the
ossuaries would be allowed. The IAA said it had lent out the two ossuaries
displayed in New York in the name of "artistic freedom," without endorsing
the filmmakers' findings in any way.

James Cameron, the Oscar-winning Hollywood executive producer of the
documentary, said at the press conference that the style of burial as seen
in the ossuaries from the tomb was only followed for about a century, at the
time of Jesus, for about 80,000 individuals.

The filmmaker's statistician, Andrey Feuerverger of the University of
Toronto, said that "Based on the assumptions that I had [given to me]...
we're seeing numbers that... make you think... this is it." Feuerverger
offered overwhelming statistics -- in the range of 100-1 to 1000-1 against
the thesis being wrong, though in the movie the statistics cited are even
more overwhelmingly conclusive.

In answer to a question, Jacobovici acknowledged that if the inscription on
the "Jesus" ossuary is actually illegible, as some critics have claimed, the
whole thesis collapses. "If this doesn't say Jesus, yes, it all falls
apart," he said of the inscribed ossuary. But every expert to whom the
inscription had been shown, he said, had conclusively confirmed it as
reading "Jesus son of Joseph." The original Israeli catalogue of the
ossuaries from the tomb recorded it as reading "Jesus," too, he said.

Dr. James Tabor, chairman of religious studies at the University of North
Carolina at Charlotte, said the ossuary from the Talpiot tomb was the only
one ever found with a confirmed provenance bearing the inscription "Jesus
son of Joseph."

The filmmakers' presentation was met by a largely receptive journalistic
audience. Indeed, the biggest doubter was on the filmmakers' own panel.

Shimon Gibson, who was one of the original team that worked at the tomb when
it was first discovered in 1980, said he was "skeptical" of the Jesus family
claims. "I'm willing to accept the possibility," he allowed. "I'm not going
to deny there's an interesting set of variables."

Gibson said the original team "viewed [the tomb] as a normal family tomb of
a Jewish family from the 1st century... All the names were well known. None
of them seemed to us to be unusual." The authorities lacked the capability
to do the kind of analysis that would be possible now, he said, and he hoped
that such further research would be permissible.

Back in Jerusalem, by contrast, Israeli archeologists were firmly
dismissive, reiterating that the similarity of the names found inscribed on
the ossuaries to those in the Jesus narrative was coincidental since many of
those names were commonplace in the first century CE.

"Yeshua was such a popular name during the Second Temple Period," said
Israeli archeologist Danny Bahat, who is currently with the University of
Toronto. "The fact that you have such similar names is due to the fact that
these were the prevalent names during that time," he said.

Bahat added that, like The Da Vinci Code, the new documentary was pure
fiction that took "two correct facts" and mixed them with "gibberish," such
as the assertion that the "James" ossuary originated in the same cave.

Kloner, who had previously dismissed the documentary's claims as
"impossible" and "nonsense," said Monday that having now viewed the film he
had previously taken it "too seriously," and stood by every word of his
stinging criticism.

Kloner noted that when the ossuaries were found nearly three decades ago,
most of the bones inside were badly decomposed.

Due to haredi pressures put on the Israeli government, no anthropological
tests were ever carried out on the remains, he said, with the bones
transferred to the Religious Affairs Ministry for immediate reburial along
with assorted other remains found in various construction projects and digs.

The location of the bones, which were then interred by the Jewish burial
society, is not known.

At the press conference, Gibson had recalled a similar process, though he
said an anthropologist had normally examined bones in the numerous ossuaries
that were being recovered at the time from various caves at construction
sites in the then-expanding Jerusalem.

The IAA looks after 30,000 known archeological sites in Israel, including
thousands of burial caves; most such sites are sealed, and closed off to the
public.

The slab that seals the Talpiot tomb is located at the bottom of a stairway
between buildings, and any future opening of the site to the public would
likely require the relocation of some residents.

The alleged burial site, which has been contested by scholars and church
officials alike, is several kilometers from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
in the Old City where many Christians believe Jesus's body lay for three
days.

According to the New Testament, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day
after his crucifixion, and the fact that Jesus had an ossuary would
contradict the core Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to
heaven. Still, members of the film team suggested on Monday that some
Christian traditions could be reconciled to the notion of a "spiritual"
resurrection.

The New York press conference ended on a semi-humorous note, when the panel
was asked if there was enough DNA remaining in the ossuary to clone Jesus.
"Some experiments shouldn't be done," one of the film team responded.

Then Tabor said conclusively that there was "no intact cellular DNA" and so
no possibility of cloning.

.............

THE LOST TOMB OF JESUS OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
http://www.jesusfamilytomb.com/

SIMCHA'S JOURNEY:
http://www.jesusfamilytomb.com/movie_overview/journey.html

FILM CLIPS:

All About Ossuaries
James Brother of Jesus: The Film Behind the Scenes
The Jesus Movement
Ossuary Inscriptions: An Ancient Phone Book
Discovering the Jesus Tomb
Using Probability As Proof for the Jesus Tomb
Was Mariamne Mary Magdalene? Mary ³the Master²

http://www.jesusfamilytomb.com/movie_clips.html

------------

THE JESUS FAMILY TOMB:
THE DISCOVERY, THE INVESTIGATION, AND THE EVIDENCE
THAT COULD CHANGE HISTORY
By Simcha Jacobovici (Author), Charles Pellegrino (Author)
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco (February 27, 2007)
Language: English
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #349 in Books

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061192023/newheavenneweart

------------

THE LOST TOMB OF JESUS DISCOVERY CHANNEL WEBSITE:
http://www.discovery.com/tomb/

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/about/about.html

EXPLORE THE TOMB:
(Includes diagram of tomb, tomb discovery outline, photos of ossuaries and
engravings, a downloadable pdf that describes and illustrates evidence, and
an outline of supporting evidence)
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/explore/explore.html

LAND OF JESUS:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/land/land.html

FILMMAKERS AND EXPERTS:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/bios/bios.html

THEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/theology/theology.html

DISCUSSION FORUM:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/forum/forum.html

------------

PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLES:

UPDATE 6: THE JESUS FAMILY TOMB (2/27/2007):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/12645

UPDATE 5: THE JESUS FAMILY TOMB (2/27/2007):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/12644

UPDATE 4: THE JESUS FAMILY TOMB (2/26/2007):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/12641

UPDATE 3: THE JESUS FAMILY TOMB (2/26/2007):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/12640

UPDATE 2: THE JESUS FAMILY TOMB (2/25/2007):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/12639

UPDATE 1: THE JESUS FAMILY TOMB (2/25/2007):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/12638

DOCUMENTARY: JAMES CAMERON TO REVEAL CAVE JESUS BURIED IN (2/24/2007):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/12634

------------

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Published by David Sunfellow
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
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