Red Flags and the Lost Tomb of Jesus
posted March 5th, 2007 at 4:49 pm by Betty
Last night I was eager to see the film The Lost Tomb of Jesus. Afterall, it was extraordinary news that the family tomb of Jesus “may” have been discovered underneath apartments in Jerusalem. The film was to give an account of this discovery and to detail the probability statistics regarding the inscriptions “Jesus, son of Joseph,” “Maria,” and “Mariamne, the master,” among others.
Yet there had been enough news coverage prior to the showing, that I was wary. Looking back, I am grateful for the preparation. I was ready to listen carefully. I was better prepared to use my God-given powers of reason, to watch for the illogical leaps to conclusions. Better prepared than when, for example, I watched Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ and remained in my seat, without bolting.
This time I was ready to raise red flags. This time I could peek through the images and music to see the manipulation.
Later, when I watched Ted Koppel’s panel of scholars, I could hear Professor Judy Fentress-Williams of Virgina Theological Seminary, who kept bringing up “critical thinking.” She spoke of the power that dramatizations have upon us, the viewers, even when dramas are depicting merely an hypothesis, and at best a shakey one. As I recall, she named such film dramas “a form of deception.”
It is true that I delighted in those parts of the film that rolled out the new Mary Magdalene as a “master” and teacher in the early days of the Christian movement. Afterall, this new view of Mary Magdalene is what my book The Magdalene Mystique is all about.
But this film is more adventure discovery than documentation. I have the sense that it has “used” bits and pieces of new scholarship. The new research in academic circles about Mary Magdalene and Jesus seeks to overturn the multiple legends and fiction and to focus on what we can “actually say.” Furthermore, it is important in scholarship to await a consensus.
There must be a better way than in filmmaking to report to the public about new findings and insight. Specifically, I am thinking of the new story about Mary Magdalene, her new image as an apostle, visionary, and spiritual leader that has recently been discovered — the new story that has brought our contempoary Magdalene community into greater shalom.
Perhaps developing other small communities in different places would help seed this new story. 
lost tomb of jesus
mariamne
jesus son of joseph
jesus family tomb
This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 5th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Betty,
I, too, watched the “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” documentary, and I will admit up front that I am inclined to be receptive to the evidence as presented. I also watched the critical debate led by Ted Koppel that followed the documentary. I must apologize that I didn’t think to write down the names of the “experts” who were on the panel opposite Simcha Jacobovici and James Tabor.
I found the evidence as presented compelling, at least to the point that much more scientific and academic research should be done. It was by no means conclusive, but I didn’t expect it to be. Personally, I enjoyed the documentary, even though it presented the scholarship in an entertaining manner. I recognized the leaps to conclusions, but I do believe that the filmmakers were sincere in their beliefs. The debate following the documentary was even more interesting to me. I thought the historians in the first half of the program were incredibly close-minded. I agreed with Simcha when he called one of them down for stating that further research would disprove the theories presented because they were bogus to begin with. My problem with historians, and don’t get me wrong, I love studying history, is that if there is no historic evidence, then something cannot be true and has no validity. I come from a totally different background, which is in literature and mythology. I was taught that myths and legends contain at their core, if not fact, then universal truth. Something doesn’t have to be a verifiable, historical fact for there to be truth within.
The second half of the debate was even more problematic. The Catholic priest stated that if scientific evidence proved the existence of Jesus, a marriage, and a child, it wouldn’t matter to him one way or another. He believes what he believes because he was taught what the Catholic church maintains to be true. Tradition, as I understood him to say, is infallible. Another of the priest’s comments that I found interesting was the fact that ideas such as those presented by this documentary crop up over and over and then die back down again (his implication was “crackpot” ideas). He failed to grasp the irony in that statement. If these ideas keep cropping up, perhaps that means there’s something to them. Koppel did say something to the effect, at one point, that people have been persecuted and killed in the past for differing beliefs and that’s why they “go away” for a time, only to re-emerge. The priest had no comment about that. The theologian from the Dallas Theological Seminar was, if possible, worse. He was so bogged down in dogma that he cannot see resurrection in any other way than the raising from the dead of the earthly physical body. This presumes that we as humans know everything there is to know about the universe and how it operates as well as what happens to us “on the other side.” I find this arrogant. The woman’s comments were equally as disturbing to me. Although she wasn’t as bogged down in the resurrection issue as the men, her comments implied that people are too stupid to figure out for themselves that a dramatic recreation of what Jesus’ family might have looked like was just that – a dramatic recreation. I got the feeling from her that the uneducated masses must be protected from such things. Heaven forbid we think for ourselves. Does this sound familiar? If I remember my history, the masses were kept uneducated so that they could be led by the infallible church father.
Finally, I tried to discuss the documentary with a co-worker who had at first expressed interest when the news broke last week. She hadn’t watched the documentary, but had decided that because the names were so common and because James Cameron was involved, she was too skeptical. Unfortunately, this is the problem with most people who didn’t watch to decide for themselves. Yes, the names are common, but it was finding all those names clustered in one place, along with a rare occurrence of Mary Magdalene as Mariamne that is compelling. Her comment about Cameron was that he hasn’t had a hit movie in a while so he did this for the money. Personally, I’m not that cynical. I’ll take him at his word that he did this because he became fascinated by the topic.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, as I see it, the value in this documentary, even if the information is presented in a way that is entertaining, is that more and more people are becoming aware of new scholarship, new ideas, and new ways of thinking.
Bridgitt
March 8th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I guess I was hoping for some great new insight or evidence of Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s relationship. Not necessarily the Husband & Wife suggestion (or conclusion in the documentary), but just that there was more to the relationship than commonly accepted. I am no biblical or historical scholar, just an average reader, and a seeker for a spiritual “truth”. I had high expectations of the film. So I was not impressed and perhaps just a little disappointed.
I didn’t find the evidence that compelling because as Bridgitt said the filmmakers “leaps to conclusions” was too much for me. Of course I hope and expect that this film will propel the study of these possibilities. The follow up show with Ted Koppel was less than informative to me and pretty much as I had anticipated. Criticizing the dramatization as leading the viewer to a conclusion is what most if not all films do.
I am glad I watched and look forward to hearing and reading more observations.