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.

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