New Delhi: Titanic director James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici of Exodus fame have produced a documentary, The Lost Tomb of Christ, which they claim is about to rock the very foundation of Christianity.
Cameron claims the coffins of Jesus Christ and his family have been found at a burial cave in a suburb of Jerusalem, adding that the discovery means Jesus did not rise from the grave - a popular Christian belief, also called the Resurrection.
The two ossuaries said to have been found in a 2,000-year-old tomb in Talpiot Jerusalem in 1980 that may have held the bones of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
The cave in which the coffins were placed was discovered three decades ago by internationally renowned Israeli archaeologist Professor Amos Kloner.
The filmmakers unveiled the artifacts in New York on Monday, to promote a documentary film, which claims scientists, may have found the lost tomb of Jesus Christ and that Jesus and Mary Magdalene may have had a son named Judah.
They claim to have put together DNA and archaeological evidence, as well as evidence found in biblical studies proving the coffins belong to Jesus and his family.
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The film by Cameron and Jacobovici depict the years of discovery and research. It also claims Jesus sired a child with Mary Magdalene - a fact that was also revealed in Dan Brown's bestselling fiction novel, The Da Vinci Code thereby leading to the ruffling of quite a few Christian feathers.
"I have never doubted that there was a historical Jesus, that walked the earth two thousand years ago, but the simple fact is that there has never been a shred of physical and archaeological evidence to support that fact until right now,” says Cameron.
The documentary claims that the tomb discovered in 1980 bears names including Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Even though the caskets and the inscriptions were unveiled at a conference, several Biblical experts and anthropologists are still not convinced of their authenticity because names including Mariam, Joseph and Jesus were very common during that period.
“These were very, very common names, so we see these names which occur again and again in the archaeological record. What they have done here, is they have simply tried, in a very, very I think dishonest way, to try to go and con the public into believing that this is the tomb of Jesus or
Jesus' family. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus,” says Biblical anthropologist, Prof Joe Zias.
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Most Christians believe Jesus' body spent three days at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City.
The burial site identified in Cameron's documentary is in a southern Jerusalem neighborhood nowhere near the church.In 1996, when the British
Broadcasting Corp. aired a short documentary on the same subject, archaeologists challenged the claims.
Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television.
''They just want to get money for it,'' Kloner said.
The film's claims have raised the ire of Christian leaders in the Holy Land.
The ossuaries do not contain any bones. The bones were reburied after their discovery, as is standard practice with archaeological finds in Israel.
After its debut in New York, the documentary will be shown on the international Discovery Channel, Canada's Vision, Channel 4 in Britain and Channel 8 in Israel.
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