It's getting close to Easter and that means several things. It means that believers, even nominal believers, are enjoying Lent, Churches are putting together their Easter programs, and sincere seekers are carefully considering the credibility of the Gospel message. But it also means one other thing that seems to have become something of a tradition this time every year -- the skeptics champion another controversy that challenges the veracity of the Resurrection of Jesus, the central claim of Christianity.

In years past, skeptics have offered works such as "The Jesus Papers", or "The Gospel of Judas." Indeed, seeming to know no bounds, the skeptical community has even offered up complete fiction, such as "The Da Vinci Cod" to challenge the capstone of the Gospel.

So, this year's challenge comes in the form of a purported "documentary" about the so-called "Lost Tomb of Jesus". The supposed documentary aired on the Discovery Channel in early March, 2007. The documentary was accompanied by a simultaneously released book giving more details about the findings. James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director and producer of The Titanic and creator of other fictitious tales such as the Terminator series, produced this documentary. In case you haven't heard, the premise of the documentary and the book is that archaeologists claim to have found a tomb in Talpiot, Jerusalem that contains a number of ossuaries (bone boxes) with seemingly significant names inscribed on them. Those names include "Jesus, son of Joseph", "Mary", "Mariamne", "Judah, son of Jesus", "Mattia", and "Jose" [pronounced Yo-sa]. The documentarians surmised that this was the lost tomb of the family of Jesus, that the Mariamne is none other than Mary Magdelene, and "Judah" is the sone of Jesus and Mary Magdelene! As you watch the documentary, we are dazzled with claims that the statistical probability of this tomb belonging to anyone other than Jesus of the Bible is 600 to 1 and that DNA evidence shows that Jesus and Mary Madgelene were married.

But, as the documentary unfolds, it becomes quite clear that this show is more about fiction than fact. There are so many "dramatizations" of the so-called findings throughout the special that Ted Koppel, when conducting a post-show panel discussion of experts, questions the integrity of the shows producers in portraying the findings as fact. Indeed, one of the experts who is not a proponent of Christianity called the special "archeo-porn" - it has all kinds of titilation, but no substance.

Without spending too much space with a point by point response, I offer just a few observations of the evidence as presented by the speicial that have been made by serious scholars, including Ben Witherington III, a noted historian:

There are major problems with the conclusion that this is Jesus' family's tomb given the names on the ossuaries. One of the key peices of evidence establishing the claims of the special is the so-called statistical analysis supposedly yielding 600 to 1 that this is Jesus' family tomb. The assumptions of the statistician making the calculation is that the combination of names on the ossuaries match up with the names of Jesus' family and close companions found in the Gospels. The analysis suggests that it is extremely unlikely that we would randomly find a tomb containing the same names as those in the NT record. There are, of course, many attendant problems. The most glaring problem is the fact that the names found on the ossuaries in the tomb were among the most common in 1st century Palestine. Amos Kloner, one of the archaeologists who first discovered the tomb in 1980, dismissed it as belonging to Jesus' family because to the common-ness of the names. In addition, one of the names is in Hebrew, several others are written in Aramaic, and the puported "Mary Magdalene", or Mariamne, is inscribed in Greek. This strongly suggests that the tomb is multi-generational tomb that should be dated to after A.D. 70 after the Romans had destroyed the temple. The Jesus, Jesus' family, his disciples, and Mary Magdelene did not speak Greek, they spoke Aramaic. There is no evidence that Mary Magdelene would be called by a Greek name before 70 AD. Indeed, it seems strange and improbable that Mary Magdelene would have a Greek inscription on her ossuary, but her husband's would have an Aramaic inscription. This also militates against this being Jesus' family tomb. Third, the film makers seem to ignore the fact that the name on one of the ossuaries is "Mattia" or "Matthew". This would militate against the tomb belonging to Jesus' family because none of Jesus' immediate family members was named Matthew. Further, nearly all archaeologists will report that historical documentary evidence always outweighs contrary artifact evidence. Because the best evidence for Jesus, the 1st century Gospels and other early documents, do not reference any son of Jesus named Judah, the names on the ossuaries don't really match up with NT record after all.

There are additional problems with concluding that Mariamne is Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdelene is never called Mariamene in either the first or second century. But to back up their claims, the film makers rely on the late Gnostic documents,the "Acts of Philip" or the "Gospel of Mary." These documents are dated after the end of the second century A.D.

Further, there are actually two names on the "Mariamne" ossuary. That name is Mara, which is short for Martha another female name. The film makers suggest that it is the Aramaic word for "master", which we are led to believe means that Mary Magdelene was the actual leader of the early Church (sound familiar? Does Da Vinci ring any bells?). The fact is, the inscriptions on the ossuaries are not honorific inscriptions. Rather, as Ben Witherington says, they are "toe tag inscriptions scrawled hastily on the boxes as they are interred in order to distinguish the ossuaries. All that was required then was names, just names. No honorific additions like we find on monumental inscriptions would be used." Witherington conclues that either "we have two women in this ossuary, perhaps sisters, or we have one woman neither of which names match up with the first century naming of Mary Magdalene."

The film makers tried to impress viewers with seemingly sound scientific test of the DNA in the bone fragments in the Jesus ossuary and the Mariamne ossuary. The film makers say that the DNA analysis shows that "Jesus" and "Mariamne" were not related, which strongly suggests that they were married. In fact, the film makers don't just suggest this, they actually state that the DNA evidence demonstrates that they were married. Interestingly, the same lab that performed the DNA analysis issued a press release stating that the film makers took their conclusions out of context. The lab says that it never would say that the DNA test proved that the two people examined were married. At best, the lab stated, the tests could only show that the two were not maternally related. They could have been paternally related. Another flaw is found by the fact that the film makers did not have any of the bone fragments in the other ossuaries compared with the "Jesus" DNA. In the post-show panel discussion, Ted Koppel asked the film makers why that is the case. The film makers said that they didn't have enough time to run down all of the possible tests. Ted Koppel aptly pointed out that they had over three years to complete their studies and could have done all the tests if they chose to.

In the final analysis, it seems fairly clear that Hollywood has more and more of an influence on the public view of historical conclusions that most scholars, including non-Christian scholars, are comfortable with. One of the telling facets of the documentary and the book is that the purportedly scholarly findings were not released to the scholarly community so that the findings could be peer-reviewed prior to publication. Peer-review is a hallmark of scholarly publishing because it helps in keeping material that could be categorized as "archeo-porn" from being passed off as being based on scholarly inquiry.

It's the Easter season and that season brings up many things. For me, one of those things is the fact that the evidence for Christianity can withstand even the most fantastic challenges.

Abdu