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.

Amos Kloner.
Photo: Courtesy

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."