Laying the Jesus Family Tomb to Rest...

If you haven't heard about the Jesus Family Tomb...that is OK....it will soon be forgotten; relegated to the ash heap of over-hyped conspiracy theories. But it reminds us of something important. The bodily Resurrection of Jesus is the central event of Christianity....everything else, large or small, is related to it. So if it did not happen, then Christianity is false and we are a pitiful lot for believing in it (cf. 1 Cor 15:17). However the Christian can sleep secure knowing there is good historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. But I came across a review of this "Family Tomb" business which reads like an obituary for this titanic flop (pun intended--James Cameron directed this documentary). It is written by Thomas F. Madden who is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University....here is an excerpt, but the whole article is worth a quick read...

"A year ago the Discovery Channel delivered a cheery Easter message to America’s Christians: Jesus is dead – and we found his tomb. After much fanfare and hype, The Lost Tomb of Jesus aired on March 4, 2007 to an audience of 4.1 million viewers. The documentary, which was directed by the journalist Simcha Jacobovici (better known as the host of The Naked Archaeologist) and produced by James Cameron (better known as the director of Titanic and True Lies), revealed that the Biblical account of Jesus’ burial in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and subsequent Resurrection was just wishful thinking. The truth, they claimed, was that the deceased Jesus was brought to his family tomb in Jerusalem, where he remained good and dead......Over the past year, the scholarly consensus on the tomb has become virtually unanimous. As Dr. Jodi Magness of the Archaeological Institute of America wrote, the documentary’s claim is “inconsistent with all of the available information - historical and archaeological — about how Jews in the time of Jesus buried their dead, and specifically the evidence we have about poor, non-Judean families like that of Jesus. It is a sensationalistic claim without any scientific basis or support."

Rest in peace...He is Risen!!