All the major news organizations today are reporting the find of “Jesus’s tomb”. There is only one problem. This isn’t news. The same claim was made ten years ago and was rightly laughed at and put away as any fable should be.

Nevertheless:

“Hollywood director James Cameron displayed on Monday artifacts that he said might have come from the tomb of Jesus, which once contained his remains, those of Mary Magdalene, and possibly their son, Judah.

But others said it was just a publicity stunt backed by the man who made the movie “Titanic” and “The Terminator” to promote a documentary and a book, and likely untrue.

Cameron and a team of scholars showed two stone ossuaries, or bone boxes, that he said might have once contained the bones of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The findings are the subject of a documentary he produced called “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” and a book “The Jesus Family Tomb.”

The two small caskets were part of 10 found in 1980 during construction in South Jerusalem. Several had inscriptions translated as Jesus, Mary Magdalene and “Judah, son of Jesus,” Cameron told a news conference at the New York Public Library surrounded by scholars and archeologists.

The Anchoress has a very good post up on this. But let me add my two-cents on the matter. As I said this story was completely debunked over ten years ago, yet there are always going to be those who were not their trying to make a buck on lies.

Yet let’s hear from those who were actually on the discovery.

“University Prof. Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. “It makes a great story for a TV film,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “But it’s impossible. It’s nonsense.”

Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and the fact that such apparently resonant names had been found together was of no significance. He added that “Jesus son of Joseph” inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years.

“There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb,” Kloner said. “They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE.”

Additionally, the accounts in the Gospels tell us that it wasn’t a stone coffin, but a cave that the body was laid in.

“Now there was a man named Joseph, a man of authority and a good and upright man

(He had not given his approval to their decision or their acts), of Arimathaea, a town of the Jews, who was waiting for the kingdom of God:

This man went to Pilate and made a request for the body of Jesus.

And he took it down, and folding it in a linen cloth, he put it in a place cut in the rock for a dead body; and no one had ever been put in it. (Luke 23:50-53)”

This was for those who cannot understand the simplicity of the account - a “cave” which was a common burial site in that day.

Lets also consider the testimony of Scripture which has been time tested for historical accruacy on a level that dwarfs any other work of antiquity. The one constant testimony throughout from Peter to Paul writings is that Christ was crucified, died and then rose on the third day.

Not that efforts to thwart this testimony weren’t begun in earnest. From the beginning there would be those who tried to coverup the truth of the resurrection.

“Now, while they were going, some of the watchmen came into the town and gave news to the chief priests of all the things which had taken place.

And when they had come together with those in authority, and had made their decision, they gave much money to the watchmen, saying,

Say, His disciples came by night and took him away secretly while we were sleeping.

And if this comes to the ruler’s ears, we will see that he does not make you responsible.

So they took the money, and did as they had been ordered: and this account has been current among the Jews till the present time.”

One who understands what was accomplished by Christ on the cross understands also the importance of his rising from the dead - that point which made Him who he claimed to be - God manifested in the flesh. Subsequently throughout the 2000 years since that day the enemies of the cross have set about to discredit the day and tell anyone who would listen “It didn’t happen”. Yet to this day millions come to faith in that day, and not just through self deception. In fact with more than 2 billion adherents and tens of billions of followers throughout the ages, that is simply not even up for debate. No other occurance of ancient history has been more recorded and documented that that of the fact of the resurrection of Christ. In fact there is more testimony and documentation to that fact than to Julius Ceaser having ever existed.

But they will keep trying and keep perishing as the everlasting an unchanging truth of Chirst died, was buried and rose again lives on.

Wizbang with more reacts.