London, Feb 27: ‘Titanic’ director James Cameron is bound to stir up a hornet’s nest with claims that he has discovered the coffins of Jesus, as well as his ‘wife’ Mary Magdalene, and their son.
The Hollywood director has produced a documentary called ‘The Lost Tomb of Jesus’ telling the story of ten stone coffins found in a 2,000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem by Israeli builders.
According to the Daily Mail, Cameron has called the discovery 'one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time'.
Cameron’s theory centres on a tomb found in the Talpiot suburb in 1980, in which archaeologists found ten coffins, or caskets for bones, and three skulls.
Six coffins had names etched into them, which were translated as Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne (thought to be Mary Magdalene's real name), Joseph and Matthew.
And though at the time the names on the coffins stirred little interest, it was only 15years later that the connection was made to Jesus when a film crew stumbled across the collection in a storeroom.
When traces of DNA left behind in the caskets were tested, it was found that the people buried in the coffins labelled Jesus and Mariamme were not blood relations – something that has led to Cameron and his team concluding that the two were married.
“Either this cluster-of names represents the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. Or some other family, with this very same constellation of names, existed at precisely the same time in history in Jerusalem,” the film's Israeli director, Simcha Jacobovici said.
However, Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who oversaw the work at the tomb, has rubbished Cameron’s claims that the tombs belong to Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
“It makes a great story for a TV film, but it's impossible. Jesus and his relatives were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the first century,” he said.
The documentary, made for the Discovery Channel, will be shown in the U.S. this week and later in Britain by Channel 4.
Bureau Report with ANI inputs
First Published: Tuesday, February 27, 2007, 00:00