Bozell, Knight Call on Discovery Channel to Drop 'Documentary' on Jesus Tomb
The Discovery Channel “documentary” purporting to have discovered the “lost tomb of Jesus” lacks scientific merit and is so laced with deceptive “facts” that it should be pulled from the broadcast schedule Sunday night, according to L. Brent Bozell, President of the
“It's time for the Discovery Channel to end this charade and pull the program,” said Bozell. “If they want to mount a full-blown attack on Christianity, they should be honest enough to say so. Instead, they coyly dredge up a long-discredited theory, cloak it in half-baked 'evidence' and pass it off as science. The public deserves better.”
Broadcast and cable news outlets extensively covered a Feb. 26 press conference featuring Titanic film director James Cameron, who produced the “documentary.” Cameron and the Discovery Channel held the press conference at the New York Public Library, complete with stone ossuaries, or coffins, they said contained “residue” of the DNA of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdelene. The film reportedly claims that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married and produced a son, Judah. Filmmakers said ossuaries containing
NBC's Today Show was out of the box early on Feb. 26 touting the “documentary” as a “huge story” that could “rock Christianity to its core.” However, by the time the evening broadcasts covered the story, the tone was much more skeptical. Nearly every news outlet produced experts who denounced the film as inaccurate if not outright fraudulent.
“Even many mainstream media outlets, which usually echo what has become an annual Easter hit parade attacking Jesus' divinity, have stepped away from this one,” said Robert Knight, director of MRC's Culture and Media Institute. “The Discovery Channel is out on a limb that they are sawing off themselves.”
Additionally, several leading biblical and archeological scholars, including Dr. Amos Kloner, the Israeli archaeologist who, 27 years ago, became the first scholar to study the Talpiot tomb featured in Cameron's film, are so outraged by the documentary's leaps of logic they released a list of ten reasons why the film's claims are “bogus.”
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There is no DNA evidence that this is the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
The statistical analysis is untrustworthy.
The name “Jesus” was a popular name in the first century, appearing in 98 other tombs and on 21 other ossuaries (or stone tombs).
There is no historical evidence that Jesus was ever married or had a child.
The earliest followers of Jesus never called him “Jesus, son of Joseph.”
It is highly unlikely that Joseph, who died earlier in Galilee, was buried in
