Well, our goal here at verge wasn’t to make today “Jesus’ Tomb” day, but the historian in me just can’t pass up the opportunity to chime in on this topic. James posted earlier about the fact that disciples would not have allowed the body to be available to the public if they were claiming that he arose from the dead. I’m going to try to stay away from repeating him, and try to talk a little bit about the historical issues/problems with the documentary.

My first problem, which was covered by the panel that discussed the documentary afterwards, is that the film sometimes substitutes entertainment for facts. Things such as “dramatic recreations” are used in places where facts are limited to lend credence to the film’s theories. Sadly this type of entertainment-history is becoming more the trend as history becomes more “consumer” friendly. I’ll be the first to admit that History can oftentimes be boring, but changing the way we approach the field to attract new viewers is not simply making history “intereseting”, it is destroying its factual foundations.

The second thing that really bothered me about the documentary was the twisting of facts and phrasings to make the evidence appear to say something it did not. For instance, the filmmakers took a sample of the outer casings (patinas) of the bone boxes (ossuaries) labeled “Mary” and the infamous “James Ossuary” to forensic scientists to be tested, they stated that the two were a “match”. A match for what? The test was done to ascertain whether or not these boxes came from the same tomb. Does this mean that they did? The viewer is left with the impression that this is exactly what it means, when, in fact, it simply means they were probably from the same time period. The test performed was simply to help determine the relative age of the boxes, not their geographic locale.

To keep this post as short as I can, those are just two of the problems that I had with the documentary. One of the archaeologists at the discussion, Dr. Jonathan Reed, used a phrase that I had never heard before, but liked very much. He called the documentary “Archeoporn”. You really enjoy it while you are watching it, but deep down you know it’s wrong. As I said before, “Archeoporn” is quickly becoming everyone’s favorite way to learn about history. Sickos.