Cameron: Jesus tomb film is a ‘detective story’

Is Jesus’ tomb under an apartment complex in Jerusalem? A new book and documentary claim limestone ossuaries, or bone boxes, found in a first-century burial place in the Talpiot neighborhood of this ancient city may not only belong to Jesus’ family, but also provide evidence Jesus and Mary Magdalene were buried together and had a son. TODAY talked to Simcha Jacobovici, an Emmy Award-winning journalist who wrote and directed “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” and James Cameron, who was the documentary’s executive producer. Cameron, director of such Hollywood blockbusters as “Titanic,” “Aliens,” and “The Terminator,” said he knew making a film on Jesus’ family tomb would be controversial, but it was a story that had to be told. “We now know more about [Jesus] than we’ve known for literally thousands of years. I think that’s pretty amazing,” he said. “I think that’s the power of film.” Here’s an edited version of the interview:

TODAY: The 10 ossuaries were excavated from a tomb found at a construction site in 1980. How did you become involved in trying to identify them as belonging to the Jesus’ family more than 20 years later?

Simcha Jacobovici: I got involved in making a film called “James, Brother of Jesus” a few years ago in 2002. An ossuary surfaced through the antiquities market in Israel that said shocking words: James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. If this inscription was authentic it was the first tangible, carved-in-stone proof that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure. I was brought into that project by Herschel Shanks, who’s the editor of the Biblical Archeology Review. And I ended up making a film on that particular bone box, which become controversial because there is a trial right now as we speak. It starts again on the 27^th that the owner of that bone box. That bone box was not found in situ by archeologists. It didn’t have provenance. They didn’t know where it came from. It came through dealers. And some people charge that the words “brother of Jesus” were forged and were added on later. So I covered that.

In the course of that investigation, I came across a cluster of bone boxes that said, Jesus, son of Joseph, two Mary’s, a Matthew, and a Judas, son of Jesus. They were sitting on warehouse shelves like in “Indian Jones’ Raiders of the Lost Ark,” just sitting there being ignored. And no one argued about their provenance. They were authentic. And I thought oh my God, has anyone actually investigated this? And one thing led to another. I came to Jim Cameron with the evidence that I had at that time. And the result is what we are unveiling now.

TODAY: Why go to Mr. Cameron?

James Cameron: Go ahead. (Turns to Jacobovici.) I don’t know why you did. You have to tell them. (Laughs.)

Jacobovici: For two reasons. One is that the book, which has just come out at the same time as the film, is co-written by Dr. Charles Pellegrino and myself. Charles Pellegrino is a friend of Jim Cameron and they had written a book on the Titanic. They know each other. The second thing is that when we needed to put the film together, we know it obviously had to be a film of a certain stature. And we needed somebody to work on it with us who had that stature. And Charles Pellegrino said the man is James Cameron. He’s the man. I had only known Jim Cameron as the maker of the “Titanic” and blockbusters like that. I didn’t know him as someone interested in all these documentaries. Really in a sense he was a documentary filmmaker as well. So when we all got together and he started cross-examining me on the facts as any executive producer or an editor at a newspaper, we all realized that we had a good team, and we moved forward: Charlie, Jim and I. It’s been two- or three-year journey.

Cameron: It’s almost exactly two years. It was March of ‘05 that Charlie introduced me to you and that I heard about this project for the first time. I knew very little of first-century Christianity at the time, but I’ve studied it pretty intensely since then. I don’t pretend to be an archeologist and I don’t pretend to be an historian, but when I get interested in a subject, I’ll read voraciously on it. So I wanted to qualify as a proper member of the team. We also knew that the investigation would take us on a journey — and it did. We couldn’t have predicted exactly where it would have come out; we couldn’t have predicted for example, in that we’d be successful in chemically fingerprinting the James ossuary to the Talpiot tomb, which I think is hugely significant in the analysis in the outcome of this. So Simcha and I became friends.

I had already friends with Charlie Pellegrino. Charlie and I had become friends during the Titanic investigations. We had dived together at that wreck site and on different expeditions. He knew that I loved a detective story, that I loved forensic archeological investigations. I had consulted with him on some things that he had been doing both at Ground Zero here, which he treated as an archeological site, and at the Vesuvius sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii and [in Santorini.] The Minoan civilization existed on Crete and what was on the island called Thera at the time. I pursue film projects where I think I’m going to learn something, where I believe my curiosity is going to be satisfied in some way. And this was that type of project.

TODAY: Where you concerned at all, or aware of, the controversy that would arise from this discovery? The idea, as you said on TODAY, that it challenges the resurrection.

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