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What do you all think of this?
Faith Tested
A claim that the tomb of Jesus Christ has been found has naturally upset many Christians, but others say their faith remains unshaken.
Feb. 28, 2007 - After James Cameron and fellow filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici announced this week that new evidence suggests the tomb of Jesus Christ was found and that they’ve now made a movie and written a book about it--the reaction from the Christian community was sure and swift. Needless to say, a bone box containing the remains of Jesus contradicts a tenet of the Christian faith, which is that there are no remains. After three days in a rocky tomb following his Crucifixion, say the Gospels, Jesus was resurrected and ascended into Heaven. All that remained was the faith of his followers that he was the son of God.

In the minds of many, then, Cameron’s movie is an effort to refute Resurrection and, by extension, Christianity. On Tuesday, the Rev. Rob Schenk, president of the National Clergy Council, labeled Cameron and his project part of the “Anti-Christian Hollywood establishment.” He is urging his 90,000 constituents to boycott not only the film and the book, but also to stop watching the Discovery Channel, which will air the film this Sunday evening. The conservative watchdog group Media Research Center is calling on Discovery to cancel the film outright, and in a statement issued Monday, the Catholic League called the film a “Titanic fraud,” as its president Bill Donohue said, “It’s time the Discovery Channel discovered ethics and stopped with the sensationalism.”

Others merely see the film as a self-serving, poorly researched attempt to capitalize on what is becoming well-worn territory. “This is simply another effort to prostitute religion and archaeology in order to make money,” says Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and also a Roman Catholic priest. “It’s amazing,” Reese says, “that every year, there comes another one of these, whether it’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or the Judas Gospel. I just want to step aside and let the archaeologists devour these people.”