AL CAPONE'S SECRET VAULT . . . or . . . THE TOMB OF JESUS

Okay .... so I watched "The Secret Tomb of Jesus" (or "Jesus' Tomb Uncovered" or "The Jesus Tomb Code" or something like that) last night on Discovery. This falls under the category of "I need to watch this because someone is going to ask me about it." Call it a job hazard.

Or maybe call it Continuing Education . . . hmmm

Anyway, I watched this show last night. I was sort of grumpy that it was two hours long and it didn't come on until 10 p.m. local time. Then there was a one hour discussion afterwards. Come on people! At least air it at a reasonable hour.

I was struck by two thoughts as I watched it. The first being that this tomb could might possibly perchance have some possibility of being the actual tomb of Jesus' family simply based on cursory statistical thoughts that say something like this: Yes, Jesus, Mary, Matthew and other names found in the tomb were common for the era, but what are the chances that ALL of those important biblical names are in one spot buried together?

The second thought was that this was a case of the filmmaker using/bending the situation to fit his predisposed theory. In other words, it was a video proof-texting of the evidence.

I am not a scientist nor an archaeologist nor even a first class theologian, so if you want further information on the show, you'll need to look somewhere else. In particular, go visit Ben Witherington's blog . . . um . . . Ben Witherington. He has a very good deconstruction of the show over there, ala Slacktivist deconstructing Left Behind, and I think you will find it very informative.

Assessment: It was sort of interesting, but I would rather have not stayed up past my bedtime to watch it.