More on "Jesus tomb"

Posting this from O'Hare in Chicago awaiting flight to NY: Catching up on the news about James Cameron's Discovery Channel show about how a tomb discovered almost 30 years ago contained remains of Jesus and family members. The documentary, to air on the Discovery Channel Sunday, March 4, asserts that a crypt unearthed during excavations for an apartment complex project, holds the bones of Jesus, and also contained the remains of Mary Magdalene and their son, Judah. Shimon Gibson, a senior fellow at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem told the NYT that he remains skeptical of Cameron's claims. The press conference on Monday that announced the findings coincides both with the 90-minute show's debut and a new book on research conducted over the past 27 years since the tomb's discovery. According to a report on NPR this morning, there was a lapse in research time of about 16 years when nothing was done with the 10 ossuaries -- bone boxes -- that contained the remains of what Cameron says is Jesus' family. Another skeptic was Lawrence E. Stager, the Dorot professor of archaeology of Israel at Harvard, who told the NYT that Cameron's "findings" take advantage of the groundswell that followed Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. Stager worries, like numerous Catholic leaders did at the debut of the movie last year, that some people with a less sophisticated understanding of the biblical world will be confused about what is true or not, what is conjecture or not. There was another story in today's Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com) noting that officials are considering opening this tomb to the public. More on this story when we arrive in Tel Aviv tomorrow.