BLOODLINE: SERIOUS DOCUMENTARY OR
HOLLYWOOD HOAX?
Gordon Franz
May 23, 2008
A
former graduate student of mine, Brenda, did an undergraduate degree in
journalism. She recounted a
statement that was made by her professor in one of her "Journalism 101" lectures. The professor said, "The two things
that sell newspapers, books, and movies are sex and sensationalism!" Evangelical authors generally don't dabble
in the first (unless it's Dr. Tim LaHaye who wrote The Act of Marriage! J), but there are some who have mastered the art of the second. In evangelical circles, we are
inundated by the sensationalistic archaeological claims by so-called modern day
Indiana Joneses who claim to have found everything from the Ark of the Covenant
with the blood of Jesus on it in Jerusalem (or in Ethiopia, minus the blood),
the real tomb of Jesus on the Mount of Olives, Noah's Ark in Iran, the real Cave
of Machpelah, Pharaoh's chariot wheels in the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments,
the ashes of the red heifer, Mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia, the plan of the ages
in the pyramids, the manger of Jesus, and the list goes on and on. Unfortunately for them, under close
scholarly scrutiny, these claims evaporate into thin air.
The
secular world is not immune to the sensationalistic approach to archaeology either,
but sometimes with a more sinister twist: to try and discredit the Person and
Work of the Lord Jesus Christ. One
just has to read The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown (2003); The Jesus Dynasty by James Tabor (2006); and The Jesus Family Tomb by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino (2007). Now there is a new movie out that makes
the same attempt to attack the deity of the Lord Jesus and His bodily
resurrection. It is called "Bloodline" produced by 1244 Films (2008). The director and narrator of the movie
is Bruce Burgess and the producer is Rene Barnett.
I
went to the Jewish Museum on 5th Avenue in New York City on Monday,
May 5, 2008, for the press conference of this new movie. As I entered the museum, there was a
large poster on a tripod in the lobby that had a picture from a stained glass
window in the Kilmore Church in Dervaig, Isle of Mull, Scotland of Jesus and
Mary Magdalene holding hands (and Mary looking pregnant). Above the title of the movie was the provocative
question: "What if the greatest story ever told was a lie?" I thought to myself, this is going to
be a very interesting news conference, especially with the cast of characters
on the panel - and they did not disappoint.
The
premise of the movie is that they have "incontrovertible proof" that would
"totally refute" Christianity. The
movie claims that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child, or children
(the sex selling point). After the
crucifixion of Jesus, Mary hid the body of Jesus and she and her child, or
children, moved to France. The
Knights Templar rediscovered the body of Jesus and brought his mummified body
to Rennes-Le-Chateau, in southwest France. The movie suggests that the mummified body of Mary Magdalene
was recently discovered in the area along with other 1st century AD
artifacts from the Jerusalem area associated with the wedding of Jesus and Mary
Magdalene (the sensationalism selling point). Another version of the story is that Jesus skipped out of
Jerusalem before the crucifixion and they had "incontrovertible proof" that he was
living in France in AD 45 with Mary Magdalene and children [0:38:40]. The movie isn't clear on which scenario
actually happened.
A
Knight's Templar "tomb" was found in 1999 by an English adventurer and treasure
hunter, named "Ben Hammott". This
name, however, is an alias because he is afraid that some people are out to get
him. Interestingly, the Hebrew
meaning of his name is "son of the death." He is also known on the Internet as Tombman. He was intrigued by the
Rennes-le-Chateau mysteries after reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Hammott
claims that the tomb of Mary, Jesus and others, along with lots of other
treasures, were found by a local priest named Berenger Sauniere at the end of
the 19th century. The priest
reburied them in this Templar's tomb and then blackmailed the Vatican for a "princely
sum."
The priest allegedly left a note with his last
confession in a bottle that was found by "Ben Hammott". The priest's confession
purportedly is: "The resurrection of Jesus was a trick, it was Mary Magdalene
who took his body from the tomb.
The Disciples were fooled.
Later, the body of Jesus was discovered by the Templars and then hidden
three times. The Knights protected a great secret which I have found. Not in Jerusalem. The tomb is here. Parts of the body are safe. I have abandoned and renounced my false
Church [He is referring to the Roman Catholic Church - GF]. I have done what I have done to
preserve the secret. Maybe in the
future the time will come for the secret to be revealed." These are pretty serious claims that
are protected by a shadowy organization called the Priory of Sion.
Where's
the Beef?
Some
will recall the Wendy's hamburger commercial that compared their large
hamburgers with their competitor's very small hamburgers and the now famous question
that was asked: "Where's the beef?"
With this movie, a similar question is asked, "Where's the
evidence?" But unlike the Wendy's
commercial where the competitor had at least a small beef patty, this movie has
no credible evidence for its claims!
This
movie purports to be a serious documentary about the proof for the bloodline of
Jesus. One should be suspicious
these days when "documentaries" come along that make amazing and sensational claims.
Did
Mary Magdalene Make it to France?
The
movie claims that there was a "thriving Jewish community" in southwest France
in the 1st century AD [0:47:34]. That would be an ideal place for Mary and her children to
flee from Jerusalem after the crucifixion of Jesus. Unfortunately there is no documentation for this statement,
nor are any "expert witnesses" interviewed to substantiate this claim. In fact, the opposite is true, there
was no thriving Jewish community living in southwest France in the 1st
century AD.
Emil
Schurer, in his monumental work, The History of the Jewish People in the Age
of Jesus Christ, states: "As for
Southern Gaul it is possible that Jews resided there in the earlier Imperial
period, since Christian communities were established in Lyon and Vienne already
in the second century, and the Christian missions, at least in the New
Testament times, tended to follow in the traces of the Jews. Apart from very scattered individual
items of archaeological evidence, there is however no definite attestation of a
Jewish settlement in Gaul until the fifth century" (1986:III.1:85). Notice Schurer's evidence for a possible
Jewish community in the 1st century is based on speculation. The hard evidence does not point to a
thriving community in the area at the time of Jesus, but rather the 5th
century AD.
Other
scholars addressing the archaeological evidence for Jews living in France point
out that of the 245 Jewish Greek inscriptions that are scattered around the
Mediterranean world, none have been discovered in France (Safrai and Stern
1976:II:1043). There was, however,
one Herodian lamp found in France (1976:II:673), but that could easily have
been brought back to southern Gaul by a French soldier in the Roman Legion.
At
the news conference in New York, one of the reporters asked Bruce Burgess what
evidence there was that Mary went to France. He replied that there was no strong, hard evidence, just 800
years of "evidence."
The
earliest legends we have of Mary Magdalene living in France are from the 12th
century AD, about the time the Knights Templar returned to France with their
relics. As Bishop John Spong, the
retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, NJ, so keenly observed at the news
conference, relics are a great way to increase tourism in small villages! When people come to venerate an object
in a church, they would spend money in the village to boost the local
economy. John Calvin, the great
reformer, wrote a book on these relics, including the tail of the donkey Jesus
rode into Jerusalem on (1854: 243).
He noted that Mary Magdalene had "two bodies, one at Auxerre, and
another of great celebrity, with its head detached, at St. Maximin, in
Provence" (1854: 265). Apparently
"Mary Magdalene" was schizophrenic and Calvin was unaware of the Rennes-le-Chateau
"body"!
The
Parchments and Scavenger Hunt
"Ben
Hammott" discovered the cave that contained the tomb with the "corpse" of Mary
Magdalene, as well as a wooden chest with the relics from Jerusalem of the 1st
century AD. He did this based on
clues and measurements he was able to discern in the pictures and statues in
the St. Mary Magdalene Church in Rannes-le-Chateau, as well as clues found in
bottles that were hidden under rocks or in caves.
On
his website he describes a few of the clues but not all of them. He said he will reveal them in his soon
to be released book, Lost Tomb of the Knights Templar. Rennes-le-Chateau
Secrets and Discoveries. Is this an infomercial for the book?
As
I watched the movie it looked like an amateurish archaeological scavenger
hunt. It taxed my imagination that
somebody could move a rock or go into a cave and voila, there was a bottle with
a note inside. What really alarmed
me was how fresh looking, flexible and clean some of those "parchments"
appeared in the movie.
Anybody who has done any research in libraries knows
how brittle and discolored pages could be in books from the 19th
century. When these books are copied
there is always a concern that the pages will crack. In the movie, the "parchments" unroll too easily for paper
that had been rolled up for 100 years.
The paper did not look faded and should have cracked when opened so
quickly, if in fact, they are 100 years old.
To
add credibility to this story, the producers of the film should have a paper
expert independently test the paper and ink in order to determine the age of
each "parchment." Experts in this
field could examine the paper and tell the date of the paper. Chemical analysis can determine the
content of the ink which could give us a date for the ink as well. Readers may recall that similar tests
were done on the so-called "Hitler's Diary" that was eventually determined to
be a hoax.
There
are some Rennes researchers who question the French and Latin of these
parchments and suggest they were written by an Englishmen. One researcher thinks the whole movie
is bogus.
The Body of Mary Magdalene
The movie, following the lead of Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe,
an Anglican priest from Wales and an avid Rennes researcher, suggests that Mary
Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are the same person [1:41:14] See also Fanthorpe and Fanthrope 1999:
231-238. The evidence for Mary
Magdalene and Mary of Bethany being the same person is non-existent (Bock 2004:13-59;
Witherington 2006:15-51).
"Ben Hammott" discovered a small entrance inside a
cave that led to another cave complex in 1999. On his first visit, his video camera fell down the hole, but
he was able to retrieve it. At the
hotel he watched the video and saw what the camera had captured. It revealed what appeared to be a
shrouded corpse with the red cross of the Knights Templar. A year later, they returned with better
equipment and lights for the video camera. This time they clearly saw the shrouded object as well as other
treasures in chests and boxes.
In December 2006, "Ben Hammott" went back to the cave
with Bruce Burgess who brought along a "remote camera rig." In the movie, Hammott has some kind of
device (a knife? on a pole) that cuts the shroud in order to reveal the face of
the corpse [1:32:58]. He then cuts
the area where the hands are and exposes them. I do not know what the antiquities laws are in France, but
the cutting of the shroud could be a deliberate desecration of an
archaeological artifact. I am
puzzled as to why they did not just lift the whole shroud off the body and
expose the entire corpse without cutting the shroud. I suspect the shroud was cut to expose only two parts of the
"body", the head and the hands.
The head was exposed in order to show that the corpse was a woman. The hands had a unique clasp that they
associated with the clasped hands of Mary Magdalene on a picture on the altar
of the church dedicated to her in Rennes-le-Chateau.
A hair sample was obtained and submitted to the
Paleo-DNA Labs at Lakehead University in Canada for analysis. The mitochondrial DNA suggested "the
Middle Eastern maternal origins of the individual based on haplotyping
information."
It was also noted that this individual was placed on
a slab of marble as if she was being venerated [1:36:26]. The conclusion drawn by "Ben Hammott"
is that this is the mummified body of Mary Magdalene [1:34:43; 1:39:23].
The body, however, could not be Mary Magdalene, or
any other Jewish person, for that matter.
During the Second Temple period (the time of Jesus), Jewish people never
mummified their dead. At the
burial of Jesus normal Jewish burial customs were followed (John 19:38-40).
When a Jewish person died, they were taken to the
family tomb and buried before sundown.
The body was washed and perfume and spices put on it to counteract the
decaying stench of the corpse once it started to decompose. The family would have a one week period
of intensive mourning, called shiva. Then there was a less intense period
for thirty days, called sholshim. At the end of the year, the family met
at the tomb and gathered the bones of the dead individual, washed and anointed
them, and placed them in a bone box called an ossuary. This funerary practice is called ossilegium,
or secondary burial (Fanny 2000; Rahmani 1961; 1981; 1982a; 1982b; Zlotnick
1966).
The Jewish people during the Second Temple period practiced
secondary burial and did not mummify their dead. The only known Israelites to be mummified were Jacob and
Joseph (Gen. 50:2, 3, 26), and they were the exception to the rule.
Who the mummified "person" is in the movie, I do not know, but it is not
Mary Magdalene, nor are any of the other mummified bodies that are purported to
be in the tomb those of Jewish people either, and for sure, not Jesus.
If the producers of the movie wanted a better
Biblical connection with the burial of "Mary of Bethany, alias Mary Magdalene"
(which I do not believe is the case), they should have looked to Jerusalem. In the early 1950's the Franciscan
archaeologists excavated a necropolis at Dominus Flavit on the Mount of
Olives. In Loculi 70 an ossuary
was found, designated no. 27, with inscriptions in Hebrew with the names
"Martha and Mary / Miriam" three times! (Bagatti and Milik 1981:77-79; Fig.
3-5; Photo 77, 78). It is quite possible
that this ossuary contained the bones of two sisters. We know from the New Testament that there were two sisters with
these names from Bethany, on the back side of the Mount of Olives, that lived
together (Luke 10:38, 39), one of them was named Mary of Bethany (John 12:1-3). If we follow the movies' scenario, one
could make a better case that this ossuary contained the bones of "Mary of
Bethany, alias Mary Magdalene", and not the so-called mummified remains in
France. At least this burial
followed the Jewish burial practice of ossilegium, or secondary burial.
The
Wooden Chest with First Century Artifacts
There
was a parchment in the 4th bottle found by "Ben Hammott" that indicated
that a wooden chest could be found with "the parchments of Abbe Bigou, the cup
of Jesus and Mary, and the anointing jar" [1:09:06]. The location of this chest was found by using "clues" from
the church and parchments from the bottles. These all pointed to a place, known by the locals, as the "Burial
Cave of the Magdalene." Once they
located the cave, they used a very unorthodox method to locate the exact spot
of the wooden chest. The dowsing
rod they used pointed them to the back of this cave [1:10:51]. When they dug down a few centimeters, voila,
there was the wooded chest! (If
only real archaeologist could be so lucky!).
Bruce Burgess commented that the chest was "extremely
damp and rotten." When I looked at
it during the news conference in New York, it did not look rotten, although I
did not handle it. The chest
should be examined by experts and the kind of wood determined as well as a
sample taken for carbon dating and it should be tested. The chest could easily have been
purchased from an antique dealer recently somewhere in France. In the movie, when Hammott was using
the petech (a tool used by archaeologists for digging dirt) or geologist hammer,
he hit the wood of the chest. It
gave a sound of a solid piece of wood with a hollow inside [1:11:23;
1:11:46-48], and did not give the sound of wood that was "damp and rotten." If the wood was "damp and rotten" it
would have crumbled or at least left a hole in the top of the chest made by the
petech.
The parchment and the movie claim that these 1st
century artifacts were connected with the wedding of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Professor Gabriel Barkay of Bar Ilan
University in Israel attested to the authenticity of these objects and stated
that they dated to the time of Jesus (some of the coins, however, were earlier
and later than this time). I
personally looked at them during the New York news conference and I am sure
they are authentic and were correctly identified and dated by Dr. Barkay. In the wooden chest was a ceramic cup,
an ungenterium, a glass phial with a parchment rolled up inside, and about
thirty coins. Can these items be
associated with the wedding of Jesus?
Before this question can be answered, the issue of
Jesus' marriage should be addressed.
This is an idea that has been popularized by The Da Vinci Code (2003), but it has been circulating in some
theological circles (Spong 1992:187-199; Fanthorpe and Fanthorpe 1999:231-238;
Starbird 1993). When the movie, The
Da Vinci Code, came out, evangelical
scholars responded to the ideas expressed in both the book and movie. The works of Dr. Darrell Bock (2004:
13-59) and Dr. Ben Witherington III (2004: 28-37) should be consulted. There is no Biblical evidence to support
the claim that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene or anybody else, for that
matter. Now let us turn our
attention to the artifacts found in the wooden chest.
The first artifact in the chest was a ceramic drinking
cup. In his analysis, Dr. Barkay described
it as a "bowl with an out flaring rim and a flat base" [1:18:13], similar to
what Paul Lapp identifies as a small deep bowl (Lapp 1961:175). In the press release it was described
as "simple pottery drinking cup" Barkay stressed that it was "common", thus an
ordinary household item that was used everyday by everybody.
Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe states that Mary of Bethany
is Mary Magdalene and she was very wealthy [1:41:15]. A case can be made that Mary of Bethany was wealthy, but not
that she was Mary Magdalene.
Jewish wedding during the Second Temple periods were elaborate and festive
affairs. The bride and groom would
not have used a common cup made of course pottery for their wedding festivities,
but rather, one of silver, gold, glass, or Eastern terra sigillata pottery
(Avigad 1980:91). Using a "common"
cup, if it was a cup and not a bowl, would be like a wealthy bride and groom at
a wedding today toasting each other with a Styrofoam cup!
The second artifact in the box was identified as an
ungenterium. This object is used
to hold unguents, or perfumes, and is used for domestic as well as funerary
purposes. They were regularly left
in tombs so that the perfumes could counteract the smell of the decomposing
flesh. The first century
ungenterium is called a piriform bottle in the archaeological literature
(Kahane 1952a, 1952b; Lapp 1961: 199; Avigad 1980:127-129, photo 124; Vitto
2000: 88, 107, 111). This piriform
bottle could not have been the object used by "Mary of Bethany, alias Mary
Magdalene" to anoint Jesus for His burial for three reasons. First, the piriform bottle is made of
clay, but the Bible says that the vessel Mary anointed Jesus with was made of alabaster
(Matt. 26:7; Mark 14:3). Second,
the piriform bottle is completely intact.
The Bible says Mary broke it in order to anoint Jesus (Mark 14:3). Finally, the vessel is too small. The Bible says it contained a pound of
spikenard, thus the vessel would have been much larger then the one found in
the chest (John 12:3).
The third object in the chest was a glass phial, also
called an alabastra. Inside of this glass vessel there was a
rolled up parchment which was carbon dated by the University of Oxford
radiocarbon accelerator unit. The results
suggest that there was a 68.2% chance that it dated between AD 1440 and 1480,
or a 95.4% chance that it was dated between 1450 and 1520. Unfortunately the test was done only on
the parchment and not the ink. All
that the test reveals is that the parchment was made about AD 1452, but does
not tell us who wrote the message, when it was written and what their motives may
have been for writing it. For all
we know, somebody could have taken a blank corner of a parchment that was known
to be old and wrote a "message" on it a couple of years ago, rolled it up and
placed it in the glass alabastra that could have been recently bought on the
antiquities market in Jerusalem!
The
clues from the fourth bottle said they would find the "parchments (plural) of
Abbe Bigou" in the chest [1:09:06].
Abbe Bigou is identified as the priest of Rennes-le-Chateau before the
French Revolution. There are two
unexplained discrepancies with this discovery. First, the clue from the fourth bottle said there would be
parchments, plural, more then one.
There was only one in the phial and none others in the wooden chest. Second, the French Revolution began in
1789. It is not stated what years
before the French Revolution that Abbe Bigou was the priest. The movie needs to explain why there is
a 300 some odd year discrepancy between the carbon date of the parchment and
the beginning of the French Revolution.
There
were about 30 coins in the wooden chest and all the coins appear to have been
minted in Jerusalem. This hoard of
coins covered a range of about 1,400 years, including Hasmonean coins (2nd
century BC), Herodian coins (end of 1st century BC), first century
procurator coins, Byzantine coins (5th, 6th century AD),
one Umayyad (Islamic) coin and the latest was a Jerusalemite Crusader coin,
probably of King Baldwin, of the 12th century AD. The last coin hints at the fact that the
hoard was gathered by the Crusaders, most likely in the 12th century. If it was gathered the 12th
century then it would be possible that the Knights Templar brought them back
when they returned to France. However,
it could also that they were gathered together in the 21st century. Anybody could have easily purchased them
on the antiquities market in Jerusalem or even from the young boys outside of
Jaffa Gate or near the Gihon Springs in Jerusalem who sell post cards and ancient
coins.
Internal
Inconsistencies
There
are internal inconsistencies within the movie, but I will leave them to be
pointed out by the Rennes researchers who know a whole lot more about the
subject then I ever will.
Some
have already noted objects in the "tomb" that have been moved about even though
there is only one small entrance and nobody has supposedly been in the
cave. Another is the incorrect
spelling of the French and Latin on the parchments that were allegedly made by
the well-educated priest, Berenger Sauniere. I think once the movie is released to the public, more inconsistencies
will be discovered as it is scrutinized by the knowledgeable Rennes
researchers.
Two
inconsistencies I noticed are these.
First, when the interview with Gino Sandri, the supposed general
secretary of the Order of Priory of Sion, was finished, Bruce Burgess said they
turned off the cameras. We see a
man in the back of the cafˇ get up and hand Sandi a note before this mystery
man walked out of the cafˇ [0:11:39].
The next scene we see Sandi holding the card with his thumb partially
covering the note, but part of the note can be read. Burgess said, "Who he was and what the note says, I do not
know." Yet the note is shown in
the movie. Is this a Hollywood
reconstruction of the event for dramatic purposes? If so, is that really Gino Sandri in the movie or just an actor? At best, this movie should be called a
docudrama, but not a documentary.
The
second inconsistency was the discovery of the third bottle. In this "discovery" "Ben Hammott" and
somebody else are trying to remove a rock from the ground. When it is finally loosen, Hammott
rolls down the hill with the rock.
For a brief second, we see the ground that was underneath the rock and there
is no bottle to be seen [1:00:53].
After Hammott stops his roll, the movie cuts back to the spot where the
rock is, and there is the bottle [1:01:02]. The question that needs to be answered is who put the yellow
or orange bottle there?
One
burning question I have is who was the second person in the cave with "Ben
Hammott" when he cut the shroud and exposed the head and hands of "Mary"? In the movie it is a night scene
[1:27:19], Ben is spooked because he thinks somebody is out to get him. He leaves Bruce and his cameraman to
watch the car while he walks to the cave alone with one flashlight and a large
carrying case, presumably containing the remote camera equipment [1:29:27]. Once inside the cave, we see the lights
on the floor of the cave from two flashlights [1:29:40] and the shadow of
somebody using a video camera [1:30:03].
"Ben Hammott" could not have done that alone. Was there a fourth person in the party that we are not told
about? Or did Bruce and the
cameraman get scared of the wild boars and go in anyway?
Will
the Tomb Ever be Excavated?
At
the end of the movie it was announced that, "Planning is now underway for a
full scale archaeological examination of the tomb site with Ben Hammott and the
French government" [1:55:06].
At
the press conference I asked Lionel Fanthorpe when the excavation will be
conducted. He said it would depend
on "Ben Hammott" because he is taking care of his cancer-stricken son. If his son does have cancer, we wish
him well and pray for his recovery.
However, this could be a very convenient excuse to postpone the "examination"
indefinitely. I, for one, am not
holding my breath waiting for a news conference from Paris, London or Hollywood
about spectacular discoveries from some cave near Rennes-le-Chateau. My mind, skeptical from experience,
doubts the possibility that the French antiquities authority, the DRAC-LR, has
jurisdiction over a movie set in Hollywood, California, or even England!
The
Agenda of Bloodline
Bishop Spong stated at the news
conference that the premise of the movie was "nuts" and that the movie itself
was "speculation" and "off-the-wall."
Normally I do not agree with the bishop's theology, but I was shouting
inside myself, "Amen, preach it!" (He
even autographed one of his books for me after the press conference).
At
the end of the movie, Bruce Burgess said, "For the record, I do think that it's
possible that these discoveries, especially the chest and maybe even the tomb
were somehow placed there for Ben, and us to find. That doesn't make them fake in any way. It just means that someone with an
agenda wanted this material revealed, but who?" [1:49:53].
I
can think of three possibilities.
First, some secret organization who wants to disprove the deity and
bodily resurrection of Jesus and will bumps off anybody in the way of their
agenda. Second, people who want to
sell books (a la Lost Tomb of the Knights Templar) and movie tickets (a la Bloodline). There
is a third, yet more driving, possibility. Bloodline has an
agenda. The message they are
trying to get out, disguised as a serious documentary, is that Jesus is not God
and He did not come back from the dead.
Bruce
Burgess, however, dropped some subtle hints that this movie might be a hoax. He said: when he saw the video of the
shrouded corpse for the first time, he thought it looked like a movie set, and
too good to be true [0:48:49].
When some locals wanted to show him parchments he said he knew it was a
"scam", but he wanted to see them anyway! [0:41:14]. When he asked Professor
Barkay how the 1st century artifacts got to France, Barkay said they
could have been bought on the antiquities market in Israel recently and brought
to Europe, or they could have been brought to France by Knights Templar [1:20:04]. The "buying antiquities" remark was not
edited out of the movie, even though it was omitted from the press release. Professor Barkay stressed that the
antiquities were "common" objects.
In other words, they are a "dime a dozen" and could easily have been
purchased on the antiquities market in Jerusalem, or even on EBay(r), for that
matter.
The film asks the question: "What
if the greatest story ever told was a lie?"
Perhaps the question that should be asked is: "What if the premise
and storyline in this movie is a lie?"
What if somebody recently placed the parchments in bottles for the archaeological
scavenger hunt in order to find the wooden chest? What if somebody recently bought some ancient coins, an ungenterium,
a common clay cup, and a glass phial from one of the antiquities dealers in
Jerusalem several years ago and places it in the wooden chest? What if somebody recently forged all those
parchments? What if somebody recently
recreated a plastic mummified "body" of Mary Magdalene (actually just her head
and hands)? What if somebody had
an agenda to attempt to disprove the deity of the Lord Jesus and His bodily
resurrection? What if they wanted
to lead people away from the truth of the greatest story ever told, and also try
and cash in on the run away best selling fictitious novel, the Da Vinci Code?
If this is the case, we have on our hands another Hollywood Hoax.
The
movie began with this quote from the apocrypha Gospel of Thomas: "Do not tell
lies for there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is
nothing covered up that will not be uncovered" (Gospel of Thomas 6; for a more
accurate translation, see Blatz 1991:1:118). We will end our critique of the movie with this passage. While this text was not inspired of the
Holy Spirit it speaks for itself!
The Conclusion of the Matter
Fortunately
the greatest story ever told is still true. The Lord Jesus, in love, left the glories of heaven, humbled
Himself, veiled His glory and became a man in order to die on a cross outside
of Jerusalem in order to pay for all the sins of all humanity (John 3:16; Rom.
5:8; Phil. 2:5-11; I John 2:2).
Three days later, He was bodily resurrected from the dead and is now
seated at the right hand of the Father.
He left no physical bloodline because He never married Mary Magdalene or
anyone else while living a perfect, sinless life here on earth as God manifest
in human flesh. However, He does
have a spiritual bloodline.
Hebrews 2:10 says: "For it is fitting for Him [Jesus], for whom are all things and
by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of
their salvation perfect through suffering." Jesus'
spiritual bloodline is composed of all who have put their trust in Him and Him
alone for their salvation. His
spiritual children did not earn their salvation, they did not work for it, they
did not join a church or be baptized, they simply trusted Jesus to forgive all
their sins so He could give them His righteousness, or perfection, so they
could enter a perfect Heaven and be in the presence of a holy God forever (Rom.
4:5; Phil. 3:9; Titus 3:4-7; I John 5:13).
The
Apostle John wrote in the introduction to his gospel: "He came into his own,
and His own did not receive Him.
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become
children of God, to those who believe in His name: who are born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:11-13). In one of his epistles he also wrote: "Behold
what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called
children of God! Therefore the
world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now are we children of God; and it has not yet been
revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be
like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (I John 3:1, 2).
Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are the true spiritual bloodline of
Jesus, not some fictitious Merovingian line that claims to descend from Jesus
and Mary Magdalene. Do not believe
the lie of the movie "Bloodline", but rather, believe the truth of the Word of
God, the Bible. Your eternal
destiny, Heaven or Hell, will be determined by what you believe.
Footnotes
I
have placed the beginning of a quote or fact from the movie in brackets. For example, [1:07:33] means the quote
begins at one hour, seven minutes and thirty-three seconds into the movie. I have the "For Screening Only" version
so the numbers may be different when the DVD is finally released. Some statements are taken from the
press release and are not footnoted, but can be found on the Bloodline
website. Others are from websites
and they are list in the bibliography.
Bibliography
Avigad, Nahman
1980 Discovering Jerusalem.
Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.
Bagatti, P.
B.; Milik, J. T.
1981 Gli
Scavi Del "Dominus Flevit". Part 1. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing.
Blatz, Beate
1991 The
Coptic Gospel of Thomas. Pp.
110-133 in New Testament Apocrypha. Vol. 1. Edited by W. Schneemelcher. Louisville, KY: Westminster / John
Knox.
Bock, Darrell
2004 Breaking the Da Vinci Code.
Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.
Brown, Dan
2003 The Da Vinci Code.
New York: Doubleday.
Calvin, John
1854 A
Treatise on Relics by John Calvin. Edinburgh:
Johnstone and Hunter.
Fanthorpe,
Lionel; and Fanthorpe, Patricia
1999 Mysteries of the Bible.
Toronto, Canada: The Dundurn Group.
Jacobovici,
Simcha; and Pellegrino, Charles
2007 The Jesus Family Tomb. New
York: HarperCollins.
Kahane, P.
1952 Pottery
Types from the Jewish Ossuary-Tombs Around Jerusalem. Israel Exploration Journal 2/2: 125-139; 2/3: 176-182.
Lapp, Paul
1961 Palestinian
Ceramic Chronology. 200 B.C.-A.D.
70. New Haven: American Schools of Oriental
Research.
Rahmani, Levi
1961 Jewish Rock-Cut Tombs in
Jerusalem. 'Atiqot 3: 93-120.
1981 Ancient
Jerusalem's Funerary Customs and Tombs – Part One. Biblical Archaeologist 44: 171-177.
1982a Ancient
Jerusalem's Funerary Customs and Tombs – Part Three. Biblical Archaeologist 45: 43-53.
1982b Ancient
Jerusalem's Funerary Customs and Tombs – Part Four. Biblical Archaeologist 45: 109-119.
Safrai, S., and Stern, M.,
eds.
1976 The
Jewish People in the First Century. Vol. 2. Assen: Van Gorcum and Philadelphia: Fortress.
Schurer, Emil
1986 The
History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Vol.
3.1. Revised and edited by G.
Vermes; F. Miller; and M. Goodman.
Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Spong, John
Shelby
1992 Born
of a Woman. A Bishop Rethinks the
Birth of Jesus. New York: Harper Collins.
Starbird,
Margaret
1993 The
Woman with the Alabaster Jar. Mary
Magdalen and the Holy Grail. Rochester, VT:
Bear and Company.
Tabor, James D.
2006 The
Jesus Dynasty. The Hidden History
of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. New
York: Simon and Schuster.
Vitto, Fanny
2000 Burial
Caves from the Second Temple Period in Jerusalem (Mount Scopus, Giv'at
Hamivtar, Neveh Ya'aqov). 'Atiqot 40: 65-121.
Witherington,
Ben III
2004 The
Gospel Code. Novel Claims About
Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci. Downers Grove,
IL: Inter Varsity.
2006 What
Have They Done With Jesus? San Francisco, CA: Harper San
Francisco.
Zlotnick, Dov
1966 'The
Tractate Mourning' (Semahot). Tractate New
Haven, CT and London: Yale University.
Websites
Bloodline-the
movie
The Fiction of
Bloodline
http://www.rlcresearch.com/2008/05/02/bloodline-fiction
Ben Hammott
Critique of
the So-Called Jesus Family Tomb
http://www.plymouthbrethren.org/page.php?page_id=4062
About the
author
Gordon Franz is a Bible teacher who holds
an MA in Biblical Studies from Columbia Biblical Seminary, SC. For almost 29 years, he has engaged in
extensive research in archaeology and has participated in a number of excavations
in and around Jerusalem, including Ketef Hinnom and Ramat Rachel; as well as
the excavations at Tel Lachish, Tel Jezreel and Tel Hazor. He has taught the geography of the
Bible and led field trips in Israel for the Jerusalem Center for Biblical
Studies, the Institute of Holy Land Studies, and the IBEX program of Master's
College. He also co-teaches the
Talbot School of Theology's Bible Lands Program. Gordon is on the staff of the Associates for Biblical
Research. www.biblearchaeology.org