by Bruno Somerset

Created on: March 04, 2007   Last Updated: August 24, 2008

You have to give James Cameron credit. For two thousand years Christian leaders and Biblical scholars have had to struggle to prove that Jesus actually lived; Cameron flies right past that and says he can prove that he died. This is a sticky point with the one billion or so folks on the planet who believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but Cameron is undaunted. After making Arnold into the Terminator, making Jesus dead should be simple, right?

James Cameron, the closest thing our generation will ever have to P.T. Barnum, is at it again. Not content to find the most famous shipwreck ever, he claims to have discovered an even bigger prize: the tomb, and remains, of Jesus. And just to sweeten the deal for DaVinci Code fans, he says Mary Magdalene and their son are there as well.

However, unlike the computer-generated darlings of his films, he is now tackling something that archaeologists and scholars can actually investigate, test, poke, and prod. He has attempted to add legitimacy to his claims by trotting out biblical "scholars" for his production of Simcha Jacobovici's documentary film, The Jesus Family Tomb, to be shown on the Discovery Channel this Sunday. His press conference yesterday, which displayed a burial box that Cameron claims contains the bones of Jesus as verified by DNA evidence, was front-page news.

DNA evidence? The combined CSI teams from Las Vegas, New York, and Miami couldn't use DNA to prove anything here, except maybe that the bones are human. Stop the Presses! Jesus may have been a human! Wait...we knew that already. The sad part of this is that respected biblical scholars and archaeologists are countering his claims with DNA claims of their own refuting him. This grotesque sideshow would have gone away much faster if they had simply ignored him.

The whole episode is like a religious version of arguing whether Kobe Bryant is better than Michael Jordan. He's not, but some people will always believe he is, because it's a matter of personal opinion. When you get into matters of personal faith, the ground becomes even more treacherous. People take these things seriously enough to do much more than just give his film a thumbs-down.

And in the end, that's what this is all about. Cameron hasn't made a decent movie in years, and it's driving him nuts. He has gone from "King of the World" to a bit player on HBO's Entourage. But he is still a master self-promoter, and he knows that all Barnum had was a bearded lady. He's got Jesus.

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