The resurrection of Jesus is the Christian belief that God raised Jesus on the third day after his crucifixion, starting – or restoring – his exalted life as Christ and Lord. According to the New Testament writings he was firstborn from the dead, ushering in the Kingdom of God. He appeared to his disciples, calling the apostles to the Great Commission of proclaiming the Gospel of eternal salvation through his death and resurrection, and ascended to Heaven.
The empty tomb is the Christian tradition that women coming to the tomb of Jesus on the third day after his crucifixion found it empty. The story is found in all four gospels, but beyond this basic outline they agree on little. However, the whole death, burial, and resurrection narrative predates the gospels and Paul's letters via oral traditions. The gospel authors' usage of standard literary, historical, and biographical compositional practices of their day along with their use of multiple sources account for much of the differences, which were usually over peripheral details. Mark's Gospel, in its original ending, the women who discover the tomb flee, telling no one, after meeting a young man who he tells them that Jesus will meet the disciples in Galilee; Matthew introduces guards and a curious doublet whereby the women are told twice, by angels and then by Jesus, that he will meet the disciples in Galilee; Luke changes Mark's one "young man" to two, adds Peter's inspection of the tomb, and deletes the promise that Jesus would meet his disciples in Galilee; John reduces the women to the solitary Mary Magdalene and introduces the "beloved disciple" who visits the tomb with Peter and is the first to understand its significance.
The James Ossuary is a 1st-century limestone box that was used for containing the bones of the dead. An Aramaic inscription meaning "James (Jacob), son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" is cut into one side of the box. The ossuary attracted scholarly attention due to its apparent association with the Christian holy family. However, while the ossuary itself is accepted as authentic to the time period, the inscription itself has been declared by the Israeli Antiquities Authority to be a modern forgery.
Oded Golan is an Israeli engineer, entrepreneur, and antiquities collector. He owns one of the largest collections of Biblical archaeology in the world.
Charles R. Pellegrino is an American writer, the author of several books related to science and archaeology, including Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Ghosts of the Titanic, Unearthing Atlantis, and Ghosts of Vesuvius. Pellegrino falsely claimed to have earned a PhD, and errors in his book The Last Train from Hiroshima (2010) prompted its publisher to withdraw it within a few months of publication.
The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the canonical gospels are reported to have occurred after Jesus' death, burial and resurrection, but prior to his ascension. Among these sources, most scholars believe the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written first. Most Christians point to the appearances as evidence of his bodily resurrection and identity as Messiah, seated in Heaven on the right hand of God. Others, including Liberal Christians, interpret these accounts as visionary experiences.
The Exodus Decoded is a 2006 documentary film by "investigative archaeologist" and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and producer/director James Cameron. It aired April 16 on The History Channel. The documentary proposes naturalistic origins for the plagues of Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus.
Simcha Jacobovici is an Israeli-Canadian film director, producer, freelance journalist, and New York Times bestselling author.
James D. Tabor is a Biblical scholar and Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he has taught since 1989 and served as Chair from 2004–14. He previously held positions at Ambassador College, the University of Notre Dame (1979–85), and the College of William and Mary (1985–89). Tabor is the founder and director of the Original Bible Project, a non-profit organisation aimed to produce a re-ordered new translation of the Bible in English.
The Talpiot Tomb is a rock-cut tomb discovered in 1980 in the East Talpiot neighborhood, five kilometers south of the Old City in East Jerusalem. It contained ten ossuaries, six inscribed with epigraphs, including one interpreted as "Yeshua bar Yehosef", though the inscription is partially illegible, and its translation and interpretation is widely disputed. The tomb also yielded various human remains and several carvings.
The Lost Tomb of Jesus is a docudrama co-produced and first broadcast on the Discovery Channel and Vision TV in Canada on March 4, 2007, covering the discovery of the Talpiot Tomb. It was directed by Canadian documentary and film maker Simcha Jacobovici and produced by Felix Golubev and Ric Esther Bienstock, while James Cameron served as executive producer. The film was released in conjunction with a book about the same subject, The Jesus Family Tomb, issued in late February 2007 and co-authored by Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino. The documentary and the book's claims have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of leading experts within the archaeological and theological fields, as well as among linguistic and biblical scholars.
The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History (ISBN 0061192023) is a controversial book by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino published in February 2007. It tells the story of the discovery of the Talpiot Tomb on Friday March 28, 1980 and makes an argument that it is the tomb of Jesus Christ and his family.
Jodi Magness is an archaeologist, orientalist and scholar of religion. She serves as the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She previously taught at Tufts University.
The Jesus Dynasty is a 2006 book written by James Tabor in which he develops the hypothesis that the original Jesus movement was a dynastic one, with the intention of overthrowing the rule of Herod Antipas; that Jesus of Nazareth was a royal messiah, while his cousin John the Baptist planned to be a priestly messiah.
Gabriel Barkay is an Israeli archaeologist.
Charles Edward Sellier Jr. was an American television producer, screenwriter, novelist and director, best known for creating the American book and television series The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. He was also known for directing the notorious Christmas themed slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night He also wrote and produced more than thirty films and 230 television shows during his career, which spanned four decades.
Joseph E. Zias, most commonly cited as Joe Zias, was the Curator of Archaeology and Anthropology for the Israel Antiquities Authority from 1972 until his retirement in 1997, with responsibility for items such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, pre-historic human skeletal remains, and artifacts from archaeological sites such as Jericho, Megiddo, and Gezer. He has appeared often in film and television documentaries regarding such artifacts and the subject of the Historical Jesus, including The Shroud of Turin for CBS, Who Killed Jesus on BBC in 1997 and Son of God on BBC in 2001, and is a frequent lecturer.
The historicity and origin of the resurrection of Jesus has been the subject of historical research and debate, as well as a topic of discussion among theologians. The accounts of the Gospels, including the empty tomb and the appearances of the risen Jesus to his followers, have been interpreted and analyzed in diverse ways, and have been seen variously as historical accounts of a literal event, as accurate accounts of visionary experiences, as non-literal eschatological parables, and as fabrications of early Christian writers, among various other interpretations. It has been suggested, for example, that Jesus did not die on the cross, that the empty tomb was the result of Jesus' body having been stolen, or, as was common with Roman crucifixions, that Jesus was never entombed.
Jean-Pierre Isbouts is a professor in the Social Sciences PhD program of Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, and an author, screenwriter, director, and producer of works addressing various historical periods, particularly the time period of Jesus and that of Renaissance and post-Renaissance art.
