More True Lies

I was actually amazed out how appropriate the "True Lies" label was for the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" pseudo-documentary. I will not try to do a point by point analysis of the film, if you want that go to Jay Cost's article, "Examining the Jesus' Tomb Evidence." I tried to call into NPR this morning when they had author/director Simcha Jacobovici on with two archeologists, but couldn't get through. I wanted to ask him what he considers himself to be because both in the film and in the followup discussions he says of himself, "I am not a scientist or theologian or bible scholar." But does claim to be a journalist, an investigative reporter, and a film-maker. That he is a film-maker is self-evident, that he did some investigation I will acknowledge, but his claims of being a journalist are questionable. He reminds me a lot of the whole Fox News enterprise, "We report, you decide." Which we all know really means, "We decide, we report, you accept." While he continually insists that he is just reporting the facts, the film is filled from beginning to end with a few facts wrapped around a multitude of theories, suppositions, speculations, etc.

Every one of the experts he used, except the guy from NC, has objected to the way he used their opinions. I thought the best comment about the film came from one of the archeologists who was on afterward with Ted Koppel. Using a links of a chain analogy, he suggested that when true academic investigation was applied to the theories the links would all be weak. In other words if a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, Jacobovici's chain is made up of only weak links. He did not make a determinative argument for any factor, he merely left them hanging unresolved and moved on to the next link. I did think the "archeoporn" comment was kind of a low blow, funny yes, but still a low blow.