All in the Family

In late winter, the Toronto documentary maker Simcha Jacobovici teamed up with the Oscar-winning director of Titanic, James Cameron, to conduct an extraordinary press conference at the New York Public Library.

They were there to promote a documentary and a book, both of which claimed to report the discovery in a Jerusalem suburb of the actual burial place of Jesus Christ. The book and the film, both entitled The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation and the Evidence That Could Change History, focused on one tomb and its contents: ten bone boxes or ossuaries that had initially been unearthed in 1980 by two boys playing near an excavation in Talpiot.

Of the ten ossuaries, six had inscriptions. What those inscriptions purport to say serves as the template for the myriad speculations of the film and the book.

According to the filmmakers, the most telling inscription refers to Yeshua bar Josef, or Jesus, son of Joseph...