I finished watching the Talpiot Tomb documentary as well as a good part of the critical look afterwards that was hosted by Ted Koppel. I stopped watching when they turned to discussing the theological implications of this find. As far as I am concerned, the fact that this find has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth means that there are no theological implications.

After the show, I found out that Judy Fentress-Williams from Virginia Theological Seminary was on the theological part of the show. Judy was a classmate of mine and I know her through my adjunct work at VTS as well. Judy is a first rate OT scholar and I am sorry I missed what she had to say.

I wanted to make some comments on the critical look part of tonight’s archaeoporn.1 I will blog later about the documentary itself.

One of the main things that struck me about the critical look was the way that Jacobovici referred to himself. He called himself a journalist at times, even comparing what he did to what Koppel does. But whenever he was pushed on issues of journalistic responsibility, he would say that he is a filmmaker and was just documenting what happened.

For instance, he said that they did not have time to do further DNA testing and that this should be done by scientists. But he was not under a time constraint the way journalists are. He did not have to get this film out at any particular time. Why not go ahead and do that testing, especially since it would have shown if Miriamne had any relationship to the other men in the tomb. Jacobovici was very disingenuous at times. He talked about not being an archaeologist and just following where the data led, but throughout the film he seems to be the one driving the research. He was the one who decided to follow certain avenues and not others.

It seems also that Jacobovici did not follow standard journalistic procedure of presenting all sides of the argument. Although a few bits of critique slipped in, it was mostly one sided.

Jacobovici also side-stepped questions of presenting questionable results by saying that he was just putting this out there with the hope that this will encourage other scholars to do research. But it seems highly questionable to present his findings as if they are all but indubitable when, in fact, many scholars doubt them. Shouldn’t debate be done first before producing a documentary that makes it seem the argument is over?

Koppel also nailed Jacobovici several times on quotes from scholars that he had taken out of context. William Dever and Jonathan Reed also noted that prominent scholars such as Frank Moore Cross were quoted when they agree with something Jacobovici had said while the fact that such scholars would have disagreed with the conclusions he drew from a piece of data was left out.

One place I was disappointed in Koppel’s approach was that he gave very little time to Dever and Reed. We had just spent two hours listening to Jacobovici’s ideas. Why not give the lion’s share of the time to his critics and let him respond. Instead, Dever and Reed each got called on twice, while Jacobovici and Tabor were given a lot more chances to say things. I think it was also telling that the documentary aired beginning in prime time, while the critical look started at 11:00 when many people would need to be in bed.


  1. Jonathan Reed used this term to refer to the documentary, saying it was a guilty pleasure but you knew you shouldn’t be watching it. I felt the same way. [back]
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