The Lost Tomb of Christ' argues that ten ancient ossuaries, small caskets used to store bones, which were found when bulldozers flattened a Jerusalem suburb in 1980, may have contained the remains of Jesus and his wife and child.

One of the caskets even bears the title, 'Judah, son of Jesus,' which Cameron claims as evidence that Jesus may have had a son. Another coffin was said to hold the bones of Mary Magdalene, also known as 'Mariamne'.

Cameron unveiled two of the small limestone caskets at a press conference in New York, but the director could offer little proof to support his claims, other than the mathematical probability of a tomb containing a set of ossuaries with names linked to Jesus.

Of the ten ossuaries found, six were inscribed with the names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Mary Magdalene, as well as Judah, Son of Jesus, and a Matthew, of which there were many in Mary's family, according to Luke 3:23. Controversy surrounds this claim. Some question whether the inscription actually says "Jesus" or some other name. Legitimate scholarship will examine and discuss something like this for years before coming to conclusions that can be questioned by new archaeological or linguistic finds. When you read up on these finds you see that solid conclusions are only arrived at after a long period of gestation. Seldom is anything of this importance verified or settled in the popular culture.

What is behind this story? It is one more attack upon the authority of religion in general and the specific claims of the Bible in particular. This story piles on the story popularized by Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code where the old stories of Jesus having been married to Mary Magdelene and siring a child were made popular through the book and movie.

Last year about this time the National Geographic The Gospel of Judas, an account purporting to an alternative telling of the story of Christ from Judas' viewpoint. The story told in this ancient Coptic manuscript portrays Judas as hero rather than the villain of the story.

There is more marketing involved with these efforts than there is truth and faith. Wild claims are made that do not stand up under the test of time and true scholarship. They certainly don't stand up to the test of applied faith in the promises and teaching of the Word of God.

Scholars and archaeologists alike have heaped scorn on the claim, as they rightly should. Cameron was promoting a documentary set to air soon with the complete story behind this find.

And this is where we all need to be careful to not be carried away with these claims and stories.  The Apostle Paul warned his audience in the first century, "that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting." (Ephesians 4:14)

It is good advice for us today. Modern archaeology and scholarship is actually doing a lot to prove the accuracy of the Bible account, despite what you read in the popular press. In the end the real proof of the Bible comes from living by every word of the book. When you come to that point in your life you will not be moved by all the other claims that seek to deny the power of God.

Our booklet, "Is the Bible True?" gives a reasoned defense of this timeless book.