I've found the coffin of Jesus, says film director

[Shipoftheline]

A Hollywood director will today unveil three coffins he claims were those of Jesus, his mother Mary and his 'wife' Mary Magdalene.

James Cameron says he has proof that Jesus married Mary and that she bore him a son, Judah, who was buried alongside them.

The Titanic director has produced a documentary telling the story of ten stone coffins found in a 2,000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem by Israeli builders.

The Lost Tomb of Jesus, made for the Discovery Channel, will be shown in the U.S. this week and later in Britain by Channel 4.

Today, Cameron is holding a press conference on what he describes as 'one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time'.

Crucially, he is not denying the resurrection - as there were no bones in the caskets.

But the £2million film still strikes at the foundation of Christianity in the same manner as the novel The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, in claiming that Jesus married and had a family.

His theory, which has already met with derision from experts, centres on a tomb found in the Talpiot suburb in 1980. Inside, archaeologists found ten coffins, or caskets for bones, and three skulls.

Six had names etched into them, which were translated as Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne (thought to be Mary Magdalene's real name), Joseph and Matthew.

At the time the inscriptions provoked little interest. The Israeli Antiquities Authority said the names were common at the time.

A connection to the holy family was not made until 15 years later, when a film crew stumbled across the collection in a storeroom.

Though the bones had long since been reburied elsewhere, as was the custom, tiny traces of DNA left in the caskets were tested.

The results for the coffins labelled Jesus and Mariamne showed the two were not related by blood, leading Cameron and his team to conclude they were married.

The film's Israeli director, Simcha Jacobovici, said: 'Either this cluster-of names represents the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

'Or some other family, with this very same constellation of names, existed at precisely the same time in history in Jerusalem.'

The idea that Mary Magdalene had a child with Jesus was the main theme of The Da Vinci Code. The book claimed their union was kept secret in a church conspiracy.

The location of Cameron's conference is being kept secret until the last moment to stop crowds trying to see the artefacts. The cave in which they were found has also been put under armed guard.

However, the archaeologist who oversaw the work at the tomb described the theory as 'nonsense'.

Amos Kloner said the names found on the coffins had been found in tombs before, adding: 'It makes a great story for a TV film, but it's impossible.

'Jesus and his relatives were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the first century.'

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