Amazon.com plays matchmaker

Well, my favorite clown John Gibson made the same mistake.

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have expressed interest in The God Who Wasn't There have also ordered The Lost Tomb of Jesus on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that The Lost Tomb of Jesus will be released on DVD on April 24, 2007. You can pre-order your copy at a savings of $6.29 by following the link below.

Hey, they're both about Jesus!

However, no scholar who appears in The God Who Wasn't There has done this:

Several scholars who appeared in the documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus — which purported that a tomb found in a Jerusalem suburb was that of Jesus of Nazareth — have backtracked on their claims, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.

Partly because I didn't distort anyone's claims like this:

Among the experts is University of Toronto statistician Prof. Andrey Feuerverger, who appears to say in the film the odds were 600:1 that the burial site was that of the Biblical Jesus.

Feuerverger now says the odds referred to the probability of a cluster of the names — Mary, Jesus, son of Joseph and another Mary, appearing together.

I don't have a degree in statistics or anything, but I think the difference between those two claims is, to put it mildly, pretty significant.

And the hits just keep on coming:

A specialist in ancient text, Prof. François Bovon, who appears in the film, says the ossuary inscription "Mariamne" does not, in his opinion, stand for Mary of Magdalene at all.

Shimon Gibson, the Israeli archeologist who excavated the tomb 25 years ago, also distanced himself from the claim the tomb was that of Jesus and his family.

"Personally, I'm skeptical that this is the tomb of Jesus and I made this point very clear to the filmmakers," Gibson is quoted as saying in Pfann's report.

The Lost Tomb of Jesus is a joke. It's a cynical attempt to turn an unremarkable archeological find into a sensation by trumpeting bogus "600 to 1 odds" and "DNA evidence." James Cameron is certainly savvy enough to understand the P.T. Barnum scam being pulled here on the media and the audience (and, apparently, even those who appear in the movie*). One day I'd like to find out what drove him to lend his name to this claptrap. It's not like he's broke and has to trash his reputation just to make a mortgage payment.

*An irony of high-budget, institutional documentary production is that the filmmakers are more free to use deception and distortion than independents like me. In fact, the big guys pretty much buy the right to lie. In exchange for payment, the scientists who appear in The Lost Tomb of Jesus almost certainly signed a typical release form that prevents them from suing the filmmakers for misrepresenting them, as well as a host of other ethical and legal violations. It's amazing what lawyers will pack into these release forms that participants often sign without even reading. For The God Who Wasn't There I didn't have anyone -- secular scholars, Christians, anyone else -- sign away their right to sue if I wronged them. Nobody got paid either, but, hey, at least I wasn't free to lie about them. (Nobody has sued.)