stephan huller

From my friend Simcha via James Tabor:

http://jamestabor.com/2013/09/12/jes...film-festival/

Four years ago in Cannes, the city famously known for their feature film festival, the “Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards” was established to honor “the world’s finest corporate films, on-line media and TV documentaries”. The festival is known for its prestigious participants, innovative and qualitative works, prominent Jury members (Oscar and Emmy winners), and producers from around the world. This year there were entries from over 40 countries and our film “The Resurrection Tomb Mystery” is among the winners in the “Science and Information” category. We don’t yet know if we won Gold, Silver or the Grand Prix as the coveted Dolphin Trophy will only be revealed during the Awards Gala Dinner on October 17 in Cannes, France, but it is an honor to know that our film has been chosen to win one of these awards.

Winning this award means so much, particularly in the “Science and Information” category, as this film truly broke new ground. “The Resurrection Tomb Mystery” follows our 4 year journey as we pushed the envelope of Jerusalem-based archaeology, by building a specialized robotic arm integrated with remote cameras to explore the contents of a near pristine Jesus era tomb.

The motivation to explore this particular tomb in the Talpiot/Armon Ha Natziv area of Jerusalem is that it is a mere 200 feet/60 meters from the controversial “Jesus Family Tomb”. I’ve made two films (“The Lost Tomb of Jesus” and “The Resurrection Tomb Mystery” and co-written two books on the subject (The Jesus Family Tomb and The Jesus Discovery. The goal was to see whether a sealed tomb under the patio of a Talpiot building holds any archaeology that may shed light on the “Jesus Family Tomb” nearby. The robotic arm and remote cameras revealed the earliest signs of Christianity – 200 years earlier than the catacombs of Rome! The discoveries include: the earliest Christian cross, the only statement of resurrection faith ever found on a 1st century bone box and the “Sign of Jonah” (see http://thejesusdiscovery.org for photos and academic discussion), the earliest symbol of the followers of Jesus. The proximity of this discovery to the alleged “Jesus Family Tomb” dramatically increases the likelihood that the original findings were correct and that Jesus and his family are buried in Talpiot, east Jerusalem.

As the project manager and director of this film, I would like to thank Professors James Tabor and Rami Arav (co-directors of the excavation), my co-producers Felix Golubev, Ric Bienstock and Nicole Austin, Walter Klassen who designed the robotic arm, and Bill Tarant and the team at GE that specially outfitted the robotic cameras.

Winning this award reinforces all the hard work that was put into this film. Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard!

Simcha Jacobovici, Associated Producers

Tom Verenna

This is deceptive.

http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.co...film-festival/

Simcha essentially bought himself a nomination and it was not THE Cannes film festival.

stephan huller

Well that is good to know. Thanks for pointing that out. I wish I could take back my congratulatory email.

stephan huller

You know that the time I spent with Simcha I found him extremely generous and nice. He treated me very well. He is devotedly religious too. If people are going to attack him, I think 'fraud' is something of a misnomer or at least a generalization which could be applied to anyone you disagree with.

The question would really come down to whether someone zealously devoted to his or her religion and with strongly-held and in this case inherited Jewish presuppositions about Jesus can really be expected to be objective about Jesus and early Christianity.

Whether you like me or not I have I believe a good psychological sense about people. I spend three days with him and I am certain his religious beliefs are sincere. I actually celebrated Shabbat at his house, even after I told him I was not observant. You can't feign what I saw. Again he's really sincere in his religious beliefs.

I've never had a vegetarian Sabbath meal before. In fact my parents were atheists so we never did anything like this. It was a real experience. I had never seen Israel before and I did on someone else's dime.

Toto

On this site, religious sincerity is not a particular virtue. Many misdeeds have been committed by religiously sincere people.

stephan huller

Right but it is what is. I saw what I saw. I am telling you, there is this sense that Simcha somehow is after money - undoubtedly IMO as part of a stock caricature of Jews as money grubbing lowlife especially when they venture into the 'sacred territory' of white people.

The reality is that Simcha is already loaded. He's not doing this for the money and there is no money in documentary films from what I have seen of other production companies in my lifetime (remember I've hung around many of these types). His motivation lies elsewhere.

I'm not defending him. I have my own mixed feelings about him and everyone and everything else on this earth. As that movie once said, 'it's complicated.'

I can say that I have known a lot of people in this business - the business of making sense of the history of Christianity - and very few of them have deeply impressed me beyond their area of specialty. That's the business of academia. Everyone in their little cubby hole scribbling away. But who gets to write the meta-thesis, the big picture? Traditionally that 'responsibility' was assigned to the institutions which helped governed society.

I am not going to say what I think of Simcha's understanding of Christianity. But I just want to make clear. He's not doing this for the money. He's doing this because he really believes in the traditional Jewish accounts of Jesus as he understands them.

Minimalist

Thank you so much for pointing that out. I was thinking the Cannes film board was hitting the Beaujolais a little too hard!

Toto

Tom Verenna's blog post ripping Tabor

aa5874

You may have forgotten that you cannot trust the internet.

Minimalist

Very well done!