Tonight the man who raised the Titanic will blast away the rock on which the Christian faith is built.

Or ... not.

Most scholars of archaeology and the Bible are betting not.

"Titanic" director James Cameron's claim that he and another filmmaker, Simcha Jacobovici, have identified the tomb of Jesus Christ has been met with nearly universal derision by experts.

But the Discovery Channel special, which airs at 9 tonight, is still pop-culture dynamite.

The assertion that a collection of ossuaries, or bone boxes, dating from the first century contain the names of Jesus and members of his family — including his supposed wife, Mary Magdalene, and maybe-son Judah — is headline news around the world.

It happens every Easter. Around the observance of Christianity's most theologically significant holiday — this year on April 8 — someone invariably gets headlines with an iconoclastic claim about the faith.

Last year it was the "Gospel of Judas" and the pre-release hype of "The Da Vinci Code."

Now it's the furor over the Talpiot tomb, a family burial place discovered in 1980 in a Jerusalem suburb.

According to Cameron and Jacobovici, six of the 10 ossuaries in the tomb bear the names of the holy family — Jesus, Mary, Joseph — Mary Magdalene, "Judah son of Jesus" and Matthew.

"Everything about the promotion of this documentary smells of marketing," said Dr. Greg Carey, associate professor of New Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary.

"This is just a splash, and it's certainly outrageous claims," said Dr. John Soden, professor of Old Testament studies at Lancaster Bible College.

"But claims don't make truth."

Hollywood giant

They do, though, make waves.

Particularly when a Hollywood giant like Cameron attaches his name to the project.

Ten years ago, the BBC produced a documentary making similar claims about the Talpiot tomb. It sank without a trace, except for a similar round of scholarly dismissals.

This time, marketing has made the difference in terms of attention.

"The tomb has been published and has been analyzed," said Dr. Bryant Wood, of Akron-based Associates for Biblical Research. "... They're kind of presenting it as some new archaeological discovery."

Wood, who said one of his staffers did earlier research on the Talpiot tomb, noted that "no reputable scholar has come forth with this theory.

"Other people have been aware of these names, and yeah, they're the same as what we encounter in the New Testament, but you can't make the connection."

Carey noted the connections between Jacobovici's claims and the storylines of earlier discoveries.

"There's the legend about Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and their producing a son, something no credible historian believes," Carey said. "There's the assumption that the controversial James ossuary was originally in this same tomb, but archaeologists who have studied the James ossuary trace the dirt on it to another location.

"... And there's the claim that DNA evidence can somehow prove Jesus' family line."

Cameron and Jacobovici said traces of human remains in two ossuaries showed that the Jesus in one box and the Mary in another were not related on the maternal side; scholars were quick to point out that the DNA analysis didn't look at relations among the other ossuary occupants.

Dr. David Dorsey, a professor of Old Testament at Evangelical School of Theology in Myerstown who has worked on archaeological excavations in Israel, said archaeologists, whether Christian or secular, will scoff at "Jesus tomb" claims because the names on the ossuaries were so common in first-century Palestine.

The range of names then, he said, was so narrow that people began using nicknames or hometowns to distinguish one from another — Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph of Arimathea, Judas Iscariot, for instance.

A Discovery Channel article about the special contends, "All leading epigraphers agree about the inscriptions. All archaeologists confirm the nature of the find. It comes down to a matter of statistics. A statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters ... concludes that the probability factor is 600 to 1 in favor of this tomb being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family."

Except that not all scholars even agree about the inscriptions.

One of the critics, Dr. Richard Bauckham, professor of New Testament at St. Andrews, has questioned the filmmakers' contention that the inscription on one ossuary is a name used for Mary Magdalene.

The Greek name — the other ossuaries' inscriptions are in Aramaic — not only isn't attested as one used for Mary Magdalene, Bauckham wrote online, but it's definitely not "Mary the Master," as the filmmakers argue.

Wood said that's the most gaping hole in the filmmakers' theory.

The Greek is, according to Cameron and Jacobovici, a translation of Mariamne, which they say is a name used for Mary Magdalene.

But Wood said that the Acts of Philip, the fourth-century "Gnostic gospel" the filmmakers are referring to, doesn't say Mary Magdalene was called Mariamne.

"In fact, it indicates that this was a name for Mary, sister of Martha," Wood added. "It says in this Acts of Philip that it was she — Mariamne — that made ready the bread and salt at the breaking of bread, but Martha was she who ministered to the multitudes and labored much.

"... If you can't make that connection, then the other names are just common names, and you really can't connect them at all to Jesus' family."

"To assume they are a particular person in a particular family is a real stretch," Soden, of LBC, said.

On the Internet, statistics experts have laid waste to the 600-1 odds as shoddily calculated.

The Jerusalem Post quoted Bar-Ilan University Professor Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who supervised the excavation of the tomb in 1980, dismissing the "Jesus tomb."

"The name 'Jesus son of Joseph' has been found on three or four ossuaries," Kloner told the Post. "These are common names. There were huge headlines in the 1940s surrounding another Jesus ossuary, cited as the first evidence of Christianity. There was another Jesus tomb. Months later it was dismissed. Give me scientific evidence, and I'll grapple with it. But this is manufactured."

Jacobovici and Cameron have said the 10th ossuary found in 1980 has vanished, and they contend the "James ossuary" — a bone box inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" that came to light in 2003 and that some suggested held the remains of Jesus' younger brother James — is the missing ossuary. Its owner, collector Oded Golan, is on trial in Israel for antiquities fraud.

"Nothing has disappeared," Kloner retorted. "The 10th ossuary was on my list. The measurements were not the same (as the James ossuary). It was plain," with no name on the 10th box.

'Tis the season

So what are Christians to make of the "Jesus tomb?"

"The resurrection of Jesus is not something we can prove or disprove through historical or archaeological methods," Carey said. "No one was present with Jesus in the tomb; no video recorders were hidden inside. All we can say for sure is that followers of Jesus said they had seen him alive not long after his death. Those people risked — and many of them lost — their lives saying so.

"... The most problematic thing about Cameron's claim is that one cannot explain how such a tomb would come to be. Jesus was buried in a tomb not his own, and he was not with his family. Early Christian tradition insisted that his tomb was empty.

"How, then, would a group of his followers gather Jesus' bones, find the bones of his father, collect those of his mother, his brother, his wife and his son, and Matthew, and then bury them together? And why would they want to, since doing this would contradict their own claims about Jesus?"

Wood concurred: "If the Romans were trying to locate Jesus and the body [as the New Testament indicates they were], why didn't they find out about this burial?

"How could [the disciples] go around preaching that Jesus was raised from the dead if his bones were in the family tomb? It seems somebody would have known about it" and would have debunked claims about resurrection.

"I think the best advice for the average Christian would be simply to say, 'Don't panic,' " Soden advised.

"Ask good questions. Read and think with your eyes open. A lot of the claims just really don't make a lot of sense. ... If it's truth, we'll find out."

"It's a big promotional thing," Wood said.

There's a $27.95 book. A $19.95 DVD. All for sale at the Web site, www.jesusfamilytomb.com.

"And it's all around the time of Easter," Wood said.

"It happens every year."