An amateur archeologist has claimed to have identified what could be the remains of some of Christ's disciples in a first century burial chamber beneath a block of flats in Jerusalem.
A team led by Simcha Jacobovic, a Canadian documentary director, used a robot to photograph a number of limestone burial caskets, which may provide an unprecedented glimpse into Christianity's earliest days.
But the potential significance of the discovery is almost certain to be overshadowed by controversy, with Mr Jacobovic using it to bolster his widely disputed claims to have identified the bones of Jesus and his family nearby.
The caskets, known as ossuaries, were inscribed with what some experts said could be the earliest Christian iconography ever documented.
One of the ossuaries carries an etching of a fish with what appears to be a human head in its mouth, perhaps an image of Jonah. His story was of major significance to early Christians because Jonah spent three days in
the belly of the giant fish, just as Christ spent three days in the tomb.The fish was also seen as a sacred symbol. Not only did fish feature in a number of miracles, while many of the disciples were fishermen, but the Greek for fish - ichthys - was held to be an acronym for "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour".
Independent archeologists said no Jewish tomb from antiquity was known to have carried a fish, giving further credibility to the theory that the etching was Christian. An adjacent ossuary was engraved with a Greek inscription that appears to refer to resurrection and could be translated as "Divine Jehovah, raise up, raise up."
Some Israeli archeologists, however, said that some contemporary Jewish communities, including the Pharisees and the Essenes, also believed in the resurrection of the dead.
The tomb would almost certainly date to before AD?70, the year the city was destroyed by a Roman army. If the remains were those of early Christians, they may well have been contemporaries of Christ, perhaps even his disciples, as the community was small.
Further investigation is likely to be tricky, however. Although the chamber was discovered in 1981, excavation has been impossible because of an edict by Jewish religious authorities.
After years of negotiation, Mr Jacobovic, himself an Israeli-born Jew, managed to win approval to lower a robotic arm to photograph the ossuaries.
According to Mr Jacobovic and his colleague James Tabor, a biblical scholar at the University of North Carolina, the discovery gives credence to their claim that a chamber they called "the Garden tomb" nearby housed the remains of Christ.
"These two tombs, both dating to around the time of Jesus, are less than 200 feet apart," they wrote in a report published yesterday. "Any interpretation of one tomb has to be made in the light of the other."
Their assertions rest on the discovery in 1981 of ossuaries in the Garden tomb that appear to carry names similar to those of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Two others carried the names of "Judah, son of Jesus" and a woman they claimed could have been Mary Magdalene, whom they suggested could have been Christ's wife in a theory given popular appeal in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.
But the archeologists who discovered the ossuaries dismissed Mr Jacobovic's conclusions as nonsense, saying such names were common at the time.
Israeli experts, who jokingly referred to Mr Jacobovic as "Indiana Jones", point out that he is a film maker with no academic qualifications beyond a bachelor's degree and say he has "cherry-picked" findings to create the flimsiest of cases.
"His Jesus theory is conjecture built upon deception built upon wilful misinterpretation in order to spin a money-making yarn and garner publicity," said one archeologist who asked not to be identified in order not to link his name to the claims.
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