Barrie Wilson
Jacobovici, Simcha
Simcha Jacobovici (1953- ) is an Israeli-born film director and producer as well as a best-selling author. One of his more controversial books was The Jesus Family Tomb [1709], co-authored with Charles Pellegrino. Jacobovici subsequently directed a documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, with James Cameron as executive producer.
Following in the footsteps of Dan Brown, Jacobovici (with Barrie Wilson) published The Lost Gospel [1931] in which they recycle an old claim that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had two children with her.
The Jacobvici-Cameron collaboration goes back further to 2006 when they worked on The Exodus Decoded, a two-hour documentary in which, among other matters, it claims that the biblical Exodus took place a couple of hundred years before the generally accepted date(c). A review in The Jerusalem Post(e) noted that none of the arguments made in the film were accepted by mainstream archaeology and that Jacobovici freely admitted his lack of academic credentials.
Cameron also joined Jacobovici on the 2017 National Geographic documentary, Atlantis Rising. The documentary did not produce anything of substance despite a lot of pre-broadcast hype. During the programme, Jacobovici threw in the extraordinary claim that the Jewish menorah represents the concentric circles of the Atlantean capital cut in half(b), a daft idea, already suggested by Prof. Yahya Ababni(a).
A 2011 article(d) in The Jerusalem Post reported that according to Jacobovici, “it is generally acknowledged that the Biblical Tarshish is what the historians call Tartessos, which was in southern Spain. In the Tanach, Tarshish is a great city with a huge navy, with silver and gold. Jonah sails towards Tarshish. Solomon has naval expeditions with Tarshish. Tarshish disappears from the Biblical record. Tartessos disappears from the historical record.”
Says Jacobovici, “Tarshish is Atlantis itself.”
(a) https://mosestablet.info/en/menorah-tablet.html
(c) https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Documentary-sets-new-date-for-Exodus
(d) https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/the-deepest-jewish-encampment *
(e) Documentary sets new date for Exodus – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) *