The Emmy award-winning journalist and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici made the remarkable claim during a press conference in Jerusalem recently that he has found the original nails used to crucify Jesus.
Jacobovici said that the nails were discovered in 1990 during the excavation of a first century Jewish tomb that has links to Jesus.
However, experts and scholars are laughing off Jacobovici’s claims, saying they are nothing more than efforts to drum up publicity for his latest documentary, "The Nails of the Cross." The documentary details the search for the missing crucifixion nails.
The two corroded iron nails were found in what is believed to have been the tomb of the High Priest Caiaphas, who presided over the trial of Jesus. The nails have spent the last two decades in a laboratory in Tel Aviv where forensic anthropologist Israel Hershkowitz had been intensively studying them.
“These are probably, possibly, the nails from that Caiaphas tomb,” Jacobovici said, in a report filed by The Media Line. “So, if you accept that this is the tomb of Caiaphas and, if you accept that these nails came from that tomb, given that Caiaphas is only associated with the crucifixion of Jesus they very well could be those nails.”
Jacobovici’s claims are made all the more bolder because they are based only on empirical data, since it is impossible at this stage to extract DNA from iron.
“I think they have been looked at to see if there is bone residue and none has been found,” said the reporter. “I don’t think you can get blood and flesh.”
The documentary’s guest archaeologist, Gaby Barkay, made the point that iron nails are rarely found in tombs.
“There’s no proof that the nails are connected to any bones or proof from textual data that Caiaphas had the nails for the crucifixion with him after the crucifixion took place and after Jesus was taken down from the cross,” Barkay insisted. “On the other hand, those are possible things.”
Jacobovici believes that Caiaphas may well have kept the nails as a type of talisman offering protection while alive and in the afterlife because he either became a follower or Christ or witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion.
Yet the Israel Antiques Authority has said that the tomb has not yet been proven to belong to Caiaphas; and it could easily have belonged to another family with the same name.
IAA said in a statement, "There is no doubt that the talented director Simcha Jacobovici created an interesting film, at the center of which is a genuine archaeological artifact. However, the interpretation presented in it has no basis in the find or in archaeological research."
(Image depicts the journalist Simcha Jacobovici holding up one of the nails).