Scholars around the world, from Israel to the United States, have almost unanimously labeled James Cameron's documentary, 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus,' as mere fiction. 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus,' is actually a remake of an already debunked British Broadcasting Corp. documentary.

First to react was the ultimate authority on the subject, Israeli Bar-Ilan University Professor Amos Kloner. He is the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb-cave in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. "It makes a great story for a TV film," he told The Jerusalem Post. "But it's impossible. It's nonsense."

"There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb," Kloner said. "They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE."

"It's a beautiful story but without any proof whatsoever," Professor Amos Kloner, who had published the findings of his research in the Israeli periodical Atigot in 1996, told DPA Friday.

"The names that are found on the tombs are names that are similar to the names of the family of Jesus," he conceded.

"But those were the most common names found among Jews in the first centuries BCE and CE," he added.

Kloner dismissed the combination of names found in the cave as a "coincidence." "The claim that the burial site has been found is not based on any new idea. It is only an attempt to sell," Kloner said after watching the documentary.

"It's a waste of money."

Worldwide known bible scholar Ben Witherington III, a Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, has worked with Cameron's co-hoaxer, Israeli-born, Canadian-based filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici:

"He is a good film maker, and he knows a good sensational story when he sees one. This is such a story. Unfortunately it is a story full of holes, conjectures, and problems. It will make good TV and involves a bad critical reading of history. Basically this is old news with a new interpretation."

Witherington wrote some 30 books, many of which focus on the "historical Jesus."