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Two ancient stone boxes are revealed by filmmakers and researchers who say they may have once contained the bones of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, chipping away at the very cornerstone of Christianity: the Resurrection.

Two months later, Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer declares he has found the tomb of Herod the Great, the "King of the Jews" best known in Christianity as the biblical king who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, the slaughter of newborns shortly after the birth of Christ. The two discoveries illustrate the controversial role that archaeology has played in a back-and-forth debate that's been waged for decades about the historical accuracy of the Bible.

On one side are the so-called biblical minimalists, who argue that the Bible is simply a series of narratives with an agenda and is no basis for history. On the other side are the maximalists, closely allied with creationists, who take the Bible as literal and irrefutable historical fact.

Most archaeologists, however, fall somewhere in between these two extremes, including even those who use the Bible as a historical guidebook for their excavations, such as Israel's leading archaeologist, Amnon Ben-Tor.

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  "The two claims of the biblical minimalists, that ‘there is no way of knowing' and that the Bible represents an agenda, do not explain anything," says Ben-Tor, who holds the chair of renowned Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

"Records were kept, which were studied by historians of their time, which often paralleled the biblical narrative."

For one thing, many of the events, names of monarchs, and identification of places in the Bible are confirmed by nonbiblical Iron Age sources -- texts found through archaeological surveys and excavations within the area of historical Judah and Israel, and in excavations in neighboring states. But materials dating to the previous Bronze Age are rare.

This led the New York Times in 2002 to declare: "Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation."

While many scholars acknowledge that some of the claims in the Bible may be exaggerated, "No discovery has ever controverted the biblical text," says Robert Cooley, president emeritus and former archaeology professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., who has conducted numerous excavations in the Holy Land.

"The problem you get is in the interpretation of the biblical text, its subjectivism. Archaeology never fully discovers the maximum amount in any society. We are dealing with perishable material."

Archaeologists such as Ben-Tor and Cooley operate under the assumption that "absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence." In other words, while the Bible tends to be considered guilty until proven innocent as a historical record of ancient events, these biblical scholars estimate that only about 2 percent of the potential archaeological material has been found and worked on.

"The biblical minimalists have suddenly ‘discovered' that … the Bible has a theological agenda, which supposedly makes the Bible a basis that cannot be used as a historiography reference," says Ben-Tor.

"The best way to refute the contention of biblical nonobjectivity is that there is no such thing as objective historiography. All historiography has an agenda. Read 10 books about Vietnam and you will get 10 versions of what happened. The issue at hand is to use the Bible as a reference, and to compare it with all other evidence available."

The highly criticized documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, produced by Oscar-wining director James Cameron and directed by Emmy-winning Toronto filmmaker Simcha Jacobovichi, drew more than 4 million viewers when it aired on the Discovery Channel in March. A companion book, The Jesus Family Tomb, rocketed to sixth place on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. Soon after, the Jerusalem Post reported that several prominent scholars had backtracked on their conclusions about the discovery of the tomb, which dates to 1980.

"This is not a new discovery," says Cooley. "We have been aware of this since the 1980s. It's out of context. It was not presented in the original tomb in which it was found, and therefore lacks the contextual credibility archeological discoveries are generally held to."

Stephen Pfann, a textual scholar and paleographer at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, has released a paper saying the makers of the film were mistaken when they identified an ancient tomb as belonging to Mary Magdalene, based on the inscription "Mariamene e Mara," which was interpreted by the film's researchers as "Mary the Teacher," often used in biblical reference to Mary Magdalene. Pfann insists it is instead a combination of two very common women's names of the time: Mary and Martha.

As for the inscription on the tomb that purportedly held Jesus' bones, "Jesus, Son of Joseph," and one on a tomb saying "Judah, Son of Jesus," which filmmakers say was part of the family tomb of Mary Magdalene, Jesus, and their children, Pfann says: "We have more than 2,000 such inscriptions from the first century. It's a part of the common vocabulary of the era. It makes for an interesting film, but it lacks context and therefore authenticity, and is meaningless archaeologically."

In the case of Herod's tomb, Cooley says, the debate over its authenticity will continue. "It has been found in fragmented condition. But if it was in fact found in context, in Herodium, where we know from the Bible that Herod was buried, it becomes a very important discovery, particularly if it was a Roman tomb."

Relatively few archaeological ruins have been uncovered compared with the scope of biblical history, even since Israelis began digging for the roots of their own heritage and other ancient civilizations after the founding of their nation in 1948. But the list of finds that correspond with the biblical record are many, including: