The Body

Antonio Banderas portrays a priest that, like Cadfael, is an ex-soldier, called in to investigate the uncovering of a body in a rich man's tomb in Jerusalem, by the Catholic Church, to discredit the finding because there is talk that the body of Jesus might have been discovered.  Of course, this would be an enormous blow to the Christianity at large, and to the Catholic Church in particular, since they maintain that the Catholic faith is not only the true Christian faith (all others did not apply) and also that they are the sole heirs of the Jesus movement that started Christianity in the first place.  Christian teaching holds that Jesus rose after 3 days (the would be Easter), and then ascended Heaven--to find his body would be a bit of an inconvenience....(sarcasm intended).

Of course, all this comes under the cloud of Israeli/Palestinian relations, or the lack thereof--which is supposed to be one of the reason for choosing Father Matt Gutierrez [Banderas] (who is also <geez!> the Pope's nephew), because of his combat experience (not sure I really follow that).  Over laying these Arab/Jewish tensions are fundamentalist Protestant pronouncements, supported, they say, by the Book of Revelation, that a Palestinian take over of East Jerusalem would be the start of the apocalypse, and signal the return of Jesus in the flesh to earth--an event that would be a bit difficult if the actual body of Jesus (Yeshua in Aramaic and Hebrew) the man.

This make a nice double feature with the "Cadfael" episode, since it also stars Derek Jacobi, along  with a very strong cast to fill it out.  In addition to Banderas and Jacobi, it features Olivia Williams as the archaeologist who discovered the tomb, veteran British character actor John Wood as Cardinal Pesci who orders Gutierrez to Jerusalem in the first place, John Sharpnel as Moshe Cohen an Israeli who gets into a secret and possibly dangerous relationship of peace with on Abu Yusef (played in creepy fashion by veteran actor Mohammed Bakri).  Veteran British actor Ian McNeice even makes an appearance as one Dr. Sproul.  It should be noted that the Church, when it does send out an investigator in the real world, they almost always came from the modern office of the Inquisition. 

Released by Lionsgate in 2001, the film was shot entirely on location.  Even the convent where the investigating Father stays in is real.  It is located in Beit Jamal (mispelled on IMDb as "Bet Jamal) in Israel:  Salesian Convent.  

While, no one has ever claimed that they have found anything in the archaeological record pertaining directly to Yeshua (Jesus), a few years back an ossuarary was uncovered that did cause some stir, especially for the Catholic church.  It appeared to bear the name one of Jesus' brother's--a fact that the church would find riling, because they maintain that Mary remained a virgin and bore no other children--the the Bible does mention siblings.  The inscription of the box was Ya'akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua (translation:  James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus).  The funeral box was determined to be 2000 years old.  The announcement of the chalk boxes existence was make in 2002.  Soon after charges of forgery cropped up.  The most reasonable argument for forgery would be that it was done in antiquity, but that the box is much older than the inscription.  The boxes owner Odad Golen was actually charged with 44 counts of forgery and put on trial last year, as the 2011, however, do judgement has been rendered.  Read more here

The actual inscription

Creepy Catholic Fact 3:  During the Middle Ages, it was theologically taught by the church that Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus, and the forms of revenge, scape-goatism, and forced conversion were perfectly alright--even encouraged by some clergy.  There were numerous out breaks of full scale persecution of European Jewish populations.  Superstition amongst ordinary Christian Europeans was off the charts--they really believed all sorts of devilish supernatural myths of Jews, including that they sacrificed and ate Christian children.  In the 14th century when the Black Death, swept through Europe, the belief that Jews were responsible for it erupted in full scale persecution and massacres by common folk that Pope Clement VI with two papal bull in 1348 no little avail.  Several months later 900 Jews were burnt alive in Strasbourg--a city that the plague had not ever affected. Here is the link to the Wikipedia page on Jewish Persecution.