OK, James Cameron claims to have found the burial site of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Mary Magdalene and a number of other family members. Discuss.

(I will say that the source of this information leads me to believe it is almost certainly more sizzle than substance).

I am not sure that there is much to discuss here. James Cameron probably realized that if it worked for Dan Brown why not follow in his footsteps? A sure way to make a few dollars…

I remember von Daniken has also “found” Jesus’s tomb (in India!) and so have many others in other places (in Japan, etc.). My favourite one was the discovery of Jesus’s fossilized feces .

And part of his proof is that the genetic markers show that all the remains there are of one family.  I’m not that familiar with the stability of deoxyribonucleic acid chains, but it seems doubtful that they would retain that much integrity after 2,000 years.

Bad enough that some con man would come up with that snow job, but worst that there are many who will jump to believe it.

Occam

Isn’t Cameron the same guy who produced a program for the History channel proving that the Exodus really happened?  That program was highly thought of among Christians in another forum I’m in.  It would be interested to see if they change their minds now.

This is what I read in National Post this morning:

The Jewish and Roman authorities were obsessed with finding the body of Jesus. The early church was enormously threatening to them. If they could prove Christianity to be a lie—i.e., that Christ was not resurrected and did not ascend into heaven—the Church would fold into just another local Jewish cult.

So Roman and Jewish soldiers and officials searched small and relatively lightly populated Jerusalem incessantly. They knew the city intimately but found no tomb. Yet according to a Canadian filmmaker, it was there all the while, obvious to everyone and in full public display. With all due respect, reality simply cries out to be heard.

Sounds just about right to me. What I also find amusing is that if anyone is going to buy Cameron’s “evidence” as the proof for Jesus’s mortality, it will be the brokenhearted churchgoers, not the atheists. I have seen it with the Da Vinci Code, when people I know who are (were?) believers were more inclined to accept the Da Vinci Code as some kind of new corpus delicti.

I like National Post’s paraphrased version of Chesterton’s famous quote (I don’t agree with his original one): When people stop believing in the truth, they don’t believe in something else, they believe in anything else. :wink:

[quote author=“George Benedik”]When people stop believing in the truth, they don’t believe in something else, they believe in anything else.

Great quote! What was the original?

[quote author=“dougsmith”][quote author=“George Benedik”]When people stop believing in the truth, they don’t believe in something else, they believe in anything else.

Great quote! What was the original?

“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.”
(G. K. Chesterton)

Ah yes, I’ve heard that one. Yep, the paraphrase is much better and more accurate.

:wink:

By the way, my blog entry on this:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/blog/index.blog?entry_id=1647450

I think the evidence is full of holes and of course I highly doubt that it is what they are claiming it is.

However, having said that, there are some real problems with the Christian reaction as well.

Apparently, #1 the bones have been reburied without having been analyzed. This is for “sacred reasons”. These bones need to be recovered and further analyzed.

#2 Christians have always been happy to claim on the slimmest evidence whenever the names “Jesus” and another name like Mary, James, etc., are found together in a text that “this is talking about Jesus Christ”, yet now that this grave is found they claim “these are common names, their association means nothing”. Bit of a double standard of course.

Overall I think that this “stunt” (and I think that’s what it is) is going to hurt scholarship critical of Christianity.

[quote author=“rationalrevolution”]Apparently, #1 the bones have been reburied without having been analyzed. This is for “sacred reasons”. These bones need to be recovered and further analyzed.

I don’t understand what it is that they want to analyze. Even if they had a complete body, with a skin and everything else, how would they know that it belonged to Christ? I mean, what would they compare the DNA to? The most they can discover is that the bones would have holes in them. So what? Hundreds of others were crucified by the Romans, of which many, I am sure, were named Jesus.

[quote author=“George Benedik”][quote author=“rationalrevolution”]Apparently, #1 the bones have been reburied without having been analyzed. This is for “sacred reasons”. These bones need to be recovered and further analyzed.

I don’t understand what it is that they want to analyze. Even if they had a complete body, with a skin and everything else, how would they know that it belonged to Christ? I mean, what would they compare the DNA to? The most they can discover is that the bones would have holes in them. So what? Hundreds of others were crucified by the Romans, of which many, I am sure, were named Jesus.

#1: They only got 2 DNA samples from the insides of the ossuaries. With the bones they could do full DNA analysis to see if the Jesus is the son of the Mary and if the other Mary and the Jesus are the parents of the child Judah.

#2: As you say, they could see if this figure were crucified and estimate his age at death.

If, in theory, they found that the Mary was indeed the mother of the Jesus, and the child was the offspring of the other Mary and the Jesus, and that Jesus had been crucified, then I think that would be a pretty solid lock. It would, at least, go way beyond what they have now.

Of course, it could still be “the Jesus” even if he weren’t crucified, but that would be a harder case to prove.

If they found that the Mary is not the mother of the Jesus, then of course, the whole thing goes down the drain and is disproved.

Wonder what Jesus’s father’s DNA would look like ...

:wink:

[quote author=“dougsmith”]Wonder what Jesus’s father’s DNA would look like ...

:wink:

Yes, that would be very interesting to see. :D But this is even more “complicated” than we might think. Jesus and his “Dad” (and the other guy, the Holy Spirit, whatever that is) were the same thing. So Jesus practically slept with his own mother. Oedipus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. :wink:

By definition, if it was “Jesus” it would negate the possibility that he was divine, since his resurrection is supposedly what proved he was “the Son of God”.

[quote author=“rationalrevolution”]If, in theory, they found that the Mary was indeed the mother of the Jesus, and the child was the offspring of the other Mary and the Jesus, and that Jesus had been crucified, then I think that would be a pretty solid lock.

Not really. All it would mean is that some Mary was mother of some Jesus who was crucified. That’s all.

I know a guy who likes Aldous Huxley so much that he decided to change his last name to “Huxley”. He once told me that he wishes to be buried with a copy of Brave New World. I told him that that isn’t probably a good idea because if some archeologist (James Cameron? :wink:) found his grave in the future, he could be mistaken for the “authentic Huxley”. Not surprisingly, he (the fake Huxley) didn’t mind. He actually scares the hell out of me. :?

Jon Stewart comments on the story.