If Titanic wasn't reason enough to despise James Cameron, he's now given us another meglomaniac fantasy: that he's single-handedly debunked Christianity. Yay! Thanks, James!
Because, you know - using DNA tests to determine if remains belong to Jesus, Mary or Mary Magdalene is...totally doable. And of course, Jesus (Yeshua, Joshua...etc..etc..) or Mary (actually Miriam...) weren't common names in the 1st century. Or, as my husband pointed out last night, "It's not like Judah wasn't the name of the whole, you know..people..."
It's nonsense, but you know what...Easter is coming!!! So, in the tradition of such things, someone must profit from the season, and Lord knows, it shouldn't just be Russel Stover.
(You probably remember that the "Gospel of Judas" excitement was played by National Geographic right before Easter last year)
Scripture scholar Ben Witherington's got the goods. Read him and be on your merry Lenten way:
2) there is no independent DNA control sample to compare to what was garnered from the bones in this tomb. By this I mean that the most the DNA evidence can show is that several of these folks are inter-related. Big deal. We would need an independent control sample from some member of Jesus' family to confirm that these were members of Jesus' family. We do not have that at all. In addition mitacondrial DNA does not reveal genetic coding or XY chromosome make up anyway. They would need nuclear DNA for that in any case. So the DNA stuff is probably thrown in to make this look more like a real scientific fact. Not so much.
3) Several of these ossuaries have very popular and familiar early Jewish names. As the statistics above show, the names Joseph and Joshua (Jesus) were two of the most common names in all of early Judaism. So was Mary. Indeed both Jesus’ mother and her sister were named Mary. This is the ancient equivalent of finding adjacent tombs with the names Smith and Jones. No big deal.
More from Scripture scholar Mark Goodacre
Archaelogist Dr. Leen Ritmeyer:
Will the world take heed to the comments of Amos Kloner, quoted in the Jerusalem Post who said that the documentary’s claims were “impossible” and “nonsense” and that there was “no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb in Jerusalem”? Jesus and his family hailed from Nazareth in Galilee, as anyone with a shred of Bible knowledge knows and there was no reason for them to have a family tomb in Jerusalem. It is worth knowing that Jacobovici and Cameron are not original in their claim. The assertion that the family tomb of Jesus has been located was made in James D. Tabor, “The Jesus Dynasty, The Hidden Story of Jesus, His Royal family, and the Birth of Christianity” (2006).
Watch this theory go the way of all such contrived “sizzling” and “staggering” “discoveries”!
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