James Cameron and the Tomb of Jesus

James Cameron and the folks at the Discovery Channel have collaborated on a 90 minute documentary that claims that the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth was located on the outskirts of Jerusalem in 1980.

In the tomb, supposedly, were the ossuaries of Jesus, his mother Mary, his wife Mary Magdalene and his son Judah (His son Judah? What happened to Sarah?).

How is this possible you ask? Has there been a cover up? Have nefarious, sinister agents of the church been bribing, murdering and kidnapping poor archeologists for the past quarter century in order to keep this devastating secret, a secret which destroys the very fabric of Christianity, hidden?

Nah, the fact of the matter is Cameron is having a bad case of mental gymnastics.

The fact is that the tomb was thoroughly investigated when it was first discovered and the findings painstakingly documented by archeologists from Bar Ilan University. The fact that five of the ten ossuaries had names that could be linked to the New Testament was noticed but considered no more than a mild coincidence since these were VERY common names in Judea during the first century. Read Josephus if you want to get an idea how common the name Jesus was.

So, has new evidence come to light since then? Nope, none whatsoever, what Cameron and the Discovery Channel have done is hire a couple of statisticians who have calculated, on their trusty calculators I assume, that the probability that this is a family other than the family of Jesus of Nazareth ranges from between 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000.

I don’t even know where to begin on this one. Even if I were to see, and accept the calculations, which I haven’t by the way, I don’t think it would result in more than a shrug on my part.

I’m one of the most anti-religious people on the planet. If I’m not impressed by this claim, who would be impressed by it? I get the feeling that this is a lot of nonsense. You’re going to need a lot more than magic with numbers to convince me of this one James.