Rosio Pavoris

This has been all over pretty much every blog I read, but it bears repeating, especially since it was on the news here, in fucking Belgium.

Jesus: Tales from the Crypt
In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn’t resurrected –the cornerstone of Christian faith– and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.

Spelling errors aside, apparently, 27 years ago, a tomb was found with ten caskets in it. For whatever reason, it took two decades for people to decipher the names on them, and apparently they were Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.
Also apparently, James Cameron (of Titanic fame) used DNA tests, archaeological evidence, and Biblical studies to confirm that this was the Jesus of the NT.

Did you get all that? Let’s go through it claim by claim.

The tomb they’re talking about is the Talpiot Tomb.
It’s obviously not the first Jesus tomb to be found (or even the first near Talpiot), but it might be the largest. Of course, just how the son of a pauper carpenter could afford a family tomb large enough to house ten is an open question as well.

Next, the names. Even assuming that’s what the caskets actually say (why it would have taken twenty years to decipher the names is beyond me, but whatever), the significance of finding a tomb of a Jesus, son of Joseph next to that of a Mary dating back to that general period ranks slightly below finding a grave marker of a John Smith next to a Beth in terms of unlikeliness.

It doesn’t even look like they got the names right, but that’s probably because Cameron wanted to look erudite. Why he’d bill Jesus as “Jeshua” (rather than the more correct Yehoshua or Yeshua; he was in the Bible as Iesous) but Mary and Mary as Mary and Mary rather than as Maryam and Maryam I’m not sure.
I’m not sure who he thinks Jofa is, or why “Mathew” (Matthew in English, Mattay in Hebrew; Luke originally called him Levi, but then changed his mind) would be buried with Jesus.

Giving Cameron the benefit of the doubt on that count, let’s move on.
Apparently he used DNA tests, archaeological evidence, and Biblical studies to confirm that this was the Biblical Jesus.

“Biblical studies,” first of all. Because the Bible clearly backs up any of the claims Cameron is making. Even if it did, the Bible isn’t a historical work. It’s a collection of fairytales.
We’ve been over this before, though.

“Archaeological evidence.” I’d be thoroughly surprised if there had been a second find corroborating the first one, but without more information, this is hard to mock. Still.

Finally, the most amusing one. “DNA evidence.”
I’m not saying it pretty unlikely for DNA to survive for two thousand years outside of cryogenics. I’m really not. I’m also not saying it’s next to impossible that it would survive active decomposition of the body over the course of two millenia. I’m not even saying that if any DNA could be retrieved, it wouldn’t be enough, and it certainly wouldn’t be undamaged enough, to perform any kind of DNA tests.
I could be saying any of this, and I’d be right.

Instead, I’m just going to point out the obvious: even if you somehow managed to retrieve some DNA from those caskets, you’d need DNA to compare it to in order to establish the identity of the people it came from. This could be another DNA sample from the same person, or a DNA sample from a close relative, if you just want to establish they’re related to that person.
Since Jesus’ father was the only thing that would genetically distinguish him from the hundreds of thousands of other Jews in the region (assuming his paternity claim was true), guess what this means?

Personally, I think the fact that James Cameron somehow managed to obtain a DNA sample from God himself is a slightly bigger deal than the fact that some tomb has been found near Jerusalem.

Edit: Apparently all he did was confirm that the “Jeshua” and a “Mary” aren’t directly related on the mother’s side, using mitochondrial DNA. Conclusive evidence, right there.