Jesus, Mary, Joseph!

A few things come to mind after the James Cameron "I've found Jesus' bones" movie.

First, this whole thing strikes me as sort of the reverse of 19th century biblical archaeology. Then, they took the bible stories as literally true and set out to find evidence of it, like Noah's ark. Cameron's movie also takes bible stories as literally true to "disprove" some part of them. Think about it. The only way these bones could be those of Jesus and his family is if the gospels accurately describe him and his family with one exception: the Mary Magdalene thing so popular today because of the Da Vinci Code. I mean, if the real Jesus was not the son of Mary and Joseph, then this person is not the real Jesus. If Mary Magdalene is a composite, then we would not expect to find a "real" one at all. It's a little strange to both affirm and deny the gospel accounts at the same time like this. Is everything true but the resurrection? Hmmm. But more on bodily resurrection later.

Second, the idea that Jesus' family continued as an intact unit and buried its own in a nice higher-class family grave site in Jerusalem runs counter to everything we know about that family. The family site would have been in the Galilee somewhere, if at all. Moreover, the gospel is clear that Jesus never set foot in Jerusalem until the last weeks of his life. There aren't any Jerusalemites among the apostles.

Third, first-century Christians had no agenda to cover up the burial of Jesus. Nor would they have succeeded, if it was so publicly done in a family site. The Roman State had an agenda, perhaps, but that was three centuries later. If the bones were so accessibly in a known family tomb, I presume early Christians would have venerated his bones as holy relics and proclaimed his resurrection in some other form (perhaps a new body like the New Jerusalem or something... this isn't hard to gin up). Peter's burial site (the Vatican) became an instant site of veneration.

Fourth, I kind of feel like we went through a hoax like this just last year with another ossuary.

What really bothers me, though, is the fundamentalist/securlarist nature of the "debate" we are seeing. We are not free to "disbelieve" science in the name of faith. The entire question should be one of scientific factfinding. If science proves that those are Jesus' bones, it does not really matter to a Christian, unless your world is constructed on the foundation of biblical literacy and inerrancy. But then, someone warned us about the foolish man who built his house on sand.