A Rant: Step right up. Get your tickets to the Jesus Family Tomb right here.

In 2001 Antonio Banderas starred in a film called "The Body". He played a priest. As incredible as that sounds, it gets even better. This priest has been sent by the Vatican to Israel to investigate something. Apparently, in a suburban Israeli neighborhood, a tomb and stone casket containing bones has been found. The tomb is marked in such a way that it is believed to be the Tomb of Jesus. Everybody panics, romances ensue, suicides happen, terrorists arrive etc. etc. It was a well-told piece of Hollywood fiction. It never suggested it was anything but fiction. I quite liked it, but the film didn't get a lot of popular attention.

However, one wonders if James Cameron has seen it. For truly, his latest exploit sounds like a cross between The DaVinci Codes and The Body. James Cameron, for those who have not yet managed to hear the news, has produced a documentary which will be shown Sunday on the Discovery channel. In this documentary he claims that the grave of Jesus, Mary Magdalen and their son has been found in a suburban Israeli neighborhood. (However they do not have the bones, as those had to be returned to earth according to Israel's law.)

But, there are names on the tomb -- Jesus and Mary (two very common names of the time.) And they have what is called DNA "proof".

And here is the DNA evidence taken from scrapings on the tomb. The man named Jesus and the woman named Mary were not related. Some people in the tomb may be related. That is the big DNA "proof". We do not have any of Jesus's original DNA to match against, but just listen closely to how it will be described when proponents of this absurd theory discuss it.

I am waiting for all the anti-intellectual literary lemmings to flop ashore at the foot of such bad science, just for the thrill of it. I have no problem with well-done research and scientific inquiry. I just do not like sloppy science and hype masquerading as research.

Logistically, in order to make this happen, this tomb must be Jesus's third tomb at the very least. There is the first empty tomb, and then if we buy the assumption that the body stayed around, Jesus must have had his body "parked" somewhere else until the the flesh dessicated so that the bones could be put in an ossuary,and a "family tomb" could have been located and arranged, miles from the locus of the crucifixion or from Jesus's ancestral home.

For a list of very sound practical reasons to refute the shoddy "science" of this show, see : the blog of Ben Wetherington a theology professor and Biblical commentator.

In one of the many articles I have read about this, a local man said he was glad they had found the tomb, whether or not it was legitimate. He said that Christians would want to live near it and would pay a premium to do so. He expected his property values to rise.

I wonder if Cameron has the rights to a theme park yet?
(end of rant)