Lost Tomb of Jesus?

The Discovery channel aired its two hour special The Lost Tomb of Jesus last night. PZ watched it and was unimpressed. As examples of the filmmakers’ extensive reaching to form the conclusion they wanted, PZ gives us:

Another ossuary has the name "Miriamne Mara". They speculate that this might be Mary Magdalene's, despite it not saying "Magdalene", because MM might have been a master ("Mara") and preacher. Extensive confabulations follow.

[…]

They extracted mitochondrial DNA from bone fragments in the ossuaries. The mito DNA from the Jesus ossuary and the Miriamne Mara ossuary don't match—which is what you'd expect if it were Jesus and Mary Magdalene (they are not maternally related!) It's also what you'd expect if it were a family tomb, and they were husband and wife. Therefore, they speculate for a while that Mary Magdalene and Jesus must have actually been married to one another! It's an awful lot to spin from a lack of a DNA match.

[…]

Patina analysis shows that the James ossuary probably came from the same tomb as the Jesus/Mary/ Miramne/ Matthew/Jose group. Uh, they don't seem to care that they've just linked their inscribed ossuaries to a known forged ossuary inscription.

I still have it to watch on my DVR and was going to write my own review later this week. I’ll see – if it’s as unimpressive as PZ says, and I don’t have anything else to add, I may not bother.

Edit March 10, 2007

I did eventually decide to write a more detailed post - The Lost Tomb of Jesus (Not)

Comments

[mouse]

I believe I saw this clip on The Daily Show of all things, but some scholarly type pointed out that the names on the tomb were very common in that area at that time.

[Chris Rosebrough]

Skeptico, you are wise to be skeptical.

At the risk of ultimately being labeled as being Moronic, may I point you to a comprehensive and scholarly rebuttal of the film’s evidence please visit ExtremeTheology.com.

Enjoy.

[Chayanov]

As an archaeologist, I can safely say that it's unbelievably unimpressive. At the end of the program the filmmaker actually breaks into the sealed tomb and when the Israeli Antiquities Authority shows up to kick him out, he makes it seem like they're trying to hide something. As for the rest of the program, I'm surprised the filmmaker didn't hurt himself with all the leaps of logic he made. He used theology, archaeology, statistics, forensics, etc. when it suited his purposes, and discounted them when it didn't. As for the forged James ossuary, he insists that it's not a forgery at all -- despite having absolutely no background in archaeology, paleography, chemistry, and so on. The filmmaker insists he's not leading to any particular conclusion and is only posing questions, yet the dramatizations of Jesus' life in the film only point toward one possible interpretation.

I think it would be great if an archaeologist could find evidence disproving the events of Jesus' life, but this program is nothing but shoddy research sensationalized for an uncritical audience. His evidence is completely uncompelling.

[outeast]

OK smartarses, if it's all a fake how come they managed to use remains found there to sequence God's DNA?

[Chayanov]

That just proves God was intelligently designed.

[cyrusgeo]

Why is it that such "findings" always appear just before Easter?

[Skeptico]

I’m closing this post to comments. If you have any comments about this film, please see my updated post The Lost Tomb of Jesus (Not).