March 2, 2007--Friday Fanaticism LXXVII--Mariamene e Mara

First there were the so-called Judas Gospels that suggested that rather than being Jesus’ betrayer, Judas was his collaborator—no “betrayal,” no crucifixion; no crucifixion, no resurrection; no resurrection, no . . . . Obviously, Christianity rests on the belief that Jesus resurrected in both spirit and flesh and thus would not have left any bones behind.

Now we may have found Jesus’ bones. And to boot, evidence of a wife and a son—Mary Magdalene and Judah. And I am not talking about The Da Vinci Code. Rather, archeological “evidence” that is about to be broadcast on the Discovery Channel in a film by James Cameron, late of The Titanic.

Before you scoff that James Cameron is hardly the person and the Discovery Channel not the place to deal with anything serious, much less something this explosively serious. But he does have some real experts who weigh in, including some from Harvard, and although other Harvard professors are leading the scoffing, take a look at what Cameron will be presenting and what both sides in the dispute are saying.

And let it be clear, though, in this we are not talking Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone’s safe.

The NY Times reports that back in 1980 a tomb was discovered that contained 10 ossuaries or burial boxes and six of them had inscriptions. It is generally agreed that these inscriptions are genuine. So far, so good.

The film’s case rests largely on what these inscriptions say. They claim that inscribed there in Aramaic and ancient Hebrew are—Jesus, Mary, Matthew, Joseph, and Judah, and that the sixth one, in Greek, says Mariamene e Mara, which can be translated as “Mary, known as the master.” Harvard professor, Françoise Bovon has written that Mariamere e Maria is Mary Magdalene’s real name.

But, the names Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Matthew, and Judah were quite common at the time—key then might be the probability of how likely it would be to find all of them in a single tomb. Perhaps this is just a mix of common names that could belong to almost any family, not just Jesus’, much less one that includes a wife and a son. Thus the filmmakers called upon a statistician to sort out the probabilities. He concluded that, at the minimum, finding all six names in one place are about 600 to one against; and, depending on the actual number of people who were alive at the time and living in that location the odds could be as high as one in a million.

So Cameron and his colleagues are asking for DNA testing to be done of what remains in the tomb, feeling that might show the relationships between and among those who were buried there—would the Jesus ossuary, for example, contain DNA which would show he was the child of both Mary and Joseph? An incendiary idea since he is viewed by Christians as the son of God. And would the Judah DNA be related to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, showing he was their child?

From this outline of their claims, you can get the picture.

It is no wonder that Ben Witherington, a Bible scholar at the Asbury Theological Seminary says this is going “to get a lot of Christians with their knickers in a knot.” He feels, unnecessarily because, though he has not as yet seen the film, the claims are untrue.

But then again, Shimon Gibson, a senior fellow at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem, who remains skeptical, perhaps the right posture, says, “I would like more information.” Also, perhaps, the right way to think about this.