Farrell Media

It’s no secret that PZ Myers is no friend of Christianity (or any religion). But his take-down of James Cameron’s over-hyped ‘documentary’ on the Lost Tomb of Jesus for the Discovery Channel is priceless.

9:05-9:15 Hey, Simon bar Jonah’s ossuary was found somewhere near here—maybe this was an area where lots of early Christians were buried! So they show some more piles of ossuaries nearby. It seems to me, though, that if they’ve got an association with a specific community of early Christians, that the statistical analysis which assumes a random distribution of names has just gone kablooiee.

9:15-9:25 Finally, the much ballyhooed DNA evidence. 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.

9:25-9:30 The guys at the apartment complex find a cement cover 20 meters away, and open it up. It’s the right tomb! I don’t quite understand why they’re rummaging about in the old tomb—the ossuaries had been removed 20 years before, and stored in a warehouse.

9:05-9:15	Hey, Simon bar Jonah’s ossuary was found somewhere near here—maybe this was an area where lots of early Christians were buried! So they show some more piles of ossuaries nearby. It seems to me, though, that if they’ve got an association with a specific community of early Christians, that the statistical analysis which assumes a random distribution of names has just gone kablooiee.
9:15-9:25	Finally, the much ballyhooed DNA evidence. 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.
9:25-9:30	The guys at the apartment complex find a cement cover 20 meters away, and open it up. It’s the right tomb! I don’t quite understand why they’re rummaging about in the old tomb—the ossuaries had been removed 20 years before, and stored in a warehouse.