Forgot to Mention
I watched the news last night and there was a story about a documentary produced by a couple of Canadians that suggests that several ossuaries (bone boxes) found 30 years ago in Jerusalem contain the bones of Jesus Christ and of (gasp) his son. It was an interesting clip, as they threw around words like "DNA evidence" and blah blah. Fortunately, the news producers had some sense and included in their report an interview with a religion professor from the University of Toronto. He said that in order for him to be even slightly interested in their find he would need to know that the names on the boxes were as old as the boxes (one of the boxes has the name "Jesus" engraved onto it), that the name on the box referred to Jesus Christ (Jesus was an extremely common name in Israel at the time, about like Mark is now) and why a family from Galilee was buried in Jerusalem. All good questions, I thought. The professor then suggested that the documentary was Hollywood hype akin to the DaVinci Code. He admitted that it would be nice to know more about the life and death of Jesus than just what is in the Gospels, but was adamant that the DaVinci Code and this new documentary did nothing substantial to answer those questions.