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Tombs
February 26, 2007 - 12:37 p.m.

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Perhaps you've heard, amid the Oscar night blare, about a documentary that claims discovery of Jesus' tomb.

*Waits for other shoe to drop.*

I've only read the initial reports, and am no archaeologist, but it smells fishy. I mean, really...how many millions of people have lived and died and been buried in Jerusalem since the time of Christ? And in that haystack they just happen to find the needle, Jesus' tomb, along with Mary Magdalene?

For one thing, the names Jesus and Mary were enormously common at that time. It's like finding a grave marked "William" next to one marked "Mary" in a London churchyard and immediately assuming it's the William and Mary of English monarchy.

The biggest thing for me is that the archaeological community is, for the most part, calling it a non-starter. Remember a few years back when the "James Ossuary" was trumpeted, only to fade into ignominy when it was discovered to be a fake? The experts were saying the same thing then. If something seems too good to be true...

So I'm skeptical. It'd be fascinating if it turned out to be true...but I'm skeptical.

Apart from the veracity of the claims and the integrity of the find, it's interesting to note the tenor of debate raging in online comments sections. Both Christians and atheists are rushing to debunk the Jesus connection, both groups afraid that the other will somehow be able to "prove" its claims. Meanwhile, other Christians and other atheists are rushing to claim the story as true and as their own, in hopes of...proving their claims.

Of course, you can't prove faith and neither can you prove a negative, so neither atheists nor Christians will find much traction here. Ultimately it won't matter - this tomb, if it does date from the time of Christ, is so ancient that we're never going to know for certain the story behind the people buried there. No matter what, ancient archaeology and history always involve a healthy dose of creative blank-filling.

So everyone will have to interpret it for themselves, and we'll all do so according to our agendas. I know that, when I was an atheist, I'd have loved nothing more than to load another stone in my sling. And as a Christian I know that such a stone won't actually touch my faith, which doesn't depend on verifiable evidence. (Which, after all, is why it's called faith.) Alternately, I recall full well that nothing a Christian said about this or any other matter would have convinced me that Jesus was anything more than a first-rate philosopher and all-around good guy.

Something I do find curious is the number of these sorts of things that have cropped up lately. The Da Vinci Code, the James Ossuary, the Gospel of Judas, now this. One thing they all have in common, aside from the stir they've caused, is that they're all decades-old stories revived by someone who didn't make the original discovery or do the original research. They all have the "this has been hidden from us" or "this has been sitting ignored on a dusty shelf" spin that so appeals to our sense of the sensational. Perhaps it's bandwagonism, the desire to get in on the Christian mystery business while it's still hot...and before Dan Brown releases another book.

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