Well, it's that time again: the orthodox-Jesus-is-dead season. This seems to happen several times a year. The traditional Christian view of Jesus is "undermined" "overturned", "demolished", etc. Weeks later, many are embarrassed. A year later, nobody remembers.

Usually, though, it's timed a bit better -- nothing like celebrating some religion's high holy days with Time and Newsweek cover stories slyly insinuating it's all a crock. (I'm eagerly awaiting their similar treatments of Mohammad and Buddha. What an interesting Eid that would be!)

So, yes, I've been amusedly following the "Jesus Tomb" story -- a friend of mine brought it to my attention yesterday morning. And yes, it looks like yet another Gospel of Judas -type sensation.

At first, I couldn't help but notice that the headlines were basicly of two types: (1) "Tomb of Jesus Found" (2) "Clergy Slams Jesus Documentary" -- the statement-of-fact -type headlines being those which echoed Cameron's contentions (and published his press release, verbatim, as news, liberally sprinked with the word "scientific"), and the defensive-sounding third-person-said-it -type headlines containing sceptical responses, depicted as mainly eminating from the True Believers.

For balance, I had fun trying to reverse the rules, and treat the pro-Cameron stance as hearsay, and the sceptical stance as fact:

"Cameron Slams Ancient Faith"
"Serious Flaws in Documentary Revealed"

I suppose we could also go with "Cameron's Desparation Revealed", given how serious the flaws appear to be. Not that you'd know it from most articles. The press seems aware of possible bias in the orthodox Christian camp -- as they should be -- but utterly unaware that those in the other camp can sometimes be equally credulous and desparate, if not more so. (Again, consider the Gospel of Judas fiasco.) This is probably because the reporters themselves often tend to fall in that second category, I suspect.

So: What if this was true? Or even reasonably appeared to be? Well, I'd be writing a rather different article. But since I'm not, here's a short list of obvious problems -- ones you can notice just by reading the news articles closely. I'm sure more will emerge in time. Then we can get back to what's really important: wall-to-wall coverage of Anna Nichole Smith's remains and possible family tomb.

(1) "Jesus" doesn't appear to be a Jesus.

For example:

Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight... Pfann is even unsure that the name 'Jesus' on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name 'Hanun.' Ancient Semitic script is notoriously difficult to decipher." [1]

A friend of mine who knows a bit of ancient Hebrew also took a look and confirmed this, saying: "I read the inscription myself from images. It doesn't even say that. It's either Hnn, or arguably Hnq, but not even close to yhs`h."

Yeshua, "Hanun" -- whatever. All the same, really.

(2) "Mary Magdalene" apparently isn't either.

Article after article keeps assuring its readers: "Mary Magdalene, also known as 'Mariamene e Mara'" [2]. But hey, what's this? Since when has "Mary Magdalene" been known as "Mariamene e Mara"??? Christians were, of course, amazed to learn they'd referred to her that way.

Oh, well it turns out that's a name scratched on one tomb. According to one article it actually means "Mary, known as Master" -- an entirely different monicker. And it's Greek, no less. Why we should think a woman from a small Jewish town should be primarily known by a Greek name an interesting question indeed. (Ed: Because otherwise, we haven't got a documentary! Tim: Oh, right. Sorry!)

(Update: Richard Bauckham notes: "By the way, 'Mara' in this context does not mean Master. It is an abbreviated form of Martha. probably the ossuary contained two women called Mary and Martha (Mariamne and Mara).")

Now, ignoring these first two tiny problems...

(3) Statistics!

I about lost it when I read this line, published in the reputable-sounding Science-Daily: "A statistical study concludes that the odds on the most conservative basis -- are 600 to 1 in favor of this being the Jesus family tomb."

"Conservative"? Err, um... where did we arrive at the conclusion Jesus had a family? Isn't that the thing to be proved here, rather than the starting assumption? And how do we know what his wife's name was? And child's name? Or are these academics taking Dan Brown as a serious source? These are "conservative" initial assumptions?

Second: 600 to 1? What was the population of Jerusalem from 1AD to 70AD? Twenty thousand at any given moment? Maybe 40,000 corpses during that time? If all you've got is a Jesus-bar-Joseph, and an unrelated woman named with some variant of Mary nearby, that's selections of three individuals from among 40,000. Minimally you've got about 40,000/3 or about 13,000 sets of three. (More, actually, considering adjacency, but I'm being lazy.) If the odds truly are 1/600, that means you should have about 22 matches in that sample.

So even if we assume this estimate is dead on, and also charitably assume Jesus was buried in a tomb in Jerusalem, the odds of it being this one would still seem to be less than 5%. (If you disagree, set me straight.) And if he wasn't buried permanently at all -- as Christians claim -- or wasn't buried in Jerusalem, as Grail-oids assert -- then the odds would be zero.

So which is it? Well, that's the great debate, isn't it? But I do know that you can't prove something is likely by first assuming it already happened. That's fallacious.

(Besides, we all know the correct answer is actually India.)

(4) Matthew? Maria? Jose?

Since when was "Matthew" supposed to be a relative of Jesus? And "Maria" and "Yose"? Since the press coverage this weekend, I guess. ;-)

(5) It seems to me it would be a bit odd for "family tomb" of Jesus to be in Judah -- given that his brothers and other relatives were based in Galilee. If Jesus and Mary got married and had a kid -- who died -- then where did they suddenly get eight more relatives? And if Jesus and Mary (and Cameron argues, James) were buried there, shouldn't his mother, a widow, be there also?

(6) I keep hearing that the "<o"-shaped symbol over the tomb called an early Christian symbol -- while other articles admit frankly they have no idea what it means. (Wanna guess who's fudging?)

(7) Tradition records that Mary Magdalene ended up in Ephesus. Dan Brown places her in France (mais oui!) with Jesus, founding a royal dynasty. So why would we expect her body to end up in a tomb in Israel? (Yes, I know: because a lot of cash can be made if so, and because there's a lot of people desparately hoping for any evidence to undermine this annoying faith.)

(8) Had Jesus been alive, Jesus's brother (or cousin, if you're Catholic), James, surely would have known about it. Yet his writings betray no trace of believing Jesus (who he reverently calls "Lord Messiah Jesus") is alive. Nor does any tradition about him. And if it was a secret instead, then why such a prominent tomb so (allegedly) clearly labelled? Would seem to give the game away a bit.

Of course points 3-8 aren't worth considering if either point 1 or 2 holds. And as I said before, I expect a few more holes will come to light once more details are known.

UPDATE: Lots of links here. My fave:

Maria is the Latin form of Mary, and is how Jesus's mother was known after his death as more Romans became followers. [1]

Oh good heavens -- how we grasp at straws, don't we? First, Magadala becomes a Greek-speaking Jewish town, and now Jesus's mother, a Jewish woman from Nazareth, is alleged to have been known by a Latin name? As White points out, this tomb allegedly dates before the fall of Jerusalem, long before there was a sizeable Latin church.

So we assume a time warp, I guess.

If one of the ossuaries had said "Mary, the kitemaker", papers would undoubtedly now be telling us that Christian tradition has long held that the Virgin Mary (or Mary from Magadala) later made her living selling kites.