JUST THE FACTS MA'M: Part 2 of 3 Reactions to the Tomb of Jesus Controversy

Well, the documentary claiming to have found the ossuary of Christ, where he was buried with wife, Mary Magdalene, and his son Judah will air this Sunday on the Discovery Channel. Seeing from my previous blog that the filmmakers have no concept of the gospel message and what Christians believe about the resurrection it is now time to examine a few key claims.

The first thing they have been touting as significant evidence is the statistics or odds of finding the name cluster they have found. The idea being that the odds of finding these names, especially, Jesus Son of Joseph, and “Mariamne,” are 100 to 1 that it’s not Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene. Besides the fact that “the odds” would be slim no matter whose names you calculated, the idea that this “Mariamne” woman is the Mary Magdalene they want it to be is based on a false assumption.

For the best break down of this information check out James White’s blogs at www.aomin.org . But, it essentially breaks down like this. They think this woman is Mary Magdalene because they claim that, in The Acts of Philip, the woman Mariamne is identified as Mary Magdalene. The problem is that you can’t really deduce that from reading The Acts of Philip. You can deduce, however, that this woman turned into a glass box and became a pillar of fire as a defense mechanism. Not to mention, the book spins a yarn or two about giant black dragons. That’s right. Dragons. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking. The New Testament has stories about demons, about a man who calms storms with a word from his mouth, who heals the sick and raises the dead, so why are dragons so much of a stretch?
Here’s why. The Acts of Philip were written 1400 years after the life of Jesus. It is a document 1400 years removed from the events in question. The New Testament, however, was written within 100 years of the events in question. The earliest copy to be found dates back to 130 A.D. We have Fifty Six Hundred copies of New Testament Manuscripts. This is more than all the copies of Homer’s Iliad, the complete works of Plato and Aristotle put together.
The New Testament is of superior historical authenticity in quantity, time span from original date, and textual reliability. But no, let’s consult the malformed ranting of the Acts of Philip to frame a false hypothesis about a Jesus we would rather have than the one who happens to be the God of the Universe.

Then there’s the DNA. They took DNA samples from the ossuaries and determined from the best experts possible (a fact I don’t dispute) that this Jesus and Mary were not related. What does this prove? Apparently, according to Cameron and Jacobovici, it proves that they were married. The problem is that the only DNA, assuming it’s not already corrupted, that they can get from samples so old is mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA, in mammals, is inherited maternally. So, in point of fact, all this analysis proves is that these two people did not have the same mother. Which means he could have been her father, her stepbrother, her cousin etc. Is it not obvious yet that these men want this to be Jesus Christ so badly that they can’t see past the irrelevancy of the supposed pillars of their arguments? I think it is.