Hey there.. Yes, it is I, Gorthos, resurrected from my influenza laden pillows to post comments..

re: medievalists. I dunno Alan. If I was part of a large rebel group and my leaders were being killed by air strikes due to informants, I would roud them up and hang them because honestly, bullets have better uses. This is not to say on supports the Taliban, just that it is logical that whenyou are already in the business of killing folk for a cause, adding a few traitors to the mix as an attampt at a stop gap is completely logical.

And just to make it easy in case you decide to delete on or the other, as far as "Heretics" goes, one cannot view scientific hypotheses with true and accepted scientific process if one brings one's personal beliefs into it. Most of the Biblical Archaeologists in the holy land are not only funded by but are firm servants of the various religious bodies in the area. They and their opinions are therefore tainted with bias. Cameron and his people have a perfect right to hypothesize whether accurately or not on the identity of the persons buried in that tomb so long as the evidence meets the criteria of "believable by some in the scientific community". What they are claiming is not completely accurate according to scientific method anyways as there is no acceptable (to science) evidence that Christ ever existed as a person anyways. Claiming they found his burial chamber and bones flies in the face of such non-biased archeology as much as saying they found aerial photographic evidence of Santa's workshop.

Non-biased, too, is heresy not to mention an oxymoron.

Oh ho!

Yes, but Heresy is not a recognized term in scientific circles.

Two entirely different worlds colliding..

Please understand of course, I am not trying to judge teh accuracy of either side. I am just saying that biblical archeologists have an agenda and pure archeologists do not see any evidence of the existance of Jesus therefore Mr. Camerons tv show is a bit on the moot side.

<blockquote><i>I am just saying that biblical archeologists have an agenda and pure archeologists do not see any evidence of the existance of Jesus therefore Mr. Camerons tv show is a bit on the moot side.</i></blockquote>

As a sidebar to gorthos' comment I am going to say that this is partially correct. There is plenty of secular archaeological evidence that references Christ (Christus), notably writing from Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, etc. But you can't point to any definitive physical articles, i.e. vases that He used, or houses that He lived in, or stuff written directly by His hand, etc.

I am interested to see how Messrs. Cameron and Jacobovici use the DNA angle. Certainly, if enough good material existed, one could prove that the contents of the ossuaries were related. How one could tie any of those DNA strands to the secular Y'shua of history and the divine Christ of the Bible is another matter entirely though. Unless they start doing wacky things like testing it against the Shroud of Turin or all the itty bitty chunks of the True Cross, held in cathedrals all over Europe.

I am interested in seeing the basis for the claim, other than the sheer unlikeliness of another family in the same time period carrying that exact constellation of names. It is not going to affect the strength of my religious beliefs any more than the discovery of a cluster of 20th century tombstones with the names Jonathan Kent, Martha Clark Kent, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White would have me believing that the <i>Superman</i> comic was highly adapted real history.

very true Chris. Stating that the names seem right and stating that the DNA shows that two adults males were not related yet the other's buried appear to be a combination of the two merely shows it was a family buried there.. It will be interesting.