I see SEED has sold ad space for the new Discovery Channel buzz episode, the purported discovery of the family grave of Yeshua bar Yosef, aka Jesus Christ, complete with his bones, along those of his wife Mary, mother Mary, son Judah and two of his four brothers...
I wonder who Judah was named after... that had to have hurt.
Dan Brown can presumably look forward to another blip upwards in sales (ok, I confess I read the stoopid book, I needed some light reading, I felt I should know what the fuss was about, and a visitor left a hardcover with us... anyway, it had da Vinci in it, right?).
But, what not so many people know is that Harry Harrison did it first, with the Hammer and Cross series wherein an englishman overcome the sons of Ragnar, revitalizes Ásatrú in the British Isles, and then takes on Christianity chasing magical relics and fighting off the nascent Holy Roman Empire 2.0
(btw, I always found it very disturbing to see how upset the english are about Ragnar of the Hairy Breeches and his Sons - where I come from their Saga is that of Noble Heroes cruelly betrayed...)
Books start off interesting, take a bad turn, and finish with an intriguing back story postulate, embedded in a silly adventure story.
Spoiler: the underlying premise is that Jesus survived the cross and fled with his family to [spoiler] where he wrote some alternative gospels and was generally very bitter about it all.
Our hero saves the world by bringing down the Church at a critical time, by publicizing The Truth, bringing about (we assume) a happier future history. As if.
Elizabeth Carey has an better written but rather whackier take on the alternatives in the Kushiel series, answering some of the more interesting theological speculation on just what angels would do... Hm, I wonder if Ben Affleck is available if Hollywood options that series.
Personally I'm mildly curious about the attempted DNA analysis, Greg Egan could have a lot of fun with a world in which some people know themselves to be direct descendants of that family...
But, as for the Christian Churches - most of them dealt with the Arian heresies centuries ago; maybe it will knock back some of the sillier sects, but the Catholic Church has legion of Jesuits ready to rationalise any discovery.
Probably be good television though.
And the Unitarians ought to be delighted ;-)
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If you could clone from the DNA, would that count as the Second Coming?
If the catholics are correct about transubstantiation then DNA could be obtained from the communion host to compare with that from the tombs.
I'm not counting on it being more than another pseudo-scientific, publicity-seeking attempt.
This was the premise of the New Outer Limits episode "The Shroud".
Hm, so that is what all the millennial waiting is for: for us to be good enough at mammalian cloning technology...
Although if I parse the press mumble correctly, they only have mitochondrial DNA.
I think it is very unworthy to suggest anyone would this just for the publicity, what on Earth would they have to gain by such a stunt!?
Anyway, the theological implications are just endlessly fascinating. And on topic, if we assume Newton really was a secret Arian, as has been suggested.
Actually Unitarianism is pretty much always on topic...
What? That would be a letdown. I want to kow what the Y chromosome of God is like.
Newton was an alien? That's a new one on me.
I don't think the Arisians were confused about the Trinity vs Unitary debate, what with having minds the size of a planet, or however it went.
I was told, in my years in the Bay Area, that God, she does not have a Y chromosome.
ScienceDaily has picked up a press release from the Discovery Channel on this:
That's it? Lame.
"I want to know what the Y chromosome of God is like."
Doesn't God have 4 chromosomes:
YHWH
also known as the Tetragrammaton? 4 letters, 4 nucleotide pairs? Surely this cannot be a coincidence?
Proof, I tell you, proof positive.
Okay, ready for my close-up now, Mr. Cameron....