Strom Thurmond, Al Sharpton, James Cameron and Jesus Christ

Strom Thurmond's ancestors owned Al Sharpton's ancestors as slaves. I swear I saw this in an episode of Family Guy.

And director James Cameron of Titanic fame has finally found Jesus. Only not like that. And probably not at all.

Cameron believes he's found a family tomb that contains the ossuaries of Mary, Jesus, Matthew, Mary Magdalene, and their supposed lovechild Judah. If his "discovery" is authentic, then it would contradict not only the long held Christian belief that Jesus died single and childless, but also that He was resurrected and that he ascended into Heaven. Cameron seems pretty certain of his findings and they are pretty convincing, if you put aside subtle details like the fact that the names on the ossuaries are some of the most common for Jews during that period of time, or that Jesus' family resided in the area of Galillee, not south of Jerusalem, or even that the name on Jesus' ostuary may actually read "Hunan," not "Jesus." But convincing nonetheless.

Oh, and his "discovery" was originally made in 1980 by archeologists who concluded that it was not related to Christ. He's not even the first one to do a documentary on the subject. The BBC made one 19 years ago.

My skepticism here should be obvious. The supporters of the Dan Brown theory of Christianity (that there isn't such a thing) like to use media glitz to mask the lack of evidence supporting their theories. Cameron's documentary has yet to be released. It airs on March 4 and an accompanying book by the archaeologist on the project will be published later. To be taken at all seriously, both need to answer some serious questions:

• Why now? As noted above, this discovery was made in 1980. The notion that it had anything to do with Jesus was dismissed. What do they have now that makes this story worthy of resuscitating three decades later?
• The Mary Magdalene issue. The ossuary that is supposedly Mary Magdalene's does not simply have her name on it. It reads, "Mariamne e mara," which apparently means ‘Mariamne, known as the master.’ The assumption he makes is that "Miriam" is Mary Magdalene and because her DNA does not show a relation to the DNA in the Jesus box, she must be married to him. I accept that her true name was probably Miriam. But what does "Miriamne, known as the master" mean? Wouldn't the box indicate a relation to someone else, like the rest? "Miriam, wife of Jesus"? Something like that?
• One of the boxes contained the bones of a "Matia" or "Matthew." Why would Matthew be in the same tomb? He had no familial relationship to Jesus. If this is just another person named Matthew, apparently unknown to history prior to this discovery, then doesn't that detract from its legitimacy?
• Why would the tomb be south of Jerusalem? Granted, it is not enough to assume that the historical location of Christ's tomb is by any means accurate, but it fits with all of the historical documention on the location of the tomb. This doesn't. So is everyone who commented on the location contemporaneously wrong?
• Address the commonality of the names contained there. My understanding is that Yeshua, Matia, Yosef, Maria, and Miriam were all common names for the time period.
• Address the relation between the person in the Jesus box and that of Judah. There have been leaks so far stating that the Miriamne person and the Jesus person are not related. Cameron deduces that they must have been married. First, how can he assume that she is the wife of anyone? Second, why would she be the wife of Jesus with three other males in the tomb? Third, if they've performed sufficient DNA analysis to determine that the Jesus and the Miriamne are not related, then why hasn't there been any talk of the relation between these two persons and the Judah person? The ostuary calls him the son of Jesus. If that were the case and Miramne was the mother of this child, then surely the DNA would bear that out. Yet the reports reveal nothing as far as this issue is concerned.
• Does DNA show any relation between the Mary and the Jesus?

Again, all that is out so far are leaks and details made public by Cameron. But if the documentary and book do not address at least some of these questions, then they should not be taken seriously.

UPDATE:

From the archaeologist who found Cameron's sepulchre in an article from the Jerusalem Post:

But Bar-Ilan University Prof. Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. "It makes a great story for a TV film," he told The Jerusalem Post. "But it's impossible. It's nonsense."

Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and the fact that such apparently resonant names had been found together was of no significance. He added that "Jesus son of Joseph" inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years.

"There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb," Kloner said. "They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE."