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Hm, some articles say bones were found and genetic tests were done -- I have a lot of questions, however:
1) First, tell me everything the bones can tell us -- when did these people die? What are their respective ages? What were their genetic relationships? (Can this be dulpliaced by other labs in anonymous, double-blind tests?) What was their health like? What did they eat? What sort of work did they do? How well-off were they? What illnesses did they have? How many children did the women have? Do their remains tell what they died of?
2) Go over the archaeology of the site carefully and sort out what it can tell us -- when were these people buried? What funerary context was used? How long was the tomb used and by who? Was it ever re-used or looted? What can the ossuaries, themselves, tell us? What do paleographers make of any writing in the tomb? (This is a way to double-check the dates.) Are there any decorations or art or grave goods? How were the tomb and the ossuaries made? Do they all belong to that tomb?
3) The history of Jesus' family and the earliest leadership of Christianity is a difficult and shadowy subject that few scholars have worked on because it is full of single-source accounts with pious motives and legendary-sounding narratives (i.e. the great-nephews of Jesus being personally interviewed by the emperor. ) If the information from this area of study doesn't match the tomb then it shouldn't be canted to fit.
As a general caution, it's much easier to track and identify famous people in the past.
If someone claimed to find the mummy of Alexander the Great we have several sources to check about how and where he was buried -- and even portraits to check his likeness against. There was no standard ID in Antiquity, no office of vital statistics -- so someone who was not frequently mentioned in writing or art (the only mass media of the day) has less and less chance of being unmistakably identified by archaeologists. Jesus was not famous in his lifetime: the earliest reports we have of him say little about his life and were by a man who never met him (Paul). Jesus didn't know a lot of literate people, and no one tried to make portrait of him until long after he was gone, and we don't know who his blood kin are now (besides, we'd need a nice stable isolated population) ... no one could possibly prove anything more than a date and a constelation of relationships, names (very common ones!), and ages. There's no way to be certain -- and I can't think of a single source (Pagan, Christian, Heretical , or Orthodox) over 400 years that claims Jesus had any children by anyone: that fact speaks against this discovery. (The fact that it's being used to sell stuff doesn't help, either...)What do you think?
-Kushana
Edited by Prim to condense long URL, 8:58 PST 26 Feb 2007
