Reminds me of this chick at Yale…

Laurence Eagleburger: She said it was this big.
Fred Thompson: That’s not what she told me, burgerboy.

I swear, they were this big!

It appears that some actual physical evidence of the existence of Jesus Christ may have been found. Apparently, they found the tomb of Jesus’ brother with an inscription describing his relation to Jesus. This brings to mind some interesting possibilities. If there were any DNA available, should they clone him and see how he looks to get some idea of what Jesus looked like? He wouldn’t have the memories of the time, but everyone could finally get a glimpse of what Jesus may have looked like. Of course, this assumes that Jesus status as the birth of an Immaculate Conception wouldn’t have modified the way he looked. It also ignores the fact that Joseph’s DNA wouldn’t have been involved like it was with his brother.

This scenario begs some scientific questions. Such as, was Jesus’ embryo implanted into Mary’s womb as an already fertilized egg? Or was some God-sperm inserted into her uterus which then combined with Mary’s DNA to create Jesus? These are questions that no one seems to have ever asked, probably because they might be sacreligious or we realize that we will never know the answers.

Well, there’s certainly some interesting possibilities here. The religious right would probably try to take over the country if any sort of scientific experiments were attempted with the DNA they might find in the tomb. I can’t believe that they aren’t up in arms with the removal of the burial tomb from its place.

Then again, how important was Jesus’ brother to the whole Christian soap opera? I’m no Bible scholar, but I certainly don’t remember reading too much about him. In fact, after Jesus disappears for those few years, you don’t hear much more about his family at all, to my recollection. I suppose the intention is that the entire human race are his children and only God is his father.

With such a renouncement of his human parents who cared for him, can we consider the Immaculate Conception little more than a nice retelling of the rapes that Zeus committed as a swan in the Greek mythos? And what of Joseph’s jealousy? It’d be awfully hard to believe in such an excuse when your virginal wife becomes pregnant. And how virginal could she have been if she was married? Was it not the custom of the times to sleep with your wife on the first night of your marriage as it is now?

Add to that the pressure on Jesus’ brother. He would never have been able to live up to what his brother had done. I can see it, “He Mom, Dad! Look, I created nuclear fission!”

“Nice, but can you walk on water?”

It’d be a bit of a curse, I think. Thousands of people are worshipping your brother and meanwhile you get to keep the ox stall clean. It certainly wouldn’t seem fair.

So, the discovery of this tomb has taught us that Jesus had a brother who didn’t rise up to heaven after 3 days. Jesus’ mother didn’t stay a virgin. I don’t know anything about the Bible. If Jerry Falwell reads this, I might get some nasty email. Science creates more questions than it answers.

Ideally, in my world, with proof or not, I will still believe what I believe. That’s what faith is. You can’t constantly be trying to prove to others how right you are and consider yourself a faithful person. To have faith means to believe regardless of proof one way or the other. If they found a parchment tomorrow written by Jesus himself answering all the questions I just posed, would you become a true believer?

Here’s a picture of the tomb:

An empty ossuary, or limestone burial box for bones is seen with an inscription in Aramaic reading ‘ “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”, in this undated handout photo. The burial artifact that was recently discovered in Israel appears to provide the oldest archaeological evidence of Jesus Christ, according to Andre Lemaire, a specialist in ancient inscriptions at France’s Practical School of Higher Studies, who dates it to three decades after the crucifixion, 63 A.D. (AP Photo/Shanks’ Biblical Archaeology Review)