Chapter 57.1: Making Assumptions

The story is all over the place: ossuaries found nearly a quarter-century ago contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth, his wife Mary Magdalene, and a son, Judah. The assertion is obviously offensive to Christians, who believe that Jesus not only resurrected from his death on the cross but was bodily assumed into heaven. In other words -- no bones. The other question about whether he was married is also a point of contention, but in my mind is not as significant a matter of faith as whether or not he assumed into heaven.

I'll have to brush up on my Revelations and probably Acts and other books of the New Testament, but the debate makes me curious whether these are the types of things that are predicted to occur before the second coming. Are Christians going to be stuck doubting their faith and only those who are deemed true believers judged worthy of the Kingdom of God? I don't remember the biblical descriptions with certitude. But I will say this: only people who have no concept of probability will believe unequivocally that this is THE Jesus and Mary. This is an argument for people who demand proof but can't be assured of recognizing it when they see it.

Another point I've not seen argued in this situation is the significance of Mary Magdalene's bones being in the Palestine region. Baigent and Lincoln, the guys who took the Holy Blood, Holy Grail argument to the public in the '80s and whose ideas were part of the genesis for Dan Brown's DaVinci Code, claim that their research points to Mary fleeing Palestine and coming to the shores of what is now southern France with her daughter, who passes on the bloodline. So if Mary Magdalene escaped to France, who's this woman that was in the ossuary?

I may fashion myself an intelligent man, but I'll admit that I take my religious belief as a matter of faith. I'll accept some things that might not make sense scientifically. Do I suspect that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married? Yes. If what I've been taught about Jews in that time is accurate, it would have been odd if a man of his age weren't married with children. These things don't bother me in the slightest. To me, it makes his willingness to die for our sins more compelling, actually. It also makes his moment of doubt in the Garden of Gesthemene more realistic. He had a life that he was giving up, not just a growing group of believers. Mohandas Gandhi was married too, but it doesn't make his sacrifices for his people less noble. Of course, one significant difference is that Gandhi was not the progenitor of a religious belief system. That's a debate for another time.

My point is to say that while it's intellectually stimulating to see this issue of the ossuaries come into the public realm, I'll still be going to mass to celebrate a faith I share with millions of other people. Amen.