JESUS’ COFFIN FOUND WITH HIS BONES: WAS THERE EVER A RESURRECTION?

‘Men of faith and men of science, by contradicting each other often manage to arrive at the same conclusion.’ Intriguing isn’t it? This is one of the sub-themes explored in The King and I, an Oscar winning musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Profound as it sounds, the above statement, as the King in the musical opines, is also ‘a silly complication of a pleasant simplicity’, because men of faith believe in the incredible and see the invisible. Men of science, however, believe the incredible is incredulous unless there is fact behind the invisible.

Ridiculously, the person making news this month as having discovered the coffin of Jesus Christ, containing his bones is neither a man of science nor a man of faith. He is Hollywood titan James Cameron, the director of Titanic, the powerful romantic story that broke box office records years ago.

The last quarter of this decade has seen some interesting revelations about the origins of the world we inhabit and the character of Jesus. First, it was Dan Brown who made a fortune with his claims in The Davinci Code that, Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and they had a daughter called Sarah, whose ancestry could be traced to a family in France. Mary Magdalene-Mrs Christ-was actually one of the 12, well 13 disciples, Brown tells us in his bestseller.

After Brown, a French lady who might have misinterpreted her nightmare to be a divine revelation stunned the world with a rather bizarre tale that she is a direct relative of Jesus Christ. She also wrote a book about that joke and might have earned some decent money to support her husband’s business.

Then last year, Richard Dawkins, one of the top three intellectuals in the world, tried to whittle any semblance of a God in the cosmic debate, in his bestseller The God Delusion. He even says that taking children to church is child abuse, because there is no such thing as a Christian child. Is money the driving force behind all these, as it was when James Cameron made an otherwise unsinkable ship sink in the Titanic?

Cameron is not a hooded prankster who chanced upon some antiquated coffins and concluded that he has made the discovery of the century; he is a smart chap. He knows preposterous claims don’t sell. But frankly, if those bones are Jesus’ then Apostle Paul, wherever he is, would be rethinking what he wrote to his friends in Corinth: If Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is in vain. And if the resurrection miracle is false, which other aspects of Jesus’ extraordinary life are false.

Though the son of a clergyman, I don’t pretend to know the resurrection story better than the average Muslim. The Moslem believes that in the course of his ministry, Jesus (Isseh) identified potential body-doubles, just as Saddam Hussein used to do. When he was about to be killed, he quickly swapped places with one of his doubles, probably an angel while God whisked him to heaven. The Jews killed the look-alike thinking it was Jesus. There was never a resurrection, because Jesus didn’t die.

The resurrection of Jesus is at the core of the Christian religion: The claim that Jesus died and was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Three days later, he rose from the dead and showed his wounds to his disciples. The first person to discover on that fateful Sunday morning that Jesus’ tomb was empty was Mary Magdalene-Mary of Magdala. Today, he reigns as Lord and Master, and he is the Son component of the Trinity, the rest being God the father and God the Holy Spirit, all of whom are also Jesus at the same time. These are the foundations of the Christian belief.

If this account is a lie, then many church leaders will soon be unemployed, because Christianity would be the biggest fabrication ever in the history of mankind. My life will instantly lose its meaning if I learn that the woman I have been calling mummy for 33 years is not my mother. I will go searching, not for my mother, but my father too. Similarly, Christianity will lose its meaning if Christ never rose from the dead.

But how plausible are Cameron’s claims. There are lots of mysterious archaeological objects and tombs in Jerusalem. 25 years ago, a casket was found bearing inscriptions which seemed to say that it contained the bones of Jesus, son of Joseph. Other coffins discovered in the vault were labelled Joseph and Mary, and Mariamene e mara, the Greek translation of ‘Mary known as the Master’- which was the name used by Mary Magdalene. Cameron found these caskets in Jerusalem and now wants the world to believe that they are the remains of Jesus and his family. He has provided some DNA evidence which experts say is limited and inconclusive.

At my work place in South Ruislip, London, there is a nice Spanish project Engineer called Jesus Donado. Jesus, Mary and Joseph were common names during Jesus’ time on earth. They are much like our Alex’s and Samantha’s. If twenty years on, I hear that one Jesus Donado is dead in Spain, wouldn’t I be a twit to authoritatively conclude that it is my friend Jess, as we affectionately call him, who is dead? There are probably a thousand Jesus Donados in Spain, as there are more than a million Smith’s and Jones’ in the United Kingdom.

Karl Marx’s ‘Religion is the opium of the masses’ may be a cliché now, but it is a truism. We are encouraged to believe many things based on faith, not intelligence. Faith based proclamations are as incontrovertible as axioms: believe without question; take it as it is. The moment you try to explore the whencesoever and the wherefores of any belief that has its roots in dogma, you are leaving the faith realm into the ‘sinful’ world of fantasy or the sceptical domain of science.

The conviction behind faith is often all-consuming. It will take more than fantasy or intellectual/scientific scholarship to destroy the foundations of peoples’ faith. If the bones are Jesus’, which would mean that he either didn’t resurrect at all or perhaps, he did, but it was his spirit that resurrected, leaving the physical body behind, very few Christians will burn their bibles and join Richard Dawkins’ atheism campaign. The liberal Christian will simply shrug it off and ask: ‘OK Jesus didn’t resurrect, and so what’, while the probing-born-again-tongues-speaking modern evangelist will counter findings such as Cameron’s with superfluous scriptural evidence.

Despite the now internet assisted scientific campaigns retelling the evolution story, Christianity has a more vigorous appeal today that it did years ago. About two years ago, a second cycle school in Pennsylvania, USA, revised its curriculum to emphasise the power of the supernatural in the evolution story. People, including curious intellectuals appear to see much wisdom in settling for the good in an ‘effect’ than worry their heads prying into the vanity of the ‘cause’. So Charles Darwin’s natural selection theory will make sense to only those who would deny the hand of the supernatural in creation, even if they saw God himself beckoning the sea to roar. While Cameron left no doubts in convincing us to suspend our disbelief in the Titanic, he would need a lot more than a few coffins and inscriptions to convince the world that those bones are Jesus’. Being a film director, he is used to imagination and compelling drama, such as the kind powerfully displayed in the Titanic. Religion is not about imagination, although many things, including God himself remain imaginary; religion is simply based on faith. Christianity, the good Christians say is not even a religion or a belief; it is a way of life. When faith becomes a way of life, people will carry it on willy-nilly, even if it doesn’t make sense to them.

What makes sense these days anyway? The climate experts, who are trumpeting this global warming idea, as though the world will end tomorrow, are producing counter arguments among themselves as to the immediacy of the threat. But there are green campaigns everywhere. We are preparing for it, even if it doesn’t make sense.

In the same way, even if the resurrection story does not make sense to Christians, the Christian religion will perhaps grow stronger. In any case, modern Christians do not go church because of the resurrection miracle alone. Churches these days operate like businesses: people go to bargain and make gains-gains in the form of marriage partners, socialisation, pulpit emanated motivation for life and employment.

Dr Nelson Glueck, the world’s top biblical archaeologist has said that: ‘no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.’ It looks like James Cameron will have to keep the bones, whoever they belong to in his living room. Next we will be hearing he is court for stealing a few bones. You bet.

Write the author: btawiah@hotmail.com