Tales from the crypt

The Providence Journal: Twenty-seven years ago, construction workers digging in a Jerusalem suburb found a 2,000-year-old burial cave, with 10 stone caskets inside. Archaeologists spent two decades trying to decipher the names on the caskets, and came up with Jesua, son of Joseph; Mary; a second Mary; Matthew; Jofa; and Judah, son of Jesua.
Enter James Cameron, director of the blockbuster movie "Titanic." A TV documentary film he produced claims that the caskets had to be those of Jesus Christ and his family. One of the Marys, it argued, is probably Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus in the New Testament; and Judah may be their child! To back up the story, the documentary hauled out a mathematician who declared that the odds were awfully long against that collection of names' turning up unless this was Jesus and his family.
Most scholars greeted the theory as the latest biblical media circus (similar to the alleged insights into the historical Jesus afforded by the kooky Gospel of Judas), and even the mathematician backed off a bit, saying he had been led to believe the names were more unusual than they really were.
Empty tomb
Were these the actual caskets of Jesus and family, some say, that would shake the Christian faith to the core. The New Testament speaks of Jesus's tomb being found empty, of his rising from the dead, visiting with his apostles and ascending into heaven and everlasting life. There's nothing about his leaving behind a son named Judah.
But, of course, the interpretation of the crypt is too full of holes to sway many experts. As for people of faith: Those who believe in Jesus's resurrection literally, as most Christians do, would not be swayed by such "evidence"; and those who believe in it metaphorically would not care much about a crypt, in any case.
Why, then, do such stories attract so much attention?
It may be because of the profound and stirring mystery at the heart of Christian belief: that an all-powerful God would take human form, and suffer a horrible and humiliating death, as a sign of his profound love for his creation, and as a message to others to "take up the cross," by humbly loving and caring for each other.