A TMICSIT editorial

Sometimes, amid all the political / human rights / U.S. policy hand wringing, some of us focused on every turn of the screw in Israeli-Palestinian current events forget the kooky history and religious significance of the lands called “holy,” upon which now sit Israel and the once and future Palestine. So focused on our histories that center around 1920, 1948, 1967, etc., we seldom ponder the events that transpired roughly around the time of 0.

I was only recently reminded of it while reading Jimmy Carter’s latest romp, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Most people don’t know much about this book aside from what they’re told to think about it by pundits who seem to have hung all their arguments against it on the fourth word in the title without bothering to crack spine. In it — aside from making the modest proposal that Israelis and Palestinians, along with the rest of us, could essentially finish off this whole occupied-territories business with the implementation of that old, fuddy-duddy Geneva Initiative — the former president whose brother brought the world Billy Beer relishes in the retelling of his visits to various holy sites. Even for the devoutly agnostic reader such as myself, there’s an infectious enthusiasm to these segues in the text. Jimmy and Rosalynn feeling “the extraordinary buoyancy” during a dip in the Dead Sea. Marveling on the Mount of Olives. Sneaking a peek at the approximate, likely area of Jesus’ baptism. The former president exudes a sort of nerdy fan-boy quality as he occasionally delves into the exuberance felt when walking in The Footsteps that seems a little like a Trekkie with a backstage pass at the annual convention. While Carter’s religious beliefs are well displayed, what is even more apparent is his fandom. Carter doesn’t just worship a religion based on the reported teachings of Jesus, he likes the guy. Knows weird minutia about him like I do about Stan Lee, The Pixies and Kurt Vonnegut.

Far more than I did during the sabbaths of my youth, exiled in Presbyterian Sunday School, I get from Jimmy Carter’s asides that this was a tough, sturdy messiah, or “prophet” as the Muslims call him. I like Jimmy’s Jesus, too. Son of God or not, He’s an earthy, real guy. He’s not the astral projection of an angry, revenge-humping mercenary that the Revelations-obsesssed crowd make him out to be. There’s another difference as well. Carter’s Jesus kicks more ass than their Jesus does. Somewhere amid the bloodbath of The Passion of the Christ and the doom in those Left Behind novels and all the war-mongering CUFI rhetoric, that crowd’s version of The Christ figure just seems a little weak to me, and why shall shortly be explained.

My new favorite Google News search query became “jesus bones” at some point last week, I don’t exactly remember when. I first came across the story about “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” at The Guardian. In summery, the article reported that The Discovery Channel put out some documentary about these old stone boxes, “ossuaries,” said to hold the bones of people named Mariamene (Mary Magdalene’s name), Matthew, Yose, Judah, Jesus and yet another Mary. The documentary was produced by James Cameron. The remains (actually uncovered in 1980 by Israeli building workers) were studied well enough to put them in the time of Jesus, but all the names were as common as Dick and Jane. Still, statistically, as if all the names carved into all the ossuaries found in Talpiot suburb of Jerusalem were laid out in a giant biblical sudoku grid, the researchers laid 600-to-1 odds in favor of this being the tomb of Jesus, his wife, mother, son, and two brothers.

The notion that Jesus was married, a dad, had siblings and so forth isn’t new. Neither is the idea that this might have been his tomb. It’s only been said to be inconclusive. It’s still considered to be inconclusive, only less so by those adding up the recent analysis made available through new technology. I like science so I read the whole article. At the time I thought, “neat if it was. That would solve that.” I didn’t think about the potential of such a thing destroying a world religion. To be honest, I still don’t. I think people who believe in resurrections, virgin births and so forth are already playing the long odds and can brave the 600-to-1 gamble. It’s still better odds than the lottery and being struck by lightning, and there’s the considerable pay off to be considered. However, If your religion is so feeble that it could be demolished by someone’s set of bones being discovered, well that’s a bummer, man. Sooner or later it or its equivalent is bound to happen, though, so brace for it.

I’m in Morocco at the moment, and don’t have cable or satellite TV, so my viewing options are Arabic melodrama, soccer with French commentators or pirate DVDs that occasionally look like they were filmed with a cell phone camera from a movie theater balcony. I read a lot. I noticed that the Jesus bones story wasn’t going away, so I took to googling it. The angry tirades that ensued were fascinating. More so than the assertions made by the scientists in Discovery Channel program.

Some of the most heated responses tended to come from the same segment of the population in the U.S. that believes the creation of Israel is somehow predicate to End Times. In Heaven’s Gate terminology, these are the people who see conflict in the Middle East as a sign of their own rapidly approaching Hale-Bopp in the form of a Second Coming, which will whisk them away as the rest of us, including most of those now in the Holy Land, burn for eternity. Ironically, these are some of the most strident self-professed “supporters” of Israel. They are the people who make up groups like Christians United For Israel and define the expression, “with friends like these…” Still other more tepid criticism, in a number of small Southern and Northeastern papers, came from quarters seeking not to stir the ire of those people and garner the mad rush of fiery letters to the editor.

A number of folks liked to describe the scientists critical of the findings as “Jerusalem archaeologists,” even though many who worked on the find were from there as well. When it came to referring to the scientists working on the project itself, well, they usually didn’t. They just pinned the whole thing on the producer who funded the show’s production.

At its most base, many critics got their digs in at James Cameron. They called his documentary a “Titanic Hoax” or somehow employed the movie Titanic as a way to discredit a documentary that he was the producer of. This logic doesn’t hold as it would mean that if Cameron Crowe had produced the documentary everything in it would be true just because Almost Famous was a good movie.

The headlines were great. The Salem News (which features a witch flying on a broomstick in its banner) was the winner in my book. It dubbed the Discovery Channel show as “Cameron’s nutty Jesus story” (as opposed to the nutty walking-on-water story) and the accompanying editorial stated that “this is a hoax on a par with the ‘Hitler Diaries’ and Geraldo Rivera’s adventures in ‘Al Capone’s Vault.’” Salem, Mass. has enough of its own nutty history with biblical interpretation to contend with as it is, but it’s interesting that this is seen as a “hoax” instead of an inquiry.

The old canard that science is somehow out to destroy religion was trotted out slightly more sparingly this time since scientists, archaeologists in this case, were available for all sides. But it was sprinkled here and there. “Here they go again,” a Savannah editorial said. Let’s look at science’s attacks on the church: A round earth was one. It rotating around the sun was another, and a useable calendar was the result while religion survived. Cloning made the list a few years ago. Evolution remains one some still construe as a threat, and a number of people continue to look warily at the entire environmental movement because it implies that we need to take care of the planet since we might be stuck here for some time to come.

The immediate jump to discredit a finding that at best says these are “likely” the remains of Jesus seemed a little drastic. To repeat, If a one-hour documentary on the Discovery Channel really had even the momentary potential to bring down your entire belief structure like an Am-Way pyramid scheme, that’s for you to work out. Don’t take it out on folks trying to figure out what really went down for themselves and who are not quite sated with the rendition turned in with the Gospel of Paul.

Whether these stone boxes belong to those specific people, who the hell knows? As the demonic Magic 8 Ball says, “signs say ‘yes,’” but that’s it. I’ve decided it would be neat enough if compelling evidence were to somehow come to light to prove that they were. If we could dispense with the boo-scary resurrection/return business and the hocus-pocus of virgin births and water-into-wine, a whole trove of interestingness remains to be scavenged in the words, legends and interpretations of the carpenter, rabbi and all-around rabble rouser.

Strip away all the special effects and it gets a lot more intriguing. The stories can then be discussed as literature as well as scripture and as representative of commentary about a time and a place of transition and great social unrest. And in there you have a whole new line of things to learn and study. Maybe the sword-weilding action-figure Jesus can’t weather such inspection. I think Jimmy Carter’s Jesus would survive it.

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