Dry Bones

Today comes a reprise of news that has surfaced periodically since the discovery, in the early 1980s, of a burial site near Jerusalem. The site contained “ossuaries” (bone repositories or successor coffins used after the original body had decayed down to a more, well, compact, state) of a family. Their names, carved on the stone, were Jesus, Mary, and Jethro. The producer of the movie Titanic concludes, rather noisily today, that these are the remains of the Christs –Jesus, wifey Mary Magdalene, and little sonny.

So many questions: Did Mary Magdalene keep her “maiden” –insert here your favorite ironic comment about her job, pre-Jesus—name when they got married? And why did she, apparently alone among all the Jews in the New Testament, have two names? If Jesus had a wife and kids, did he have a mortgage, too? Strike that; I mean, did his kids have kids? Are there thousands of people running around who have the DNA of the Eternal One? And (see next story) did any of it get into Strom Thurmond? Al Sharpton?

And, by the way, given Mary Magdalene’s rather, um, colorful past, was Jesus sure those kids were his? Didn’t it seem like, every time he came home for lunch from the carpentry shop, that neighbor guy Morty had just been helping Mary sacrifice turtle doves, or something?

A Catholic priest, interviewed on NPR, was asked if he thought of giving any credence to the argument that Jesus and his family were buried in boxes beneath a Palestinian tire-repair shop. He said (this is only an approximate quote), “for two thousand years we’ve known that Jesus died, that he rose up, and ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of the Father. There’s nothing that could change my mind about that.”

Oh, really? What if the heavens opened up to reveal Jesus sitting at, say, the left hand of the Father? How many hands does the Father have? Did that finger he broke as a kid ever heal straight, and is that ugly scar any less noticeable –it’s been eons, now. What if the “Father” is really a Mother? I can hear Her now: “That Jesus, what a lazy kid. Sits at my right hand all day. Think he’d clean up his room? All the time with his stupid water into wine tricks! He’s a lush. He’s a bum!” And so on. Don’t even get Her started about that tramp of a wife he brought home!

But those bones! Now there’s something you really want to sink your teeth into, metaphorically speaking, of course. Do you suppose they found his wallet, too?