I agree. I don’t think the claims are credible at all; the closer you look them, the less plausible they seem. I think the only value in the publicity that the claims get is that they can engender potentially meaningful discussions about what actually is historic and how do we know.

I read “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” years ago, which more or less kicked-off this entire thing. Even its own authors now declare, more than a quarter-century later, that it’s rubbish. Very good fiction though, but very bad history.

Then two years ago I finally read “The Da Vinci Code” (no, I ain’t seen the movie), and after finishing the last page I literally threw the book at the wall for the time wasted on it. As Salman Rushdie said, “It’s a book so bad it makes bad books look good.”

(Here’s the review that I wrote of it, if anyone’s interested.)

There are probably dozens of fascinating historical mysteries regarding the life of Christ, any one of which has some factual evidence for it. I’m not too entirely doubtful that Jesus might have spent some of his early years in England, as has been speculated. Wouldn’t either increase or decrease my faith if He did, though. Neither would it add anything substantial to what we know of Him already. But we only seem to hear about the stuff that’s advertised to bring down the faith, not build it up or otherwise give us reason to appreciate Christian history.

I see this sort of thing happen every few years. Some “historian” comes out of the woodwork with “earth-shattering evidence” that threatens to explode not just Christianity but all of western civilization. Not one has stood up to rigorous scrutiny. Neither will this. It will probably be not much more than a vague memory a year from now.

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