A bombshell like this is hard to overstate, provided it’s legit. James Cameron, of Titanic fame (and quite possibly titanic fame), claims to have found the tomb of Jesus Christ and the BBC will air a documentary about this discovery.

At the center of the mystery are 10 bone boxes, or ossuaries, taken from a crypt that was unearthed in the Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1980. Largely ignored for 16 years as they languished in an Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) storeroom, the objects sparked wider interest when a couple of scholarly articles brought attention to the inscriptions on six of the 10 limestone boxes. In addition to “Jesus son of Joseph,” there were two Marys, a Matthew (a possible relative of Jesus’s mother), a Yose (the name by which Jesus’s brother Joseph goes in the Gospel of Mark), and “Judah son of Jesus.”

So why didn’t those names set off an immediate alarm? The answer, quite simply, is that to the Israeli archaeologists scrambling to salvage antiquities during a Jerusalem construction boom, the names were anything but unusual. Amos Kloner, author of one of the first articles about the tomb, has pointed out that the name Jesus was found 71 times on objects from the some 900 burial caves unearthed in the same general area. And there was even one other instance of “Jesus son of Joseph.” Kloner and other archaeologists have also noted that the crypt in question bore signs of belonging to a comfortable Jerusalem middle-class family—something Jesus’s humble Nazarene family definitely was not.

Obviously this is going to cause many a ripple amongst both the Christian and non communities. Allow me to thus weigh in.

One of the most bizarre contradictions I see in those of faith is their on-and-off acceptance of scientific discoveries. If a report comes out that a bunch of archaeologists found Noah’s Ark or that they found the likely area where Moses parted the Red Sea, that’s held up as evidence that their faith is right. If scientists say that the Shroud of Turin was impossible to create by any feasible means, then that means it’s obviously holy.

But when science definitively does prove (or may prove) something that doesn’t mesh well with what theists believe, then suddenly science is inadequate and otherwise cannot be used as evidence of anything. When a study showed there was no link between prayer and recovery in the hospital, it was shrugged off. Now you find many again throwing up their hands and saying it means nothing if this is found because, hey, there were lots of Jesuses (Jesi?).

Of course, that kind of evidence only bolsters the claim that the “real” Jesus was not any kind of Messiah, but was just a man. A good man with good teachings, but a man nonetheless. The question becomes, if a tomb was found with the inscription “Jesus Christ” but was devoid of a body, would the faithful take that as proof that he was real and he ascended?

The arguement has already been leveled that of course this proves nothing, Jesus didn’t literally ascend as in his body floated up. I think that’s a dubious claim to make, as it was written that “while [Jesus] blessed them, parted from them, and carried up into heaven.” (Lk 24:51) To suggest that this means he suddenly died and his body laid there while everyone understood his spirit went up requires a bit of a symbolic interpretation, which throws everything into question.

But now we’re getting into hairy territory. My point is just this: if this discovery wasn’t antithetical to the Christian understanding of Jesus’s life, would they be so apt to throw it away? For the record, I don’t believe this is legit either, it’s a little too convenient that it houses everyone of consequence in the same area, I just find the general Christian argument that I’m seeing to be… strange.