Josiah Concept Ministries

I don’t know if everyone reads the comments section, so I wanted to call attention to an excellent reader comment that expounds upon my analysis of the DNA sample in the last post. A reader calling himself Aelli had this to say:

Can I just add a little about the DNA sample? It really should be thrown out of the project completely and can have no bearing at all upon any results obtained. The reasons are this:
     aDNA is notoriously difficult to obtain due to degradation and the strong likelihood of contamination with other DNA in the environment. DNA literally floats in the air around us and is the reason for strict sterilisation controls in university human DNA sample labs.

     There is absolutely no way of knowing if the DNA samples tested were actually those of whoever was named on the ossuary or not as, firstly, the tomb is known to have housed about 18 individuals (possibly as many as 35) raising the prospect of the ossuaries being re-used. Additionally, the DNA samples might even be of the person/s who placed the bones in the ossuaries in the first place. There is no way of being sure about this either way, without other samples to compare, and of course this is impossible.

     Additionally, since the tomb was opened in 1980 it has been subject to repeated contamination from the environment and the number of people who have all handled the ossuaries. We must be looking at least at several dozen people over the past 25 years or so, and again, the DNA sample could be that of anyone of those people.

     Even if we could, by some most enormous stretch of the imagination, be sure that the samples were those of the two people named on the ossuaries, we again run into difficulties. They should have been tested against the DNA of all the other ossuaries in order to examine every possibly relationship permutation, the better to arrive at an honest and scientifically valid set of data. We know from a quote by Jacobovici that the only reason they didn’t do this is simply because they couldn’t be bothered to, not because it wasn’t possible.

     As such, the DNA results obtained can have no bearing on any of this, and deserve to be thrown away. Scientifically they are completely invalid.

Very well said, and I couldn’t agree more! I will say it one more time: DNA, in this case, is completely irrelevant. Anyone who says otherwise is completely unaware of the limitations of DNA analysis.

For more on this topic, James White has exchanged e-mails with Dr. Carney Matheson, the scientist who conducted the DNA test for Jacobvici. Read Dr. Matheson’s response to White here. It is very enlightening!