The Jesus Strand: A Search for DNA (2017)

This History Channel offering (which aired on Easter Sunday evening, though I watched it next day via the app) respectably attempts to cover the bases of both faith and science. Unfortunately, however, and fatally, it tumbles into the usual History Channel pitfalls of logic and process, particularly those of selective evidence, circular arguments, and the classic speculation-turned-fact (usually in the space of a few sentences). While the geneticist and the pastor work well together, they ignore some glaring goofs. The Shroud of Turin is a deeply venerated object of faith for many, but even the Catholic Church takes no official position on its veracity; similarly, with every relic the duo sought to analyze, provenance was presumed, then relied on as proof. DNA tests of the supposed bones of John the Baptist were contaminated by a technician, but that error is never mentioned as a possibility with tests of other relics. The pastor asks custodians for their opinion on the relic samples in their care, and when they present statements of faith as factual or logical, the pastor pronounces that as proof (before any testing has begun). The duo's circular reasoning yields a controversial conclusion that contradicts all we know about Christ; that is a problem, if science and faith are to work together, as the duo suggests. My other chief complaints are over the Protestant fallacy that Jesus was the firstborn son in a large family of siblings (so he would have descendants), the gnostic fallacy that Christ did not ascend to heaven (so he personally engendered descendents), and the agnostic fallacy that the virgin birth is a myth. Throw out the entire New Testament so you can presume that a bone fragment inscribed with the most common name in Judea must be his mother's? Not in my book. 3.5 stars.