I would like to stake my theological reputation on the following sentence, so please read it carefully. There can be no serious doubt that archaeologists in Jerusalem have, with help from the film director James ("Titanic") Cameron, found the ossiary, or stone casket, that contained the bones of Jesus, who therefore did not rise from the dead but died just like everyone else. Perhaps I should rephrase that last bit, actually. There can be no serious doubt that archaeologists have found the ossiary of someone called Jesus, who was, all the evidence suggests, mortal.

I know what you are thinking: "it's bound to be some other guy called Jesus". Admittedly this is possible, for there were other people in ancient Palestine, normal non-divine people, also called Jesus. So maybe this bone-box belongs to some nonentity with no religious significance at all who just happened to be called Jesus? But wait, consider the evidence: this one is named as "Jesus, son of Joseph". Perhaps you are still sceptical, perhaps you think that there were other people in ancient Palestine called Jesus whose dads were called Joseph. Admittedly this is technically possible.

But now consider some fascinating further evidence. This ossiary is accompanied by two others. One bears the name Mariamene, which can be translated as "Mary known as the Master", and the other bears the name "Judah, son of Jesus". It seems that this Jesus had a family: he married someone called Mary (whose nickname suggests that she wore the trousers in the Jesus-house), and he had a son.

So where does this take us? I know what you're thinking: "Oh, dear, it can't be our Jesus then, because, if I remember rightly, he was a single man." But wait. Just wait, will you? Maybe "our Jesus" wasn't as single as the Bible tells us. Maybe he married his close friend Mary Magdalene. Maybe he didn't actually die on a cross but lived to experience the manifold joys and stresses of family life. So maybe this was indeed THE Jesus, and the Bible got some of his details wrong.

Er, hang on. If the Bible got it wrong, and Dan Brown got it right, then are we still talking about THE Jesus? The claim made by Mr Cameron and his fellow bone-botherers is that this is the ossiary of THE Jesus, the founder of Christianity. Here, he says, is the proof that he really existed. But here is the rub: it's proof that WHO really existed? The Jesus of Christianity-fame?

Here we come up against a fascinating contradiction. It is logically impossible to find the bones of the Jesus-of-Christianity-fame, for their unfindability is his a key part of his claim to fame. Ah, but what if he actually died like anyone else? Then the person you are referring to is not the Jesus-of-Christianity-fame. Ah, but what if the Bible was a cover up, and the real Jesus was just a wise teacher who got married and had kids?

Oh dear. Let us be very clear about what people are doing when they argue for this possibility, for it is not generally understood. They are not attacking a religious myth, in the manner of atheist rationalism. They are peddling an alternative Jesus myth. They are constructing a new character. This new character both is and is not the Jesus-of-Christianity-fame. He is parasitic on the Jesus-of-Christianity-fame. He is not just anyone; he is THE Jesus, but without the supernatural and celibate elements.

Why do people want to believe in this human Jesus figure? As I said in a previous blog, it seems that such people are both attracted to Christianity and repelled by it, and want to invent a sort of half-way house, a way of being cultically involved yet also "sceptical". This position is essentially cowardly.

Mr Cameron presents his documentary about the ossiaries as a factual investigation into recent archaeological findings. But to make such a film is actually a strange sort of religious act: it is the attempt to fuel the strange and tedious cult of the merely human Jesus.

On the other hand I see something positive in all this nonsense. It shows that people remain attracted to the figure of Jesus, and sceptical about the official church version of Christianity. As a "post-ecclesial" Christian, I am sympathetic to this. There is a sort of frustrated Protestantism lurking beneath the conspiracy crap. I just wish it would venture out.