Posted on 05/25/2006 10:45:12 AM PDT by Mike Bates
DOES JESUS have a secret line of descendants who are living today? It's an oddly appealing idea. We tend to think of ancestry in terms of bloodlines, in which some individuals are descended from famous ancestors and others are not. And the idea echoes deeper religious themes of individuals and groups favored by God.
But this is one idea in "The Da Vinci Code," which opens today in theaters worldwide, that just won't wash. Jesus couldn't have just a few descendants living today. If anyone alive today is descended from Jesus, then so are most of the people on the planet.
This absurd-sounding statement is an inevitable consequence of the workings of ancestry. People may have just a few descendants in the two or three generations after they lived, but after that the number of descendants explodes. For a population to remain the same size, every adult has to have an average of two children who grow to adulthood and have children. So the number of descendants for the average person grows exponentially — two children, four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and so on. In just 10 generations — roughly 250 years — an average person can have more than 1,000 descendants.
SNIP
In real genealogies, a person's descendants either peter out within a few generations or begin to grow exponentially. That's why people who came to America on the Mayflower now have thousands of descendants. People who lived just a few centuries earlier have many millions of descendants.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It wasn't AT Hooters. I said they were FROM Hooters... big difference.
Well, there COULD be people related to Jesus around today. He may have had brothers and sisters.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. My experience at Hooters is pretty limited. Whenever I go in there, the only employee fawning attention on me is the bouncer.
Perhaps there needs to be a TRITE AWARD for such shopworn phrases as "It's only about sex", "Bush lied", and "It's just fiction."
Sounds like the premise for a book that could make you millions.
Don't you think that awards have become trite also?
Has anyone here seen the movie? I haven't, and I haven't read the book either (and I don't plan to do either). But I am curious about the 'revelation' about Jesus' surviving descendant(s) that supposedly had the Cannes audience crack up laughing. Someone want to FReepmail me with the details (Please???)
No, but Mel Gibson did!
Like, whatever. :)
Have a nice day! ;<}
May the force be with you :> )
Make love, not war! ;@ }
Come to think of it, how could Jesus's trials have been complete if he didn't have a teenage son?
Where do the aliens come into the picture?
Our self-centered secular society needed a guru to express the false doctrine that there is no God. Brown fit the job description and he wrote the Da Vinci Code to express the hopelessness of a society without a loving God.
Before someone jumps on my last line, let me rephrase. Brown wrote a book to appeal to the hopeless in a society which does not believe in a loving personal God.
Is that before or after the Free Masons infiltrated Opus Dei?
Maybe we should all go out and burn American flags, it'll make our patriotism stronger!
You're supposed to capitalize "FICTION" so you can irritate the folks who get tired of being reminded that it's fiction.
I have often wondered about the lineage, if any, of the cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist.
I'm claiming to be Jesus' heir, and from what I hear the inheritance is quite substantial.
"superior DNA because they are a cross-breed of angels and mortal women) "
No, that was the Nephilim, they were the heroes of old, men of reknown.
And they all perished in the flood if you follow what was written.
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