Jesus' Tomb: Proof by Brute Force

NYTimes.com had an interesting article titled Crypt Held Bodies of Jesus and Family, Film says, about an upcoming Discovery Channel "documentary" which purports to have found a tomb with several ossuaries inside, with names of the Holy Family... including that of Jesus Himself, a son called Judas, and somebody whom they are alleging is Mary Magdalene.

My first thoughts on reading this were: (1) If the proof was really all that strong, they wouldn't need to have it shown on the Discovery Channel, of all places; and (2) being an avid Discovery Channel/Animal Planet watcher, why in the world did I not see it being advertised before, if it really were that compelling.

I did more research into the whole thing, and it seems like another one of those "proof by brute force" (to borrow a phrase that we coined back when we were studying algorithms) theories. Or proof through slick marketing and storytelling, I suppose. It's really not that difficult to poke holes in their theory (beyond the initial ones that I had). Here's one of the best of the analyses that I came across. (If you decide to read that, go through the comments as well as the blog post. Some of them are amazingly well-thought out, and rival the original post in terms of scientific rigorousness.)

The most disturbing thing to me, however, is not so much that somebody would come up with something like that. Proofs and claims like that have surfaced before and I am sure that we'll see plenty more in the future. The thing that disturbs me is: why are works like these so popular all of a sudden? First it was the "Da Vinci Code", then it was that Judas Gospel thing, and now this. I don't know enough about eschatology, but is this one of the signs?