Name:nopaniers •
Title: Probability is misleading, film is a hoax. •
Date posted: 01/31/09 5:19
Q: The probability that this is Jesus tomb is not 1/600. That is the probability that this particular set of names is found. However, to make this movie, any set of names compatible with Jesus family could have been used. So what combination of names would be acceptable to make this movie?
We know from the film that it would accept "Matthew" even though we don't know of a Matthew related to Jesus. That was done under the claim that variations of Matthew were found in Jesus family tree. But almost every Jewish name is found in Jesus family tree! So presumably that makes almost any Jewish name from the royal line ok.
We also know from the movie that he was willing to accept names which were questionable. Some archaelogists I have read say they just can't make out Jesus name. Even with the creative editting of the movie, the guy they asked said that it looked like graffiti.
We also know that Jose, whose name is made so much of, is spelled differently to how we might expect it. So variations of all these names are ok.
So how many names does that leave as acceptable? I figure there are between 100 and 200 possible names, and on top of that there are variations. But let's be incredibly conservative here. We won't allow any variations like the movie does. We will ignore questionable names, graffiti and other questions including ones which are illegible. We'll ignore all of this and say that they started with a list of 20 names which might be in Jesus family.
So how many combinations of names would be acceptable then? Well if the names are unique then there's 20 choose 6 = 121 million different combinations of names which could be used to make a sensational film like this. The chances of finding at least one tomb (assuming that all the combinations of names have a chance of 1/600 of being found) is 1- (1-1/600)^121,000,000 which is... well it's so close to 100% as to not be statistically significant.
If they absolutely require a particular name (for example), Jesus, before they start, things are worse, but not a lot. In this case the chance would go down by that fraction. I figure this is what they did. They went looking for the name Jesus, and just chose the best one, which they were (statistically speaking) absolutely guaranteed to find.
So in summary: The chance of finding this unique combination of names might be 1/600. But the film-makers would be happy with any combination of names which might cause controversy. There are literally millions of those combinations - even for a very, very, conservative estimate of the number of names they would accept. Presumably every archaelogist who is worth their salt knows this. These names occur all the time, and the only unique thing is the particular combination. But the combination isn't unique either, because we weren't looking for just one single combination. They were looking for one of a possible 120 million different combinations (as a very conservative estimate!), all of which would have been acceptable to the film maker. And that makes the probability of this actually being Jesus tomb almost precisely 0.
