It is the greatest newspaper story ever told, and it was told again last week. In New York the Oscar-winning film-maker James Cameron pulled back a curtain to reveal two cream-coloured limestone coffins, flown in from Jerusalem. One of them, he said, had once held the recently crucified body of Jesus of Nazareth. Another — there are 10 in the set — had held that of Mary Magdalene.

“It doesn’t get bigger than this,” he said, and then claimed it did. He had evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had married and that another coffin — or “ossuary” — had contained a son, Judah.

It was a scene-stealing performance from the man who swept the Oscars with Titanic in 1998. Indeed, it could hardly have been more dramatic if Cameron had come on stage wearing the Turin shroud.

If true, his claims would fracture the 2,000-year-old pillars of Christian history: the New Testament reports that Jesus rose from the tomb after three days — no ossuary necessary — and “after 40 days” ascended into heaven. “If Christ is not raised,” said St Paul, who had quite a lot riding on it, “then our faith is in vain.”

Confusing for booksellers, too: should Dan Brown be moved to “factual”? After all, The Da Vinci Code also has Jesus getting in the family way with Mary Magdalene.

Cameron produced the Israeli Antiquities Authority to confirm that the 10 ossuaries — or “bone-boxes”, originally dug up in a Jerusalem suburb in 1980 — were inscribed with a collection of names pointing right back to the original Jesus and Mary. The inscriptions included “Yeshua bar Yosef” (Hebrew: Jesus son of Joseph), “Maria”, “Matia” (Matthew), “Yose” (Joseph), “Mariamene e Mara” (Greek: Mary the teacher or Mary Magdalene) and “Yehuda bar Yeshua” (Aramaic: “Judah son of Jesus”).

Finding just these names on coffins from the same 1st-century tomb was way too much of a coincidence, said Cameron. “The chances of finding that combination together was like finding a grave marked Ringo next to others marked John, Paul and George.”

As a way of promoting his film The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which airs tonight on the Discovery Channel, he could hardly have done more.

The film, he says, offers “tangible, physical, archeological and in some cases forensic evidence” for the existence of Jesus.

The only snag is that nobody is looking for any evidence. “I can’t believe how far behind the game he is,” says Tom Wright, one of the Church of England’s leading New Testament scholars and now Bishop of Durham. “Scholars from all religious traditions and none have no doubts that Jesus lived. The argument is about whether he was who he said he was.”

As for the statistics and the names, Professor Geza Vermes, world authority on the life and times of Jesus and one of the first to study the 1st-century Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947, finds Cameron’s claims more Hollywood than Jerusalem.

“These are such common names of the time that nothing would oblige you to connect them with the figures of the New Testament. You’d also have to assume that Joseph and Mary — who famously lived in Nazareth — moved to Jerusalem to be buried there.

Now, says Professor Vermes, who calls himself a “sympathetic agnostic”, “if we had an inscription saying ‘This is Jesus, son of Joseph, celebrated as the Messiah’, then we might be getting somewhere, because why would you need an ossuary if the body has been raised . . . but I wish I hadn’t suggested that because it will give someone an idea!”

Bruce Longenecker, New Testament specialist at St Andrews University, knows a thing or two about 1st-century names: of all those found in the relevant archeological area, 9% are “Jesus”, 14% “Joseph”, 10% “Judas” and 5% “Matthew”. “It’s not as if they had hundreds of names to choose from, so there’s nothing statistically significant about finding such a grouping in Jerusalem at the time,” he says.

But if Cameron’s claims are so risible, why the global fascination? It’s the paradox of our religious curiosity in our allegedly secular age, says Longenecker. “We have such a hunger to find ways of interpreting Jesus that are different to orthodox depictions, that artefacts are leapt on and massaged, often in rather farfetched ways.”

The most famous 20th-century example was the Turin shroud, which fell from grace in the 1980s after radiocarbon dating suggested it was medieval smoke and mirrors. But while an ossuary or shroud can command a global 21st-century audience, down the centuries relics have always been box office. Collect all the pieces of the True Cross venerated in hundreds of European churches and you could rebuild Noah’s Ark. From Veronica’s Veil (used to wipe the forehead of Jesus) to the Crown of Thorns and the Holy Lance (which pierced Jesus’s side to confirm his death), relics have always lured the devout.

“There have been quite a few foreskins of Jesus,” says Professor Vermes. “And several heads of John the Baptist. The believer wants something tangible to confirm their faith, the unbeliever wants the same to disprove it.”

Take it from me, he says, speaking as someone who knows, “Neither will have it.” History won’t turn up that kind of proof.

But Keith Ward, former regius professor of divinity at Oxford University, wonders if the present fascination with shrouds and tombs is different from religious veneration. Relics offered a sense of devotion because of their perceived link to Jesus — “like people who collect football shirts” — but “this modern obsession is the opposite”.

“Like The Da Vinci Code, it is the simple desire to shock even when the argument is breathtakingly literalistic, ludicrous and superstitious.”

It’s no different from campaigning secularists who have taken to attacking religious belief, Ward says. “It’s part of the same syndrome as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, writing shallow books which attack Christianity but are still taken seriously. As a scholar, I don’t care if people aren’t religious, but I am dumbfounded at the second-rate thinking.”

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