Jesus H. Christ!

This is painful to watch, so I’ll summarize it and spare you.

Ron Wyatt, biblical fantasist extraordinaire, claims to have found dried blood in the rocks below the place where Jesus was crucified. He took it to an Israeli lab where they reconstituted it, and then cultured it in a growth medium, and discovered that the blood was still alive. A miracle! Especially since if you took some old rock scrapings and threw them in growth medium you probably would get something to grow…it just wouldn’t be human cells.

Then, further, they looked at it under a microscope and counted the chromosomes. How, I don’t know; you can’t see chromosomes with a light microscope unless you squash the cells undergoing mitosis and stain them, which would require killing Jesus’ cells.

But they counted them anyway, miraculously, I guess. They discovered that Jesus’ cells — we have now leapt straight into the assumption that this is actually blood from a named person 2000 years ago — contained 24 chromosomes. Twenty three from Mary, which gave him his human form, and a Y chromosome from Jehovah to make him male. So the old joke is right: the “H” in his name is for “Haploid”. Also, he’s aneuploid.

Of course, it’s a bit odd. Old guy comes into the lab with some flaky red stuff scraped off a rock; lab technicians accept that it’s two millennia old human blood. They cultivate it on growth medium and get some cells, and they still accept his claim that these are human. They magically count chromosomes in these cells, and they have a non-human number; they still assume it’s human, and even that it is from a specific human. None of this makes any sense.

After that revelation, the video goes on and on about another old evangelical Christian chestnut: there is a molecule called laminin that is vaguely cross-shaped, which is somehow supposed to imply that we’re held together by Jesus. Only (?) problem is this guy spells and pronounces it “liminin”.

We are compelled to accept the inevitable truth. Jesus was haploid, and he was from New Zealand.

The only other possible explanation is that Ron Wyatt is a liar, and these gullible Christians are mind-bogglingly stupid. But that can’t possibly be.


  1. Larry says

    Oh, great, next thing you know Jim Bakker is going to be selling buckets of survival jesus meat cells.

    I’ll one up him. I’m going to sell rocks off of which you can scrape your own jesus cells and grown them in a special solution (secret formula: H2O + C12H22O11) included with the rocks. It’ll be sort of like growing your own batch of sea monkeys. Of course, not every rock is going to have jesus cells on them but that’s part of the fun.

  2. says

    They’ll try to create a new Jesus (“this technology was predicted, it is CLEARLY WHAT THEY MEANT BY JESUS RETURNING”) but the rock will contaminate it and it will be a golem Jesus and
    Oh, then Golem Jesus will see that giant Jesus statue in–uh, where is it, Brazil?–and use his magic golem powers to bring it to life and then the two Jesus will make out.

  3. says

    Why would God create a physical body with weird DNA for Jesus? He was supposed to be a human like any other human, so he could be a sacrifice in the place of mankind. Wouldn’t that special chromosome ruin the magic spell?

  4. cartomancer says

    There was a line of Medieval theological speculation which held that a relic of Christ’s blood was a physical impossibility. The reasoning goes that Jesus was transfigured bodily into Heaven after his resurrection and post-mortem time on earth, and when he was every earthly particle of him would have been also – including all the blood he shed. Needless to say academics attached to cathedral chapters with Blood of Christ relics on display tended to dispute this reasoning.

    Still, it’s not like there aren’t half a dozen European cathedrals which still claim to possess Blood of Christ relics today. Perhaps the scientists ought to compare that with Mr. Wyatt’s rock gunge to see which one is more Jesusy? As a control they could get a Catholic priest to do a mass over some wine – though you’d need to analyse it with a special Aristotelian microscope that can pick out substantial form beneath the accidents of everyday oeneous matter.

  5. weylguy says

    When someone says “… something, something, Jesus” then it just has to be true to the legions of Christians who’ll believe anything nowadays.

  6. evodevo says

    Who would believe this? A lot of the fundies I know lol. This kind of Weekly World News stuff is fine with them … the last time most of them had Bio was in HS, and they weren’t paying any attention at the time anyway.

  7. says

    I think this is great news. It is about time for a reboot of the Jurassic Park series, but this time instead of reanimating dinosaurs, they will have a park stocked with Jesuses (Jesi?) that get loose and start terrorizing humanity. Everyone will be terrified, but one ruffled old fart, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Christopher Hitchens, will face down the Jesi and put them in their place (on the shelf of historical fiction).

  8. zetopan says

    “… these gullible Christians are mind-bogglingly stupid. But that can’t possibly be.”
    Your summary is ironically true, they are way beyond “mind-bogglingly stupid”.

  9. Matthew Herron says

    Screw it; if they really got living cells out of 2000 year old blood, and if a human being survived thirty-some years with 24 chromosomes, I’ll give them that it was Jesus. That would be the least surprising part of the story.

  10. smoggybatzrubble says

    Did somebody say New Zealand? Be very careful what you awaken!

    It’s Smoggy Batzrubble, OM for Jesus, here.

    Of course Jesus is alive, and PZ is correct, he’s down here in Noo Zillund molesting sheep with me and my best bubba Floyd Rubber. As for that being 2000 year old blood, all I can say is bollocks, it’s far more recent than that, and the blood is mine, not Jesus’s. How do I know? I was on a trip to the Holy Land just last year as part of a blessed and blissful flagellation party, and I felt the need to slip off for a bit of quiet hand relief. Unfortunately Floyd Rubber caught me sloping off to spank my monkey without him, and he came up behind me and dropped a holy rock on my meatstick. As I was rolling around in agony screaming like the angel choir, this old geezer, Ron Wynot came scrambling about with his tongue hanging out and slipped face first into a congealing puddle of my exsanguinated fluid. And yes, before you so rudely enquire, all Batzrubbles have 24 chromosomes, as well as 7 toes and three testicles (even the women) and if you don’t like that you can go fuck yourself.

    BTW, Jesus says Donald Trump is indeed the Antichrist, and he’s also a very naughty boy.

    May you all burn in hell. Yours in Christian love,

    Smoggy Batzrubble, missionary to the atheists

    PS Laminin is an anagram for “I’m Nail’n” It’s one of God’s sadistic little jokes at the expense of his crucified son. And you wonder why Jesus has escaped to New Zealand? Actually, a lot of you Mercans seem to be heading this way, particularly your planeticidal plutocrats (Peter Thiel anyone?)

  11. robro says

    Oh, I get it. He’s selling something.

    Here’s another cock-and-bull story the throw on the pile. David Meade predicts the end of the world on Sept. 23rd. Something to do with the planet Nibiru and 33 being one of those magic numbers in the Bible…and 9/23 is 33 days after the eclipse. As Meade puts, “It’s a very biblically significant, numerologically significant number. I’m talking astronomy. I’m talking the Bible … and merging the two.” Right. I’m talking stupid. I’m guessing there are thousands more.

  12. smoggybatzrubble says

    What proof do you want, oh ye chigau of little faith? It’s not my fault that the login pages have all changed since I last posted.

    And you should pray to Jesus for the truth (and to redeem your atheist soul) not to PZ the dyed-in-the-wool cracker desecrator.

    Yours in Christurbation


  13. mywall says


    So religious terrorists are running a bullshit lab to produce propaganda. Why am I not surprised?

  14. PDX_Greg says

    Is everybody here missing the significance of this? We should obtain and sequence that chromosome immediately and make our own omnipotent, omniscient being! First we have to determine which sequences we have to manipulate to eliminate the genes at the root of the bloodlust, the racism, the misogyny, and the extreme narcissistic need to be constantly worshiped. Then we have to make it so that our creation kicks that disgusting god’s ass!

    Also this is comment #24. Numerology has willed this!

  15. Dunc says

    Wait, what kind of blood cells are these? If they’re red blood cells, I have a number of additional questions…

  16. lumipuna says

    OK, I thought Cartomancer’s comment was the best thing in this thread but then Smoggy Batzrubble showed up. Apparently it’s “Make Pharyngula great again” day.

  17. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    But but but don’t they make Jesus blood and drink it every Sunday through transmogrification? Why scrape old stuff off rocks and sciencefy it when priests make the stuff from common wine each week? Mind blown /s

  18. birgerjohansson says

    I was about to suggest that we can now potentially clone God, and that Lex Luthor would be very interested, but PDX_Greg beat me to the clone angle.

    BTW there ac tually is a graphic novel titled “Supergod”.
    For corporeal gods, you can also read “Towing Jehowah” ( if you want to tow the corpse of God to a final resting place in the Antarctic, you will need something the size of a supertanker)

  19. Ogvorbis: A bear of very little brains. says

    Smoggy is back? So, like, everything will now be slightly harder to see and our eyes will burn?

  20. blf says

    robro@20, Here’s what I think was the best, as in funniest, part of the article: “Sept 23 is 33 days since the Aug 21 total solar eclipse, which Meade believes is an omen.” As I noted at Affinity:

    Um, kook, solar eclipses can be predicted with considerable accuracy for a rather long time. The main thing one is a sign of is Newtonian orbital physics, except perhaps to those who have trouble with the concepts “Earth not flat” and “Earth orbits Sun”.

    And note he already has his excuse in: The world is not ending [on 23 Sept], but the world as we know it is ending, […] A major part of the world will not be the same the beginning of October. Which covers just about every possibility.

  21. blf says

    [E]verything will now be slightly harder to see and our eyes will burn?

    Yer playing with choo-choos again?

    (How are you doing? I hope things are progressing well!)

  22. Ogvorbis: A bear of very little brains. says


    Still recovering. But I got an electro-stimulation unit which is helping with the pain. They were going to give me a TENS, but figured I wasn’t worth it. So I got a NINES unit.


    I’ve kinda plateau’d as far as the recovery goes. But the shock therapy is working.

  23. Owlmirror says



    So wouldn’t that also mean his foreskin, which various churches also claimed to have?

    Although…. maybe that would mean that Jesus in heaven is uncircumcised. No, wait, maybe he recircumcised himself, and sent his foreskin back to Earth as a sign to our naughty world.

    Theolology is so interesting!

  24. blf says


    Not an ELEVENS unit?

  25. Rich Woods says

    contained 24 chromosomes

    This confirms my suspicion that, given all the cavorting around fig trees and pushing over of tables, Jesus was a chimpanzee.

    I suppose it’s understandable that the Gospel authors left out the poo-flinging. No kid would ever make it through Sunday School with a straight face* if the Good News contained stories of poo-flinging.

    *Come to think of it, some of us didn’t anyway.

  26. says

    @Owlmirror: supposedly a 17th century theologian named Leo Allatius claimed that the Holy Foreskin ascended into Heaven and became the rings of Saturn. However, the treatise allegedly containing this claim has never been found.