Cloning Jesus?

    Word has been spreading on the web and elsewhere that a California organization has the technology and intent to clone Jesus Christ. By all appearances, the group's project is a fund-raising hoax, yet its claims are being taken seriously by a few hopeful Christians and have received at least bemused coverage in some regular media.

    This is how it is described in http://www.clonejesus.com/:

"The Second Coming Project is a not-for-profit organization devoted to bringing about the Second Coming of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, as prophesied in the Bible, in time for the 2,000th anniversary of his birth. Our intention is to clone Jesus, utilizing techniques pioneered at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, by taking an incorrupt cell from one of the many Holy Relics of Jesus' blood and body that are preserved in churches throughout the world, extracting its DNA, and inserting into an unfertilized human egg (oocyte), through the now-proven biological process called nuclear transfer. The fertilized egg, now the zygote of Jesus Christ, will be implanted into the womb of a young virginal woman (who has volunteered of her own accord), who will then bring the baby Jesus to term in a second Virgin Birth.

"If all goes according to plan, the birth will take place on December 25, 2001, thus making Anno Domini 2001 into Anno Domini Novi 1, and all calendrical calculations will begin anew.

"How Can This Be Possible?:
    a. Modern cloning technology enables us to clone any large mammal - including humans - using just a single cell from an adult specimen.
    b. Throughout the Christian world are churches that contain Holy Relics of Jesus' body: his blood, his hair, his foreskin. Unless every single one of these relics is a fake, this means that cells from Jesus' body still survive to this day.
    c. We are already making preparations to obtain a portion of one of these relics, extract the DNA from one of its cells, and use it to clone Jesus.

"No longer can we rely on hope and prayer, waiting around futilely for Jesus to return. We have the technology to bring him back right now: there is no reason, moral, legal or Biblical, not to take advantage of it.

"IN ORDER TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM SIN, WE MUST CLONE JESUS TO INITIATE THE SECOND COMING OF THE CHRIST.

"The Second Coming Project is soliciting contributions and donations to help us is our quest. Time is short! We must have a fertilized Jesus zygote no later than April of 2001 if Baby Jesus is to come to term on the predicted date. Please send all contributions to:

"The Second Coming Project
P.O. Box 295
Berkeley, CA 94701"

    Also Sci-fi novels such as "The Genesis Code" have tried to create plausible savior-cloning scenarios. But any science-literate or even theology-literate person will pretty quickly conclude that Jesus-cloning experiments simply won't work. See Reviews: The Genesis Code    The Genesis Code by John Case

The Cloning of Jesus the Christ is impossible:

    His Second Coming will not be by this Sci-fi way, for the following reasons:

    1- Even if, through science you could overcome the actual impossible scientific barriers and reproduce a baby with an exact duplicate of Jesus' genetic structure, you still would not have Jesus the Christ, the Only son of God. All you'd have is a physical look-alike, but not His Soul and Divinity... What a person is, personality, character, and in this special case of Jesus, His Divine Being, does not come from genetic structure only; it comes also from experience and environment, learning, culture, and in this very special case of Jesus Christ from God Himself!.

    2- Even assuming a DNA sample from Jesus could be found on the Shroud of Turin, for example, it would almost certainly be worthless for genetic engineering. Jesus died 2,000 years ago; his DNA would now be degraded. Genes slowly break down if a living body does not preserve them. The "genetic fingerprint" tests that courts are beginning to use to assess guilt or innocence are tests that look only for a short "genetic marker,".  Degraded DNA can be scanned for some kinds of molecular information, but not to recover the Genoma itself... no technology present or anticipated can make it usable again.

    3- The technology used for Dolly requires live cells taken from a living animal. And even the Dolly experiment has not been duplicated yet from mammal adult cells, only from embryonic cells. See Cloning.
    This fundamental requirement most likely means that if human cloning is ever possible, only living embryonic or even living adults are needed... not Jesus or Einstein or anyone else from the past, could be cloned with the present cloning knowledge.

    4- What about from the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano where there is the Blood and Flesh of Jesus?... Again, no technology present or anticipated can make it... and if ever possible at all it will be just a replica of the physical body of Jesus, not Jesus the Christ, God.

    As a Christian, I'd love to see Jesus return. But genetic engineering is not going to accomplish the happy event. Whoever produced the "Second Coming Project" materials is talking about some kind of Science Fiction, but clearly has no idea what he is talking about... or just a good plan to get some money and fame with false illusions and dreams.