The Ossuary: The brief swirl around an ossuary, said to be that of apostle (and reputed brother of Jesus) James, that turned up in the Middle East is over. It's a fake, they say. (The famous "They" having spoken, once again.) It was interesting while it lasted. Personally, I don't dispute that Jesus may have existed, that he was a sage, that he was an insightful and spiritual man. Such people do come along, though they're not typically as straightforward as they may appear -- the oddities of Gandhi, who is as close to ecumenical sainthood as is possible, being a good example. The Gospel of Thomas, in that vein, gives a more impressionistic portrait of an eccentric and mysterious Jesus, rather than the sanitized midwesterner-god-the-son with the hippie beard that the modern Jesus has become.

At any rate, actual proof of a historical Jesus would, I suspect, carry a bushel of disappointment and confusion for every grain of consolation.