A “miracle” baby has brought a kind of mystical hope to people in Russia’s mostly Muslim southern fringe who are increasingly desperate in the face of Islamist violence.

From hunchbacked grandmas to schoolboys, hundreds of pilgrims lined up this week in blazing sunshine to get a glimpse of 9-month-old baby Ali Yakubov, on whose body they say verses from the Koran appear and fade every few days. [video]

From the old Procter & Gamble Satanism libel to tales of more recent vintage about President Obama’s faith and citizenship, Internet-fueled rumors seem to run rampant. And, frighteningly, Christians seem at the very least to be as susceptible as the population at large to spread false stories.

So, why are Christians so willing to believe unsubstantiated rumors? And more troubling, why are Christians, who should hold the highest standards of truth-telling, so eager to spread rumors — and even downright libels?

A new version of the Nigerian e-mail scam plays on fears of anti-Semitism, coaxing unsuspecting Jews to part with their money to help solve an imaginary crisis half a world away.

Several prominent scholars who were interviewed in a bitterly contested documentary that suggests that Jesus and his family members were buried in a nondescript ancient Jerusalem burial cave have now revised their conclusions, including the statistician who claimed that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the tomb being the family burial cave of Jesus of Nazareth, a new study on the fallout from the popular documentary shows.

Just as freshly sprouted daffodils indicate the imminent arrival of spring, so the pop culture’s yearly discovery (and exploitation) of Jesus Christ heralds the upcoming celebration of the Easter holiday.

Attempts to debunk Christianity have become traditional Easter-season fare in recent years.

In a surreal moment on “Larry King Live” earlier this week, the film’s producer, James Cameron (of “Titanic” fame), told us with a straight face that we should all be thankful that we now have tangible evidence that Jesus existed. Actually, no serious historian of biblical antiquity has ever doubted that there was a historical Jesus.

Claims that the burial site of Jesus, his wife and son have been found in an ancient family cemetery in Jerusalem have been criticised by researchers as fanciful.

“The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” which premieres March 4 on the Discovery Channel, chronicles recent efforts to apply modern science and new understanding of Jesus and his followers to the 1980 discovery of a set of ossuaries, or “bone boxes,” under what is now an apartment complex near Jerusalem.

The film has also sent shockwaves throughout the Christian world, shaking the foundation of a religion established on the tenets that Jesus, a single man who never married, was crucified, died, and was resurrected. (That’s ABC News’ take. Christians simply see the documentary for what it is: yet another hoax based on fantasy and speculation).

To resolve the question of whether the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene may have rested in two limestone boxes discovered in a Jerusalem suburb, the filmmakers of a new documentary took novel approaches – including turning to statisticians. Some religious scholars and archaeologists, however, have not been convinced by the numbers.

Transcript of Larry King’s interview with the maker of the documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus

The Discovery TV Channel has released new details of the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” documentary that is to be officially launched at a New York press conference on Monday, including the claim that Jesus was buried in a Jerusalem tomb alongside Mary Magdalene and, possibly, their son Judah.

The makers of a new documentary, to be aired for the first time at a news conference in New York on Monday, claim that a tomb found in a Jerusalem cave 36 years ago belongs to Jesus Christ.

In a scene worthy of a Dan Brown novel, archaeologists a quarter of a century ago unearthed a burial chamber near Jerusalem. Inside they found ossuaries, or boxes of bones, marked with the names of Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Then one of the ossuaries went missing. The human remains inside were destroyed before any DNA testing could be carried out. While Middle East academics doubt that the relics belong to the Holy Family, the issue is about to be exposed to a blaze of publicity with the publication next week of a book.