My thoughts lately about life and love took a jolt recently with the news that the Bible might need some editing.

Authors Barrie Wilson, a professor at York University in Canada, and Simcha Jacobovici, a Canadian-Israeli Emmy-winning documentarian claim in a soon-to-be-released book, “Lost Gospel”, that Jesus had a secret wife, named Mary Magdalene, and fathered two children with her. The book’s opening, noted in a Washington Post article on Monday, reads like a flashier treatment piece for the “Da Vinci Code”, minus all that serious stuff for eggheads.

“What the Vatican feared — and what “Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown only suspected — has come true,” the book begins. They urge potential readers not to shoot the messenger.

“There is now written evidence that Jesus was married to Mary the Magdalene and that they had children together…. Gathering dust in the British Library is a document that takes us into the missing years of Jesus’s life…. According to the document that we uncovered, sometime during this period he became engaged, got married, had sexual relations, and produced children. Before anyone gets his/her theological back up, keep in mind that we are not attacking anyone’s theology. We are reporting on text,” they say.

That text is called the Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias Rhetor, written on animal skin and brought to the UK in 1847 when the British Museum bought it from an Egyptian monastery. Scholars had tossed it aside long ago, but it seems the book’s two authors took a look and, being in the business of exploring these things, thought it interesting.

Like with “Da Vinci” and in the Nicholas Cage vehicle “National Treasure”, this supposed holy grail’s meaning is written in code — ostensibly a pre-Middle Ages attempt at what’s called “encryption” here in this brave, new world you and I live in. The text’s main figure is Joseph, depicted as savior and turned up dead only to be alive later. They contend Joseph was actually Jesus in the text.

Holy Noah’s Ark, Batman! Nah, I don’t think so. A caveat the size of the ark itself can be found sprinkled through Jacobovici’s background. In 2002, he did a documentary based on an earlier finding of a text that claimed Jesus had a family. Academics and archeologists from multiple countries claimed it a hoax, and the Discovery Channel named it among the top 10 scientific hoaxes of all time. Wilson, who has written seemingly scholarly essays on St. Paul’s theology, appears to be the clearer head here. Still, the allure of notoriety can be irresistible even for academia.

And the scent of a big payday either from speaking tours or a movie deal down the line isn’t just in my nose. Check out the nostril of one of the British tweed set, as quoted over the weekend in The Sunday Times:

“It sounds like the deepest bilge,” said Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford University. “I’m very surprised that the British Library gives these authors houseroom.”

Call it an odd reference, but it’s these stories that have me thinking back to the original “Planet of the Apes” film. Charlton Heston’s character, Taylor, rides along the beach in what turns out to be the final scene after seeking out what the apes’ “sacred scrolls” had in store for him.

I guess some in academia just want their own moment in the sand.