The James Ossuary is a limestone box that is claimed to be from the 1st-century that was used for containing the bones of the dead. An Aramaic inscription reading "Jacob (James), son of Joseph, brother of Yeshua" in translation is cut into one side of the box. The ossuary attracted scholarly attention due to its possible association with the Christian Holy Family. It has been the subject of continuing debate over its authenticity. It is owned by Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan.
In a trial that lasted from 2004 to 2012, Oded Golan and others were tried for forging the inscription. The judge found that the evidence was insufficient to establish their guilt, while making it clear that the verdict did not prove or disprove the authenticity of the inscription.
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Text Transliteration yʿqwb br ywsf ʾḥwy d yšwʿ Romanization Ya'akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua Translation Ya'akov son of Yosef, brother of Yeshua
Significance An ossuary is a stone (usually limestone) depository for storing bones of the dead, considered a luxury for the elite. The dead would lie on a loculus in a tomb for a year of decomposition, and then the remains would be collected and placed in an ossuary. Depending on the wealth and taste of the family, the box would sometimes be inscribed with decorations or the name of the deceased. The James Ossuary measures , which is slightly smaller than average compared to other ossuaries of the time. Owner Oded Golan said that, if the inscription on the James Ossuary is genuine, it may indicate that the ossuary was that of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.
Professor Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University stated that, other than the James Ossuary, there has so far only been one found, amongst thousands of ossuaries, that contains a reference to a brother, concluding that "there is little doubt that this [naming a brother or son] was done only when there was a very meaningful reason to refer to a family member of the deceased, usually due to his importance and fame." He produced a statistical analysis of the occurrence of these three names in ancient Jerusalem and projected that there would only have been 1.71 people named James, with a father named Joseph and a brother named Jesus, expected to be living in Jerusalem around the time at which the ossuary was produced.
Announcement and exhibition The existence of the James Ossuary was announced at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on October 21, 2002. It was organized by Hershel Shanks, founder of the Biblical Archaeology Society. He presented it as the first direct archaeological link to the historical Jesus.
Shanks also announced that the ossuary would be featured at an exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, opening the following month. The opening was to coincide with meetings of scholarly groups such as the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion that were to take place in the city in November.
Scholarly analysis The James Ossuary came from the Silwan area in the Kidron Valley, southeast of the Temple Mount. The bones originally inside the ossuary had been discarded, which is the case in nearly all ossuaries not discovered by archaeologists. The only time Jews conducted burials in this fashion of ossuary was from approximately 20 BC to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The fragile condition of the ossuary attests to its antiquity. The Geological Survey of Israel submitted the ossuary to a variety of scientific tests, which determined that the limestone of the ossuary had a patina or sheen consistent with being in a cave for many centuries. The same type of patina covers the incised lettering of the inscription as the rest of the surface. It is claimed that, if the inscription were recent, this would not be the case.Craig A. Evans, Jesus and the Ossuaries Baylor University Press, 2003
Antiquities dealer Oded Golan invited Parisian epigrapher André Lemaire to view the ossuary in his apartment. According to Lemaire, the cursive Aramaic script is consistent with first-century lettering. He determined that the inscription was not incised with modern tools, as it contains no chemical elements not available in the ancient world.Paul L. Maier, The James Ossuary The Lutheran Witness, 2003. p 1 The first part of the inscription, "James son of Joseph", seems more deeply incised than the latter "brother of Jesus". This may be due to the inscription being made at a different time, or due to differences in the hardness of the limestone.
On June 18, 2003, the Israeli Antiquities Authority published a report, based on their analysis of the patina, which concluded that the inscription is a modern forgery. Specifically, it claimed that the inscription was added in modern times and made to look old by addition of a chalk solution. In 2006, Wolfgang Elisabeth Krumbein, a world-renowned expert in stone patinas, called by the defense counsel, analyzed the ossuary and concluded that "the inscription is ancient and most of the original patina has been removed (by cleaning or use of sharp implement)".Wolfgang E. Krumbein, Preliminary Report: External Expert Opinion on three Stone Items , Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, 2005 He further noted in his report, "any forgery of three very distinct types of patina, if ever possible, requires the development of ultra-advanced techniques, in-depth knowledge and extensive collaboration of a large number of experts from various fields". According to his analysis, the patina inside the inscription took at least 50 years to form; thus, if it is a forgery, then it was forged more than 50 years ago.
In 2004, an analysis of the ossuary's petrography and oxygen isotopic composition was conducted by Avner Ayalon, Miryam Bar-Matthews and Yuval Goren. They compared the δ18O values of the letters' patina from the James Ossuary with the patina sampled from the uninscribed surfaces of the same item ("surface patina"), and with the surface and letters' patinas from legally excavated ossuaries from Jerusalem. Their study undermined the authenticity claim of the ossuary. However, Dr James Harrell, professor of Archaeological Geology at the University of Toledo, provided an explanation for this δ18O discrepancy. He suggested that a cleanser, which antiquities dealers and collectors often use to clean the artifacts to increase value, may have been the source of the low δ18O readings. He tested the most popular cleanser sold in Israel and confirmed that the δ18O value of the cleanser was consistent with the δ18O value of the patina in the inscription.
A later study with a different isotope found that the δ13C values of the surface patina and the inscription patina were almost identical. In 2007, Finnish theologian Matti Myllykoski (Arto Matti Tuomas Myllykoski) summarised the current position thus: "The authenticity and significance of the ossuary has been defended by Shanks (2003), while some scholars—relying on convincing evidence, to say the least—strongly suspect that it is a modern forgery."Myllykoski, Matti (2007), "James the Just in History and Tradition: Perspectives of Past and Present Scholarship (Part II)," Currents in Biblical Research 6:11, p.84, In 2013, an archaeometric analysis by Amnon Rosenfeld, Howard Randall Feldman and Wolfgang Elisabeth Krumbein strengthened the authenticity contention of the ossuary. It found that patina on the ossuary surface matched that in the engravings and that microfossils in the inscription seemed naturally deposited.
Israeli investigation
Limor Livnat, Israeli Minister of Culture, mandated the work of a scientific commission to study the suspicious finds. IAA began an investigation into the affair. The James Ossuary was authentic—albeit unusual in shape—but they concluded that the inscription was likely a forgery.
However, in an external expert report, dated September 2005, Wolfgang E. Krumbein concluded that "Our preliminary investigations cannot prove the authenticity of the three objects beyond any doubt. Doubtlessly the patina is continuous in many places throughout surface and lettering grooves in the case of ossuary and tablet. On the other hand a proof of forgery is not given by the experts nominated by the IAA."Biblical Archaeology Society
The Biblical Archaeology Review continued to defend the ossuary. In articles in the February 2005 issues, several paleographic experts argue that the James Ossuary is authentic and should be examined by specialists outside of Israel. Another article claims the cleaning of the James Ossuary before it was examined may have caused the problem with the patina. On June 13, 2012, a Biblical Archaeology Review press release announced the first major post-trial analysis of the ossuary, discussing the plausibility of its authenticity, including a statistical analysis of ancient names, conducted by Professor Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University, suggesting that in contemporary Jerusalem, there would have been 1.71 people named James with both a father Joseph and a brother named Jesus.Biblical Archaeology Society | Press Release: "Brother of Jesus" Proved Ancient and Authentic
Trial of Oded Golan Oded Golan claimed publicly to believe his finds were genuine. Hershel Shanks declared that he did not believe the evidence of forgery and launched a personal complaint against IAA director Shuka Dorfman. Lemaire supported his original assessment when Frank Cross regretted Shanks' attitude. The Royal Ontario Museum, in its statement about Oded Golan's arrest and the validity of the so-called James Ossuary stated, "There is always a question of authenticity when objects do not come from a controlled archaeological excavation, as is the case with the James Ossuary." However, the museum's decision to rush the ossuary into an exhibition was criticized by scholars. Eric M. Meyers called the ROM "reckless", and Joe Zias said, "They saw the opportunity to make a fast buck and they did it." The ROM rejected these criticisms, stating that it had conducted thorough examinations of the ossuary and consulted scientific experts prior to the exhibition. According to ROM senior curator Edward J. Keall, tests conducted by the museum supported the authenticity of both the ossuary and the inscription, concluding that the weathering was consistent across the surface.
The Israel Antiquities Authority wants to limit the trade in Bible-era artifacts, which they believe encourages grave robbers, who smuggle the choicest finds out of the country.
On December 29, 2004, the Israeli Justice Ministry charged Golan, three other Israelis, and one Palestinian, with running a forgery ring that had been operating for more than twenty years. Golan was indicted in an Israeli court along with his three co-defendants: Robert Deutsch, an epigraphy expert who has given lectures at the University of Haifa; collector Shlomo Cohen; and antiquities dealer Faiz al-Amaleh. They were accused of manufacturing numerous artifacts, including an Ivory pomegranate which had previously been generally accepted as the only proven relic from the Temple of King Solomon. Golan denied the charges.