[lexington minuteman 1775]

intresting read.Think i will wait till other scholars wade in on this one. But my guess is we will never really know whether its real or fake.Some things are best left to FAITH.

[joesnuffy]

When Jesus was told that his mother and brothers and sisters wish to see him...he replied "Those who do my Father's will, are my mother and brothers and sisters indeed"!

[berned]

As you know, the Ossuary was damaged pretty badly during the recent flight to Canada...

Here's an intriguing thought.

There are several other threads which claim that the second half of the inscription "Brother of Jesus" is a hoax or forgery...

My thought is, since the limestone is 2000 years old and very very fragile...It's very serious damage, but not unusual for a limestone box of this age." ... and since the stress fractures were inherent in the piece of limestone, (just made manifest by vibration to the fragile limestone during the flight) isn't it reasonable to assume that if the 2nd half of the inscription was FORGED RECENTLY, the stress from grasping the fragile box and laboriously scratching the words "brother of Jesus" into it, would have caused the box to fracture THEN?

In a way, doesn't the stress fracture caused by this week's airplane ride almost AUTHENTICATE that the inscription was NOT faked or added recently?

[Vidalia]

Well I'd be dawg gone!

Another religious fakery?

Who could imagine such a horrid thaing, but who could or would benefit, exceptin' for the fakirs themselves?

Take 'em out and bury 'em in the deep and undulating sands of the desert, along with their thieving brethren...

[Hank Kerchief]

The ossuary itself is undoubtedly genuine; the well executed and formal first part of the inscription is a holographic original by a literate (and wealthy) survivor of Jacob Ben Josef in the 1st century CE. The second part of the inscription bears the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition and is questionable to say the least.

Somebody needs to explain why the word "fraud" is used for this supposed, "addition," and exactly who it would be that was defrauded. Why an addition is necessarily a fraud is never explained, it could just as well have been a well intentioned addition of fact, even if poorly done.

It is obvious the evaluation is anything but objective, and the reason for that may point to a genuine fraud.

Hank

[isthisnickcool]

Why don't the ask Walter Mondale? He was around back then.

[toenail]

ping

[Varda]

It will be fun reading about this find for a while as the expects have their usual knock down drag out fight over it.
The issue of the spelling of "brother" was addressed in Biblical Archaology Review.

From BAR,
"To forge the James inscription, a forger would need to be able to imitate Aramaic letter forms of the first century CE and also to avoid any errors in first-century usage.

Before publishing the inscription, we showed it to Father Joseph Fitzmyer, formerly of the Catholic University of America and one of the world's leading experts in first-century Aramaic and a pre-eminent Dead Sea Scroll editor (he edited a number of the Aramaic texts among the scrolls). Father Fitzmyer was troubled by the spelling in the James inscription for the word "brother", it is spelled aleph, het, waw and yod. In Hebrew it is spelled simply aleph het. Only after hundreds of years would the spelling on the James inscription appear in Aramaic, and then it would be plural, not singular.

However, after doing some research, Father Fitzmyer found the same spelling of "brother" in the Dead Sea Scroll known as the Genesis Apocryphon. In addition, He found another example in which the same form appeared - in an ossuary inscription in which the deceased was identified as someone's brother, just as James is here. "I stand corrected," said Father Fitzmyer.

Either the putative forger had to know first century Aramaic better than Father Fitzmyer or the inscription is authentic.

To my mind this is one of the strongest arguments for the authenticity of the James inscription. - H.S. (Hershel Shanks)"

[SunkenCiv]

A Blast from the Past.

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