Posted on 11/06/2002 11:11:35 AM PST by Polycarp
"Brother of Jesus" bone-box plot thickens
By Ellis Shuman
November 5, 2002
An ancient burial box believed to have belonged to James, the Biblical brother of Jesus, was damaged while being sent for display at a Toronto museum. The museum is awaiting word from the ossuary's owner before attempting to repair the box, but the owner is being questioned by police as the burial box may actually belong to the State of Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli scholars insist that the inscription on the box is a fraud.
Staff at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto discovered numerous cracks Friday in the 2,000-year-old limestone burial box. The cracks appear under an Aramaic inscription which states: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Herschel Shanks, the Jewish publisher of the respected Biblical Archaeology Review, announced the discovery of the box last month as the "first archaeological attestation of Jesus."
"We sent out a conservation proposal to the owner on the weekend and he's decided he wants to wait," Royal Ontario Museum spokesman Francisco Alvarez told The Globe and Mail. The museum sent the owner images of the damage caused in transit, and said that repairs would have to be done in Toronto. The museum plans to exhibit the box between November 16 and December 29.
When granting an export license, officials at the Israel Antiquity Authority received a promise from the ossuary's owner that it would be returned to Israel after four months so that they could continue to study the box in attempts to date it.
Owner may have acquired ossuary illegally "We put one and one together and realized that [the ossuary's owner] must be Oded Golan," says Dr. Uzi Dahari, deputy director of the Antiquities Authority.
Golan, 51, the chief executive at a Tel Aviv high tech company, said he purchased the ossuary from an antiquities dealer some thirty years ago, apparently when he was in his early twenties. "Until a short time ago, I didn't realize the historical importance [of the box] to the Christian world. When I sent the box to an exhibition overseas, it had a small crack in its side that apparently widened during the transit to Canada," Golan told Maariv.
Shortly after the Biblical Archaeology Review announced its finding, Tel Aviv police summoned Golan for questioning. Investigators at the Antiquities Authority claim that Golan acquired the box illegally. According to Israel's Antiquities Law, an artifact that "was discovered or found in Israel" after 1978, when the law was enacted, is "state property." Original media reports indicated that Golan acquired the box about 15 years ago, which would mean that it belongs to the State of Israel.
Scholars insist: inscription is a fraud Israel Insider posted exclusively on October 29 the report of an expert of ancient scripts and writing systems who claimed that while the burial box appeared to be genuine, as was the first part of the inscription, the second half of the inscription, "brother of Jesus," was a "poorly executed fake" and a later addition.
Rochelle I. Altman, co-coordinator of IOUDAIOS-L, a virtual community of scholars engaged in on-line discussion of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, says that people are taking Sorbonne University paleographer Andre Lemaire's word too quickly when he stated "that the inscription is incised."
Both Altman and noted paleographer Ada Yardeni have concluded that the second part of the inscription was added later. "There are two hands; two different scripts; two different social strata, two different levels of execution, two different levels of literacy, and two different carvers," Altman says.
Altman believes that the second half was actually written in the 3rd or 4th century, while Paul Flesher at the University of Wyoming, an expert on Hebraicized Aramaic dialects, dates it anywhere between the 2nd and 7th centuries.
"The reason the police are onto Golan is that there are two such ossuaries, both already known and photographed in a book on the ossuaries in collections in Israel published in 1996. This one was not bought at an antique dealer in the 1960s, but at an auction, from a museum, in the 1980s," Altman says.
© 2001-2002 Koret Communications Ltd. All rights reserved.
Ossuary repairs on hold The Globe and Mail
Final report on the James ossuary Rochelle I. Altman
Ossuary was genuine, inscription was faked Rochelle I. Altman
Altman believes that the second half was actually written in the 3rd or 4th century, while Paul Flesher at the University of Wyoming, an expert on Hebraicized Aramaic dialects, dates it anywhere between the 2nd and 7th centuries.
It looks like plain old everyday MODERN Hebrew block letters to me. I think these "experts" are pulling everyone's leg.
But, of course, forcefully HACKING letters into the 2000 + year old surface did NO DAMAGE WHATSOEVER!!!!!!!!!
On the right, traditional funerary script, very meticulous. On the left, scraggly uneven inconsistent lettering, probably by somebody who didn't speak Hebrew or not of that period . . .
Anyway, it isn't necessarily a "hoax" if the whole inscription was completed in ancient times; it can't be used as evidence of the existence of Jesus, though (as if such evidence were really needed, anyway).
EXACTLY!!!
Though some here and elsewhere with a sectarian axe to grind have used this ossuary box inscription as if it definitively disproved certain Catholic teachings about the Blessed Virgin Mary.
How absurd.
Even if it is a 2nd century hoax, would not this be THE absolute fact that the early Church did not attach itself to a dogma of Mary's perpetual virginity--as proposed by the Church of Rome centuries later?
Personally, I think "the experts" are making an honest, disinterested study of this ossuary.
The ones pulling everyone's leg are those who, two weeks ago, used this ossuary inscription as a mighty big sledge hammer to attack traditional/orthodox Christianity's teaching's regarding the Mother of God.
They owe everyone a big apology and admittance of error, both on this forum and elsewhere, but I ain't holding my breath.
See post #11...even if hoax it backs up fact about early Church theology...
No. Mary's perpetual virginity was taught by the early Christians as well as the protestant reformers Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli.
It was only recently, in the mid 1800's, that protestants began denying this continuous belief of Christianity.
So contrary to the thinking that the RCC "attached itself to a new doctrine...
...the Truth is that protestantism detached itself from the continuous teachings of Christianity regarding Mary, only about a century ago.
I guess you fail to see the contradiction in this post of yours.
Typical of the defenders of this hoax.
Typical. Guess you forgot about the Shroud of Turin tho....
Now wait a second here. Suppose the early Jewish Christians had this box, labelled "James son of Joseph", which they knew contained the bones of the James who the Bible CLEARLY SAYS was the "Brother of Jesus".
The Jews are run out of Israel in 70AD. As the years go by, and the ossuaries begin to pile up, and there are more ossuaries with "Joseph & James" (very common names) the Jews realize that if they are to diferentiate THIS box from the others as belonging to "James the Brother of Jesus" -- they need to FURTHER LABEL it so they can know WHICH "James son of Joseph" is ALSO "James brother of Christ".
So someone adds the additional identifier.
THAT IS YOUR IDEA OF A "HOAX"?????
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