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Those words inscribed on the so-called James ossuary, a stone burial box that reportedly held the bones of the brother of Jesus, set off a frenzy when the discovery was first announced in a 2002 press conference. The box appeared on the cover of Time magazine, drew thousands to a Toronto exhibit and was featured in a critical 60 Minutes report, in 2008, linking it to anantiquity forgery ring.
The inscription claim was celebrated, denigrated and ultimately prosecuted. And now with a "not guilty" verdict on Wednesday in the forgery trial in Israel of the antiquities dealer, Oded Golan, the long-running saga of the James Ossuary has taken only its latest turn.
Concluding a seven-year case, Jerusalem district court judge Aharon Farkash ruled that evidence presented by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) against Golan wasinsufficient to prove the last part of the inscription was faked beyond a reasonable doubt. "This is not to say that the inscription is true and authentic and was written 2,000 year ago," Farkash added.
In 2003, Israeli authorities raided Golan's apartment, finding the ossuary sitting atop a rooftop toilet amid a workshop filled with inscription tools, suggesting that the Jesus reference was forged.
No one disputes the ossuary itself is an authentic burial box, likely placed in a crypt near Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Removing bones from rock tombs and reburying them in ossuaries was fashionable among the wealthy there from the mid-reign of Herod the Great, Herod of the New Testament around 15 B.C., until 70 A.D., when a Roman army sacked Jerusalem.
However, not much agreement remains between archaeologists and those who vouch forthe inscription, such as French ancient-writing expert Andre Lemaire, whoauthenticated the inscription in 2002. With the verdict's announcement, Golan claimedvindication for his innocence, while the IAA claimed victory because the court held him guilty of separate violations of antiquities laws.
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Trial publicity brought a spotlight on the shadowy-but-legal sales of antiquities in Israel, and as a result, "the trade in written documents and seals derived from illicit antiquities excavations has almost been entirely halted ," said an IAA statement. "This in turn has led to a dramatic reduction in the scope of antiquities robbery occurring at biblical sites in Israel."
How Golan and others acquired the box, and what they did with it, was where the controversy started. In 2002, the magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review and theDiscovery Channel announced the existence of the ossuary at a press conference, noting that Lemaire vouched that the inscription "very probably" referred to the brother of Jesus of Nazareth.
Many outside experts, however, concluded the inscription's "Jesus" reference was phony, including the scholar Rochelle Altman, who found that it "bears the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition." In other words, someone had chiseled the Jesus reference onto the box after its discovery and then treated the words with weathering chemicals to artificially age its appearance to match the patina of the stone box, a charge made by Israeli officials against Golan. All in a bid to dupe some wealthy collector into paying more.
"For archaeologists, the court decision doesn't really change anything," says University of North Carolina archaeologist Jodi Magness, author ofStone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus. "There is no way to tell where the ossuary came from, and without that context, the ossuary is worthless."
Adds Magness: "In Biblical archaeology, there are all these things tied up with faith that people want to see evidence for, Exodus, Noah's Ark and especially, Jesus, just him, that people want physical evidence for. And that's never going to happen. Finding physical evidence for Jesus (as an individual) is just not something that archaeology can supply."
Lost in the courtroom debate over the divinity of the James Ossuary is a lot of verified archaeology about the world in the era of Jesus, Magness says. "We know what houses looked like, what they ate, and how they were buried," she says. Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer reported the discovery of King Herod's tomb five years ago, she notes, "a truly stunning discovery that has received much less attention than the ossuary."
So will archaeological science ever advance enough to determine whether the inscription on the ossuary was real or not? Magness says it's not likely. "What we do know is that only the wealthy were buried in ossuaries, not people like James," who reportedly lived in communal poverty, she says.
In ancient Judaea, there was little shame or status attached to how someone was buried, she adds, just fashion. Most likely, she suggests the ossuary held the bones of a money-lender or a high priest, rather than anyone found in the New Testament.
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