That Empty Box
The recent discovery of an ossuary (bone box) bearing an inscription that includes the name of Jesus is not only a sensational archaeological discovery but an exciting and controversial drama.
In early November 2002, the press announced that “a simple limestone burial box, apparently bought 15 years ago on the Jerusalem antiquities market, could be the oldest archaeological evidence of the existence of Jesus, and the first object ever found that relates to a member of his family” (Sydney Morning Herald, November 3, 2002).
The Herald article said, “The box’s Israeli owner, who asked to remain anonymous, said he bought it from an Arab dealer 15 years ago for a few hundred US dollars. . . . Neither the buyer nor the seller knew the significance of what they had on their hands.”
A Time magazine reporter, sent to Jerusalem to check the facts, was apparently convinced of the authenticity of the discovery because the November 4 edition claimed, “This would be the most important discovery in the history of New Testament archaeology. . . . It is something tactile and visible reaching back to the single most important personage ever to walk the earth.”
Over thousands of years, various methods of burial have been practiced in Israel—deep underground tombs, tombs cut into the sides of cliffs, burial chambers with niches for the dead (kokhim in Hebrew), tombs with shelves on which to lay the dead, and tombs with multiple burial chambers whose main doorway was sealed with a circular stone rolled across the opening.
For a relatively brief period—about 20 BC to 70 AD—an unusual method became popular: burial in an ossuary. The body was interred in a tomb or cave until the flesh disintegrated, the bones were then collected and placed in an ossuary—a box just long enough to accommodate the longest human bone, the femur.
Most ossuaries were plain limestone boxes. Wealthy people had rosettes or geometrical designs carved on their sides. A few had inscriptions cut into them. This usually consisted of the name of the deceased and the name of his father.
Only one has ever come to light with the name of the brother of the deceased, and that is what makes this discovery so exciting. The words written on it read, “Ya’akov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua,” which translated is, “Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Yeshua,” which in contemporary terms reads, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”
To mention a dead person’s brother would indicate that the brother must have been important or someone very well known. Matthew 13:55 says Jesus’ brother, to whom Jesus appeared after His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:7), was called James. James presided over the church council in Jerusalem (see Acts 15:13) and later wrote the Epistle of James, where he introduced himself as a “servant of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1). Whoever cut the inscription on the ossuary identified him as the brother of Jesus Christ.
The excitement of the discovery might have ended there except for some suspicious circumstances surrounding the revelation of the artefact. It is strange that an Israeli collector would not know the value of the find. He explained this, according to Time, saying that while he was familiar with its inscription, “as a Jew, [I] was unaware that the names were special. . . . I didn’t know Jesus had a brother.”
He also hurriedly sent it out of the country to a museum in Toronto, Canada, ostensibly for it to go on display there. Why the haste?
Intrigued, I contacted Danny Herman—a Jewish correspondent for my magazine Diggings—who lives in Jerusalem. Herman did a little “excavating” of his own, discovering both the name of the ossuary’s owner and that he was unlikely to be unaware of the value of his possession, which he now claims he purchased 30 years ago, not the 15 reported.
According to Herman, the problem is its source. “Any find coming from the antiquity market has first of all to ‘prove’ its authenticity, especially when it’s claiming to be connected to well-known figures or events.”
His reaction was disbelief, and for several reasons, he says: “The text is too clear [usually inscriptions on ossuaries are of poor quality]; the formula ‘X son of Y brother of Z’ on an ossuary is very rare; the Aramaic dialect used is not typical for the period; and worse, the statement given by the collector that he bought it 30 years ago and only now cared to examine the inscription on it, seemed very strange.
“If the owner is telling the truth we have to assume that he was really naive and ignorant when he bought it, and so was the antiquity dealer who sold it to him. Usually antiquity dealers are far from naive. Furthermore, why did the owner wait 30 years before he checked the inscription.”
Herman says he proposed a possible scenario to explain all of the anomalies, proving that it is a fake. It went something like: The collector buys an ordinary ossuary, many of which are in the antiquity market, then adds an inscription of a well known figure—James—to greatly increase its value. He uses the father’s and brother’s name, limiting the possibility of attributing it to a different James.
However, according to Herman, the chiselled inscription, which is very clear so the reading would not be questioned, is in an Aramaic dialect that only became common later, something, according to Herman, that most people wouldn’t have realised. And, because of the 1978 Israeli antiquity law, under which antiquities objects purchased post-1978 could be confiscated if of national value, he says he’s had it for 30 years.
But even given that scenario, how did the ossuary get to Toronto?
“Any antiquity taken out of the country must be reported to the Israel Antiquities Authority,” says Herman, “and only if a license is given can it be shipped out. I theorised that not only is it a fake, but it was also smuggled out.”
So what happened?
According to Dr Uzi Dahari, vice-head of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the collector actually did ask for a licence to export the ossuary. However, he failed to mention the inscription, which amounts to smuggling.
“Bingo!” says Herman, his theory proven. “I got everything tied up, matching my theory about the nature of the collector and the authenticity of the object.”
But one thing still didn’t make sense; something that required further research.
“In the geological report added to the publication of the ossuary, Dr A Rosenfeld and Dr S Ilani of the Israeli Institute of Geology verified that the ossuary is indeed ancient, for example, it was not chiselled with modern tools, and has a patina [microscopic incrustation acquired over centuries] on it.
“That still didn’t disprove my theory,” says Herman, “because I’d theorised that the ossuary itself was genuine, only the inscription was fake. But the report said that the letters of the inscription also have some patina traces in them, something forgers can’t do.
“Intrigued by this verdict, I sought further information. I noticed in the publication that credit was given to Ada Yardeni for drawing the inscription. Ada Yardeni is an experienced and reputable epigraphist. Having seen the original inscription, I felt that her opinion would be of great value, so I called her.
“Her answers were impressive. She said the collector told her he likes to collect antiquities of all sorts, and he doesn’t always know the basic facts on items he purchases. And as for the inscription—she was very convinced the inscription is genuine.”
Taken together, then, could it be that the evidence pointed to the ossuary being that of the James? Herman asked Yardeni.
Yardeni said that given that the artefact surfaced in the antiquities black market, an absolute answer can never be given. However, she gave it a 50:50 chance that it is indeed the ossuary of James as stated.
So, overwhelmed by such an authority, Herman retreated from his own critical theories. “There’s reason to believe that the ossuary could really be the ossuary of James, the brother of Jesus,” he concedes.
But adding to the controversy were two local Israeli media reports, one in Ha’aretz magazine, giving further evidence for suspecting the owner’s statement, and revealing his identity as “Mr Oded Golan, 51, single.”
“[Mr Golan] claims to be rather ignorant of antiquities of the Classical periods,” says Herman, “and, indeed, his antiquities collection—over 3000 objects—is mostly Israelite and Philistine pottery. Yet the antiquity dealer Robert Deutsch, who knows him well, states that he is well experienced in antiquities in general, and his brother, Yaron Golan, adds that his knowledge in archaeology is ‘phenomenal.’
“Oded Golan admitted purchasing a few months ago the contents of a looted burial cave [an illegal act] near Jerusalem, yet the James ossuary, he states, is not part of this purchase, but was bought in 1967, shortly after the Six-day War. At that time he was aged 16.”
But it’s Deutsch who provides the numbers that can explain the owner’s strange statement: “If he can prove that he owned the object prior to 1978, he can sell it abroad for as much as $US2 billion,” he claims. “If he can only sell it in Israel, the Israel museum would offer him no more then $US200,000.”
Motive, means and opportunity. An open and shut case? Hardly. So the suspicion remains that this ossuary is a recent discovery, that the owner knew instantly its value and promptly shipped it out of Israel before the authorities could step in, and that it is, indeed, “the most important discovery in the history of New Testament archaeology.”
And if authentic, it provides evidence that Jesus Christ actually lived and was not a mythical figure, and that His genealogy as recorded in the Bible is historically accurate and reliable. But authentic or otherwise, it certainly proves the interest people still have in the life of the Man, Jesus.
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