Ossuário de Tiago - James Ossuary

Geologists: Ossuary Patina Faked

The Geological Survey of Israel (GSI), today publicly clarified its position regarding the authenticity of the James Ossuary and the Jehoash Inscription. In a letter sent to Uzi Dahari, deputy director of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), GSI director Amos Bein states that its representative to the IAA's committee established to determine the authenticity of the objects, Avner Ayalon, determined that the patina covering both the letters and surface of the Jehoash Inscription, as well as the inscription on the James Ossuary, "could not have formed under natural climactic conditions...that prevailed in the Judea Mountains during the last 2000 years." Furthermore, the patina contained in the inscription on the James Ossuary is "significantly different from the oxygen isotopic composition in the surface patina of [the ossuary] and of patina of authentic ossuaries stored in [Jerusalem's] Rockefeller Museum." An internal GSI committee reviewed and approved Dr. Ayalon's conclusions. 

Archaeology - An Official Publication of the Archaeological Institute of America - June 23, 2003

http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/patina.html

Defender of 1st-century Jesus Inscription Fight Back Following Israeli Fraud Charge

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has greatly amplified the cries of fraud leveled against a purported first-century inscription that names Jesus. The IAA stated in June that the stone box on which the inscription appears was ancient but the words on it appear to have been inscribed in modern times. In a word: hoax. Defenders of the inscription's authenticity have been fighting back, saying other experts disagree and arguing that everyone should at least wait to evaluate the IAA's full scientific report, which isn't out yet (...) The chief promoter of the box's authenticity is Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review magazine, which published Lemaire's article, and co-author of a book on the find, "The Brother of Jesus" (HarperSanFrancisco). Given the competing opinions among experts, Shanks -- who has plenty at stake -- is urging everyone to withhold judgment pending the full IAA report and further scholarly assessment. But in the meantime, Shanks argues that the 15-member IAA investigating committee is actually endorsing the view of one scholar, Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, the only member of the panel with the necessary geological and chemical expertise. "Professor Goren may be right, but we need to wait for further developments before arriving at this conclusion," Shanks asserts. The IAA announcement raised a highly technical point about oxygen isotopes that led to the conclusion that the patina (surface film) was a water-and-chalk paste, applied to imitate ancient weathering. Goren quips that this paste is the "James bond." Shanks says it hasn't been proven that modern paste can successfully fake ancient patina and says the oxygen isotopes could be explained if, as owner Golan said, his mother partly cleaned and scrubbed the inscription, perhaps with hot water (...) Shanks' pro-ossuary magazine will continue to track the ongoing controversy, as will the anti-ossuary Archaeology magazine.

By Richard N. Ostling  - DodgeGlobe.com -  Friday, July 11, 2003

Preliminary Discussion Concerning The So-Called Ossuary Of Jacob From A Tel Aviv Collection

No começo do artigo, o autor alerta:
What follows below is again only a preliminary presentation of the discussions, this time not of the first month but of the four months after the public announcement of the discovery. Thanks to my colleagues and friends, I have received some additional current material.

Após um amplo panorama das discussões sobre o Ossuário de Tiago, bem documentado com 82 notas de rodapé atualizadas até março de 2003, o autor conclui:

Rather than summing up the whole discussion, I should like to made a few remarks concerning the so-called James ossuary:

1. The object from the Tel Aviv private collection does look to be ancient. Its typology is not questionable, but I am not sure if the cover is from the same object. This observation is based only on photographs, so I might be wrong here.

2. Very suspicious to me is the fact that the inscription is on the wall of the object opposite to that bearing the recently discovered traces of rosettes. This is something exceptional compared with the thousands of known objects.

3. The inscription has provoked many questions from specialists, starting with its contents and ending with its lettering. Serious comparative paleographical research is a must.

4. We cannot exclude that the second part of the inscription was added later (possibly still in antiquity?). Preliminary linguistic analyses also point in this direction.

5. The historical identification of the deceased is statistically doubtful. The probabilities have to be counted anew by professional mathematicians.

6. The only reliable, geological argument for the authenticity of the ossuary should be verified in an independent laboratory. (As we have noticed above, such a step is already being considered). The surprising microbiological observation of Mr. Lupia concerning the patina of the ossuary must be evaluated by other specialists in the field.

My impression is that in presenting his identification to the general audience Prof. A. Lemaire forgot to answer a few questions:

1. We know from the Gospels that the Joseph family did not have a family tomb in Jerusalem. If they had had one, there would have been a necessity to collect James’s bones after a year and to inscribe the ossuary (assuming that there were many bodies in the tomb). However, the Church Fathers explicitly say that James’s tomb was on the Temple slope and that it was never opened (it was marked by a stone and sealed at the time of Eusebius and Hegesippos). As we are dealing with the tomb of a venerated person I do not see that there would have been a need to open it, to collect the bones in an ossuary and to inscribe the ossuary with so suspicious a text. Secondly, according to Rabbinic law, a dead man’s bones had to be collected by his son.(80) We do not know from the sources of any son that James might have had.

2. The problem of the removal of James’s bones requires further study. For one thing, why should we assume that James’s family, or his brethren in faith, followed a practice accepted mainly by the Pharisees?(81) The relationship of the early Christians with the Pharisees were not very good and we know that sectarians like to distinguish themselves from the rest of the community. The early Christians probably viewed themselves, and were certainly viewed by others, as a Jewish sect.

3. If James’s bones were in the ossuary after 63 A.D., why didn’t the Judeo-Christians take the ossuary and the bones with them when they left Jerusalem at the time of the first anti-Roman revolt? How could they forget about the bones of the brother of Christ?

To sum up: the object, if authentic, raises more problems than it solves.(82) A serious and in depth discussion is needed before we can really accept the historical interpretation offered and before we decide to call the discovery the most important one in the history of Biblical archaeology.

By Zdzislaw J. Kapera - Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland 

 Bible and Interpretation - July 2003

From: “The Polish Journal of Biblical Research” Vol. 2, No. 1 (3), December 2002 [printed in May 2003!]. Copyrighted by Zdzislaw J. Kapera and The Enigma Press 2003.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Preliminary_discussion.htm

Dealer Charged With Jesus Forgeries 

(...) Dealer Oded Golan was arrested Monday at his home in Tel Aviv, police said, on suspicion of forging and dealing in fake antiquities. He was brought to a Jerusalem court, where police showed equipment for making forgeries they said was found in his home, including stencils, stones and partially completed forgeries. The police said Golan was being held at the Jerusalem police lockup on a four-day detention order. Golan was involved in the discovery of two items that shook the religious and archaeological world - an ossuary, or burial box, with the inscription, ``James, the brother of Jesus,'' leading to speculation that it referred to the brother of Jesus of Nazareth. Also, a shoebox-sized tablet was found, inscribed with instructions for caring for the Jewish Temple, in wording similar to that of the Bible. Called the ``Joash inscription,'' it purported to be rare physical evidence backing up the biblical narrative. However, from the beginning, questions were raised about the authenticity of the two items, and after exhaustive studies, the Israel Antiquities Authority declared last month that they were forgeries. 

By Ian Deitch, Associated Press Writer - The Guardian - Tuesday July 22, 2003 7:59 PM

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Leia também:

Royal Ontario Museum Statement: Oded Golan’s arrest/ James Ossuary 

  July 23, 2003

http://www.rom.on.ca/news/releases/public.php?mediakey=vhggdo3048

Ossuary Dethroned

The once-celebrated James Ossuary, heralded by the international press last fall as the first physical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, was found Monday, July 21, in a filthy rooftop bathroom during a police raid on ossuary owner Oded Golan's Tel Aviv apartment building.

Archaeology - July 24, 2003

http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/ossuary3.html

The James Ossuary Yet Again

The arrest of Oded Golan on July 23rd by the Israeli police on suspicion of forging antiquities, among them the Jehoash Temple inscription and the so-called “James” ossuary (see Ha’aretz, English edition, p.3, July 23), should give pause to both the media and a large portion of the scholarly world. The media frenzy, which greeted both of these supposed discoveries, was fed by journalistic desire for a big “Holy Land” story. Insofar as the BAR promoted the authenticity of the James ossuary through its premature publication by Andre Lemaire and its subsequent exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum as well as its TV promotion on the Discovery Channel, one should have been more suspicious of its provenance and ownership. In an unprecedented plenary presentation of the SBL in Toronto, after numerous presentations in which I was the only doubting Thomas, Golan was allowed to defend the ossuary’s genuineness in front of thousands of scholars and hundreds of the media. No one seemed to mind that he had much to gain from the exposure including monetary reward, advertisement as a major supplier of “biblical” antiquities, etc. It was a dynamic combination: BAR and a dealer, making hay at SBL and the ROM. I was suspicious after having viewed the artifact for a number of reasons. First... 

By Eric Meyers, Professor of Judaic Studies, Duke University, Department of Religion 

Bible and Interpretation - July 2003

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Ossuary_Again.htm

Forgery Mystery Creates a Pandora's Box 

Unanswered questions surrounding the James ossuary are pitting experts against each other

In a profession not normally noted for its belligerence, the strange case of Oded Golan and the James ossuary -- potentially one of recent archeology's most important discoveries -- is generating a nasty little firefight (...) The dispute has already besmirched the reputation of Golan, the ossuary's owner. Yesterday, the middle-aged Israeli entrepreneur, an important collector of biblical artifacts, was released from an Israeli jail, where he had been questioned for five days on suspicion of forgery. No charges were laid (...) The IAA report was signed by 14 prominent Israeli academics. One has since defected, saying the oxygen isotope test on which the IAA based its conclusion was flawed. Even more problematically, Amos Bein, director of the Geological Survey of Israel, which conducted the test, is now saying he's agnostic on the question of the box's legitimacy.

By Michael Posner -The Globe and Mail - Saturday, Jul. 26, 2003

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Leia também:

Experts, Dealer Clash Over James Ossuary's Authenticity

July 27, 2003

Final Report of the Examining Commitees for the Yehoash Inscription and James Ossuary

Summary of Israel Antiquities Authority Report

(...) After consulting with senior IAA advisors, IAA Director-General, Mr. Shuka Dorfman resolved to make every possible effort to examine the genuineness of the two finds. He then consulted scholars from various disciplines at the IAA and others, and set up two expert committees to examine the items from a scientific aspect and reach a conclusion regarding their authenticity. One committee was designated as the Writing and Content Committee and would use its knowledge of epigraphy and paleography to investigate whether the material content and language used are compatible with the Hebrew and Aramaic of the designated period. The second committee, the Materials and Patina Committee was to examine the substance of the materials, composition of the patina, additional materials present and perform any and every possible examination, including a morphological study of the items.

The Writing and Content Committee was comprised of two subcommittees – whose members were authorities on the First Temple period – archaeologists, linguists, historians, paleographers, epigraphers who would study the Yehoash inscription. The second subcommittee, consisting of archaeologists, Second Temple period linguistics scholars, who would study the ossuary. The Writing and Content Committee would, if needed, consult with Prof. Y. Naveh, an authority on ancient Hebrew writing of international repute, and with Dr. L.Y. Rahmani, an authority on ossuaries who had collected and published a vast amount of information on the subject.

The Materials Committee consisted of a geologist expert appointed by Dr. Amos Bein, Director of the Geological Survey of Israel, and who guaranteed his institute’s backing and scientific assistance (in spite of the conclusion reached earlier by two of the Geological Survey’s geologists), a petrograph expert, C14 researcher, and antiquities conservators with experience in ancient patina.

A great deal of attention was devoted to the choice of committee members. One consideration was the degree of involvement of each scholar in earlier research on the two items. Director-General Dorfman decided on a mix of committee members. The most suitable experts were chosen even if they had, in the past, expressed an opinion on the subject, as well as top scholars who had never been involved with the authenticity question.

The committee members were given specific guidelines: to arrive at the truth based on pure research only – without taking into account any other related factors regarding the collector, current gossip, rumors, or prejudices. Each scholar would work in his own discipline. The Writing and Content Committee members would each work alone during the early stages would later meet jointly. The Materials Committee members together photographed and took samples of the material so that the exact location and size of the sample would be precisely documented. 

At the opening committee meeting, each member was given a file containing most of the published research and professional material gleaned from the internet, plus a large amount of information from the collector.

Following are the names and institutional affiliations of the committee members:

The Writing Committee
Dr. Gideon Avni – Director of the Excavations and Survey Department, Israel Antiquities Authority, Committee Chairman
Prof. Shmuel Ahituv – Ben Gurion University – Expert on Ancient Hebrew inscriptions
Dr. Tal Ilan – Bar Ilan University – Historian, expert on the Hebrew and Aramaic names in the Second Temple period
Dr. Esther Eshel – Bar Ilan University – expert on the history and development of Hebrew script
Prof. Avigdor Horowitz – Ben Gurion University – world renown expert on ancient middle eastern languages.
Dr. Hagai Misgav – Hebrew University – expert on ancient Hebrew script and inscriptions
Prof. Amos Kloner – Bar Ilan University – archaeologist, expert on burials and burial customs during Second Temple period Jerusalem
Prof. Roni Reich – Haifa University – archaeologist, expert on First and Second Temple periods

The Materials Committee
Dr. Uzi Dahari – Deputy Director, Israel Antiquities Authority, Committee Chairman
Prof. Yuval Goren – Tel Aviv University – archaeologist and expert on petrography and identification of materials and sources
Dr. Avner Ayalon – Geological Survey of Israel – geologist, expert on identification of materials through the study of isotopes in rock
Dr. Elisabetta Boaretto – Weizmann Institute of Science – C14 expert
Ms. Orna Cohen – expert conservator, specialization in identification and restoration of ancient patina
Mr. Jacques Neguer – Israel Antiquities Authority – expert on antiquities conservation and restoration

Each committee member received an official appointment from the IAA Director General (Appendix 1).

Dr. Avner Ayalon received an additional appointment from Dr. Amos Bein, Director of the Geological Survey of Israel, as the authority for the instruments to be used in the examinations and based on his experience in geochemical applications and petrography identification and classification of materials (Appendix 2).

All the committee members participated on a completely voluntary basis.

At the first meeting of the two committees...

Biblical Archaeology Society - July 2003

Final Reports on the Yehoash Inscription and James Ossuary from the Israeli Antiquities Authority

1. Final Report Of The Examining Committees For The Yehoash Inscription And James Ossuary

Esther Eshe, Tal Ilan, Dr. Avner Ayalon, Orna Cohen

2. Radiocarbon Dating
Elisabetta.Boaretto

3. The “James son of Joseph” Ossuary
Amos Kloner and Ronny Reich

4. Opinion on the inscription known as The "Yehoash Inscription”.
Hagai Misgav 

5. Opinion concerning the authenticity of the "Yehoash Inscription" and the ossuary of "Ya‘aqov son of Yosef brother of Yeshua‘"
Shmuel Ahituv 

6. Examination of Authenticity: James Brother of Jesus Ossuary and Yehoash King of Yehuda Inscription 
Yuval Goren

7. Final Report Of The Committees 
Uzi Dahari

8.The Jehoash Inscription
Victor Avigdor Hurowitz

Bible and Interpretation - August 2003

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Committees_report.htm