Israeli experts say inscription on burial box is a fake

JERUSALEM -- An inscription that purportedly links an ancient burial chest to Jesus' brother is a forgery, Israel said Wednesday, dashing excitement about an artifact that had been touted as one of the greatest archaeological finds of modern times.

The beige box caused a stir when it was discovered in October because some said the inscription on it, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," was a physical connection between the modern world and the Bible.

Israel's Antiquities Authority said Wednesday that the 20-inch by 11-inch burial container was indeed ancient but the inscription wasn't. The telltale sign, it said, was that the letters cut through the patina, a thin coating acquired with age.

"The inscription appears new, written in modernity by someone attempting to reproduce ancient written characters," a statement from the authority said.

Uzi Dahari, a member of the committee that studied the burial box, or ossuary, was more condemnatory. The inscription is "a contamination of the archaeological science," he said. "It's breaking my heart to see such things."

Dahari said the inscription was recently painted over with a homemade paste made of crushed chalk and very hot water. "It's not a good fake."

According to biblical accounts, Jesus' brother James led the early church in Jerusalem and was stoned to death as a Jewish heretic in A.D. 62. The artifact, one of hundreds of ancient ossuaries uncovered in Jerusalem, had been valued at up to $2 million because of the claimed link with Jesus.

Even when the burial box was revealed, skeptics said it was entirely possible that it could be authentic but still have nothing to do with Jesus Christ because the names Jesus, James and Joseph were then common.

Another tablet in doubt

The committee also dismissed as a fake the "Yoash inscription," a shoebox-sized tablet from about the ninth century B.C., inscribed with 15 lines of ancient Hebrew with instructions for maintaining the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. It was revealed about two years ago.

Both items are owned by Oded Golan, who said he bought the James ossuary in the mid-1970s from an antiquities dealer in the Old City of Jerusalem for about $200. He said he could not remember the dealer's name.

Golan dismissed the officials' findings. He accused the experts of having "preconceived notions."

"I am certain that the committee is wrong regarding its conclusions," Golan said.

Biblical language professor Avigdor Horowitz, who served on one of the investigating committees, said not one of the inscribed passages on the tablet was without a linguistic mistake.

"The person who wrote the inscription was a person who thinks in modern Hebrew," he told reporters in Jerusalem. "A person thinking in biblical Hebrew would see it as ridiculous."

Hershel Shanks, editor of the Washington-based Biblical Archaeology Review, which first revealed the inscription, said he still believed the burial box was authentic, pointing to several previous studies that supported his belief. He said the issue was fraught with "archaeological politics."

"The jury is still out. There's no question about that," he said. Shanks defended the scratched patina over the inscription, saying the box had been scrubbed heavily by the mother of the man who owns it.

Neil A. Silberman, a historian with the Ename Center for Public Archaeology in Belgium, said those previous studies were "fairly slipshod examinations" by people who "really wanted this to be true."

"I hope that a lesson has been learned from all of this," he said, criticizing those that he said prematurely lauded the discovery. "They have wasted the time and the spiritual enthusiasm of their audiences."

Until now, the oldest surviving artifact that mentions Jesus is a fragment of chapter 18 in John's Gospel from a manuscript dating to A.D. 125.

Antiquities inspectors have questioned several Old City dealers, and were checking suspicions Golan bought the ossuary only a few months ago. If that's true, those involved in the sale could be prosecuted for dealing in stolen goods.

The police investigation into how the box was acquired will continue regardless of the committee's findings.