Biblical archaeology has a long and colorful history, full of intelligent people with conclusions, digging in the Near Eastern dirt for evidence to support them. The latest discovery is no exception.
An empty ossuary--essentially, a bone-box--has been discovered, bearing the Aramaic inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Actually, it wasn't discovered so much as 'revealed;' it was purchased by a still-anonymous collector from an Arab antiquities dealer some 15 years ago. The type of Aramaic, and the fact that Jerusalem-area Jews practiced ossuary burials only between 20 and 70 AD, puts the ossuary squarely in the first century AD.
The Washington Post reports that Andre Lemaire, the French scholar who has published his findings in Biblical Archaeology Review, said that it is "very probable" that the inscription refers to Jesus of Nazareth.
Later in the same article, Lemaire estimates that although the three names on the ossuary were commonplace, "only 20 Jameses in Jerusalem during that era would have had a father named Joseph and a brother named Jesus."
Um...doesn't that mean, then, that right off the bat there's a one-in-twenty shot? That's 5%. The probability goes up because of the unusual naming of the brother on the ossuary, but that still doesn't account for the possibility that this particular Jesus just owned the tomb, or conducted the burial, and didn't get nailed to a tree for our sins and so forth.
Then, the penultimate paragraph:
"Lemaire, who was raised Roman Catholic, said his faith did not affect his judgment, since he studies inscriptions only 'as a historian – that is, comparing them critically with other sources.'"
Uh-huh. I'm sure that faith had nothing to do with claiming an anonymously-owned ossuary with absolutely no provenance for the past 19 centuries as a reference to Jesus Christ. Neither did academic ambition, or any of the other myriad human foibles that enter into such investigations.
That's what's cool about hard science: it's all about replication of results. Pass that old bone-box on to others, Andre, and let them have a look.
I'm with Herschel Shanks, the editor of BAR, on this one:
"Something so startling, so earth-shattering, raises questions about its authenticity."
[Of course, Herschel Shanks did publish Lemaire's results, so I think his comment was intended to explain the skepticism, rather than express his own doubts.
D'oh! --IAW]
