At the end of last month I addressed and did a report or more of an addenum that had came out through the Biblical Archaeological Review that claimed to have found indirect evidence of the existence of Jesus. This evidence was an ancient limestone bone burial box, called an ossuary, that dated from around the time of the biblical James' death. An translation of the inscription on the box was put forth as, "James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus". Naturally, Christians immediately claimed that this must be referring to the biblical James and Jesus of Nazareth, despite the fact that these three names were quite common during those times.
Rochelle I. Altman, who is an expert on scripts and a historian of writing systems just recently examined the inscription on the box and concluded that, while the bone-box and the first half of the inscription are both authentic, the second half of the inscription - the part that refers to Jesus and the part that has caused all the hoopla - "is a poorly executed fake and a later addition."
Altman gives us three points to keep in mind when thinking about ossuaries:
1) "According to Rahmani (1981, 1982) on Jerusalem burial practices, most ossuaries are from the period between 30/20 BCE-70 CE -- but by no means all."
2) "Human remains are not dug up and displaced without very good reasons. Ossuaries show up in quantity when burial space is at a premium." In other words, an ossuary isn't a sign of the popularity of the person.
3) "While today, grave markers are carved by pros, this was not the case in these Jewish ossuary inscriptions. The apparently wide variations in ossuary inscriptions come from a simple fact: these ossuary inscriptions are covenants, vows to affirm continuing respect for the deceased in spite of having disinterred his/her remains. As with any other vow, the text must be in the hand of the one making the vow. Thus (as is noted in the literature), a surviving member of the family painted on, or scratched into, the (usually) limestone box the memorial data. In some cases a professional would carve over the handwriting exactly as written."
Altman translates the original text as: "Jacob son of Joseph brother of Joshua" and concludes that it was written by two different people. How does she come to this conclusion? Two points:
1) The first part of the script is formal - "The person who wrote the first part of the inscription [Jacob son of Josepth] was necessarily a surviving member of the family. He was fully literate; he clearly was familiar with the formal square script (those cuneiform wedges), the writing is internally consistent, and this part of the inscription is his expertly written holograph."
2) The second part of the script is informal - "None of the forms in the second part agree with the script of the first part. The person who wrote the second part [Brother of Joshua] may have been literate, but it is doubtful that he was literate in Aramaic or Hebrew. Again, aberrant spelling is dismissed as dialectic. True, there are dialectic variants, but there is always some linguistic logic behind these variants. There is nothing logical about these misspellings. They smell of someone guessing how the words "brother of" and the name "Joshua" would have been spelled a couple, three hundred years earlier. Once again, the writing in this part is internally consistent in its semi-literacy. Part 2 has the characteristics of a later addition by someone attempting to imitate an unfamiliar script and write in an unfamiliar language."
She goes on to note that since the text is excised (as opposed to inscribed, or incised), it should be bounded within a frame. Yet, the original frame is missing and the second part of the inscription would have lied outside of it. "To anybody who knows something about anti-fraud techniques as practiced in antiquity, it is rather obvious. The frame was removed to add the second part of this inscription." This suggests that the "Brother of Jesus" text was added at a much later date.
Altman concludes her report with, "If the entire inscription on the ossuary is genuine, then somebody has to explain why there are two hands of clearly different levels of literacy and two different scripts. They also have to explain why the second hand did not know how to write 'brother of' in Aramaic or even spell 'Joshua'. Further, they had better explain where the frame has gone."
"The ossuary itself is undoubtedly genuine; the well executed and formal first part of the inscription is a holographic original by a literate (and wealthy) survivor of Jacob Ben Josef in the 1st century CE. The second part of the inscription bears the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition and is questionable to say the least."
Whether or not Altman's conclusions are correct - and I see no reason to doubt them - the fact that the most significant portion of the inscription, the part that refers to Jesus, is "questionable" should raise enough doubt to quiet believers for now.
To see the full report,
click here
[This message has been edited by JIM, 01-12-2004]
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