"James -- SON of Joseph, brother of Jesus.
Complete vindication, confirmation and corroboration of the Fundamentalist teachings on the subject, replete with slam-dunk historical, physical evidence.
That tired ol' Catholic baloney about "cousin" won't fly anymore.
Get with it, Nyer!
1) Prove it refers to the historical Jesus,
2) Prove the translations of the inscriptions are not also part of a fundamentalist agenda (remember, the "scholarly" journal this report comes from also claimed that microphones lowered into deep mine shafts in Russia recorded the voices of the damned in torment in Hell...not much scholarly rigor here, not much more can be expected in this current agenda driven media hysteria),
3) Prove the Joseph referred to was the same Joseph betrothed to Mary.
The text on this empty ossuary can prove NOTHING except that a guy was buried who was named James, was a son of a man named Joesph, and had a close relative, but not necessarily a blood brother, given the scriptural explanation already provided by NYer named Jesus.
Absolutely nothing can be concluded from this report beyond what I stated here.
NOTHING!
But in your puny fundamentalistic mind the entire YOPIOS tradition of the reformers has been proven.
How pathetic. Yer countin' yer chickens before they're hatched. When you are subsequently proven wrong --don't worry, you will be-- will you be so zealous to apologize for your error?
St. James the Greater is buried at Santiago de Compostella in Spain. He was martyred not by stoning but by being put to the sword by Herod Agrippa I (Acts, xii, 2), in 44 AD and not in 63 AD as indicated for the fellow whose lid this may be. The martyrdom of St. James the Greater is the only martyrdom of one of the twelve apostles recorded in the New Testament.
St. James the Greater was the brother of St. John the Evangelist. See also Matthew x, 2, and Luke vi, 14, and Acts i, 13. Collectively, they were known as "Boanerges" or "the sons of thunder" and are sons of Zebedee not Joseph, not Mary (Mark iii, 17) and were, along with Peter and Andrew, the first four apostles called by Christ. The remains were brought to Spain and are no longer buried in Israel.
St. James the Lesser was a son of Alphaeus and another Mary who was at the tomb (Mark xv, 40, xvi, 1; and Matthew xxvii, 56). There is improbable legend that he was martyred at Persia or that he was "the brother of the Lord" when he was more likely a cousin whose parents were Alphaeus and that other Mary.
There was yet a third James who wrote the Epistle of James and died in 62 A.D., known as James "the Just" who was apparently a step-brother of Christ by a previous marriage of Joseph or was actually St. James the Less, son of Alpheus and a Mary not the mother of Christ but related to her, according to St. Jerome. There is apparently some dispute as to the manner of death, some arguing that he was stoned and some that he was thrown from an upper story of a building. While James "the Just" may possibly have been the person whose ossuary lid has been found, it simply begs the question as to the relationship to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. As to that question, this may be an interesting artifact to the "reformed" but it proves nothing but that a man whose father was Joseph and had a brother named Jesus is said to have been buried in the box.
How many Jameses were there in Jerusalem at the time? If Jesus Christ's inner circle is any representative sample, the place must have been crawling with them.