[Mr. Lucky]

Dr. James Heiser presented a paper to the 2003 meeting of the Near East Archaeological Society in which he pointed out that the ossuaries which are the subject of the current hoopla were contained in a published 1994 catalogue. (which is to say that this film crew didn't stumble upon them in a storage chamber; as is common with 21st Century shoppers, they picked through a catalogue and mixed and matched).

Of the ossuaries listed, 233 contained inscriptions; some form of the name Joseph appeared on 19 ossuaries while some form of the name Jesus appeared on 10. Multiply these percentages by the number of people who would be expected to have been interred in Jerusalem during the period of ossuary use and the fraud of these hucksters becomes obvious.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Thanks for that timely information.