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Why, you might even say: Preposterous unless your mind were made up in advance of ever hearing of the unseen box.

Actually, I don't find it preposterous in the least.

We have a large amount of evidence that a new religion was founded in Palestine by a Jew named Jesus around 30 AD, and that that religion very quickly came to assume such importance that our very calendar derives its system of numbering years from the date of the birth of its founder.

There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of important potential artifacts from this early period of the history of this religion that could, and by all reasonableness, should have been preserved in some way.

Possessions of Peter and Paul, and the various other apostles, and undoubtedly bones, burial sites, ossuaries and many other things relating to the early church and its leaders would have been preserved. Some would eventually have gotten destroyed, others forgotten.

Many such artifacts would have been carefully put away in secure (and in a great many cases) secret places. It is neither strange that they should have been hidden away, nor that, in many cases, what the artifact actually was should be forgotten over the centuries. A single family or group of people will have been the caretaker of a particular artifact. At various points, it will have been deemed wise to limit the knowledge of such an artifact to a few, or even to only one, person. Or perhaps an elder caretaker simply didn't get around to passing on the knowledge before meeting with an unexpected death. Over the couse of 2000 years, the chain of knowledge was broken.

We have manuscripts of New Testament writing -- far more fragile than stone -- that were penned very early on, including the essentially complete Codexes Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. It is not at all strange that a stone artifact should survive.

Nor is it strange that we should find it now, at a point in history when there are people poking their noses into just about every nook and cranny on earth, when knowledge and communication are widely available, and when intensive research is doubling the knowledge of mankind every few years.

There is actually another reason why genuine artifacts likely would have been forgotten over the centuries: creeping skepticism and carelessness.

It is 900 A.D. Your father tells you that this stone box contains the bones of James, and that you are to take care of it. Obviously it's very old, but you're not an archaeological expert, and you don't actually read Aramaic. You're smart enough to know that not everything you're told is true, and that the only evidence your father had was that his father told him the box was the ossuary of James.

Years later, you tell your son that the box "is supposed to have contained the bones of James, but I'm not really sure about that."

Your son will tell his son that "there's a legend that this box contained James' bones."

Your grandson will tell his great-grandson "this is supposedly a real important box. Legend has it that this box once contained the bones of some big church leader. I think it was James or John or, well, somebody like that."

Your great grandson tells his kids: "Look at this cool ancient bone box. It's supposed to be real important."

Doubting virtually nothing that you say, this unseen artifact, possessed by an unidentified person and not to be shown publicly requires that we place faith in something quite distinct from our Creator and in someone who just happens to be viewed as holding evidence (which we cannot see) that just happens to be consistent with reformation PIOS.

The Roman Catholic Church possesses the Shroud of Turin. As a Catholic, I fully accept that the Shroud of Turin MAY not be authentic as the shroud of Jesus Christ although the evidence seems to suggest that it is. It may also be the lost Shroud of Odessa as well as the Shroud of Jesus Christ as the residents of Odessa believed. It may be a clever forgery as many critics seem to believe in which case it is one of the most remarkable forgeries in the history of humanity. Nevertheless, my faith does not and ought not to rest on the Shroud one way or the other nor yours on the unknown and unseen ossuary lid.

May it be noted, however, that the Romnan Catholic Church not only displays the Shroud to the public with some regularity with due regard for its preservation but also allows for scientists critical of Christianity and Catholicism and outright hostile atheist scientists access for scientific testing to take their best shot. Whoever possesses this ossuary lid ought to do likewise if he or she expects to be taken seriously or he or she ought to at least allow viewing by neutral scientific observers of all persuasions. We have a world out there which we are commanded to teach and to baptize. Those in need of teaching and baptizing are not going to take the word of anonymous for it.

BTW, that calendar is the Gregorian calendar, known for Pope St. Gregory the Great who introduced it. As the late Bishop Fulton Sheen once wrote, Christ's birth was so important that it split all history in two.

The RCC also has fragments of parts of the Mass that are clearly that which date to the early 2nd Century (ca. 120 A.D.)

In any event, I suspect I may disagree with your theology but I must say that I respect your thoroughly reasonable approach to archaeology and its significance and your evident integrity.