Posted on 11/06/2002 11:11:35 AM PST by Polycarp
"Brother of Jesus" bone-box plot thickens
By Ellis Shuman
November 5, 2002
An ancient burial box believed to have belonged to James, the Biblical brother of Jesus, was damaged while being sent for display at a Toronto museum. The museum is awaiting word from the ossuary's owner before attempting to repair the box, but the owner is being questioned by police as the burial box may actually belong to the State of Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli scholars insist that the inscription on the box is a fraud.
Staff at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto discovered numerous cracks Friday in the 2,000-year-old limestone burial box. The cracks appear under an Aramaic inscription which states: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Herschel Shanks, the Jewish publisher of the respected Biblical Archaeology Review, announced the discovery of the box last month as the "first archaeological attestation of Jesus."
"We sent out a conservation proposal to the owner on the weekend and he's decided he wants to wait," Royal Ontario Museum spokesman Francisco Alvarez told The Globe and Mail. The museum sent the owner images of the damage caused in transit, and said that repairs would have to be done in Toronto. The museum plans to exhibit the box between November 16 and December 29.
When granting an export license, officials at the Israel Antiquity Authority received a promise from the ossuary's owner that it would be returned to Israel after four months so that they could continue to study the box in attempts to date it.
Owner may have acquired ossuary illegally "We put one and one together and realized that [the ossuary's owner] must be Oded Golan," says Dr. Uzi Dahari, deputy director of the Antiquities Authority.
Golan, 51, the chief executive at a Tel Aviv high tech company, said he purchased the ossuary from an antiquities dealer some thirty years ago, apparently when he was in his early twenties. "Until a short time ago, I didn't realize the historical importance [of the box] to the Christian world. When I sent the box to an exhibition overseas, it had a small crack in its side that apparently widened during the transit to Canada," Golan told Maariv.
Shortly after the Biblical Archaeology Review announced its finding, Tel Aviv police summoned Golan for questioning. Investigators at the Antiquities Authority claim that Golan acquired the box illegally. According to Israel's Antiquities Law, an artifact that "was discovered or found in Israel" after 1978, when the law was enacted, is "state property." Original media reports indicated that Golan acquired the box about 15 years ago, which would mean that it belongs to the State of Israel.
Scholars insist: inscription is a fraud Israel Insider posted exclusively on October 29 the report of an expert of ancient scripts and writing systems who claimed that while the burial box appeared to be genuine, as was the first part of the inscription, the second half of the inscription, "brother of Jesus," was a "poorly executed fake" and a later addition.
Rochelle I. Altman, co-coordinator of IOUDAIOS-L, a virtual community of scholars engaged in on-line discussion of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, says that people are taking Sorbonne University paleographer Andre Lemaire's word too quickly when he stated "that the inscription is incised."
Both Altman and noted paleographer Ada Yardeni have concluded that the second part of the inscription was added later. "There are two hands; two different scripts; two different social strata, two different levels of execution, two different levels of literacy, and two different carvers," Altman says.
Altman believes that the second half was actually written in the 3rd or 4th century, while Paul Flesher at the University of Wyoming, an expert on Hebraicized Aramaic dialects, dates it anywhere between the 2nd and 7th centuries.
"The reason the police are onto Golan is that there are two such ossuaries, both already known and photographed in a book on the ossuaries in collections in Israel published in 1996. This one was not bought at an antique dealer in the 1960s, but at an auction, from a museum, in the 1980s," Altman says.
© 2001-2002 Koret Communications Ltd. All rights reserved.
Spoil sport.
Yes, the inscription is in two different hands. How does that prove it to be a hoax? The author cites no evidence that the second part was a later addition, or that it was a falsehood. In fact, she proceeds to destroy her own argument. I quote:
As with any other vow, the text must be in the hand of the one making the vow.
So suppose there were two people making a vow to the deceased? Then there would be two hands. And who might these people be? One, of course, would be a family member, who promised to remember him in the traditional Jewish way, as "James the son of Joseph". And the second, perhaps, was a religious associate of James, in other words a Christian, who promised to rememer him using the style that we are familiar with from the NT, and that may well already have been in use, namely "James, the brother of Jesus".
I'm not saying this is is the case. But it's possible - indeed, given the times, and specifically given the manner of James' death, I'd say it was plausible. But this much at least: it demonstrates that the author's abrupt conclusion that the inscription is a hoax cannot be sustained on the basis of the evidence she presents.
For my part, I continue to suspend judgement.
Do you refer to the same believers who redacted the New Testament? Who copied the various books, preserved them, and -- over the course of various Church councils -- identified them explicitly and declared them a "canon"? Were they following "biblical principles" when they established the canon? Or was promulgating the New Testament the only thing these "icon worshippers" ever did right before the Lord?
There was a New Testament Church before there was a New Testament. What "biblical principles" did it follow? In fact, the Church has always had a body of teaching along side Holy Scripture, and served to interpret and to put Scripture in context (I'm sure you've have the bible quote from St. Paul memorized, right?). The Church did not die with the Evangelist John to be resurrected at the Protestant Reformation. Post #64 gives a crude rendition of what is actually the Orthodox Church teaching on the perpetual virginity of the Theotokos.
Deuteronomy 34:6 "And he buried him in the valley of the land of Moab over against Phogor: and no man hath known of his sepulchre until this present day."
1 Maccabees 5:54 "And they went up to Mount Sion with joy and gladness, and offered holocausts, because not one of them was slain, till they had returned in peace."
1 Timothy 4:13 "Till I come, attend unto reading, to exhortation, and to doctrine."
1 Samuel 15:35 "And Samuel saw Saul no more till the day of his death: ..."
2 Samuel 6:23 "Michal the daughter of Saul had not children until the day of her death."
Romans 8:22 "For we know that every creature groaneth abnd travaileth in pain, even till now."
Apocalypse 2:25 "Yet that, which you have, hold fast till I come."
1 Corinthians 15:25 "For He must reign, until he hath put all His enemies under His feet."
Even the 16th century "reformers" themselves confessed "Mariam semper virginem":
"There have been certain folk who have wished to suggest from this passage [Matthew 1:25] that the Virgin Mary had other children than the Son of God, and that Joseph had dwelt with her later; but what folly this is! For the gospel writer did not wish to record what happened afterwards; he simply wished to make clear Joseph's obedience and to show that Joseph had been well and truly assured that it was God who had sent His angel to Mary." John Calvin, Sermon on Matthew 1:22-25, published 1562
"It is an article of faith that Mary is the Mother of the Lord and still a virgin.... Christ, we believe, came forth from a womb left perfectly intact." Martin Luther, Works of Luther, Vol. 11, pp. 319-320; Vol. 6, page 510.
"I firmly believe that Mary, according to the words of the gospel, as a pure Virgin brought forth for us the Son of God and in childbirth and after childbirth forever remained a pure, intact Virgin." Ulrich Zwingli, Zwingli Opera, Vol. 1, page 424.
The narrow modern English definition of "until" or "till" that you choose to cling to is not equivalent to the Greek heos and that is just one reason why linguistic literalists, like yourself, get tripped up every time.
Mark 6:3
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
Are you offended by Jesus?
Present ONE verse from the Bible which states that Mary is still a virgin, into perpetuity. Nowhere else, just in the Bible. Without that, you have nothing but the words and trasditions of men, which thing was and is rejected by Jesus Himself.
Mark 7:9
And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.
Mark 7:13
Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
Colossians 2:8
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
His,
Bob Z.
*CoughProoftextingCough*
That's amazing!! Did she die in an accident on the way home from the polls?
As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
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