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James Ossuary

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Kushana
Post subject: James Ossuary
Posted: Mon 28 Mar , 2005 7:06 am
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The news show 60 Minutes had a segment on this, tonight. Nothing new, and no answers that helped me make up my mind.

Can we please have further lab work on this artifact? The inconsistancies in lab results have yet to be explained. Particularly, can we have identifying tests done on the "James Bond", the substance found in the letters? Looking at it through a microscope is all well and good, but we are no longer in the 1800's and have more tools at hand. If this or other artifacts were forged by cut-and-pasting then a long afternoon's work should allow skeptics to assemble a partial replica, with sources. (Epigraphic publications (and private collections) are not infinite. Then it is a simple matter of showing the forger had the sources and equipment -- and forensic work on both could cinch the case. ) If the patina on the front of the ossuary is fake, then why has no one claimed the substantial prize for its replication? (Hmn, or was that for replicating the patina on the Jehoash tablet?)

If this is a forgery I'd like to see it exposed, quickly and decisively. What is the trouble doing so, given that scientists and scholars have a decided advantage of knowledge over even the most enthusiastic collector?

(Note that the question of the ossuary's authenticity adds little to the scholarship on the family of Jesus, we already have non-Biblical references to him and without the bones and an archaeological context the ossuary itself tells scholars little. )

For background:
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/bswbOOossuary.html

-Kushana

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tinwe
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Posted: Mon 28 Mar , 2005 7:35 am
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Quick question K. (I haven’t had time to read all of the background, sorry). I thought that people had already been arrested for this “forgery”. Are you saying this is still going on? Can you give us a brief summary as to why this hasn’t been resolved? You’re the resident expert here. Please enlighten us, if you can.


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The Watcher
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Posted: Mon 28 Mar , 2005 2:22 pm
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I thought the same as tinwe. The 60 minutes episode was on last night at the big family get together, but I heard none of what was being discussed. I thought the Israeli officials had cracked the whole ring involved with this, and the suspected ringleader, Oded Golan, had been arrested, although subsequently released.

To be honest, I find such a fortuitous coincidence to be somewhat troubling, firstly, because this was not the ONLY unique and historically valuable artifact that Golan was in possession of, I mean how likley is it that he would "find" two such highly valuable items (the ossuary and the Jehoash tablet.) And, the explanations that Golan did provide for his "finds" are overly vague at best.

Secondly, how convenient that the inscription on the ossuary just happens to mention "brother of Jesus."

I do not know, but this just seems TOO good to be true, it doesn't seem to pass the smell test for me at least. No pun intended that when the Israeli Archaological authorities raided Golan's premises, they found the supposedly "priceless artifact" sitting on top of a commode.....in the midst of several halfway completed forgeries.

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Axordil
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Posted: Mon 28 Mar , 2005 3:12 pm
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Certainty on an issue doesn't make anyone money. Doubt, on the other hand, can be a cash cow for decades.

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vison
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Posted: Mon 28 Mar , 2005 3:13 pm
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I, too, had read that the forger was arrested, and a number of accomplices.

They had been making and selling fake antiquities for years, apparently, and were very good at it.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 5:35 am
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I watched the 60 minutes program and find it all befuddling.

There was another program on PBS a few months ago about Israeli antiquities, and apparently there's a lot of Israeli political stuff behind the debates over authenticity for this stuff. The religious party is looking for temple artifacts that will prove some theory or another, and the secularists are questioning the methodology of religiously motivated archeologists.

If Kushana says there are tests that would prove or disprove authenticity conclusively, I believe her! It sounded on 60 minutes as if the tablet were given to the Israeli museum to give them an incentive to find both artifacts authentic.

Jn

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Kushana
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Posted: Tue 29 Mar , 2005 6:00 am
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<K. mildly points to the Israeli judicial equivalent of "innocent until proven guilty" >

Note: there is no money to be made in this, the collector says he has had the box since the 1970's and has not been interested in selling -- it either before or after the inscription was identified. It's really a matter of whether specialists can use this as a piece of evidence or not.

If you'd look through the background material (and the TORC thread which I can't, for the life of me, locate...) there are problems with the Israel Antiquities Authority's report and many unanswered questions about initial lab work and paleographic analysis which seemed to tend towards the artifact's authenticity. BAR has done a good job, also, of pointing out the local politics at stake -- and of covering the issues of looting, the antiquities market, and private collectors over the years.

(Note that antiques dealers, private collectors, and unprovenanced artifacts have played a central role in my (and some related) fields. I'd be glad to see an end to forging and looting, but until that day a degree of realism (and skepticism) is necessary...)

I would like to see the prosecution's case. The collector was previously arrested then released... why the delay? If this is a clear-cut case of forgery, why has it taken so long to make the arrests and what is the evidence? What else have these people allagedly forged, and if so what is the evidence on each of these items? If the tablet and/or the ossuary is their work (and such an obvious crime), then I'd like to see such things prosecuted with greater speed and clarity. (I'd also like to see analysis by neutral panels of experts who are not working somewhat outside their training and background... and I am accustomed to lab work being consistent and peer-verifiable. )

To go to the anecdotal:

I took the first published photo of the inscription I saw to a seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was working on paleography and where most of the participants knew Aramaic. None of us noticed anything odd about the inscription, and none of us could sort out the 12th through 16th letters... it turns out they spell "brother of", but in such a rare form that they puzzled a world-ranked expert on the language of the time who was asked to examine the artifact.

If this rare form was copied from another inscription, I think it would be easy to peg which one... No one has done so, and no one has offered an explanation for this rare, ancient form of this very common word except for 'authentic'.

-Kushana, who would just like her questions answered

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Pretty nice Shire, isn't it? Ring... God-Soldier... What's the difference?


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