The Ossuary Find: Was It Really from 'The Brother of Jesus'?

In October 2002, archaeologists stunned the world by announcing the discovery of a first-century C.E. bone box with the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." In the succeeding months, a flurry of debate has surrounded the ossuary find. While many scholars believe the bone box itself is genuine, some question whether the Aramaic phrase "brother of Jesus" is a forgery tacked on to the original inscription. Here, the editor of Biblical Archaeology Review makes a case for the inscription's authenticity.

Reprinted from "The Brother of Jesus" with permission of HarperSanFrancisco.

Since the discovery of the ossuary, more and more people, many of them scholars, were saying the inscription was a fake. Some people had been saying this from the moment the ossuary announcement was made.




Above: Artists' rendering of the ossuary inscription.

... On an Internet Web site, one Rochelle Altman concluded that the second half of the inscription ("brother of Jesus") was not written by the person who wrote the first half. Altman said categorically,

The differences between the two parts are glaring and impossible not to see.. [In the second part of the inscription] we immediately can see that this is a different person writing.. Part 2 has the characteristics of a later addition by someone attempting to imitate an unfamiliar script and write in an unfamiliar language.

She also identified another "tell-tale sign of fraud." The text of the inscription, she claimed, is excised rather than incised. That is, the area around the letters has been carved out so that the letters themselves protrude.

There are several infirmities in this analysis. The first is the certainty with which Altman makes judgments. It is strange that she is so sure of herself and able to see at a glance what apparently evades some of the world's leading paleographers. Second, she is clearly wrong (although just as confident) in contending that the inscription is excised rather than incised. She had never seen the ossuary itself, only pictures. Yet without hesitation she concluded that none of the letters in the inscription is cut into the stone. I am no expert. But even I can see that the letters are incised. Anyone who has seen the ossuary itself knows this.

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