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Engraved in Memory

Diaspora Jews Find Eternal Rest in Jerusalem

By André Lemaire

When Oded Golan first invited me to his home in April 2002, it was to examine an inscription on a bone box—but not the one bearing the now-famous inscription, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” That one was not even in Golan’s apartment at that time. He showed me only a picture of it; he had already been able to read the inscription with the help of one of Israel’s most prominent paleographers, Ada Yardeni. (Whether Golan yet realized the significance of the inscription is another question; from the way he spoke of it, he did not.) What […]

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Footnotes

1.

See André Lemaire, “Israel Antiquities Authority’s Report Deeply Flawed,” BAR 29:06.

2.

For a somewhat similar phenomenon, see the ossuary of “Alexander Son of Simon” in Tim Powers, “Family Tomb of Simon of Cyrene,” BAR 29:04.

3.

Frank Moore Cross, “Statement on Inscribed Artifacts Without Provenience,” BAR 31:05.

4.

See Hershel Shanks, “A Tale of Two Meetings,” BAR 30:02.

Endnotes

1.

For a technical treatise of these two ossuary inscriptions, plus the James ossuary inscription, see my “Trois Inscriptions araméennes sur ossuaire et leur intérêt,” Compte Rendus, Academie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres, Janvier–Mars 2003, pp. 301–317.

2.

L.Y. Rahmani, A Catalog of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1994), pp. 11–12, n. 6.

3.

See Joseph Naveh, “Varia Epigraphica Judaica 1: Two Unpublished Ossuary Inscriptions” Israel Oriental Studies 9 (1979), pp. 17–23, esp. pp. 21–23; Emile Puech, “Ossuaries inscrits d’une tombe du Mont des Oliviers,” Liber Annuus 32 (1982), pp. 355–372, esp. p. 358.

4.

Jewish War 2.479 (Loeb ed.).

5.

See Edward Lipinski, Itineraria Phoenicia, orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 127 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), p. 524.

6.

J. Cantineau, Grammaire du palmyrénien épigraphique, Le Caire, 1935, pp. 31–35.

7.

Harvard Semitic Museum News, February 2003.