Predilections—Is the “Brother of Jesus” Inscription a Forgery?

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We all have our predilections, BAR no less than those I write about here.

The massive effort to expose and condemn the ossuary inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” as a forgery ended with the acquittal of owner Oded Golan, but this effort has risen anew, enlisting a prominent American paleographer in the cause. From beginning to end, as we shall see, however, the effort to establish the forgery was motivated by predilections more than facts.

Although the ossuary inscription had been authenticated by an internationally respected paleographer (André Lemaire of the Sorbonne) and the ossuary (bone box) had been submitted for examination to the Geological Survey of Israel, which found no suggestion that the inscription was a forgery,^a the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which is well known for its antipathy to antiquities collectors and the antiquities market, made the almost unprecedented decision to appoint a committee to study the inscription and report.^b Their predilection was plain.

The importance of the inscription is also plain. If it is authentic, it would be the earliest written reference to Jesus.

The IAA committee’s report admitted that it had chosen some committee members who had “expressed an opinion on the subject,” suggesting that it knew where it wanted the committee to come out. A penetrating analysis of the committee’s report has recently been published by the eminent Dutch scholar Pieter van der Horst, who points out that the IAA’s choice of committee members was far worse than this.¹ Van der Horst notes that the IAA “appointed almost exclusively committee members who had already expressed outspoken opinions to the effect that the inscription was a forgery.”² Nor did the IAA appoint to the committee anyone on the other side, such as Professor Lemaire.

But, to its credit, the IAA formally instructed the committee members “to arrive at the truth based on pure research only—without taking into account any other related factors regarding the collector, current gossip, rumors or prejudices.” Moreover, “Each scholar [on the committee] should work in his own discipline.”

Unfortunately, these guidelines were utterly ignored by the committee members.

Here are some quotations from Van der Horst’s analysis of the committee report:³

• “Amos Kloner, an archaeologist, says that the inscription looks rather recent and that the forger has tried to create an air of authenticity by imitating ancient examples. No proofs or arguments are given for these assertions. As André Lemaire rightly states, on the basis of such reasoning innumerable inscriptions from antiquity can be dismissed as forgeries.”
• “Tal Ilan, expert in the field of Jewish onomastics and women’s studies, admits that she is not an expert in epigraphy and for that reason had to rely on the opinions of other experts, which is in flagrant contradiction with the guideline that ‘each scholar should work in his own discipline.’ Nevertheless, she ventures the epigraphic judgment that the words ‘brother of Jesus’ are a later addition because these letters look more cursive than the others which are in a more formal style. However, apparently because other committee members regard the preceding words (‘James, son of 055 Joseph’) as an addition to the (authentic) inscription ‘brother of Jesus,’ Ilan strangely enough says further on that the forger got his hands on an ossuary with the authentic phrase ‘brother of Jesus’ (who could have been anyone) and added the words “James, son of Joseph,” a curious statement which does not agree with what she said in the first instance. She does concede, however, that when she saw the inscription for the first time, before the controversy broke out, she could not find anything suspicious about it!”
• “The archaeologist Ronnie Reich … does not see any indications of forgery, but in the end he nonetheless votes against authenticity! Why? Because the ‘materials committee’ says that the patina in the letters is not ancient. But in this way Reich violates the rule that each expert is obliged to present an opinion that is based only upon his own discipline. This is certainly the way to come to a unanimous verdict!”
• “Esther Eshel, paleographer, rejects the authenticity of the inscription because she does not know any other ossuary on which the decoration (in this case some rosettes on the back) is so vague and worn out, whereas the inscription is so clear and sharp.”

  “In fact, such cases are far from exceptional. Lemaire refers to several [such] ossuaries in Rahmani’s collection [the standard collection of Jewish ossuaries].”

In the end, the committee members unanimously agreed that the ossuary inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” is a forgery.

Van der Horst concludes:

“It is stupefying that there are scholars who think in all seriousness that decisive proof of the inscription’s inauthenticity has now been provided. One really does not have to be a genius in order to see that no compelling arguments whatsoever have been put forward … Seldom has a ‘final scientific report’ been so much the contrary of what it should have been.”⁴

Van der Horst goes on to note that Oded Golan, one of the largest antiquities collectors in Israel, “was arrested by a number of policemen in the middle of the night as if he were a dangerous criminal, 056 was handcuffed while TV cameras were present, and after that was interrogated for 30 hours continuously.”⁵

• • •

The criminal trial of Oded Golan lasted seven years (although it also charged other defendants involving other alleged forgeries) and included 138 witnesses, more than 400 exhibits and over 12,000 pages of testimony. In the end, the judge acquitted Golan (and all other defendants) on all charges of forgery. (Golan was convicted of two minor charges of trading in antiquities without a license.)

Three well-known paleographers (specialists in dating, interpreting and authenticating inscriptions) testified at the trial: André Lemaire testified that the inscription on the stone bone box was authentic. And so did Ada Yardeni of Hebrew University. She is probably the most eminent paleographer in Israel since the death of her mentor, Joseph Naveh.

The third to testify was a prominent American paleographer now of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Christopher Rollston. But Rollston refused to opine regarding the authenticity of the ossuary inscription or its paleography! He explained that he was not an expert in Second Temple inscriptions (the time of the ossuary). “I only talk about what I am sure of. That is not my field,” he said. Attempts to get him to express an opinion failed. “This is not a period I specialize in. My work is in the Iron Age,” he protested.

In the seven-year trial the government was not able to find a single paleographer to testify that the inscription was a forgery.

After the verdict of acquittal, Rollston blogged. He talked about past forgeries in general and the motivation of forgers. But he did not question the verdict of acquittal, nor did he express any doubts as to the authenticity of the inscription.^c

I thought that this was the end of the matter until the Easter season in 2015, when I watched an hour-long TV program on CNN regarding the ossuary and its “brother of Jesus” inscription. Only one scholar addressed the question of the authenticity of the inscription—the same Christopher Rollston who could not express an opinion at the trial. Now he was prepared to opine on the authenticity of the inscription—for all of 33 seconds.

Rollston said he “notice[d] … a difference in depth, clarity and the presence of kerning [spacing between the letters] between the first half of the inscription and the second half [the ‘brother of Jesus’].” On that basis—and that basis alone—Rollston declared the chances of the “brother of Jesus” inscription being a modern forgery are “at least 75–85 percent.”⁶

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I later talked to Rollston, who is a good friend of mine and with whom I have long argued amiably. He explained that since his testimony at the trial in Jerusalem, he has schooled himself in Second Temple inscriptions so that he is now competent to opine about them. What this involved, he did not explain.

When he agreed to appear on the TV program, Chris had apparently never expressed a written opinion regarding the forgery/authenticity of the “brother of Jesus” inscription. On March 22, 2015, the day the CNN program aired, he posted a blog about the inscription,⁷ but he has still not written a scientific paper supporting his new conclusion. He apparently jumped at the chance to appear on nationwide TV during the Easter season.

In his blog post, he gave no more extended analysis of the ossuary inscription than he did on the TV screen. In fact, he was considerably more tentative. In his blog, he hesitated to judge the percentage that the inscription was a forgery. The furthest he would go was to say that the “most tenable conclusion” is that two different hands wrote the first and second parts of the inscription. In conclusion, there are three possibilities, he said: (1) both hands are ancient; (2) the second hand is modern; (3) the entire inscription is modern. Based on what he calls the “hermeneutics of suspicion,” he finds the inscription “suspicious.” Finally, dramatic claims of authenticity “require decisive evidence.” No unprovenanced inscription can meet Rollston’s test. (What would constitute “decisive evidence” of an unprovenanced inscription? Rollston’s antipathy to unprovenanced inscriptions is well evidenced in his writings.) “In the case of the James Ossuary,” he goes on in his blog post, “we simply do not have that caliber of evidence” (i.e., “decisive evidence” of authenticity). On that basis, Rollston declares at least the second half of the ossuary inscription a “probable modern forgery.” No more than that.

Only on the TV program did the probability of forgery go up to “at least 75–85 percent.”

Moreover, neither on TV nor on his blog does Rollston mention the judgment of André Lemaire and Ada Yardeni, who have authenticated the inscription, nor the fact that no paleographer testified at the Jerusalem trial that the inscription was a forgery. Nor does he provide the scholarly world with the usual analysis to support his conclusion before going public with it on Easter TV. The most we can say is that Rollston came to his conclusion rather casually.

So far, no other paleographer has endorsed Chris’s TV judgment. When I asked Chris whether any paleographer had agreed with his conclusion, he referred me to Harvard Professor Frank Cross’s very early judgment that the ossuary inscription was a forgery (Cross died in 2012). Cross was about as distinguished a professorial judgment as you could get. But this shows how far Chris had to go for expert paleographical support. Cross had judged the inscription to be a forgery because it was engraved deeply, in contrast to the two rosettes on the other side of the ossuary that were very shallowly inscribed. His suggestion was not received well in the scholarly world. The explanation for the difference in depth of the carving on the two sides of the ossuary is simple: The inscription was made with a chisel; the rosettes were traced with a pointed compass. Moreover, the 058 rosette side may have been against the cave wall; water may have dripped on that side for centuries, wearing away at the back of the ossuary. I concede to no one in admiration and respect for Cross. He and I even did a book together. But no one today would express any confidence in the reasons he gave for his judgment that the ossuary inscription was a forgery. “Even the good Homer nods,” as the Roman poet Horace famously said.⁸ That Chris had to go this far to find support for his conclusion of “forgery” indicates just how weak his case is.

My conclusion is that Chris has a predilection for concluding that an inscription on any object that is unprovenanced (i.e., whose source is unknown) is a modern forgery.

I suppose I should end by expressing my own predilections.

I am no paleographer. My confidence is based mostly on the fact that André Lemaire and Ada Yardeni regard the inscription as authentic, and I highly respect their judgment. (Yardeni, in fact, told her colleague Bezalel Porten, a renowned epigrapher, “If this is a forgery, I quit.”^d) But my reasoning goes beyond that.

Oded Golan, the owner of the ossuary, claims to have purchased the ossuary from a Jerusalem antiquities dealer in the mid-1970s and never realized that the inscription had any special significance. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the importance of the inscription support Golan’s claim: Golan met Lemaire at a party in 2001 and asked if Lemaire would look at an ossuary in his collection that he kept in his apartment. Lemaire agreed and later visited Golan, who showed him an ossuary with an inscription. But it was not the one that later became famous. Later, Golan showed Lemaire a photograph of another ossuary he had in storage. Lemaire was able to read the inscription on it and assess its significance. This is how the “brother of Jesus” inscription was discovered.

But even if Golan had been able to read the inscription, he would not have understood its significance. The inscription is commonly expressed as “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” But this is not what it says. It is in Aramaic and begins with the name “Ya‘akov.” An Israeli would read this as the name Jacob. The English names Jacob and James are variants of the same name. Ya‘akov, the name of the Biblical patriarch Jacob, became Jacobus in Latin translations of the Bible; in the New Testament, the apostle of the same name became Jacomus. In English it became “James.” Unless Oded Golan knew this, he would not understand that Ya‘akov could be read as James.

Moreover, Golan owned the ossuary since the mid-1970s without trying to get any benefit from it.

Golan submitted at his trial two pictures of the ossuary in his parents’ apartment from the mid-1970s. An American former FBI agent, Gerald B. Richards, testified at the trial on the authenticity of the photographs. He testified that the photographic paper on which the photographs were printed was discontinued in the early 1980s.

Golan also produced other strong evidence that he has owned the ossuary since this early time—all without realizing the significance of the inscription. He says he had no idea of the possible significance of the inscription until André Lemaire saw it and explained it to him. In short, if he owned the ossuary since the mid-1970s without recognizing it for what it was, this makes it extremely unlikely that he forged the inscription.⁹

But this may only be my predilection.

Although the famous “Brother of Jesus” inscription on an ancient ossuary (bone box) has been authenticated by two world-class paleographers, American paleographer Christopher Rollston has judged the inscription 75–85 percent a forgery on an Easter-time TV program. Is his judgment based solely on his predilection against unprovenanced inscriptions?