First Person: Help Me! I’m Desperate!

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The truth is that almost everyone—scholar and layperson—believes that the James Ossuary inscription (“James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”) is a forgery.

And no wonder. A committee of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has declared it a forgery. The alleged forger, a Tel Aviv collector named Oded Golan, is now on trial in Jerusalem for forging it. Last Easter, “60 Minutes” broadcast a segment devoted to the James Ossuary that seemed to confirm this conclusion. They even found the missing Egyptian who helped Golan make his forgeries!

So what’s to argue about? True, BAR first exposed the inscription to the public in a cover story^a that made the front-page of The New York Times and practically every other paper in the world the next day. Isn’t it about time to just admit we made a mistake? After all, nobody’s perfect.

I’m no expert in ancient inscriptions. But I can reason. All I want is for somebody to meet me on the ground of reason, not hunches. And not by silence—just reason.

I know lots of scholars. I can’t find one (except Yuval Goren; more on his views later) who will argue with me. Most who think it’s a forgery have not studied the matter closely and either base their view on a hunch or just meet my arguments with silence. It’s simply too easy, even for scholars, to accept the widely held view that it’s a forgery.

I may not be an expert in ancient inscriptions, but, after 35 years in this business, I’m a pretty good judge of scholarly expertise. I know who’s good and who isn’t. And I think you will find general agreement that André Lemaire of the Sorbonne and Ada Yardeni in Jerusalem are at the top of the field when it comes to ancient Semitic inscriptions. Both of them say the inscription is authentic. So does, by inference, another great Semitic paleographer, Émile Puech of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, who has written widely about the inscription, arguing that it does not refer to the brother of Jesus of Nazareth. If Puech had another basis for attacking the inscription—such as, it was a forgery—he would certainly say so. That he hasn’t speaks volumes. So you have three of the world’s greatest paleographers—experts in scripts—who believe the inscription is authentic.

Any discussion of this inscription that doesn’t at least mention this fact is, to my mind, biased and questionable.

Is there a paleographer on the other side who, based on this expertise, says it’s a forgery? Yes, a woman named Rochelle Altman, whom nobody in the fraternity of experts on Semitic scripts of this period has ever heard of. Her recent book on scripts was reviewed in a leading scholarly journal; it was the most damning review I have ever read.^b

That’s the extent of the paleographical argument that the inscription is a forgery. No qualified paleographer has suggested that an examination of the script indicates in any way that it is a forgery.

What about science? A number of scientists have examined the bone box with its inscription and Yuval Goren’s report and found no reason to think it a forgery. These scientists include Amnon Rosenfeld and Shimon Ilani of the Geological Survey of Israel; Edward J. Keall, curator, and Ewa Dziadowiec, conservator, of the Royal Ontario Museum; Wolfgang Krumbein of Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany; and James Harrell of the University of Toledo.

Here, however, a pair of scientists from Israel with distinguished credentials have concluded otherwise: Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University and Avner Ayalon of the Geological Survey of Israel. Goren found a patina-like covering on the inscription that he speculated was used to cover and thereby conceal the marks of forgery. (Ever the comedian, Goren called the covering the “James Bond.”) This James Bond was made with water about 50 degrees centigrade, according to an oxygen-isotope study of the substance made by Avner Ayalon.

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There are several holes in their analysis, however. One is that, as they themselves admit, their oxygen isotope results could have been produced by cleaning the inscription with hot water. They say it is one “or” the other—as likely one as the other.

And there is every reason to believe that the ossuary was cleaned with hot water.

Second, according to several scientists, the James Bond could not be produced in the way Goren claims.^c Goren’s mistake in claiming otherwise may result from the fact that he is not really a petrographer, an expert who studies stone. He studies clays—a very different subject. Only a few of the more-than-a-hundred papers he has published involve stone. And not a single stone expert (or anyone else) has stood up to defend the conclusions Goren derives from the isotope tests.

Well, what about the finding of the IAA committee?

As one of the world’s great Aramaists, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, has noted, there really is no IAA report that all the committee members signed.^d There are only individual submissions. Some committee members express no opinion. Others found original patina in some of the letters of the inscription. Still others based their views not on their own expertise but on that of others, specifically on Yuval Goren’s scientific arguments, which they themselves could not vouch for. One committee member said he would have found the inscription authentic until he was “forced” to change his mind by Goren’s scientific argument.

As to the forgery trial, it simply drags on. Three of the original five defendants are out of the case. After nearly three years, the government has recently concluded its case against Golan and the other remaining defendant. No smoking gun.

Supposedly the smoking gun was an Egyptian named Marko. No one knew where he was, however. The Israeli police couldn’t get him for the trial. But “60 Minutes” found him—in the Arab souk in Cairo! Marko is a jeweler (forger?) who worked for Golan for 15 years. “60 Minutes” producer Michael Gavshon interviewed Marko and showed Marko a picture of the ossuary inscription. But Marko said he had never seen it before.

The television show’s major piece of evidence that the ossuary inscription is a forgery consisted of a picture showing that Golan had stored the ossuary in an old unused bathroom on the roof of the apartment in Tel Aviv where he lives. Golan says he put the ossuary there after it returned from exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum because that was the safest place in the building for his now-famous artifact.

I may be dense, but it’s hard for me to understand how storing this precious object in an unused (and unusable) bathroom suggests—let alone proves—that the inscription is a forgery. I guess the idea is that if Golan would store the ossuary on a toilet, he must know it wasn’t worth much. Or maybe the idea is that if Golan, an Israeli Jew, really thought this was the ossuary of Jesus’ brother, he would never put it on a toilet.

Other evidence, which Golan denies, suggests Golan is a forger of seals. But that does not make everything in his huge collection a forgery. Let’s be specific: Is the ossuary inscription a forgery?

I have put the arguments I have made here to several scholars who I think believe the ossuary inscription is a forgery, but all I get from them is silence. I can’t get them to argue the other side.

Where am I going wrong?

In desperation, I am turning to both BAR’s scholarly and lay readers. Let’s have a discussion. Let’s reason together. Tell me where I’m making my mistake.

Either I’m way off the mark or there has been a successful effort to “hustle” this inscription. Maybe it’s just a better story if the inscription is a forgery than if it’s authentic. Maybe the IAA hates the antiquities market enough to lump the ossuary inscription with other alleged forgeries where it has a better case. Or perhaps the strong suspicion that Oded Golan is a forger is enough. Perhaps he’s forged other stuff.

Is that enough to declare the James inscription a forgery? Let us hear from you—either by e-mail (letters@bib-arch.org) or by mail (4710 41st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20016).

The truth is that almost everyone—scholar and layperson—believes that the James Ossuary inscription (“James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”) is a forgery.