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Imagine! Imagine that I had not had what seemed at the time like a casual conversation with two well-known Jerusalem scholars at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta last November. Imagine that therefore I did not know the identity of the two unnamed sources in the story Eric Meyers put out on the Internet.
Eric Meyers—professor of Judaic studies at Duke University, former president of the American Schools of Oriental Research, former editor of Biblical Archaeologist magazine, excavator of numerous sites in the Holy Land, author of an untold number of books and articles and book reviews—publishes an article on the Internet that is soon picked up by the Associated Press and then summarized in Artifax, a joint publication of four evangelical societies, and from there beamed around the world: On separate occasions in the mid-1990s, Meyers reports, two Jerusalem scholars saw the same controversial ossuary, or bone box, now inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” in an antiquities shop in the Old City, but at the time they saw it the inscription read only “James, son of Joseph.” And they are “certain” that it was the same ossuary. One of them has even given a sworn statement to this effect to the Israeli police, so it must be true.
There’s only one hitch, Meyers tells us: They don’t want their names used! They insist on anonymity. So Meyers protects them.
In effect, Meyers vouches for them. And, after all, Meyers has impeccable credentials. To assure us that there can be no mistake, Meyers tells us that one of his unnamed informants is a “noted Hebrew/Aramaic epigrapher,” so he is in an excellent position to read the inscription. Accustomed to dealing in inscriptions, Meyers’s unnamed source would easily be expected to remember the ossuary inscription that he saw in the antiquities shop.
Soon everyone is talking about it: The ossuary was seen in the mid-1990s in a Jerusalem antiquities shop without the reference to Jesus. That had to be added later. Oded Golan, the owner of the ossuary, says he owned the ossuary for decades. He’s got to be lying. The thing has been proven to be a forgery!
Now imagine you’re Oded Golan reading about this. What can he do? How can he investigate the matter? He doesn’t even know who his accusers are. They are standing behind Eric Meyers, a scholar of surpassing rectitude.
Yet, if Golan is telling the truth, the two scholars standing incognito behind Meyers are lying (unless there’s some explanation I haven’t thought of).
That’s how rumors work. They are insidious things.
Just by happenstance, the two scholars standing behind Meyers told me the same story. I know who they are. This makes it possible for me to check their story. To see the result of my investigation, read “Lying scholars?”.
Imagine! Imagine that I had not had what seemed at the time like a casual conversation with two well-known Jerusalem scholars at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta last November. Imagine that therefore I did not know the identity of the two unnamed sources in the story Eric Meyers put out on the Internet.