Update: Finds or Fakes?

046

Late News: Golan Jailed

Charged With Trying to Influence Witness

Oded Golan, owner of the ossuary (bone box) inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” and indicted forger, was jailed on March 8 for “obstructing legal procedure,” according to Major Yoni Pagis of the Jerusalem police. He refused to elaborate, however. According to Golan’s lawyer, Lior Bringer, Golan is accused of attempting to influence a prosecution witness, an Egyptian jeweler who some say might have engraved the forged inscription. Golan denies this, claiming the inscription is not forged. Golan says the Egyptian has been his friend for more than 15 years and has even stayed at Golan’s apartment

Under Israeli law, after 24 hours the prosecutor must justify the arrest before a magistrate. The magistrate authorized extensions of time until, after two weeks, the case was heard by a district judge in Jerusalem. The judge ordered Golan’s release.

However, the government, as of this writing has appealed this ruling to Israel’s Supreme Court. In the meantime, Golan remains in jail.

For further news on this situation, see the “Update—Finds or Fakes?” section of our website (www.bib-arch.org).

Star Witness Recants

Israeli Prosecutor Repudiates IAA Report on Forgery

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) report concluding that the James ossuary inscription is a forgery is falling apart. Even the Israeli prosecutor has repudiated the IAA report.

It never was as unanimous as the IAA made it out to be. From the outset there was disagreement among the committee members.

Committee member Ronny Reich wrote that he was “forced” only by the hard scientific evidence to change his view that the inscription was authentic. Based on his own expertise in reading ancient inscriptions, he would have found the inscription authentic. Now, after studying the scientific evidence in more detail, he announced to a BAR banquet in San Antonio last November that he believes the inscription is authentic, although not archaeologically important.

The more important defection from the IAA report is the Israeli prosecutor. In the forgery indictment, released in late December 2004, the prosecutor admits that the words “James, son of Joseph” are ancient and authentic. The forger simply added “brother of Jesus” to an otherwise authentic inscription, the indictment alleges.

This is an entirely different theory of the case from the conclusion of the IAA. According to the IAA’s reasoning, the entire inscription is a forgery. If the first part of the inscription is authentic, as the indictment now admits, then the IAA reasoning attempting to prove the whole inscription a forgery is worthless. There is no way, using the IAA’s reasoning, that the first part of the inscription can be authentic and only the words “brother of Jesus” a forgery. There is an irreconcilable conflict between the IAA report and the forgery indictment—both cannot be true.

There is not a word in the voluminous IAA report even remotely suggesting that the first part of the inscription is authentic, as the indictment now admits. The IAA conclusion that the inscription is a forgery is based on the results of seven oxygen isotope samples taken from various parts of the inscription. According to the report, six of these samples indicate the inscription is a forgery. The seventh sample does not support this conclusion. The seventh sample was taken from the last word in the inscription: Jesus. So if the IAA oxygen-isotope test proves anything, it proves that the word “Jesus” may be authentic.

This is echoed in the conclusion of one of the IAA committee members, Orna Cohen, who writes in the IAA report: “The end of the inscription ‘brother of Jesus’ appears authentic; in some places [in ‘brother of Jesus’] there seems to be remains of old patina.” Yet that is the only part of the inscription that the indictment alleges is a forgery.

If the theory of the IAA report is correct—that the oxygen-isotope study indicates forgery—then the entire inscription must be a forgery. There is no room for the indictment’s contention that only the last two words have been forged. In short, the forgery indictment irreconcilably conflicts with the IAA report and the IAA report irreconcilably conflicts with the indictment.

In the indictment, the Israeli prosecutor is apparently relying on the claim of two Jerusalem scholars—Father Emile Puech of Jersualem’s Ecole Biblique and physical anthropologist Joe Zias—that they saw the ossuary in Mahmoud’s shop on the Via Dolorosa in the mid-1990s, but without the words “brother of Jesus.” When they saw it, the inscription read only “James son of Joseph.” Here, apparently, is the smoking gun on which the prosecutor is relying: Proof 047positive that “brother of Jesus” had been added sometime after the mid-1990s to an authentic inscription reading “James, son of Joseph.”

One of the people to whom Puech and Zias told their story was Duke University Professor Eric Meyers, who believes the James ossuary inscription is a forgery because it violates the “To Good To Be True Rule” (for more on this “rule,” see story later in this section). Meyers was so excited by this news that he promptly published the claim of Puech and Zias on the internet.

Moreover, Puech is an experienced epigrapher (a specialist in inscriptions) and Dead Sea Scroll expert who would easily read and remember the inscription. Zias, however, has no expertise in epigraphy.

As it happened, both of these scholars also told the editor of BAR the very same story they had told Professor Meyers. Although Meyers published the report before BAR, the story also appeared in BAR.^a The two published accounts confirmed one another.

Puech had written widely about the ossuary inscription before telling his story to Meyers and the BAR editor. And these stories were published after he purportedly saw the ossuary inscription without the words “brother of Jesus.” Yet, strangely, in these articles he did not mention the fact that he had previously seen the ossuary inscription in its truncated state. He went to great lengths in these publications to argue that the “Jesus” in the inscription was not the “Jesus” of the New Testament. Why, then, didn’t he say that when he first saw the inscription, it said nothing about anyone named “Jesus”? In one of his publications, Puech confidently assures his readers that the entire inscription was written by one hand. How could this be possible, however, if “brother of Jesus” was a forged addition?

One possibility was that Puech was lying about having seen the inscription without the words “brother of Jesus.” We raised this possibility in a story in the May/June 2004 BAR.^b

After the indictment was filed, which apparently relies on the testimony of Puech to support its theory of the case, a magazine in Israel named Jerusalem Report published a cover story on the ossuary (February 21, 2005). The reporter investigating the story went to Puech to get clarification of the apparent conflict in what Puech was writing and what he told Meyers and the BAR editor. The result of this query: Puech recanted. He admitted that he never saw the ossuary inscription, either in Mahmoud’s shop or elsewhere!

It is not clear whether Puech claims that Meyers and BAR inaccurately reported what he said or whether he simply changed his mind about what he saw in Mahmoud’s antiquities shop.

In any event, Puech now admits that he never saw the James ossuary inscription. He told the Jerusalem Report writer that “he had glimpsed … a pinkish bone box … 20 years earlier. He also says today that he can barely recall the … ossuary, didn’t even notice if it had an inscription, and having seen the Golan box only in photos, he can’t possibly say if they [the ossuary he saw in Mahmoud’s shop and the James ossuary] are one and the same.”

So much for Puech’s claim to have seen the ossuary in the mid-1990s without the words “brother of Jesus” and so much for the prosecutor’s smoking gun.

Will Zias stick to his story? So far he has remained mum on the subject. He has not said whether or not he still maintains that he saw the inscription in Mahmoud’s shop without the words “brother of Jesus.” When BAR questioned his claim to have seen the ossuary inscription without the “brother of Jesus,” Zias threatened to sue BAR. The Jerusalem Report article states that he “is now suing Shanks for libel.” Shanks says he is unaware of any lawsuit brought by Zias.

Mahmoud, who closed his shop and lives in Germany, says the James ossuary was never in his shop.

If Zias’s testimony is all that the Israeli prosecutor is relying on, he will have a very difficult case.

Perhaps the prosecutor has some evidence that we don’t know about. But under Israeli law any such evidence must be given to the defendants. So far as we have been able to determine, no such evidence has been given to the defendants.

One thing seems clear: The IAA’s conclusion, which we have shown elsewhere to be deeply flawed,^c has now been repudiated not only by BAR, but by the Israeli prosecutor.

For The Latest on the Case

The forgery case changes almost daily. To keep up, go to our website (www.bib-arch.org) and click on the “Update—Finds or Fakes?” section. There you will find extensive coverage and highlights such as the Update section from the previous issue of BAR (March/April 2005), which described the forgery indictments handed down in Israel against five individuals, profiles of the accused and the accusers, and descriptions of the objects alleged to be forgeries. That Update section also featured an extensive bibliography, which listed past BAR articles related to the case.

Our website also contains an English translation of the indictment and the full report of two committees appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which declared two inscriptions—on the James ossuary and on the Jehoash tablet—to be modern forgeries.

048

Israel Museum Declines BAR’s Offer to Purchase Forged Pomegranate

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem has declined an offer of more than a half million dollars from BAR to purchase an object newly discovered to be a forgery.

In late December 2004, the museum announced that an ivory pomegranate in its collection, inscribed on the shoulder “Holy to the priests, belonging to the Temple of [Yahwe]h,” was a forgery. Often said to be the only surviving relic from Solomon’s Temple, the tiny pomegranate was thought to be the head of a priestly scepter and, as such, was prominently displayed in the museum. The museum had purchased the pomegranate from an undisclosed seller for $550,000.

On February 11, 2005, after the announcement that the pomegranate inscription was a forgery (although the pomegranate itself was conceded to be ancient), BAR offered to buy the pomegranate for the amount the museum had paid for it. On March 17, museum director James R. Snyder declined the offer. While “the Ivory Pomegranate no longer carries the historical significance which it was previously thought to have, it remains for us an important story of museological process,” Snyder wrote BAR editor Hershel Shanks.

The first announcement that the inscription was a forgery came in March 2004 from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), without any explanation as to the basis for its conclusion. When the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz asked for an explanation, the IAA, in the words of the newspaper, “refused to reveal the origins and the nature of the information it holds.”

The IAA apparently reached its conclusion on the basis of nothing more than looking at the pomegranate in its museum case. Like Ha’aretz, BAR, too, sought more information. Museum director Snyder told BAR that he had no more information than BAR did. He told BAR, as we reported in our July/August 2004 issue (p. 52):

“I only know what I read in the newspapers. Nothing has been presented to us. We are always willing to look at evidence that one of our pieces is a forgery, but in this case there is nothing to look at. We had it carefully examined before purchasing it by independent experts outside the museum and they raised no question about its authenticity. It is too bad that it has just been presented to the media as a platform for publicity.”

Sources tell BAR, however, that when Snyder made this statement, a secret committee had already been appointed to examine and report on the inscription’s authenticity. The identities of the committee members have remained a top secret, however, even until now.

The guiding light on the committee, BAR has learned, was Tel Aviv University professor Yuval Goren, who previously guided an IAA committee in its finding that both the James ossuary inscription and the Jehoash inscription are forgeries. Goren is also responsible for determining that most of the other objects listed in the recent criminal indictment against four Israelis and one West Bank Palestinian are forgeries. Goren was assisted on the pomegranate committee by Avner Ayalon, of the Geological Survey of Israel, who also worked with Goren on the IAA committee that found the James ossuary inscription and Jehoash inscription to be forgeries.

The committee’s conclusion that the pomegranate inscription is a forgery was announced in what has now become standard practice in Israel archaeology: Make an announcement to the press but give no explanation or report supporting the conclusion. In this way it is impossible to obtain other views on whether the committee’s conclusion is sound, for no one knows the basis for the finding. This results in maximum media coverage in favor of the announced conclusion. The “Committee” functions like a court from whose decision there is no appeal.

In the case of the pomegranate committee, the announcement was made by the Israel Museum. No mention was made of the members of the committee or the reasons for their conclusion. No report of the committee’s findings was made at the time, nor has one become available since then.

BAR has learned, however, that the committee includes Miryam Bar-Matthews, of the Israel Geological Survey and a frequent colleague of Goren and Ayalon who often works with them on matters far removed from archaeology; the chief curator of archaeology at the Israel Museum, Michal Dayagi-Mendels, who is neither a hard scientist nor a paleographer (a specialist in ancient writing) but a very competent museum curator; Uzi Dahari, deputy director of the IAA and chairman of the committee that declared the James ossuary inscription and Jehoash inscription to be forgeries and who is neither a hard scientist nor a paleographer; detective Nadav Levine, of the Trace Materials Laboratory of the Israel police; and two scholars who are experts in the linguistics of ancient Semitic inscriptions but whose specialty is not paleography, Professor 049Aaron Demsky of Bar-Ilan University and Professor Shmuel Ahituv of Tel Aviv University. In short, the committee includes no experts in ancient Semitic script or paleography

This committee has written a report that is to appear in the Israel Exploration Journal. The paleographical basis for the forgery conclusion is apparently that one letter, a mem, is suspicious. The other letters are above paleographical suspicion. In addition, two letters in the inscription appear to stop short of an ancient crack in the pomegranate. The forger, it is said, stopped short of the crack to avoid breaking the object.

Interestingly enough, Professor Ahituv included the ivory pomegranate inscription in his Handbook of Ancient Inscriptions but raised no question or doubt then regarding its authenticity. If there were a paleographic problem with the inscription, he would be expected to call attention to it in his book, one scholar told us. The speculation is that he was persuaded by other considerations to conclude that the inscription is a forgery. Moreover, several leading paleographers, including the most distinguished paleographer in Israel at the time, Nahman Avigad, found no paleographic reason to suspect the authenticity of the inscription when he examined it at the time the Israel Museum purchased it.

In the absence of an expert on the committee who specializes in paleography, BAR consulted American paleographer Christopher Rollston, of Emanuel School of Religion, who is familiar with the arguments made by the Israeli committee. With regard to the mem, Rollston said that its “graphemic morphology is problematic.” He called it a “modest red flag.” On the other hand, he noted that the engraver was not writing on a flat surface, so “it’s not impossible.”

The shin also raised a question in Rollston’s mind. It was not anomalous, he said; one “can find shins like this in other Old Hebrew inscriptions, but it merits attention.”

With regard to the fact that two letters seem to stop before an old crack in the pomegranate, Rollston said this was not a paleographic issue, but an argument made by hard scientists like Yuval Goren, who apparently guided the committee’s deliberations. Considering factors other than paleographical, including the fact that the pomegranate came from the antiquities market, Rollston has concluded that the pomegranate inscription is “probably” a forgery.

The hard scientists on the committee found other reasons to suspect the inscription is a modern forgery. Much modern material was found on the pomegranate. The committee made no effort, however, to determine whether this might have been the result of the conservation of the object before it was offered for sale to the museum. Rafi Brown, a former chief conservator for the Israel Museum and now a defendant in the criminal case alleging forgery of a number of objects including the pomegranate, says that he conserved the pomegranate before its sale to the museum. Brown told BAR the object was badly in need of conservation, but he does not recall the details of his conservation efforts.

According to information obtained by BAR, the committee report does not consider innocent explanations of the foreign material on the pomegranate.

Those scholars who still believe the inscription may be authentic say they cannot argue their case because they do not know the basis of the committee’s findings. The Israel Exploration Society, publisher of the Israel Exploration Journal, says the issue with the pomegranate report will be out in June.

Major New Forgeries Uncovered by Professor GBSTMT

Professor Andrew Vaughn, of Gustavus Adolphus College, has developed a new rule for detecting forged inscriptions. He calls it the “TGTBT rule,” most recently articulated in a Society of Biblical Literature internet posting.^d Professor Vaughn there explains that TGTBT simply means “Too good to be true.”

One of the acknowledged experts in the application of this rule is Johnny GBSTMT, Ph.C., N.C.O., M.S.A., the Moses M. Blind Distinguished Professor of Forgery at Zakukistan University, in South Zakukistan. We spoke with Professor GBSTMT (he asked us to call him Johnny) by telephone in his office in Zakukistan. Although the connection was somewhat unclear, we were able to piece together the following transcript:

BAR: Hello, Professor GBSTMT?

Johnny: Call me Johnny, please.

BAR: Discovered any good forgeries lately, Johnny?

Johnny: Have I ever. It’s all in the TGTBT rule. But you’ve got to use your noodle. That’s what some people don’t do.

For example: Who would ever believe that there was a hieroglyphic inscription—in Egyptian yet—from the late 13th century B.C. that mentions “Israel.” My God, that is before there was an Israel! To discover that this is a forgery is really a no-brainer: Israel in hieroglyphics? In the 13th century B.C.? In an inscription by an Egyptian pharaoh? Even a beginning student of the TGTBT rule would recognize this as a forgery. Yet generations of the best scholars have been fooled.

BAR: You’re referring to the famous 050Merneptah Stele?^e

Johnny: Of course. The TGTBT rule clearly exposes it!

BAR: By gum, you’re right. What else?

Johnny: Almost as easy is the Mesha Stele, which has been fooling scholars for a hundred years and more. The key is that it gives a different version from the Biblical account of an Israelite conflict with King Mesha of Moab. A smarter forger would have left this out of the inscription. There’s plenty of other interest in the inscription without bringing Mesha into it and the Biblically-described war. The TGTBT rule exposes it.

BAR: Amazing.

Johnny: Oh, I’ve got a million of ‘em.

BAR: What else?

Johnny: Take the Siloam Inscription, which explains the tunneling of the water channel under the City of David. That forger made the mistake of using a Hebrew word that no one ever heard of and no one is sure what it means. If he had been a better linguist, he might have gotten away with it. But forgers always make some mistake.

BAR: How about a more recent inscription, Professor GBSTMT?

Johnny: Call me Johnny.

BAR: OK, Johnny.

Johnny: Well, I’m tempted to tell you about the “House of David” inscription.

BAR: You mean the inscription from Tel Dan excavated by Israeli archaeologist Avraham Biran that for the first time mentions the name David in an ancient inscription?

Johnny: That’s the one. It’s an obvious forgery by the simple application of the TGTBT rule. “House of David”—who would believe that? But I don’t want to take credit for exposing it as a forgery. That was done by some Biblical Minimalists from Copenhagen. The only remaining question is whether it was salted by Biran or by someone else.

BAR: Well, what modern forgeries have you uncovered, Johnny?

Johnny: The best place to look is among Jerusalem excavators. By definition, they’re looking for glory. Otherwise, they would not be excavating in Jerusalem.

BAR: Gee, I never thought of that.

Johnny: I’ve recently uncovered two forgeries perpetrated by Jerusalem archaeologists. The first is by that fellow who died young. What was his name?

BAR: You mean Professor Yigal Shiloh of Hebrew University, who excavated in the City of David, the oldest part of Jerusalem?

Johnny: Yeah, that’s the one. He forged some clay seal impressions called bullae. He probably would have gotten away with it, except he got greedy. He forged one of these seal impressions with a Biblical name: Gemaryahu son of Shaphan. According to the Bible, it was in Gemaryahu’s office on the Temple Mount that Jeremiah’s scribe read the words of the Lord that Jeremiah had dictated (Jeremiah 36). Shiloh forged many bullae, but his mistake was the Gemaryahu bulla. That violated the TGTBT rule. The house of cards fell.

BAR: Wow! You are brilliant, Johnny.

Johnny: It’s not me. It’s the TGTBT rule.

BAR: With everything else, you’re modest. How about a wrap-up?

Johnny: OK. I’m going to expose this for the first time. It will be the kind of scoop that BAR loves.

BAR: I’m hyper-ventilating, Johnny.

Johnny: This is the story of a prominent Jerusalem scholar and archaeologist—a fellow named Gabriel Barkay—who could not control his jealousy. He knew little about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Day after day, he toiled in the vineyards of Jerusalem archaeology and elsewhere, while all the glory was going to the Dead Sea Scroll scholars who were working on fragments of Biblical books that were a thousand years older than any previously known Hebrew Bibles. (Actually, these scrolls themselves violate the TGTBT rule; I myself think all the Dead Sea Scrolls are clever forgeries, but that’s beside the point here.) The glory that Dead Sea Scroll scholars were basking in was driving Barkay nuts. He became obsessed with “finding” something Biblical even older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. He finally decided on the famous Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers. He was smart enough to realize, however, that no one would believe this, so he used a slight variation on the Biblical text and made sure that words were missing and hard to read on his forgery. His only requirement was that it be a famous Biblical passage from the First Temple period, hundreds of years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. This alone was enough to expose him. But then he made another mistake. The Dead Sea Scrolls are almost all written on animal skins. Only a single scroll is on copper, the well-known Copper Scroll. Consumed with jealousy, Barkay wanted to go these Dead Sea Scholars one better. He would forge his variation of the Priestly Blessing from Numbers on pure silver. That of course was his fatal mistake. The variation on a famous Biblical passage was bad enough, but then to put it on pure silver was too much—a clear violation of the TGTBT rule.

BAR: Well, I guess that goes to show, you can’t trust those archaeologists. That’s what Uzi Dahari, the deputy director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, says too. He says he’s going to tell us who they are very soon.

Johnny: I can’t wait.

051

Who Will Stand Up?

Where—in Israel or anywhere else in the world—is the scientist who will stand up and say, “I have examined the work of Tel Aviv University petrologist Yuval Goren (and his colleague Avner Ayalon) and if their measurements are correct, then their reasoning and their conclusion are sound and they have shown that the Jesus inscription is a forgery”?

So far, no one has come forth.

Not even the head of Israel’s Geological Survey, Amos Bein, is willing say that this inscription—reading “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”—is a forgery. We spoke to him.

On the other hand, the two scientists from the Geological Survey of Israel, Amnon Rosenfeld and Shimon Ilani, who initially examined the inscription, continue to maintain that it is authentic. So does Edward Keall of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, who examined the ossuary after it cracked on its way to Canada for exhibit in the fall of 2002.

We tried to get an independent expert to look at the work of Yuval Goren. James Harrell, a distinguished officer of ASMOSIA (Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones in Antiquity) and professor at the University of Toledo, examined Goren’s work at our behest and found it deeply flawed. By no means has Goren demonstrated that the inscription is a forgery, Professor Harrell said.

But the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) plays hardball. Uzi Dahari, the deputy director of the IAA called Harrell a “charlatan” in the Washington Post on February 21, 2005. (In the same Post article, Dahari called the editor of this magazine “totally crazy” and “pathetic.”)

The word is out: “Don’t you dare express an opinion contrary to ours. We’ll drag you through the mud. We may even get you involved in a criminal case.”

Experts the world over, frankly, are scared to get involved. Who needs it? is the common attitude. Try to get the Getty Conversation Institute to step into this mud-fight. Or any of the other research institutes that should be prepared to examine the inscription and offer an opinion. “Disagree with the Israel Antiquities Authority, and we’ll break your hands” is the message.

And, incidentally, where is the script expert (paleographer) who will stand up and say, “I have examined the James ossuary inscription and it exhibits this or that feature reflecting that it is a forgery.” The only script experts who have examined the inscription (André Lemaire and Ada Yardeni, two highly regarded, experienced paleographers) have pronounced the inscription to be authentic.

The New Yorker magazine published an article about the inscription (on April 12, 2004); in its usual thorough way, it looked for a script expert who would declare the inscription to be a forgery based on the script. The only one they could find was Rochelle Altman. No one in the community of paleographers had ever heard of her. The New Yorker referred to her as an “independent scholar.” That means she has no academic affiliation. The article also says “her work [appears] on a Biblical-studies Web site.”

According to the New Yorker, Altman “focus[es] on what she called ‘writing systems’ (including script, direction of letters, format, size, punctuation, and content) rather than on individual letters and phrases.” Sounds very impressive. However, her book on “writing systems” has now been published—and reviewed in the respected scholarly journal Maarav. Here are excerpts from the review:

“The author intervened in the controversy over two allegedly forged inscriptions that surfaced in Israel in autumn 2002 [the Jesus inscription was one], putting herself forward as an expert in Northwest Semitic paleography. Her analyses included puzzling references to ‘variant forms’ of Hebrew and Phoenician letters that denoted vowels and intonation patterns. When pressed for explanations of these assertions, she referred to her forthcoming book, which has now appeared.”

“Turning to the question of variants,” the reviewer quotes a paragraph from the 364-page book, and notes that “this is the sum total of what Altman has to say.” The review continues, “Nowhere are any of these variant forms, or their assignments to particular vowels, illustrated, or even described. The above about exhausts Altman’s treatment of the Semitic scripts; whether her theory of positions and variants has relevance for detecting forgeries cannot be determined from this volume.”

The review then refers to Altman’s “bizarre assertion” and her “proceed[ing] by free association,” her use of “words like no one before her” and concludes: “‘Amateur in the best sense’ is an accolade frequently granted to scholars like Altman who delve deep into their subject without benefit of professional training. Ample evidence has been provided above that the reverse of this epithet applies here.”

So much for the New Yorker’s expert.

The solution is obvious: Have the ossuary tested by an international team of experts and give them authority to engage whatever additional experts, either in paleography, linguistics or hard sciences, might be helpful in determining whether the inscription is authentic or a forgery. That is the only way this badly botched affair can be salvaged.

Additional Coverage on the Web

Read three related stories on our website—www.bib-arch.org—under the “Update—Finds or Fakes?” section:

When, Uzi?

In 2003 Uzi Dahari, deputy director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, charged that the forgery conspiracy ring included “an honored Israeli archaeologist” and other scholars.

When are you going to tell us who they are, Uzi?…

Zias Calls for Boycott of BAR Authors and Lectures

Joe Zias, a physical anthropologist formerly with the Israel Antiquities Authority, has called for a boycott of scholars who publish in BAR and lecture at BAR seminars…

To Israel Antiquities Authority: Ask Naveh

Can you believe this? The Israel Antiquities Authority, which found the James ossuary inscription to be a forgery, failed to show it to Israel’s greatest script expert and ask his opinion on whether the inscription is a forgery…