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Courtesy André Lemaire

The James Ossuary, as this now-famous artifact is often called, is a limestone bone box that bears an Aramaic inscription reading “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” Controversy—including charges of forgery—has surrounded this ossuary since BAR first reported it in 2002. The saga of the James Ossuary culminated in 2012 with the acquittal of Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan in a seven-year “forgery trial of the century,” but the story isn’t over yet.