James Ossuary, Revisited

[jjramsey]

I can't --- it's in pdf format, and my computer doesn't know what to do with it.

You can't download and install Acrobat Reader?

 

[Dr Adequate]

You can't download and install Acrobat Reader?

Well, your post nailed it. I am indeed running Windows 98 on my home computer.

I could tell you all sorts of stuff about how I don't update my OS because I just use my home computer for word processing and it's not worth the money, but really it boils down to two things: (1) I am frightened of change; (2) I am especially frightened of messing about with anything which works by electricity.

Now, could we leave my psychological defects alone and get back to the James Ossuary thing?

Cheers.

Dr (almost) Adequate.

 

[Peter Cartoon]

Obvious forgery

When I first heard of this "proof" I laughed, the inscription was all wrong for an Ossuary from Jerusalem.

"Achuii Yeshua......" should have read "Achuii YeHOshua...."

Yeshua is the Gallilean diminuative form of Yehoshua (Joshua) and was not used in Jerusalem. This is the equivalent of "Mikey" instead of Michael.

Thus James son of Joseph brother of "Josh". Do you really think they would have made that mistake on an Ossuary of an important man?

Ooops !

 

[stamenflicker]

Thus James son of Joseph brother of "Josh". Do you really think they would have made that mistake on an Ossuary of an important man?

Unless Josh is what he went by, in which case it wouldn't be a big deal at all. I know two people named Josh and both put Josh, not Joshua, on their driver's liscense, etc. One of them is only called Joshua by his mother. The same is true for a Bill I know, he never puts William on anything.

It's really not a very conclusive dismissal, in fact most scholars don't have a problem with the idea that Jesus could not have been identified by the Gallilean derivitive, since he was in fact Gallilean.

Flick

 

[Peter Cartoon]

weak, weak

Amazingly that wouldd make the script on his Ossuary truly unique! I wonder why it didn't read:

"Jimmy, son of Joey, the big brother of Josh"

All kidding aside -

"The spelling on the Jacob ossuary is 2nd - 7th CE Galilean Aramaic according to Flesher and Basser, both of whom are experts on the dialects of Aramaic." Ossuary inscriptions usually ran something like: "Judah son of Johanan, son of Jethra," and do not include a brother's name. In fact, such a reference is almost unknown.

Its odd that an orthodox Jew would have his epitaph written in Aramaic, the language of the northern kingdom, as opposed to Hebrew, which was that of Judea and of "true" Jews. Educated Jews may have settled on Greek possibly, but not Aramaic.

Possibly, the forger supposed – as have millions of Christians – that an historical Jesus spoke Aramaic, and therefore so would his purported sibling James. In order for the inscription to appear "authentic" to Christian tradition, it was written in Aramaic

 

[Checkmite]

When the police raided Golan's living quarters, they found a room therein containing various fake antiquities in various "stages" of production. They found the Ossuary in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet - seriously. Oded Golan is not merely an alleged antiquities forger.

It's telling that he didn't come up with the "well my mother (whom I allow to handle all of these ancient artifacts regularly) cleaned the thing with various chemicals lots of times" argument until confronted with the fact that the patina over the inscription was missing. Yet the BAR seems to have bought the excuse without batting an eye. I might remind everyone here that the Biblical Archaeology Review accepted and hurrah'd the authenticity of the Ossuary before any tests or studies whatsoever had been performed. I will further remind you that Hershel Shanks, the editor of the BAR, personally condemned the forgery study as soon as it was released without having access to or composing a scientific rebuttal. The BAR's editor has something of a personal stake in the authenticity of the box, and all of that magazine's material regarding the subject makes this obvious. The BAR is not inherently a bad publication, but its well is tainted when it comes to the Ossuary.

 

[stamenflicker]

Joshua,

When the police raided Golan's living quarters, they found a room therein containing various fake antiquities in various "stages" of production. They found the Ossuary in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet - seriously. Oded Golan is not merely an alleged antiquities forger.

As near as I can tell from my research this isn't true. While Golan had in fact been in trouble in the past for passing forgeries, this story (which I've heard before) from my reading is internet mythology. However I'm open to reading more if you have link from a trustworthy site.

It's telling that he didn't come up with the "well my mother (whom I allow to handle all of these ancient artifacts regularly) cleaned the thing with various chemicals lots of times" argument until confronted with the fact that the patina over the inscription was missing.

This wasn't his idea, to my knowledge he did not put forward this "excuse." It was rather a finding of those doing research on the item.

I might remind everyone here that the Biblical Archaeology Review accepted and hurrah'd the authenticity of the Ossuary before any tests or studies whatsoever had been performed.

I read BAR frequently and never recall them accepting the authenticity of the item. The did feature it, more than once, however I don't recall ever reading a claim to authenticity. If you have a link to an article in which it was accepted as authentic before tests or studies had been done, I'm willing to look them over.

I will further remind you that Hershel Shanks, the editor of the BAR, personally condemned the forgery study as soon as it was released without having access to or composing a scientific rebuttal.

My understanding is that it was deemed a forgery by many of the scientists doing the work prior to the work being done. One of the complaints against the forgery study was that the belief of most of the people doing the research was "too good to be true," therefore it must not be. However the magazine does in fact have a vested financial interest in keeping the dialogue going, a good point you have raised.

Nevertheless, we have a scientific question raised about the ethics of the research in the link I provided, one which includes misrepresenting an article by renaming it in such a way that it appeared to be against the authenticity of the Ossuary:

Original title of the article: "New Tests Bolster the Case for Authenticity"

Quoted title in the released document of the forgery testers: "New Tests Bluster the Case for Authenticity"

The idea that un-biased researches would make an error like this by happenstance is far fetched. Instead, it would appear to me and many others that the box was doomed from the outset.

Again, the actual authenticity is of little consequence to the author of this link, nor is it of any consequence to me personally. What does matter is fair play in the scientific community, particularly archeology and future finds.

Flick

 

[Checkmite]

The publicising of the Ossuary was nearly entirely BAR's doing. Its existence was first announced to the world through a press conference hosted by them. At that press conference, which took place on October 22, 2002, Hershel Shanks is quoted as calling the Ossuary "the first ever archaeological discovery to corroborate biblical references to Jesus". I was incorrect in my statement that "no tests had been performed whatsoever"; the Geological Survey of Israel tested some soil remnants and concluded that they dated to around the 1st century AD. But interestingly, soil samples taken from the "forgery lab" at Golan's apartment proved to be from archaeological sites. Golan insisted that he spread these soil samples on "restored" artifacts because "you would like to give a feeling to the viewer that it looks old". Seriously now. But even if true, it indicates by Golan's own words that the soil on the Ossuary - the very soil the GSI tested - was not necessarily the same soil the thing had been buried in all this time. Golan himself has neutralized the GSI's conclusion. This is very important.

Here is an abstract of an article from Archaeology Magazine. In it, you'll find a photo of the Ossuary atop its ignoble "throne", as well as a scan of the Nov/Dec 2002 issue of BAR, which features the headline Evidence of Jesus Written in Stone, which pretty much summarized BAR's stance on the matter. Hershel Shanks is also quoted on his own website, dismissing the conclusion of the IAA because 1) the conclusion was different from the conclusions reached by the people the BAR contacted, and therefore they are suspicious, and 2) one of the IAA investigators (Yuval Goren) had previously written about how patinas could be faked, and therefore had already decided that the Ossuary was fake. That second line of reasoning doesn't even really follow, but that's what Shanks says. The last paragraph of length in the linked article is a truly wonderful conspiracy theory, which Shanks has constructed in order to be able to dismiss the conclusions of the evil IAA committee. The entire article, in fact, is a series of logical fallacies - but what is important is that not once does Shanks mention any of the specific tests the IAA did, or what was so horribly wrong with those tests and the methodology the IAA used; his dismissal of the conclusions reached by the IAA is apparently based on who was on the committee, not the committee's work.

Scientists did indeed initially regard the Ossuary with skepticism, and they were right to. We're not talking about something dug up in situ. We're talking about something offered for sale by a disreputable antiquities "dealer", a truly amazing artifact which happened to be one of a series of truly amazing artifacts which this particular "dealer" had been attempting to sell in a short space of time. Here is an object which has been mishandled, misappropriated, and misrepresented. It is in such a bad state that researchers testing different parts of it get different conclusions. It has no provenance, no history before Golan's ownership. It will always be "questionable" at best, and the scientists who test it aren't required to "think happy thoughts" when they do their work. I don't see why a group of scientists thinking the Ossuary is fake necessarily makes a "forgery" conclusion suspicious outright.

 

[stamenflicker]

Joshua,

At that press conference, which took place on October 22, 2002, Hershel Shanks is quoted as calling the Ossuary "the first ever archaeological discovery to corroborate biblical references to Jesus".

There was a great deal of excitement around the find at first, as one would expect. The dating of the box remained consistent throughout the process, so any find from the 1st century is worth getting excited over. I went back and read that Press Conference and there is still a great deal of guarded dialogue about the box. Words like, "This appears to be..." and "If it is..." were scattered throughout the responses. I have no reason to believe that Shanks was personally making any claims about the box, other than what everyone else at the conference was saying.

He did however have immediate plans to display the box, which was way over-zealous on his part. You may have a good theory about the box's ability to generate profit for both the magazine and the ROM in Toronto. It may have been getting the "push" for nothing more than financial exploitation. Even so, the press conference itself was just what you'd expect after a "discovery" from the 1st Century with an inscription about its most famous individual.

Hershel Shanks is also quoted on his own website, dismissing the conclusion of the IAA

He is also quoted as saying this in the same article/letter:

It may indeed be a forgery and, if so, let's hope the forger will be caught and put in jail.

He then goes on to justify his initial excitement:

Normally, anything that André Lemaire writes for us would be enough to justify its publication in BAR. Because this was such an extraordinary inscription, however, we showed it to a number of other prominent paleographers. Harvard's Frank Cross, perhaps the world's most distinguished Semitic paleographer, said, "If this is a forgery, the forger was a genius." (Along the same line, leading Jerusalem archaeologist and paleographer Gaby Barkay is quoted in a recent news report as saying, "If its a fake, it's a fantastically executed piece.")

The inscription was also examined by P. Kyle McCarter, Albright Professor at the Johns Hopkins University (and author of Ancient Inscriptions), and by Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni, author of The Book of Hebrew Script. They, too, saw no reason whatever to question the authenticity of the inscription.

We had it examined by one of the world's leading Aramaic experts, Father Joseph Fitzmyer of Catholic University of America. After some initial hesitation, he deemed the somewhat peculiar Aramaic phrasing on the inscription to be appropriate to the first century A.D.

He goes on for three more paragraphs about others who examined the inscriptions. Then he adds this:

The recent conclusion of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is essentially the view of one person, Professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University. The decision of the IAA purports to be by unanimous agreement of a 15-person committee, each of whom had been named by the IAA. It appears, however, that the only one on the committee with any geological and chemical knowledge on which the conclusion is based is Yuval Goren....

There are other reasons why the conclusion of the IAA should at least be further explored before accepting it without discussion. For example, when the announcement was made the final report of the committee was not ready for distribution. Why was the announcement not made when the final report was ready to be released? .... It's also significant that the team from the Israel Geological Survey has been gagged. They are not permitted to discuss the case. Why?

You've read the letter, so I don't need to keep cutting and pasting. Bottom line is that is no reasonable way to deny Shanks misgivings. The fact is that the declaration of forgery was the work of one team in the best case senario, and one man in the worst case-- a man who despises antiquities dealers at that.

Contrast that with Shanks, who had the box looked at by numerous scholars, including those capable of dating it, as well as critics of ancient script.

Even so, it is the report of one team of archeologists with only one chemical expert who manipulated the data (see my link) that the archeological world is supposed to just rest on. Shanks misgivings are clear:

All this is not to say that the IAA's conclusion is incorrect. What it says is that we must be patient and see what evaluations can be made of the IAA report when it comes out.

It's about the science and methodology. And one group of scientists refuses to allow another group to examine it and reach their own conclusions. That, I contend, is bad science-- which is the focus of my post.

Flick

PS: There is also a lawsuit against the IAA by Golan himself for slander/liable or defamtion of character (I can't remember the actual charges), which I read someplace and I'm trying to dig up.

 

[Checkmite]

Joshua,


Contrast that with Shanks, who had the box looked at by numerous scholars, including those capable of dating it, as well as critics of ancient script.

No, Shanks had the script looked at by a number of speciality linguists, who agreed that the wording could reasonably be held to be from the appropriate time. There is only one entity the BAR asked to examine the box that was at all capable of physically dating it, and that was the GSI - whose findings are rendered tainted by Golan's confession that he smeared the artifact with dirt taken from an ancient site.

Some of the same "problems" that Shanks has with the IAA's conclusions should equally apply to the "authentic" conclusions as well. Shanks mentions the fact that the IAA found no patina in parts of the inscription. He says that it's "amazing" that the GSI testers (and another study done some time afterwards by a Canadian museum) didn't find this, and then in the second sentence goes on to state that the fact Golan's "mother" cleaned the inscription would help to explain why some patina is missing - but he fails to reapply the logic. Why didn't the GSI testers find the letters with the "cleaned off" patina? This is suggestive of a mistake on the part of the GSI, but Shanks won't tell you that.

We're dealing with two very biased poles of a silly argument, but neither side can be accused of any "irresponsibility" that the other side can't be accused of in kind. And the entire business, by the way, is squarely the fault of Golan. Golan admitted to tampering with the artifact, using techniques well known to be used by artifact forgers to "clean" and "restore" this object and others in his collection. He has no training or education in the handling of artifacts. If the artifact is not really a forgery, Golan is the reason why the tests keep suggesting otherwise. It also would help if he stopped trying to sell other potentially-highly-significant artifacts which also turn out to be fake when tested.

The IAA may despise antiquities dealers like Golan, but that's because antiquities dealers like Golan are the enemies of archaeology. They finance thieves and tomb raiders by buying their stolen artifacts, and they then further destroy the integrity of those artifacts by tampering with them in amateurish and catastrophic attempts to "restore" them and make them "look old". One cannot suggest that they do any service at all for archaeology as a whole.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Nevertheless, we have a scientific question raised about the ethics of the research in the link I provided, one which includes misrepresenting an article by renaming it in such a way that it appeared to be against the authenticity of the Ossuary:

Original title of the article: "New Tests Bolster the Case for Authenticity"

Quoted title in the released document of the forgery testers: "New Tests Bluster the Case for Authenticity"

The idea that un-biased researches would make an error like this by happenstance is far fetched.

I should say: no it isn't.

If they wanted to make something up, they could have made something up. "Bluster" isn't even a transitive verb. And, of course, it would not be caught by a spell-checker, but it would be spotted as a spelling mistake by anyone who knows what "bluster" means. It would also be caught by anyone who looked at the references and had read the original paper, i.e. the scientific community it was aimed at. Including, if all else failed, by the original authors, who know what they called their paper. Finally, the error was in fact caught. The scientific community, taken as a whole, is not bleedin' stupid.

If you want to find problems in science, as an outsider, it is not enough to point to mistakes in science that scientists themselves have caught. You must --- as an outsider, as a philosophical critic --- find mistakes that the scientific community itself has failed to correct.

The idea that the spelling mistake was a subtle cunning move to try to discredit the ossuary borders on paranoia. It was a mistake.

Let's finish on a song.

Printer's Error

by P.G. Wodehouse

As o'er my latest book I pored,
Enjoying it immensely,
I suddenly exclaimed 'Good Lord!'
And gripped the volume tensely.
Golly!' I cried. I writhed in pain.
'They've done it on me once again!'
And furrows creased my brow.
I'd written (which I thought quite good)
'Ruth, ripening into womanhood,
Was now a girl who knocked men flat
And frequently got whistled at',
And some vile, careless, casual gook
Had spoiled the best thing in the book
By printing 'not'
(Yes,'not', great Scott!)
When I had written 'now'.

On murder in the first degree
The Law, I knew, is rigid:
Its attitude, if A kills B,
To A is always frigid.
It counts it not a trivial slip
If on behalf of authorship
You liquidate compositors.
This kind of conduct it abhors
And seldom will allow.
Nevertheless, I deemed it best
And in the public interest
To buy a gun, to oil it well,
Inserting what is called a shell,
And go and pot
With sudden shot
This printer who had printed 'not'
When I had written 'now'.

I tracked the bounder to his den
Through private information:
I said, 'Good afternoon', and then
Explained the situation:
'I'm not a fussy man,' I said.
'I smile when you put "rid" for "red"
And "bad" for "bed" and "hoad" for "head"
And "bolge" instead of "bough".
When "wone" appears in lieu of "wine"
Or if you alter "Cohn" to "Schine",
I never make a row.
I know how easy errors are.
But this time you have gone too far
By printing "not" when you knew what
I really wrote was "now".
Prepare,' I said, 'to meet your God
Or, as you'd say, your Goo or Bod,
Or possibly your Gow.'

A few weeks later into court
I came to stand my trial.
The Judge was quite a decent sort.
He said, 'Well, cocky, I'll
Be passing sentence in a jiff,
And so, my poor unhappy stiff,
If you have anything to say,
Now is the moment. Fire away.
You have?'
I said, 'And how!
Me lud, the facts I don't dispute.
I did, I own it freely, shoot
This printer through the collar stud.
What else could I have done, me lud?
He'd printed "not"...'
The judge said, 'What!
When you had written "now"?
God bless my soul! Gadzooks!' said he.
'The blighters did that once to me.
A dirty trick, I trow.
I hereby quash and override
The jury's verdict. Gosh!' he cried.
'Give me your hand. Yes, I insist,
You splendid fellow! Case dismissed.'
(Cheers, and a Voice 'Wow-wow!')

A statue stands against the sky,
Lifelike and rather pretty.
'Twas recently erected by
The P.E.N. committee.
And many a passer-by is stirred,
For on the plinth, if that's the word,
In golden letters you may read
'This is the man who did the deed.
His hand set to the plough,
He did not sheathe the sword, but got
A gun at great expense and shot
The human blot who'd printed "not"
When he had written "now".
He acted with no thought of self,
Not for advancement, not for pelf,
But just because it made him hot
To think the man had printed "not"
When he had written "now".'

 

[Kopji]

The idea that science has that religion does not, is falsification. There is not really a similar concept in religion.

Falsification might go something like this:

Claim: "I propose the ossuary belonged to James the Brother of Jesus."

So how might I DIS-prove this theory?

The box itself could be fake.
Some or all of the text could be fake.
James the brother of Jesus may not have existed.
This might be a different James and Jesus.
etc

So take each question and work through it a similar way:

Claim: The box is genuine.
How might I disprove this theory?

Not the right age.
Not the right size or shape.
Construction is not right.
etc.

Claim: The box is the right age.
How might I disprove this theory?

Compare to other known boxes (this might be an appeal to authority)
Chemical testing
X-Ray testing
etc

For the box, obviously there would always be questions that would go unanswered. I suppose finding DNA that matched the Shroud of Turin would be really cool. But since Jesus was the son of God there is always the chance he did not have DNA. Maybe lack of DNA is actually evidence?

Or location. Maybe the box was found in South America. But couldn't God move the box there if he wanted.

The problem with religious 'faith' ideas is they cannot be falsified and ultimately, all things are possible.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

The problem with religious 'faith' ideas is they cannot be falsified and ultimately, all things are possible.

I think you have summed it up nicely...

 

[stamenflicker]

Dr. A,

The idea that the spelling mistake was a subtle cunning move to try to discredit the ossuary borders on paranoia. It was a mistake.

It's a side point anyway. I'm uncertain which is more paranoid-- this author's point about an article title, or refusing to allow another group of scientists to access the box for testing, or re-testing.

Either way, it doesn't change the fact the scientists mixed two different isotopic standards for oxygen in the paper and draws conclusions, which the author with whom I linked compares to mixing metric and English units.

Flick

 

[Checkmite]

There may be other reasons for not allowing the box to be examined. If criminal charges are being pursued in this instance, and the legal matters have not yet concluded, then the box is under lock and key in the Evidence Room and simply can't be allowed out.

In Shanks' article, I am interested in his claim that the Geological Survey of Israel has "been silenced". Did they actually tell him they were forced to shut up, or did he just assume that since they will no longer talk with him? In either case, the GSI's "silence" may have something to do with the criminal case as well.