wfn.org | Scholars defend authenticity of biblical-era artifact

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

June 19, 2003  News media contact: Kathy Gilbert7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.	10-71B{328}

By United Methodist News Service

A United Methodist pastor and prominent biblical scholar defends the
authenticity of an inscribed, first-century ossuary believed to provide the
oldest archaeological evidence of Jesus Christ, after claims by Israel's
Antiquities Authority that the box is a fake.

"What you have here is a case of dueling scholars," said the Rev. Ben
Witherington III, New Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in
Wilmore, Ky., and a United Methodist pastor in the Kentucky Annual
Conference.

Officials with Israel's Antiquities Authority announced June 18 that the
Aramaic inscription reading "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" on the
ossuary is a forgery.

The director of Israel's Antiquities Authority, Shuka Dorfman, called it a
hoax. "The ossuary is real. But the inscription is fake. What this means is
that somebody took a real box and forged the writing on it, probably to give
it a religious significance."

Witherington and Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, took
part in announcing the discovery of the box last year. They have written a
book, The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story & Meaning of the First
Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family, about the discovery of the
ossuary. 

"Some of the world's greatest paleographers, and two teams of rigorous
scientists that have tested the inscription, have found nothing to question
as to its authenticity," Shanks said. "All indicate a first-century date.
There is too much evidence in favor of the inscription's authenticity that
the IAA announcement has not yet addressed. It's premature to make such an
announcement without an accompanying scientific report. When that comes out,
paleographers and scientists can then assess it. In the end, if the
inscription is indeed proven to be a fake perpetrated by a modern forger,
then I hope that the forger will be caught and put in jail."

"The IAA findings are, at the very least, incomplete if not incorrect,"
Witherington said. "Their yet-to-be-released report could not have taken into
account the new tests performed on the inscription in Toronto by scholars at
the Royal Ontario Museum."

Witherington says the report did not address several crucial points:

7	In conducting its tests, Israel's Antiquities Authority did not take
into consideration earlier findings by the Israeli Geological Survey and the
Royal Ontario Museum, which contradict the IAA results. 
7	The Israeli Geological Survey found conclusively that the ossuary
stone and the dirt found in the ossuary both came from the Silwan area of
Jerusalem. How did dirt from Silwan get encrusted in a box that Israel's
Antiquities Authority claims is from Cyprus or northern Syria?
7	No paleographer or Aramaic specialist in the world has suggested that
a modern forger tried to imitate an older Aramaic style prior to the report
by Israel's Antiquities Authority. 
7	The evidence from the mass-spectrometry test (the ultraviolet test)
performed at the Royal Ontario Museum and featured on the Discovery Channel
special "James, Brother of Jesus" is "the most rigorous scientific test there
is." There was no evidence of modern tampering with the box or the
inscription.

The limestone ossuary, a box used by the Jews at the time of Christ to hold
the bones of the deceased, was discovered several years ago after being
purchased by an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem for between $200 and $700.

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