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The bone box is authentic, but the inscription is not. That's the conclusion of experts at the Israel Antiquities Authority following careful examination of the "Ossuary of James," which was unveiled to the world last November by Biblical Archaeology Review.

"The inscription is a fake," IAA director Shuka Dorfman told reporters at a news conference in Jerusalem. But BAR editor Hershel Shanks and Asbury Seminary professor Ben Witherington, his coauthor on a book about the ossuary, aren't yet convinced.

The inscription, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," electrified Christians who suddenly had an authentic 2,000-year-old souvenir of the founder of their faith. The 18-inch-long box carved out of soft limestone was typically used by first-century Jews to reinter the bones of deceased family members. To have one that may have held the bones of Jesus' brother was called by Shanks "the most important find in the history of New Testament archaeology."

But the IAA confiscated the relic from antiquities collector Oded Golan as it returned to Israel from a two-month display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. A second artifact, a fragment of an inscribed tablet that purported to date from the reign of the 9th century B.C. king Jehoash, was also confiscated a short time later. The fact that both objects surfaced in the possession of the same collector, Golan, heightened suspicions.

The IAA assigned one team to reexamine the geology of the ossuary. A second team looked at the epigraphy of the inscription, the letterforms, grammar, and syntax.

"This was not a matter of competing experts," says archaeologist and writer Neil Asher Silberman. Silberman is coauthoring an article on the ossuary for Archaeology magazine with Yuval Goren, a geologist on the IAA investigative team. Noting that Shanks had obtained what amounted to a certificate of authenticity from the Israel Geological Survey before revealing the ossuary last year, Silberman says the IAA did a much more rigorous analysis.

Silberman says the IAA team found the same patina described by earlier investigators. This is a calcite buildup comparable to the mineral deposits on a tea kettle over time. They also found a "rock varnish," another natural buildup of algae and bacteria.

But inside the incised letters was a third type of patina. "They found microfossils that appear naturally within chalk stone," he said. "That indicated someone had taken chalk and powdered it up, fossils and all, and put it over the letters to make it seem that it was ancient."

Silberman says geologists can also determine the temperature at which crystallization takes place. The patina on the other surfaces conformed to what would be expected for the cool groundwaters of Jerusalem. "But within the letters it seemed as if it was done with heated water."

The other IAA team also came up with an explanation for the inscription, which had fooled some of the world's leading epigraphers, with one part in a formal script and the second part in a more informal cursive script. "You wouldn't expect a forger to use two different, authentic first century handwriting styles," said Silberman. "That was always a puzzle," especially since the physical examination showed it had been carved at the same time.

The scientists suggest that each word in the inscription, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," exists on other ossuaries that have been catalogued. It would have been simple for someone using image software to put them together and carve them into the ossuary.

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47