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In addition, Dr. John Eiler of the California Institute of Technology makes the important point that by its own report, the IAA admits that the film found in the ossuary letters is not identical to the patina on the Yehoash inscription—the other artifact the IAA was accusing collector Oded Golan of faking. This means that these two artifacts should not be treated as a part of a coordinated effort at forgery. Rather, each must be evaluated individually. Eiler insists that we need a double-blind test done by scientists who have no stake in the authenticity of the ossuary.

Fifth, only a few people have noticed that there were no New Testament scholars or New Testament archaeologists on the IAA committee that studied the James ossuary. This is a glaring omission. One would have hoped for at least one specialist who could relate the ossuary and its relevance to the New Testament.

Curiouser and curiouser this becomes: No internationally known scholars on this commission were from anywhere outside Israel. Nor were there any Christian scholars on this commission, even though some outstanding ones live in Jerusalem. Christian participation would have assured us that theological agendas were not at play. The conclusions of the study would have been far more convincing had there been a balanced and internationally represented team of experts on the IAA commission. A scientific inquiry wants to guard against predispositions and biases. There are serious problems with a self-chosen body like the IAA commission, especially when several of the members on the commission spoke publicly against the authenticity of the ossuary inscription before they conducted scientific tests on it.

The IAA, long before the James ossuary came to light, has repeatedly made clear that it has an agenda—to stop looters and forgers—and in the bargain to oppose collectors, who in its view aid and abet looters and forgers. These are basically admirable aims (though I do not think it is necessary to tar all collectors with the same brush), but James and his ossuary should not have been made the poster child of this crusade. It is such a high-profile artifact that it needed to be studied dispassionately. The environment of extreme suspicion that surrounded this investigation, and the attempt to proceed by a process I can only call "justification by doubt" (a process in which one shows one's scholarly acumen by discrediting something), leaves me worried that the conclusions must surely be dubious at best. It is clear that the ossuary must undergo further tests in the wake of this report.

What specific things need to be said about the published summary of findings? To begin with, no one disputes the presence of some sort of modern substance or film on some of the letters on the James box. Oded Golan told us long ago that his mother tried to clean the first part of the inscription. The fact that a modern chalky substance and evidence of modern tap water has been found on the inscription is no surprise. What the IAA calls fake patina, placed on the letters, is probably no more than modern cleanser and water. Perhaps the antiquities dealer also attempted to clean the ossuary inscription to make it easier to sell. Remember that neither the dealer nor Golan (when he bought the ossuary in the '70s) had any idea of its potential significance until Lemaire pointed it out last year.

It is especially disturbing that the oxygen isotope test was allowed to be the determining factor in concluding that the inscription was a forgery when (1) such a test has apparently not been tried on ossuaries before (that is, there was no controlled study or data to compare these results against); (2) this test can only prove there is evidence of modern water in the inscription, not that there is no ancient substance or patina in the inscription; and (3) the verdicts of the epigraphers on the IAA team were mixed, as their report shows, until the isotope test results were presented. In other words, one type of test with no track record was used as a trump card to rule out any questions raised by other sorts of studies. This is not good scientific procedure.

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October 2003, Vol. 47, No. 10