Tabor, Shanks, Cross, Fitzmyer Discussing the Ossuary in Toronto

The not-guilty verdict in the Jerusalem forgery trial of Oded Golan and Robert Deutsch, announced Wednesday, has generated an incalculable number of news stories. I just did a Google search for “James ossuary Oded Golan trial” that yielded over 12,000 results. The basic facts are presented in any number of summary stories, for example Matthew Kalman’s piece that scooped the story in the Globe and Mail and the Huffington Post piece. The Israel Antiquities Authority, that brought the law suit against these defendants, has already issued a statement reasserting the position that the verdict establishes neither the innocence nor the authenticity of the objects under question. Various self-styled “bibliobloggers” have chimed in agreement, see Chris Rollston here, and Jim West here. Eric Myers has restated his doubts on the influential ASOR blog here.

Although there were a number of issues and artifacts involving a complex set of forgery charges against these two defendants, my own interest and that of many of my readers is focused more on two central questions about the “James ossuary,” first, whether its inscription is forged or authentic, in part or in whole, and second, if the inscription is authentic can we establish anything about the provenance of the ossuary itself?

Drawing by Shimon Gibson

The case for forgery has been well presented in the recent edited volume, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics, edited by Ryan Bryne and Bernadette McNary-Zak (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). The case against has been ably argued by Oded Golan himself in a much overlooked and largely ignored piece posted at Bible & Interpretation. I also highly recommend what I consider to be a fair, comprehensive, and balanced summary of the entire controversy at the Biblical Archaeology Society. There are a number of articles at their web site but mostly recently see the free e-books Awaiting the James Ossuary Verdict, that gives lots of interesting background and most lately, with the announcement of the verdict, James, Brother of Jesus, The Forgery Trial of the Century.

On the question of the possible provenance of the James ossuary, assuming it is authentic, there are a number of new developments, none of which have been covered by the press so far, nor discussed by any of my academic colleagues who have had an interest in the James ossuary matter. See in particular: A. Rosenfeld, C.Pellegrino,

Bone Samples from the "Jesus" Tomb for DNA Analysis

H. R. Feldman, and W.E. Krumbein, “The Connection of the James Ossuary to the Talpiot (Jesus Family Tomb) Ossuaries.” M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “The James Ossuary in Talpiot.” In our new book, The Jesus Discovery, chapter 6, titled “The Mystery of the James Ossuary,” offers a summary of all we know with the new evidence linking the James ossuary to the Talpiot tombs included. So far, neither that aspect of our book, nor the DNA results from the “Jesus tomb: that we publish for the first time, have been discussed much at all with so much focus on the new discoveries of the Jonah image and the four-line Greek inscription. The new tests were done at the paleo-DNA anthrpology lab at the University of California at Davis. Our next step is an obvious one, now that Oded Golan will be the legal owner of the James ossuary again, namely comparative mitDNA tests of the bone fragments from the James ossuary (which were quite substantial prior to its confiscation for the trial and are in safe keeping) with those from the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb. I will post more on this in the future as those tests are completed as well as the results of our comparisons of the mitDNA results from bones in the Talpiot tomb with those in the “Tomb of the Shroud,” that have already been published.

I got the news by phone from Israel an hour ago, posted the news on Facebook and Twitter. Reports are beginning to appear slowly:

A Roman-era burial box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” was reprieved from the scrapheap of history on Wednesday when a Jerusalem judge completely exonerated an Israeli antiquities collector who had been accused of forging it.

The verdict, delivered by Judge Aharon Farkash in a tiny, crowded courtroom in the Jerusalem District Courthouse, ended a seven-year ordeal for the accused, Oded Golan, 60, but it will do little to extinguish the decade-long scientific controversy over the authenticity of the limestone box which has raged since it was first displayed to the public at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2002. Matthew Kalman

James Ossuary Side-by-Side with Yeshua bar Yehosef from Talpiot

Both Oded Golan and Robert Deutsch were declared innocent of the main counts of forgery for both the James ossuary inscription and the Yohoash tablet. Predictably, prejudiced parties who had pilloried Oded unmercifully for the past seven years are already declaring–oh well, the verdict is innocent but the inscription is still a fake. So much for due process and the evidence. Why not just cast it all off and maintain your position? These very critics obviously have not read Oded’s own testimony of the trial, posted at bibleinterp.com, which had been up for months and totally ignored by those who have nothing to say but silence in the force of the evidence. This is a victory for justice and the judicial process as well as for those who are falsely maligned. The only question I guess is the famous Ray Donovan query: “Where do I go now to get my reputation back?”

This also opens the way for Dr. Aryeh Shimron to complete his soil tests on the James ossuary, see The Jesus Discovery, chapter 6 (pp. 159ff) where we discuss the whole issue of the James ossuary and the latest evidence as to its provenance. Oded Golan will have possession again of the ossuary and he has already said he would co-operate with us Dr. Shimron on these tests. It will also now be possible to carry out DNA tests that we have long had in mind involving the significant quantity of bone fragments that were in the ossuary even as recently as 2002 which have been in safe keeping until after the trial. We do, by the way, publish in the book the complete new results of our DNA tests on both the bone fragments from both the  Yeshua bar Yehosef and the Mariamene Mara ossuaries. We had new tests done at the Paleo-DNA lab at the University of California at Davis. So far everyone has been arguing about the four-line Greek inscription and the Jonah and the fish image and have not gotten to that bit of news yet. We are also going to do some tests on the limestone boxes themselves, which are remarkably similar in shape, size, and appearance, as you can see in the photo above. It is possible to tell from the artisan’s engraving marks, in hollowing out and shaping the block of limestone, whether they come from the same hand.

I guess the lesson I take away from this, likely to be ignored by many in our field is how horrible it is to destroy a person’s life by this sort of media/internet “crucifixion” process. I know Oded quite well and he is a heck of a good guy, contrary to all the nasty things people have said about him who have never met him or even had a single word with him. I know the same to be true of Robert Deutsch from our exchanges by e-mail.

For those who want to keep up with the latest, even before this trial verdict was declared, be sure to read these two posts that many apparently have missed:

The Connection of the James Ossuary to the Talpiot (Jesus Family Tomb) Ossuaries: http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/JOT.shtml

The James Ossuary in Talpiot: Kevin Kilty and Mark Elliot:
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/kilell358029.shtml

I find it somewhat amazing that so many freely expressing opinions on the controversial Talpiot “Jesus” tomb and/or the “James ossuary” have not kept up with even the most minimum of the latest research on the topic. I find this is the case even with all too many of my academic colleagues, not to mention a host of others, most with an evangelical Christian bias, who regularly “trash” the idea that this tomb might arguably be that of Jesus of Nazareth. It seems everything but the facts are brought into play here.

I was reminded of this today with the publication of the excellent article by Prof. Kevin Kilty and Mark Elliot of the University of Wyoming, reviewing the latest published views of my colleague Jodi Magness. In her latest book, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, Prof. Magness offers a spirited argument that there is little to no likelihood that the Talpiot tomb, or the James ossuary, have any connection with the Jesus movement. The problem is, as Kilty and Elliot so clearly demonstrate, is her argument and even her information is as flawed as it is outdated.

Most of what Prof. Magness argues has been addressed previously, see for example my exchange with her now archived at the SBL Web site: http://sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=651.

No one can keep up with everything in our rich and ever complex field of biblical/archaeological studies but on a subject as controversial and as potentially important as this, it seems a minimum expectation for those wanting to engage in discussion would be to be up to speed on at least the basic research. Lamentably, such is not the case.

Here are a few of the basic articles, all readily available at the Web site bibleinterp.com, that are fundamental to any informed discussion of these subjects. If one is not willing to spend an hour or so reading through these I have to honestly question to what degree such a person is interested in a high level and informed discussion based on facts. As I say to my students on any topic we cover–read, read, please read–then express your views!

M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “Inside the Numbers of the Talpiot Tomb.”  http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/tomb2.pdf

M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “Probability, Statistics, and the Talpiot Tomb.” http://www.lccc.wy.edu/Media/Website%20Resources/documents/Education%20Natural%20and%20Social%20Sciences/tomb.pdf

Jerry Lutgen, “The Talpiot Tomb: What Are the Odds?”http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/tomb357926.shtml

M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “Talpiot Dethroned.” http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/talpiot357921.shtml

Eldad Keynan, “Jewish Burials.” http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/burial357907.shtml

Oded Golan, “The Authenticity of the James Ossuary and the Jehoash Tablet Inscriptions.” http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Authenticity_Letter.pdf

A. Rosenfeld, C.Pellegrino, H. R. Feldman, and W.E. Krumbein, “The Connection of the James Ossuary to the Talpiot (Jesus Family Tomb) Ossuaries.” http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/JOTalpiot3.pdf

M. Elliott and K. Kilty, “The James Ossuary in Talpiot,”  http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/kilell358029.shtml

Eldad Keynan, “Obscurities Around the Tomb of the Holy Sepulcher” http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/tombs358017.shtml

Sometime in Spring, 2006 I was browsing one of the local bookstores here in Charlotte and came across a title that seemed to jump of the shelves–The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity by Jeffrey Bütz. In thumbing through the book I immediately realized that the brother in question was none other than James the Just, head of the Jerusalem Nazarene movement following the death of Jesus. I was aware, of course, of Robert Eisenman’s well known book, James the Brother of Jesus and John Painter’s valuable study, Just James, as well as several edited volumes on James by Craig Evans, Bruce Chilton, and Jacob Neusner. In fact, in our field of Christian Origins it seems that James, marginalized and forgotten for centuries, was having a bit of a renaissance. I had never heard of Jeffrey Bütz but decided to get the book anyway and see what it might offer. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. My own book, The Jesus Dynasty had just been published and dealt substantially with James the brother of Jesus. I quickly realized that Bütz and I had independently come to many of the same conclusions and we began to exchange e-mails, eventually met, and even spent time together in the Jerusalem, digging at Mt. Zion and hanging in the Old City where Bütz was doing research on his next book, just out, with the provocative title The Secret Legacy of Jesus: The Judaic Teachings That Passed from James the Just to the Founding Fathers.

I read the manuscript in draft form and found this latest work by Bütz both fascinating and provocative. On the face of it the thesis of Reverend Jeffrey Bütz’s new book might strike one as far-fetched if not downright absurd, namely that the “true teachings” of Jesus were passed in some underground fashion, down through the ages, and ended up shaping the vision of the Founding Fathers as they forged the principles and ideals of the United States of America. Over the past decade the bookstores have been full of new titles claiming to reveal at last some lost, forgotten, suppressed, hidden, “underground” stream of Christianity, with connections to various esoteric traditions within Western history. The titles speak for themselves: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The DaVinci Code, The Hiram Key, The Templar Revelation. Few of these works have received the attention, much less the academic endorsement, of mainstream historians, and probably for good reason. They are often long on speculation and short on hard evidence. It would be a mistake for readers to classify Bütz’s latest work in this genre. In contrast, it is a serious work, in touch with mainstream scholarship, and characterized by full references to original source materials.

Admittedly the trail Bütz follows, from Jesus to Jefferson, is a faint one, with many dead ends, twists, and turns. After all, groups such as the Ebionites, the Desposyni, the Elkesaits, and the Cathars are hardly household names. Bütz’s imaginative but careful consideration of evidence pays off and results in a fascinating thesis that informs the very roots of our American culture.

The book is divided into three parts. Parts I and II, making up about two-thirds of the whole, deals with the roots and history of what Bütz calls “Jewish Christianity.” The term refers to those original Jewish followers of Jesus, led by James the brother of Jesus, who continued in their Jewish beliefs and practices, rejected Paul and the Nicean Church, and according to most scholars continued into the late 4^th century, particularly in areas east of Palestine. These followers of Jesus valued the royal “bloodline” of the Jesus family, whether that of Jesus himself, if he was married with children, or that of his brothers and immediate family. Indeed, Bütz argues that these successors of Jesus and his brother James can properly be viewed as a type of “Caliphate,” in many ways similar to the Shiite branch of Islam. Bütz further argues that these “Nazarenes” set up a provisional government with their own Sanhedrin led by James as high priest, and the Twelve apostles as a kind of inner ruling cabinet. Bütz further locates the operations of this sectarian “government,” on the southwest hill called Mt Zion where both Armenian and Catholic traditions place the “throne” of James, the “Upper Room,” and the house of Mary and the Jesus family.

By far the majority of scholars who have dealt with this branch of “Jewish Christianity” have tended to trail things off in the late 4^th century where most of our records seem to terminate. Bütz take things much farther, and herein lays the special value and contribution of his work. Not only does he pick up on the “Ebionite” trail through an obscure sect of southern Mesopotamia known to us as the Elkasites, but in Part III of his treatment he convincingly traces the key characteristics of this original “Jewish Christian” perspective into early Islam as well. Although the chapter on Islam is somewhat of an excursus, Bütz returns to his more linear story line as he moves from the Elkasites through the Cathars, and thus to the Templars and earliest roots of Freemasonry. It is these last one hundred pages of his book that Bütz truly offers the reader, and in my estimation, the academic world as well, the skeletal framework of a wholly new perspective on the ideas that were most influential upon our Founding Fathers. Here I have in mind specifically the ways in which they imagined America as a sort of New Jerusalem/Promised Land. Other historians have touched on this sort of biblically based idealism, but I think Bütz might be the first to suggest there is an actual current or stream of influence running back into antiquity. I for one find it rather convincing. The history of ideas always remains a tenuous enterprise with no definable terminia post/ad quem, but as Jonathan Z. Smith, the most eminent history of religions used to put things—even an exaggeration in the direction of the truth is progress. I believe that Reverend Bütz has provided us with new perspectives waiting to be tested with subsequent review and consideration. I for one am grateful to him for the opportunity to consider this innovative approach to understanding the roots of our American founding and its ideals.