- JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An
Israeli Antiquities Authority official said on Monday archaeologists would
never prove beyond doubt that an inscription on an ancient limestone casket
referred to the brother of Jesus.
-
- Scholars had hoped the nearly 2,000-year-old ossuary,
a box once used to hold bones for burial, would be the most important find
in the history of New Testament archaeology.
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- The earliest previously known artifact mentioning Jesus
was a papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John, dated about 125 A.D.
-
- Bearing the Aramaic inscription "James, Son of Joseph,
Brother of Jesus," the porous limestone box has been dated to about
63 A.D and could be the earliest known non-biblical reference to Jesus.
-
- Now in a Toronto museum for its first showing, it belongs
to an Israeli who is reported to have bought it for a few hundred dollars
in the 1970s. Canadian museum officials estimate it is worth about $2 million.
-
- Uzi Dahari, deputy head of the Israeli authority responsible
for the nation's antiquities, doubted that experts would be able to determine
for certain that the casket's inscription referred to the brother of Jesus.
-
- "Statistically the chances of it being Jesus's brother
are low and we will never know the truth because the casket is from an
unofficial dig and ended up in the open market," he said.
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- "We don't even know if the cave in which it was
found was in Jerusalem or far from Jerusalem. There are so many questions
that will never have an answer so that no one will ever be able to say
for sure that is the ossuary of the brother of Jesus."
-
- The Geological Survey of Israel determined that the ossuary
sat in soil native to Jerusalem's Mount Scopus and said in a letter to
the journal Biblical Archaeology Review, which announced the find on October
21, that no evidence was found to detract from the inscription's authenticity.
-
- Stephen Phann, president of the University of the Holy
Land in Jerusalem, has seen the inscription. "If we were to have an
A,B,C,D rating of certainty, this is up there at B-plus, or fairly certain,"
he said.
-
- Under Israeli law, the Antiquities Authority, which authorized
its export to Washington and then Toronto, has the right to examine it
on its return in early February. If it has national significance, the government
can claim it.
-
- The ossuary was cracked on its way to Toronto, where
it is scheduled to go on display on November 16.
-
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