Posted by Alcyonian [203.97.2.242 - netcache1-acld.auckland.clix.net.nz] on 19 June 2003 at 07.16.55 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: quick Hunter turn on the history channel posted by Prot on 19 June 2003 at 05.24.42 ZuluTime:

Most of us have known this for months. We've stayed up to date with those scientists that have been trying to inspect James Box, but refused by the BAR. Now, today, it's official, thank's to the Israeli Government. And here it is. Pasted right of Discovery.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20030616/jesusfake.html

Stone Box Linked to Jesus Called Fake
     AFP

The James Ossuary

June 18. 2003 — In the end was the word, and the word was "fake."

Eight months after the highly publicized discovery of a burial box believed to bear one of the first historical mentions of Christ, Israeli experts said Wednesday the so-called "James ossuary" was a recent fabrication.

     The judgment on the box, thought to have contained the bones of Jesus' brother, James, was delivered by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which also debunked a stone tablet billed as dating back to the 9th century B.C.

Department director Shouka Dorfman told a press conference the damning conclusions of two teams of archaeologists, geologists and linguists charged with verifying the authenticity of the finds were "categorical."

The announcement last October that a stone ossuary had been found with the engraving "James, son of Joseph and brother of Jesus" was greeted with much excitement as well as skepticism in archaeological circles.

Such boxes were common among the Jews of Jesus' time, who customarily used them to store and identify the bones of the deceased that were recovered from the full body a certain time after burial.

The markings on the "James ossuary" in the Semitic Aramaic language were hailed by the Biblical Archaeology Review as one of the first historical references to the man who gave birth to the Christian religion.

But Dorfman told reporters Wednesday: "Upon examination it appeared that the inscription was recently engraved."

One specialist who studied the ossuary, Rochelle Altman, argued that the inscription "Jacob (James) son of Joseph" was carved in the 1st century, which would be consistent with the events in question.

However, she said the second part — "brother of Joshua (Jesus)" — was in a different hand and style that was added later, possibly as late as the 3rd or 4th centuries.

The second artifact stripped of its historical bona fides Wednesday was a black stone tablet carrying a Phoenician inscription attributed to the Jewish king Jehoash, who ruled Jerusalem at the end of the 9th century B.C.

The 10-line inscription written in the first person mentions "repairs ordered in the Temple" by Jehoash and bears a striking resemblance to a passage in the Bible's Book of Kings, chapter 12.

If it had been authentic, it would have provided the first non-biblical proof of the existence of the first Temple of Jerusalem, which has yet to be confirmed by any archaeological evidence so far.

The fragment was discovered during excavations by Moslems in recent years around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which the Jews call the Temple Mount, site of Jerusalem's second temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

"This writing is recent and without any doubt also a fake," Dorfman said, backing up his verdict with a flurry of complex scientific data.

The two items belong to Israeli collector Oded Golan, who says he bought the ossuary for $200 at an antique shop in Jerusalem's Old City, although he said he has forgotten exactly where.

The two teams of experts spent two and a half months studying the pieces and ended up disputing the results of previous research that had estimated their value at millions of dollars.

Officials of Israel's Antiquities Authority declined to discuss the legal ramifications of the episode, with an investigation into possible fraud committed by Golan already under way.

But Dorfman said the announcement Wednesday should dispel any illusions about the significance of the ossuary and tablet.

No less than 14 researchers, tops in their fields, have accomplished a remarkable piece of scientific work," he said.

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