leonarde

Partial repost of post by Vorkosigan:Ah but in the quotation from Cross above the word (and the distinct concept of) "modern" does not appear. He is apparently on the fence as to when the forgery took place.

Furthermore on the styles of the letters: just about EVERYONE agrees that there is a mixing of styles. The disagreement is over:

1) how many distinct styles one can make out (Altman claims 5 cursive styles are being mixed together but no one else claims such a high number) and

2) the significance of the mixing of cursive and non-cursive styles (Cross, like Lemaire, doesn't consider this, per se, a problem; instead, he finds it--------even if a forgery is involved-------"clever" on the part of the forger, whereas Altman finds this decidedly unclever)(to repost the full quotation from Cross on this point: "The mixing of cursive and formal characters was particularly clever..."). To repeat: though she has several reasons for her belief in the inscription's forgery, the mixing of lettering styles is one of the two or three most salient: she thinks it a BAD forgery. Cross thinks it a good one (but apparently of uncertain chronology)

Cheers!

Artemus

He mentions the badly weathered rosettes and the unweathered inscription. He recognizes it as a modern forgery.

leonarde

I don't know whether Cross himself made this point or someone else but: there's a possibility that the box was reused ie a pre-existing ossuary was recycled for the purpose of holding the bones of James. Therefore the box (including presumably the rosettes) WOULD BE (under this scenario) older than the inscription, EVEN IF the inscription goes back to the 60s of the First Century.
Furthermore we have no idea of how the ossuary was stored/set aside for all these centuries. It is at least theoretically possible that the rosettes were more exposed to the elements than the inscription was anyway.
Of course, all that stuff is speculation; it is tests, tests, and more tests that will determine the final disposition of the ossuary....

leonarde

I should have noted in my previous post that the rosettes are on the OPPOSITE side of the ossuary from the side where the inscription is. This is an indication (but not a confirmation) that the ossuary was used more than once. It also COULD potentially account for differences in degrees of wear for the rosettes and inscription.
Intrigued by the subject of the rosettes I found here:
http://www.udayton.edu/news/nr/011603.html
an account of how they were discovered. Oddly enough, the man who discovered them and found them consistent with the idea of forgery, Daniel Eylon, thinks that a word, "Yeshua", of the second half of the inscription is the only genuine lettering: due again to the weathering of the incision (ie just like the rosettes); that part of linked story ensues:

leonarde

For a couple photos of the reverse side of the ossuary look here:
http://www.rom.on.ca/ossuary/discovery.html

Vorkosigan

No. Cross knows it is a modern forgery.

You have misread. Cross believes it a modern forgery, as does Altman. The difference is that Altman believes the letter mixing is significant. Lemaire's attitude is not relevant -- he is an accomplice, I believe, of the forger.

Nothing will determine that, because there are people who refuse to believe no matter what. The fact is that science has already settled the issue. The patina over the inscription is fake. Golan owns a forgery workshop and everything that came through his hands is a fake.

Vorkosigan

spin

I got a different idea from Altman, ie that the second half is a modern forger, and the first part was authentic:

She argues that, as the letters from the first half don't match letters from Rahmani inscriptions, ie they are not copied from there, they are in all probability authentic.

I think this is a legally dangerous statement and patently wrong. Lemaire has simply done what a lot of people do, jump on a bandwagon and convince oneself of the veracity of something too soon, and by that time it's too late to go back because you've hooked yourself. In this field the old school rarely changes its mind even in the face of a truckload of evidence. (Cross for example hasn't changed his mind over any of his slipshod assumptions regarding Hebrew palaeography.)


spin

rlogan

It's not a forgery.

It's an interpolation.

leonarde

Partial repost:This is ONE of the things I want to establish: which 'expert' said what about the ossuary and when, and on what basis they said it. Do you have a link or text where Cross explicitly states that the forgery is modern?

Cheers!

leonarde

Here's a good exchange among the three men, Shanks, Lemaire and Cross. I gather that Cross leans toward a modern forgery, though he does not explicitly state the 'modern' part but this is based, not on paleography, but on the scientific findings and making connections between the ossuary and Jehoash Inscription.....the latter he finds a forgery....
http://www.bib-arch.org/bswbbreakingHSALFMC.html

Cheers!