leonarde

Posted by RD: But when taken together with the determination that the cursive
lettering is of the style from before 70 AD
we are left with the 1st Century only.

Cheers!

Steven Carr

I'm not certain how they can be so certain, especially with stone work.

Cemeteries near me have many styles of lettering.

When was Gothic Script dropped in Germany? I saw a newspaper today using it.

Jayhawker Soule

And I can find plenty of examples of Roman numerals at the local cemeteries. Please indicate any reference whatsoever that suggests, much less tests and confirms, the dating accuracy of epigraphy, particularly when applied to a small handfull of engraved letters.

Ted Hoffman

Great work Apikorus and Sauron.

Layman, I have watched with utter disbelief as you have painted yourself into that untenable corner you occupy right now. You have made misapplied generalizations, resorted to strawman arguments, made conclusions based on incorrect information and refused to consider what other sources say about the same matter. You have attempted cop-outs, used emotive language and projected your weaknesses on others and of course your blindfolded application of double standards.

But I have to hand it to you: you are stubborn. As Sauron noted earlier, you even have to be dragged by the nose, kicking and screaming before you can admit error in a simple matter.

Lets look at one of the arguments you made earlier:

Layman said:
Tentatively confident about what? This is a fallacy of missing arguments. Confident that "...this is James, the New Testament brother of Jesus' ossuary?" If that is the assertion you wished to make, you are aware of how untenable it is.

As for 1: This ossuary is from the middle-first century.
Based on what? The inscriptions (as per Kyle McCarter's position) or the use (and cessation thereof) of Ossuaries vis-a-vis the The destruction of Jerusalem?
Or are you basing this claim on the BAR article?

It has been demonstrated that:
1) The practice of Ossuary reburial started dying off after circa 135 CE.

2) If your argument is based on the type of limestone used (soft vs hard), well, its just one of many other ossuaries that have been found. For its dating to have any probative value, its important to link it to a place and perhaps to a family. That is where your nightmares begin.

About 2: This ossuary is from the Jerusalem area. .

There is simply no evidence for this.
Furthermore, "Jerusalem Area" is very vague and could mean anything including Jericho. Since you are using vague expressions used by reporters when writing to an uncritical audience, you are obligated to find out and show us exactly what "Jerusalem area" means and on what basis the scope was narrowed down to that area. If you cant do that Layman, you have no business posting it here as evidence, unless you are willing to admit it is vague and cannot therefore be used to make conclusive and specific conclusions. Which would be self-refuting.

We can't help you to support your arguments (you've kept asking people to do further research and contact concerned sources - which is very irregular) to transefer the burden of proof to othere while you are the one making a positive assertion is a shoddy debating practice.

About 3: 3. The inscription on the ossuary is not a fraud and is the original inscription.

Please provide evidence for this. All that is known is that experts said it was not written using modern tools and "modern pigments" (why would an inscription need ANY pigment anyway? [are these the non-arguments that are used as proof?] and of course they dont state exactly what they mean by "modern tools" chisels? ultrasound technology? what did the 1st Century Jews use? stones?).
And that there is no observable sign of use of modern tools and pigments does not in itself mean it is the original inscription (are you that naive really?). It just dims out the likelihood of tampering (of course the possibility of fraud remains intact).
Moreover, it doesn't prove authenticity, because humans can be fooled by people who know their methods.

Nobody knows what the original inscription was.

So don't argue untestable and unprovable ideas. What can be validly questioned is its authenticity, not originality (and this is where credibility of the persons involved, the background [the particular scholar's questionable serendipity], possible motives, evident lack of transparency, evasion of scrutiny etc come in).
Like a reknown pedigree said, its too pat.
Anyone familiar with the cursive style of the script that Jews used in the first century could have done the job.
Very well. But it turns out it wasn't even done well. A keen expert has already detected the forgery was done poorly. This sure bereaves your "evidence" of any credibility it might have otherwise have had . As Dr. R.I.S. Altman <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/11211" target="_blank"> in this url </a> says:
So its likely to be a fake, the excuse about the absence microbes notwithstanding.

Refute those arguments in that URL first. If you cannot do that, you should admit that nothing important can be said with certainty about the ossuary.

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: Intensity ]</p>

Apikorus

Steven Carr wrote:

"The obvious reason why a brother would be named on a coffin, is if they are twins, and die (perhaps in stillbirth) so shortly together that the burials (or placing in the ossuaries) took place closely together.

If two brothers were put in ossuaries in the same day, that would be a motivation to record such a tragic loss. "

There are a number of problems with these hypotheses, Steven. First of all, Jewish tradition was to name sons on the day of their circumcision, which would be on the eighth day. (This is attested to in the New Testament as well: see e.g. Luke 2:21.) Naming is associated with the covenant of circumcision: according to legend, God changed Abram's name to Abraham upon the latter's circumcision. A stillborn child or children would hence likely not be named. In catalog no. 73, for example, the (Aramaic) inscription reads "Matya's wife and her son" with no name given for the child. Perhaps this child was stillborn. In other cases, a child's name is provided with that of the mother - maybe those are older children?

Second, the size of ossuaries for children was generally smaller than those of adults. According to Rahmani, adult ossuaries were typically 42-65 cm (16-26 in.) in length, while those for children could be as small as 30 cm (12 in.) in length. According to the BAR article, the James ossuary is 20 inches long, which is average length for an adult. (One might at this point be prompted to ask whether the length of the ossuary might increase were it to contain the remains of two infants. I doubt it, though it might be deeper. The length probably scaled with the size of the longest bone, i.e. the femur. )

Third, there is at least one known example of an inscribed ossuary containing two brothers. It is catalog no. 560, and the inscription (in Greek) reads "Mathia and Simon brothers sons of Ya'ir". So here both brothers are mentioned together, as in "A and B, brothers, sons of C". This formula is distinct from that employed in cat. no. 570 ("Shimi son of `Asiya brother of Hanin") and the James ossuary, i.e. "A son of B, brother of C".

I think it more likely that James' brother Jesus was a person of prominence/wealth. Perhaps he was a surviving sibling who had purchased the tomb. Of course, Dr. Altman's analysis brings into serious question whether or not the second half of the inscription ("brother of Jesus") was the work of a later forger.

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

MortalWombat

Regarding the patina, if the second half of the inscription were put there say a century or two after the original, would there be no noticeable difference between the patina of 1800 vs 2000 years?

Sauron

He included the specific comment about 1st and 2nd centuries, to rebut the previous claim that the practice of limestone ossuary burial in/around Jerusalem stopped at 70 CE. Clearly, it did not.

Jayhawker Soule

I was again discussing this with my son-in-law. While insisting that he is not a linguist, he indicated that he found the original every bit as ambiguous as in English, though he indicated that "A, son of B [and] brother of C" was the most natural. He also suggested that, while the term used for "son of" is Aramaic, that used for "brother of" is Hebrew. Again, he is not a linguist, but he does have a full wall of Hebrew and Aramaic texts which he seems to be constantly reading.

Sauron

Interesting question, since the link from crosstalk that Intensity provided seems to point to a second author, adding the "brother of Yeshua" text at a later time.

Or perhaps that's where you were already going with your question, and I was just a little slow...

leonarde

Partial post by RD: 1)Roman numerals are not a particular style of writing our Arabic numerals.

2)I still use Roman numerals for limited
purposes when I write stuff.

3)The Roman numerals are used publicly (less and
less) for stuff like numbering the Super Bowls.

4)In general Roman numerals are a completely different system for representing numbers. (ie they would be for numbers what Arabic
or Hebrew alphabets are for representing words, in our terms a substitution for the Latin alphabet).

In sum, a different writing style is a different style but a different sytem is something else again.

Cheers!