Haran

I'll grant you that there was probably much more silly bravado than scholarly information to King Arthur, but it was there (names and sources), challenges in Greek translation and paleo-Hebrew scripts, etc.

I'm curious what you imply? That my inner atheist was wanting to come out? Seriously, I'm curious.

Haran

Unfortunately, CX, it has been brought up in other forums. I also have reason to believe that the incident was mentioned to Dr. Altman. I find that disturbing and frustrating because I have never done this (nor will I) in any other forum. I dug my own hole, but I think it is shallow of others to be bringing this up elsewhere when some (atheist and theist) contacted me privately to tell me they had done similar things before. I goofed and may have to put up with this, but I think it is sad how others are and have been using the incident, as if they have never had a lapse in good judgement. When King Arthur is compared with others in these forums who use quite vulgar language and pictures and mean-spirited insults which are not in jest like King Arthur's, he doesn't seem quite so bad.

Sauron

Many people share your opinion. Some don't. Others, like myself, are only partially convinced. And, of course, depending upon how one defines "authenticity" may have a lot to do with it:

1. the ossuary is genuinely from the appropriate time and location, the inscription is of the correct age and linguistically correct;

OR

2. the ossuary is genuinely from the appropriate time and location, the inscription is of the correct age, linguistically correct; and the text refers to James, brother of Christ

There's a big difference between #1 and #2.

No. For reasons of efficiency, I have tended to base my opinions without referring to Altman. When I saw the back-and-forth on her views, I looked elsewhere for information on the ossuary. And in like fashion, I don't use Altman's views as a reference whenever I present my arguments about the ossuary. She may still be right; I don't know. But I wanted to see what kind of conclusion I could arrive at, independent of her work. The end result was the same: the box appears to be genuine; the inscription is still under investigation.


I think he is. Did you read it carefully?

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/...temp/12/12/27/

However, John Lupia, editor of the Roman Catholic News and a scholar with degrees in art history, biblical studies and archeology, told The Globe and Mail yesterday that he "immediately knew the inscription was a fake without giving a paleographic analysis [inscription interpretation] for two reasons: biovermiculation and patina."

I didn't consider his faith when using him as a source. Are you trying to infer that since Catholics believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, that Lupia might have an axe to grind here?

No. He denounced the inscription as fake. Go back, and read carefully. To my knowledge, he has said nothing about the limestone ossuary being a forgery. Here is how he explains his view - you'll have to scroll to the 2nd PDF page:

http://www.minervamagazine.com/pdf/news.pdf

Indeed.

The problem that I have with such a viewpoint is that we're not talking about one isolated report of suspicious behavior by Golan. There are multiple sources indicating that behavior, one of which is the IAA (which you previously indicated that you had confidence in).

Moreover, if one examines just the items that Golan admits to - the story of the ossuary's purchase, the timing, the failure to disclose to the IAA, etc. - inconsistencies appear that are not filtered or being "spun" by the news media.

And finally, Golan (as I pointed out on another thread) is in hot water for the Jehoash inscription, and for similar reasons as the ossuary. A pattern emerges.

It's one thing to withhold judgment if reports are preliminary and/or sketchy. It's quite another to have multiple testimonies from different people, independent evidence, and a pattern of behavior - and then cast aspersions at the news media, merely because the evidence is stacking up in an uncomplimentary fashion and no rescue is visible.

Slow down, Haran. You know better than that.

For starters, yes - artifacts with similar backgrounds do get authenticated. However, their authentication is most often only *partial* in nature. By that I mean, the authentication process reaches a maximum confidence level in what can be reasonably claimed about the artifact - and it can proceed no further. Why? Because issues of provenance aren't settled.

Secondly, when such un-provenanced articles achieve authentication, it almost always takes longer than articles for which the provenance is known or well-established. Considering how this ossuary has been on a bullet train to an almost forced authenticity, one has to wonder if the process has been hurried along with reckless results. In other words, it's too short a time for an unprovenanced ossuary to achieve the level of authenticity that some people have desperatedly tried to assign to it.

And thirdly, there is a rule that still applies here: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Or, in this case, extraordinary claims about a particular artifact require extraordinary evidence to back them up. That rule is simply being invoked here, and with good reason. We have zero physical evidence, outside this ossuary, of the 1st century Christ. And there are no church legends of James' burial that involve ossuaries. So because of the specificity of the claims being tossed around for this ossuary, as well as the fact that it stands alone as a piece of physical evidence, cautious skepticism is well-warranted.

I think you better check your facts, Haran. The first pieces of the DSS may have been sold that way, but the entire lot of them? No. If I recall, the provenance was ultimately established as being from desert caves and some ancient ruins. Does the name Khirbet Qumran ring any bells?


And most, if not all, of them are affected by the three items I mentioned above.

PS - and note that this is the type and tone of conversation that I prefer to have, as opposed to the Turkel version. But he seems incapable of that.

Sauron

So they adhere to definition #1, in my previous post.

No, I have not. I've focused instead on issues that don't deal directly with the paleography, but instead deal with background issues: chemical composition, patina, and the materials analysis like that which was done by Daniel Eylon:

http://www.catholicexperts.org/burialbox.html

In Eylon's failure analysis work, he determines if a malfunction has occurred before or after an accident. Because of his years of experience, he felt so strongly that the inscription might be a fake, he has written to the Biblical Archaeology Review, which first published the finding, offering to perform a detailed analysis at any lab of the author's choice. He says there are several clues in the pictures that have been released that may dismiss the inscription's authenticity.

"This box has several service-related scratches, the result of moving the box against other boxes on the cave shelves, impact with collapsed cave roof material or the final excavation," Eylon said. "The inscription would be underneath these scratches if it had been on the box at the time of burial, but the majority of this inscription is on top of the scratches."

This sort of detours around the entire question of paloegraphic authenticity, and raises a very serious barrier. Yet background analysis gets very little attention by the paleographers, because they don't understand the forensic value of it. If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail, I suppose.

Eylon is himself a Jew, and well-read amateur archaeologist. He brings to that discipline the added perspective of materials analysis:

http://www.udayton.edu/news/nr/011603.html

"The decorative lines of the rosettes were almost completely eroded away, as you would expect for a 2,000--year--old artifact," said Eylon. "So it doesn't make sense that almost the entire inscription is still sharp and fresh. In other documented ossuaries that have deteriorated to the point that the decorative design is eroded, the inscriptions were eroded, too."

Eylon says his theory is supported by the data published in the most authoritative monograph on the subject of Jewish ossuaries, "A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries -- In the Collection of the State of Israel" written by L.Y. Rahmani (Jerusalem, 1994). The book catalogues and reviews more than 800 ossuaries; more than 500 with decorative designs and more than 200 with inscriptions.

"The two rosettes on the back of the box were very common during that period, and the catalogue shows hundreds of such examples," Eylon said. "From the many published photographs, it becomes very clear that whenever an ossuary was well protected from the elements and in a good state of preservation, both the inscription and decorations were sharp and well--defined. However, in ossuaries that have been eroded to the point that the decorative lines are faint, the inscriptions are also faint and difficult to read. On the so--called James bone box, there is no consistency between the inscription and other incised decorations."

[...]
And Eylon believes the forgery may have been copied from inscriptions from three of the ossuaries in Rahmani's catalogue.

"The word 'Yaakov' (Jacob or James) has a suspiciously great resemblance in style to the same word found on ossuary Cat. No. 865 (p. 257)," said Eylon. "The word 'Yosef' (Joseph) is almost identical in spelling and style to the one on ossuary Cat. No. 573 (p. 201). Curiously, the other 18 catalogued ossuaries with the same name from the same period are spelled Yehosef, and with many variation of script styles. Yet, James' ossuary is identical both in style and in the unusual spelling only to Cat. No. 573. Thirdly, the word 'Achui' (the brother of) is almost a replica in style and spelling of the same word on ossuary Cat. No. 570 (p.200). I found that there is no other documented inscription with such an unusual word."

"It is my conclusion," said Eylon, "that the first part of the inscription most probably was 'inspired' recently and copied from three ossuary scripts published in the 1994 Rahmani catalogue."


But the questions that stand in the way of authenticity of the script are not trivial questions, nor are they easily ignored. The examples I gave above illustrate why.

No, for several reasons:

1. Consensus emerges over time, as a result of investigation, research, and trial-and-error. In the same way that the theory of evolution reached scientific consensus, only on a smaller scale.

2. All scholars can offer opinions. But those opinions must be well-sourced, and backed up by some kind of evidence. Otherwise, the scholar risks his/her credibility by going out on a limb with no supporting data. And unfortunately, gathering and examining that data also takes time. So again - my complaint about Shanks and Witherington comes in: they can offer an opinion, but based on what? There needs to be a certain "critical mass" of information available to the scholarly community, before a reputable scholar will offer an opinion. Prior to that critical mass being assembled, the wisest (and most scholarly) course of action is to just admit "We don't know." Unfortunately, when dealing with matters of faith (esp. fundamentalist faith), the words "I don't know" aren't acceptable. So conclusions are rushed and judgements are premature.

3. Your statement is that scholars do not need consensus; they make it. How would you characterize a scholar who makes a mistake? Were they "making consensus" then?

And I believe that any such conclusion is premature. Did S & W address the problems of the flaked-off patina? Or the scratches? How could they - because that analysis hadn't been done yet. The examination was still going on, while they were busy writing their book and signing large contracts.

We also know that Shanks did not bother to check out Golan's alibi for the provenance of the ossuary. Does that not strike you as someone who lacks the necessary investigative rigor to be making a statement about an artifact's authenticity? Especially in the field of Holy Land artifacts, which is rife with fraud?

1. They hardly waited any longer; the manuscript had to be done several weeks or months ago, in order to be published now;

2. I don't use Altman;

3. There's a difference between a two-page opinion on XTALK, and a book of several hundred pages. Lupia and Altman merely published an opinion; part of the natural give-and-take during the investigative process. S & W published a book - for which they received a good sum of money - and which purports to be a comprehensive examination of the ossuary.

The difference here is that Golan stands to gain upwards of $1M for his "copied music CDs." If you still think your example is an accurate analogy, you should re-examine it.

Because I don't believe that is the case. I believe he *does* know where he got it.

Extraordinary claims about artifacts *do* require extraordinary evidence. Either that, or get used to saying "we just don't know."


Hmm. Let's see here:

1. The scholars I quoted are experts in the relevant fields;

2. The articles are not outdated, and no one has brought forth any newer articles to invalidate them, even though I have asked several times;

3. I am not aware of ever quoting a questionable source, and no one has done anything except cast generic dispersions to try and raise baseless doubts;

4. No one has pointed out any unsubstantiated rumors or gossip. Although many have complained that they didn't like the Ha'Aretz articles I posted, but offered no evidence of deceit or incompetency on the part of the reporter

What I see here is someone from particular viewpoint who doesn't like being contradicted. But I haven't seen any evidence to back up the specifics of these charges.

Haran

Bingo. Number 1 is what I think most of these top scholars tend to believe, including myself.

Number 2 is possible, maybe even probable according to a few scholars. Those who state number 2 as definite are wrong.

Yes. I read it. I'm also somewhat familiar with him from scholarly online forums where his credentials have been challenged in other areas. What exactly are those degrees (bachelor, master, doctorate)? Finally, the patina is specifically a geological issue. Is this his scholarly expertise? It doesn't seem to be the case to me. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy and knows a lot from what I've seen. However, I'm not sure what to think since I have seen him challenged on the issue of credentials before. I'll have to go back and see if I can find how he responded in archives, because this is only rumor until I can.

I suppose that was what I thought you might infer from the question.

My bad. You're right. I always seem to write ossuary in generalization. I meant the inscription.

Yes, but...

According to SW:

"The newspapers reported that the police were investigating Golan. The truth, though, was that the IAA had talked to him to learn more about the ossuary and how he acquired it. The police were never involved."

SW mention the many other contradictory rumors that were and are still flying around. Can we trust these rumors? I'm not convinced we can.

Sort of true. There comes a point where they are accepted by most scholars and incorporated into our understanding of history. We will never know for absolute sure about even provenanced items. What if the archaeologist misinterpreted layers or pottery?

I didn't say all of the DSS. The first ones were unprovenanced, sold to scholars in a market. We can believe they came from the caves near Qumran, but did they? Do we know for sure? There was speculation, then, of fraud and forgery as well.

Yes. Thanks for the better tone and more reasonable discussion. Turkel's/Holding's style of "debate" does nothing but back people into corners using emotion.

Haran

I'd like to respond to some of the points in your second post, but I just don't have the time to efficiently look up information and respond any time soon.

I'll just say about SW's book not to forget that Lemaire, Yardeni, IGS, and other scholars were involved in analyzing the ossuary and its inscription for months before it was revealed in BAR and to us and to some of the more outspoken, critical scholars. So, they had more scholarship behind their book than I think you give them credit for. I looked forward to the book simply for a little more information on the ossuary and its inscription. I'm sure they did intend to make some money. Many other scholars have done the same thing.

As to the CD analogy, you make a good point. However, mine was that Golan may regard the antiquities laws like some regard speed limits and copyrights. Would you call someone who breaks the speed limits a criminal? Would you call the many people who download copied CDs from the net thieves? Some would and, maybe, Golan is technically a thief. However, there is not enough conclusive proof for me to say that he broke any laws yet.

Ultimately, I look forward to future articles in scholarly journals. I hope they aren't too far away...

Haran

I found the information I was looking for on John Jupia from the TC(textual criticism) e-list. I remember reading this exchange because it coincided with a discussion of P46 here on Infidels. Here is a questioning of Lupia's credentials:

Professor LW Hurtado on Lupia and Dating P46

This is more discussion surrounding this.

I leave it to others to decide what field John Lupia is an expert in. I do not know for sure, and perhaps Dr. Hurtado was only being snooty to John? Your decision.

keyser_soze

I should think that there is a bit of difference between speeding, pirating music, and stealing an antiquity from it's country of origin. If it proves to be fraudulent(worse frauds have taken longer to discover), then he is also guilty of decieving a rather large population of gullible people...which while not criminal, is certainly immoral.

Ted Hoffman

He is having trouble seeing the difference between a misdemeanour and a felony. Fraudulence and underhandedness.
Happens all the time.
Sometimes, its just the ego striving to be sublime.

Ted Hoffman

Denial - rationalizations...
Beware.