Vorkosigan

Hmm, as I mentioned above, BAR has editors. And must sell copies. And an authentic link to Jesus sells a lot more copies than a simple ossuary with a forged inscription.

godfry n. glad

Along those lines, would someone who subscribes to BAR please post up the citation, so that those of us who do not, nor never intend to, subscribe may request it via interlibrary loans?

Standard scholatic citation, with primary author, "article title", _journal title_, volume (issue): pages, and year, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

godfry n. glad

Layman

But getting back to your attack on me (that you did not in any way say that Christianity was the motivation), we were not discussing financial motivation. You expressly stated that it was their (plural) "faith commitment."

So far you admit you have no idea what the "faith commitment" of author of the statement you claim is a lie is.

You have to admit that BAR is NOT a Christian publication. Indeed, its Editor-In-Chief is JEWISH.

So who are these liars motivated by their "faith commitment" It's not the author of the statement. It's not the Editor-In-Chief of BAR.

Who is lying because of their "faith commitment"?

Or, just admit your accusation was baseless.

Jayhawker Soule

Burial Box of James the Brother of Jesus by Andre Lemaire
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2002 Vol. 28 No. 6, pages 24-33

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

MortalWombat

Many book stores such as Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc. carry BAR in their magazine section. You might want to try there to get a single issue once it hits the newsstands.

Jayhawker Soule

The absurd bias or, at the very least, mindless enthusiasm, of the BAR staff is more than evident in a sidebar on the "Three Versions of the Family Tree of Jesus". The versions diagramed are <ol type="1">[*]the Protestant version, with James as the brother of Jesus, and the son of Joseph and Mary,[*]the Orthodox Church version, with James as the half brother of Jesus, and the son of Joseph and a previous wife, and[*]the Catholic version, with James as the cousin of Jesus, and the son of Clopas and Mary of Clopas, Clopas being the brother of Joseph.[/list=a]The editor then writes: Both sentences are in error: if James were the cousin of Jesus, the significance of the box would evaporate, and there is nothing 'likely' given the evidence produced to date.

Apikorus

Looking at the blow-up of the inscription, I can't detect that there are two different hands at work. One problem is that Yardeni's sketch, which was reproduced on the web sites as an "enhanced image" is not entirely faithful. For example, it contains a bigger space between the fe sofit of yosep and the aleph of akhui. Remember that it is precisely at this point where Altman maintains the second hand begins - perhaps she based her analysis in part on the sketch as well? Another difference is that when I take a straight-edge an place it above the tops of the letters on the photograph, it seems they all line up. (Not so for the characters on the sketch.) Indeed the alignment is excellent based on the other inscriptions which I've seen (though only sketches) in the Rahmani catalog. Quite often one sees the letters are a real mess. So it seems to me that this was the work of a single rather careful scribe, and perhaps it is my own ignorance of Aramaic epigraphy which leads me to criticize the aleph and daleth as sloppy. It really is a very beautiful inscription.

I had referred to the other ossuary mentioning a brother in another thread:

The mention of a sibling relationship is apparently quite rare, though not unique to the James ossuary. For example, no. 570 in the catalog bears the inscription Symy br `syh 'Hwy (d')Hnyn = Shimi bar Asiya akhui (d')Hanin = Shimi son of Asiya, brother of Hanin. This language exactly parallels that in the James ossuary. (If Lemaire and/or Shanks has done his homework, this should be mentioned in the BAR article.)

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

godfry n. glad

MortalWombat did post this:

Sorry, MW, ever since Hershal Shanks decided to hurl epithets of "anti-Semitism" at fellow scholars because they disagreed with his point of view (www.bibleinterp.com/articles/copenhagen.htm), I'm of the opinion that he and his pet project, the BAR, don't deserve a single red cent from me.
In my eyes, neither the man nor the journal deserve any of the recognition they currently receive.

I'll get it via interlibrary loan, thanks anyway.

Thanks for the cite, ReasonableDoubt.

godfry n. glad

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: godfry n. glad ]</p>

Toto

hyperlinking godfrey's article:

<a href="http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/copenhagen.htm" target="_blank">A view from Copenhagen: Israel and the History of Palestine</a>

is a quote to remember.

Apikorus

<a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101021104-384797,00.html" target="_blank">Bone fragments in James ossuary?</a>

"The bone fragments lie in the dirt at the bottom of the box like the dots and dashes of some infuriating code. They were there, says the owner, when he bought it. Whoever sold it to his dealer would have removed anything larger, since Israeli collectors and looters alike know that the rabbinical authorities are sensitive about human remains. What is left is these off-white bits. The largest is half an inch wide and three inches long, its inner surface an intricate honeycomb. A reporter holds it gently — who knows whose DNA it might contain?"

This report (from Time) seems to conflict with what Lemaire writes in BAR:

"Unfortunately, as is almost always the case with ossuaries that come from the antiquities market rather than from a legal excavation, it was emptied. What happened to the bones that were once inside it we do not know."

The Time article is very good, and contains some interesting tidbits not included in the BAR piece, most notably the remarkable news about the bone fragments. In addition:

• After other constraints are accounted for, Lemaire estimates there is a 90% chance that the ossuary is that of the brother of Jesus of Nazareth. (He didn't want to be so bold in his own BAR article, but he saw fit to communicate this privately to the Time reporter.)
• "Camil Fuchs, head of Tel Aviv University's statistics department, running numbers from the article, claims that Lemaire overestimated the final tally. Fuchs claims that there would have been only five possible Jameses."
• The article claims that other epigraphers, working from photographs, have agreed with Lemaire's dating. The sole exception identified is Emile Puech (who is also a very serious scholar).
• The Time article also includes (in a separate clickable link) another very good photograph of the inscription. The angle and lighting are different than in the BAR article. It is looking like perhaps a stroke is left off the aleph(?) Also one can see very clearly from this photo that the second character after (that is, to the left of) the Het is a yod and not a waw. Altman is simply wrong on this.
  

Enjoy!

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>