james ossuary | brother of jesus | ossaury | james the just | oded golan, חוו"ד ד"ר ירדני

Source: Biblical Archaeology Magazine - Novemevr/December 2004

The debate continues over the supposed James ossuary. Script Expert and author Ada Yardeni weighs in on the controversial subject...

"Regarding the inscription on the famous James ossuary, Ya’akov bar Yoseph ahui d’ Yeshua (Yod, ayin, qof, waw, bet. bet, resh. Yod, waw, samah, pe. aleph, het, waw, yod. dalet, Yod, shin, waw, ayin, translated in English as “James [Jacob] son of Joseph brother of Jesus”), I have been following the discussion and reports, and I am by no means persuaded by the claims that it is a forgery. My opinion is based on paleographical as well as circumstantial evidence.
Having studied thoroughly the script of the Second Temple period (see my two-volume work The Aramaic Hebrew and Nabataean Documentary Texts from the Judaean Desert and Related Material, Jerusalem 2000), I have managed to develop a feeling for this script.

When I copied the inscription, I initially had some question about the qof and the final pe, as well as the angular first ayin. I also wondered about the name Joseph spelled Ywsp this way rather than Yhwsp (with a he). The latter spelling was much more popular in this period. I also noted that the first name, Yqwb (James/Jacob), is spelled with the waw (w) which might lead one to expect a he (h) in Joseph. (Both waw and he are rudimentary vowels.)

These were the only peculiarities I saw in the inscription. I also observed that there was no difference in the depth of the engraving between the two parts of the inscription.

It is quite normal for a hand-made inscription to display variations in the execution of the letters. However, the use of the cursive alef seems to be too sophisticated for a forger, while it may easily have occurred to a scribe who was trained in the cursive script.

I don’t see any similarity between the somewhat distorted dalet of this inscription and the dalet in ossuary No. 570 in Rahmani’s catalog of ossuaries. No. 570 is, of course, the only other ossuary inscription containing the name of the deceased’s brother. The verbal form is the same as in our ossuary. But it is clear that the engraver of our ossuary did not copy the dalet in No. 570.

I am confirmed in my opinion by external circumstances. When the ossuary’s owner, Mr. Oded Golan, first gave me a photograph of the inscription on November 1, 2001, it was with photographs of two other ossuary inscriptions, one of which is incised in a “Jewish” cursive script. There is no way that this could be a forgery. The second additional photograph was inscribed with letters in a so-far-unidentified script. Perhaps it’s a forgery. On January 2, 2002, I traced the inscriptions from the photographs, but Mr. Golan did not seem anxious to see my drawings. I think that I gave them to him later that month when he brought me, at my request, some Idumean ostraca to be examined and copied by me. I really don’t know if at that time he was aware of the meaning of the inscription. It was not until July 2002 that Andrי Lemaire of the Sorbonne told me that he is going to publish in BAR the inscription mentioning Jesus.

This was totally different from the circumstances involving the so-called Yehoash inscription. In that case photographs were sent to me by a messenger in a mysterious way on November 18, 2001, following a phone call six days earlier. I was never told that Mr. Golan was actually behind this or behind the request that I write a paleographical report on this inscription. Looking back, this seems quite strange, but it could be explained by the claim that the dealer wanted it to be kept a secret.

In sum, I am confident that the James ossuary inscription is authentic. About the Yehoash inscription, there is more doubt".

Ada Yardeni