"Biblical" ossuary doubts

The ossuary which recently received so much press attention as the putative burial box of James, the brother of Jesus, has been seriously damaged while in transit from Jerusalem to Toronto. The owner apparently contracted with a local moving company instead of making arrangements through a museum, with disastrous results.
The owner of the ossuary has now been publicly identified as Oded Golan, CEO of a Tel Aviv tech company. Questions have arisen whether the ossuary was discovered after 1978, and hence subject to seizure by Israel as state property.
Meanwhile, experts are expressing sharp doubts about the authenticity of the inscription. Rochelle Altman has called it "a poorly executed fake and a later addition", stating that "you have to be blind as a bat not to see that the second part is a fraud..." -- albeit a fraud that may well be ancient.

UPDATE: Here's an article with more on ossuaries and the antiquities trade.

MORE on the various claims of provenance here.

Posted by David on November 6, 2002 9:44 PM