'James ossuary' verdict adds to burial box furor

— -- "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."

Those words inscribed on the so-called James ossuary, a stone burial box that reportedly held the bones of the brother of Jesus, set off a frenzy when the discovery was first announced in a 2002 press conference. The box appeared on the cover of Time magazine, drew thousands to a Toronto exhibit and was featured in a critical 60 Minutes report, in 2008, linking it to an antiquity forgery ring.

The inscription claim was celebrated, denigrated and ultimately prosecuted. And now with a "not guilty" verdict on Wednesday in the forgery trial in Israel of the antiquities dealer, Oded Golan, the long-running saga of the James Ossuary has taken only its latest turn.

Concluding a seven-year case, Jerusalem district court judge Aharon Farkash ruled that evidence presented by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) against Golan was insufficient to prove the last part of the inscription was faked beyond a reasonable doubt. "This is not to say that the inscription is true and authentic and was written 2,000 year ago," Farkash added.

In 2003, Israeli authorities raided Golan's apartment, finding the ossuary sitting atop a rooftop toilet amid a workshop filled with inscription tools, suggesting that the Jesus reference was forged.

No one disputes the ossuary itself is an authentic burial box, likely placed in a crypt near Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Removing bones from rock tombs and reburying them in ossuaries was fashionable among the wealthy there from the mid-reign of Herod the Great, Herod of the New Testament around 15 B.C., until 70 A.D., when a Roman army sacked Jerusalem.

However, not much agreement remains between archaeologists and those who vouch for the inscription, such as French ancient-writing expert Andre Lemaire, who authenticated the inscription in 2002. With the verdict's announcement, Golan claimed vindication for his innocence, while the IAA claimed victory because the court held him guilty of separate violations of antiquities laws.

Trial publicity brought a spotlight on the shadowy-but-legal sales of antiquities in Israel, and as a result, "the trade in written documents and seals derived from illicit antiquities excavations has almost been entirely halted ," said an IAA statement. "This in turn has led to a dramatic reduction in the scope of antiquities robbery occurring at biblical sites in Israel."

How Golan and others acquired the box, and what they did with it, was where the controversy started. In 2002, the magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review and the Discovery Channel announced the existence of the ossuary at a press conference, noting that Lemaire vouched that the inscription " very probably" referred to the brother of Jesus of Nazareth.

Many outside experts, however, concluded the inscription's "Jesus" reference was phony, including the scholar Rochelle Altman, who found that it " bears the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition." In other words, someone had chiseled the Jesus reference onto the box after its discovery and then treated the words with weathering chemicals to artificially age its appearance to match the patina of the stone box, a charge made by Israeli officials against Golan. All in a bid to dupe some wealthy collector into paying more.