Phony biblical relics spark controversy

— -- Medieval pilgrims would have understood the throngs who crowded Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum to see the James Ossuary. Only six years ago, the stone box inscribed "James, Son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus" in Aramaic, made Time magazine's cover and drew 100,000-person lines to see the limestone box that, by implication, may have once held the skeletal remain of Jesus' brother.

But like so many religious relics before, the ossuary, a two-foot-long box that Jewish inhabitants of burial-site-poor Jerusalem typically used to store remains around the First Century, A.D., turned out to have a checkered past. The 2002 vetting of the box's authenticity described in the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review came under fire quickly, from experts who complained the box's origins were unknown. Oded Golan, the antiquities dealer who owned the ossuary, only said he had bought it from another dealer in the 1970's.

Many outside experts, concluded the second part of the ossuary inscription, the reference to Jesus, was a fake, including the scholar Rochelle Altman who found that it "bears the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition," and "is questionable to say the least." Others, such as Amnon Rosenfeld of the Geological Survey of Israel, continue to defend the inscription's authenticity.

In 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority raided Golan's apartment, famously finding the ossuary sitting atop a rooftop toilet amid a workshop setting filled with inscription tools. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University described the furor over the ossuary as a case of " Jerusalem syndrome," modern-day people suddenly deluding themselves into believing they are Bible characters. Golan and three other men were indicted for forgery of the James ossuary in 2004 by Israeli authorities. Golan and one other man, the antiquities dealer Raymond Deutsch, remain on trial.

The case has called into question other artifacts of the same era, particularly the " Jehoash Inscription," a stone describing repairs to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, and an ivory pomegranate once thought a relic from Solomon's Temple, declared a forgery by the Israel Museum in 2004.

One journalist who has followed the ossuary case is Nina Burleigh, author of the upcoming Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed & Forgery in the Holy Land (Smithsonian Books, $27.50), which goes on sale this week. Part crime story, part travelogue through the netherworld of antiquity scholarship, the book serves up a real-life mystery that puts to shame any simplistic DaVinci Code-type thriller. We asked Burleigh to comment on the ossuary and the wider world of biblical archaeology:

Q: Faked religious objects go back a long way, don't they? Isn't it kind of an old tradition?

A: Absolutely, this goes back to the earliest roots of Christianity and probably earlier. People in the Middle Ages traveled places to see relics. It's just more high-tech now with global media coverage.

Q: Where do things stand with the forgery trial?

A: Well, the prosecution rested its case in the spring after calling about 70 experts to testify about the ossuary being a fake. A lot of scientific people have come forward and both sides are fighting tooth and nail. The defense is supposed to present its case, have its experts present their evidence by the end of October. But Israeli court cases are complicated … and it looks like the trial won't be over any time soon.

Q: Regardless of the trial's outcome, what do you think the story of the James Ossuary says about biblical archaeology as a field?

A: I've come to realize that archaeology can be seen as a very subjective science. It has a lot of objective aspects, measurements, dating and so on, but especially in biblical archaeology people bring a lot of prior assumptions to bear in their work, whether the Bible was real or not, and those can be very difficult to sort out.

Things are a whole lot more political than I ever suspected. Not just theology-minded people who are interested in artifacts like the ossuary, but Israeli nationalists who believe that evidence of ancient habitation of the Holy Land would lead to a larger Israel. The field archaeologists even joke about it, 'Oh no, I didn't find a mikvah (a ritual bath in Judaism), I found a church. I'm going to lose my funding.'

The apotheosis of the whole thing is at (Jerusalem's) Temple Mount, where the Muslim religious authority doesn't want any digging under a sacred site and others would like to find evidence of Solomon's Temple buried there. It is an incredibly tense, trip-wire place and these questions quickly become very dangerous ones.

Q: What about funding? Aren't collectors or enthusiasts funding digs and antiquities dealers having a role in scholarly debates an unhealthy situation for archaeology?

A: Archaeologists in the region have a problem, and they know it, in that antiquity collectors and people with some interest in a particular view of the Bible fund some of their work. Shelby White, a wealthy New York collector, just funded a major university archaeology department, for example. So they are torn. They see collectors as raping sites for cool stuff to decorate their apartments and on the other hand, they need the money. They have quite a conundrum.

Was I surprised by this? No, money talks everywhere. And I am a New Yorker.

Q: How does this affect the archaeology we see?

A: Biblical archaeology is really a small community. Everybody knows everybody. I think the people out in the field are just trying to honestly report what they find. When you get away from the field, things get complicated.

Q; Where do you come down on the James Ossuary?

A: I don't have a science background. My sense is that the people presenting evidence of fraud have a pretty good case.

It's important to say that Oded Golan maintains his innocence and the trial is still not over.

Q: Even if a lot of this stuff is phony, why should we care about rich guys buying forged biblical artifacts?

A: Seems like a victimless crime if a wealthy collector like Shlomo Moussaieff (who dealt with Deutsch) wants to have something possibly fake in his apartment. But when dealers and forgers toy with believers, and what they do to belief systems, is kind of a problem. That's just wrong. It's a scam: Forgers take money from gullible believers that would have gone in the collection plate to help people.

And they are distorting the truth. Especially in writing, we need in situ findings to have an accurate account of history.

Finally, the forgers are really playing with fire, things are so tense in East Jerusalem, to throw fake biblical artifacts into the mix puts gasoline on the flames there.