Back in October, 2002 when Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review revealed the existence of an ossuary that had once held the bones of “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” few in the media or the public knew what an ossuary was or that Jesus even had any brothers. A lot has happened since, much of it chronicled in the archives of this Blog, but the charge that the owner of the ossuary, Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan, added the phrase “brother of Jesus” to an original that said merely “James son of Joseph” is at the center of a criminal forgery trial in Jerusalem.

The case for and against the charge of forgery is a complex one with many twists and turns, involving a who’s who of leading characters in both the academic community and world of antiquities collecting. This week the Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Shuka Dorfman, who had spearheaded the forgery charge in behalf of the IAA, was called to testify. For the latest see the Jerusalem Post coverage by Matthew Kalman:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1251804522111

Last week TIME ran a major story, also written by Kalman, highlighting the ways in which the physical evidence of the case for forgery, appears to have become more problematic than previously revealed since various letters in the phrase “brother of Jesus” appear to be ancient, and thus authentic:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1920720,00.html

Matthew Kalman, who reports from Jerusalem for TIME, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Channel 4 News in Israel, is the only reporter who has covered the trial from day one. He has his own Web site where all his reports are conveniently chronicled, see: http://jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.com/

There is also a useful collection of materials and documents archived at the Biblical Archaeology Society Web site: http://www.bib-arch.org/debates/antiquities-trial-00.asp

In the meantime, the consensus of many leading academics that the ossuary inscription is a forgery has been generally reflected in major media reports, such as a series of updated segments on Sixty Minutes that have aired over the past two years as well as several major magazine stories. That case, with its charge of media sensationalism, is most recently argued in a new book, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics, edited by Ryan Bryne and Bernadette McNary-Zak (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

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