Questioning Jerusalem's Bone Box

There are several problems with this find. First, and most importantly, there is no provenience data for the box. The box is currently owned by an unnamed antiquities dealer, who claims it was looted from a site in Jerusalem near the Mount of Olives. It has been in the dealer's possession for some decades. As a result, forgery cannot be ruled out, although to date testing has supported the box's authenticity.

Secondly, the names James, Joseph, and Jesus were all relatively common in the 1st century AD. The inscription (James, son of Joseph) is, well, rather plain when you consider the importance of James (and of course Jesus) to the early Christian church. And we don't really have any evidence that the early Christian community used the secondary burial boxes of the Jewish community. In other words, if the box is genuine, it may not be from a member of the founding family of Christianity.

Furthermore, although I haven't seen it discussed anywhere, I don't know of any peer-reviewed publication of Lemaire's information to date---in fact, the work was published in a popular magazine rather than an academic journal. Lack of peer-review has been a sharp criticism of other controversial archaeological studies. However, no one disputes the credibility of Dr. Lemaire; and I must admit I am not more than superficially familiar with the workings of biblical archaeological research.

The find is definitely interesting and will no doubt be debated and considered for some time to come. In addition to the article in the BAR, articles reporting on the box have appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post; discussion of the box's authenticity has taken place on the ANE email discussion list. The Discovery Channel plans a documentary on the testing to be aired in the Spring of 2003; and there are negotiations underway to exhibit the box at the upcoming American Academy of Religion meetings in Toronto in late November.

Previous

• 1
• 2

Next