Ossuary dealer's arrest stirs more controversy

Christian Century, August 23, 2003

Experts continue to clash over the authenticity of the James ossuary, a 2,000-year-old limestone burial box purported to be that of James, the brother of Jesus, and whose inscriptions was deemed a forgery by the Israeli Antiquities Authority in June. The debate intensified with the arrest of Oded Golan, the Tel Aviv antiquities dealer who has been under suspicion of systematically counterfeiting relics since Israeli police discovered tools used for inscription and partially inscribed stones in his apartment.

Golan, who said he insured for $1 million the box inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," was released on bail and had not been charged by the end of July. Police raiding his apartment saw the ossuary sitting on an unused toilet seat.

Amir Ganor, head of the Israeli Antiquities Authority unit for the prevention of antiquities theft, said the police also discovered a rooftop storage room containing various items that appeared to he in the process of being doctored, some with so-called "ancient" inscriptions. Although police had searched Golan's apartment six months earlier, the rooftop storage room was a new discovery.

Despite the mounting evidence against Golan, a number of experts stand by his contention that the Aramaic inscription is ancient. "I still stand by the fact that it is a genuine ossuary with a genuine inscription," Ed Keall of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where the ossuary was on display for five weeks last winter, told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television.

Hershel Shanks, editor of the Washington-based Biblical Archaeology Review and a staunch defender of the ossuary, said the find verdict cannot be issued until the test results are published.

Scientists who call it a fraud cited the absence of a patina, or fossilized sheen, over the inscription as evidence that it was carved in modern times. After measuring the box's oxygen isotopes, which indicate weathering, scientists concluded that the sheen over the inscription was a water-and-chalk paste intended to imitate ancient weathering.

But Shanks and others, including Amos Bein, the director of the Israel Geological Survey--the research institute that conducted the test--say the patina could have been rubbed off By vigorous cleaning. Golan claims his mother scrubbed the ossuary with hot water.

Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University" and Avner Ayalon of the Israel Geological Survey said they found the sheen covering the inscription to be of a different geological nature than the patina on the rest of the ossuary. Most notably, he says, the material on the inscription contained micro-fossils of plankton and marine micro-organisms--the kind that are naturally found in chalk or limestone--from rock formed tens of millions of years ago in ancient seas.

Such fossils wouldn't be part of the geological footprint of a chalk patina, Goren contends, since that natural patina is made of calcium carbonate that recrystallizes after exposure to ground water. "True patina is like the stone crust that accumulates on the bottom of a tea kettle," the scientist said. "The calcium carbonate, a common mineral in an area rich in limestone, dissolves in the ground water, and with the loss of carbon dioxide, it recrystallizes. The process may be accelerated by heat. But in land conditions, like a burial cave, you can't expect a patina to contain any fossils in it."--RNS