Jack Linthicum
Guest
|
 Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 5:47 pm Post subject: "Jimmy Box" forgery trial about to be dropped |
 |
|
NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Washington, DC, United States, 11/03/2008
- The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has charged the owner of the
James Ossuary, Oded Golan, with forging the inscription that reads
"James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" on the ancient bone box.
The reputation of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is in
shambles. After a nearly four-year trial (and still counting), 75
witnesses and more than 5,000 pages of testimony, what has been billed
as the "forgery trial of the century" is about to collapse. The
Israeli judge who will decide the case has advised the prosecution in
open court to consider dropping the case. The evidence isn>t there.
The story was reported by Matthew Kalman in the San Francisco
Chronicle, and from there around the world. He described Judge Aharon
Farkash>s evaluation as a "humiliating collapse" of the government>s
case and "a major embarrassment ... for the [Israel] Antiquities
Authority."
The principal target of the case has been the bone box inscribed
"James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" that was brought to the
world>s attention in 2002 by the Biblical Archaeology Review in an
article by Sorbonne epigrapher Andre Lemaire. The inscription, it was
charged in the criminal indictment, was a forgery, engraved on an
authentic stone box of the kind that Jews used 2000 years ago to
rebury their dead--after a year following the initial burial when the
flesh had decayed and desiccated.
The government>s principal witness was Professor Yuval Goren, a former
chair of Tel Aviv University>s archaeology department, who testified
that the forger had used a fake covering to conceal evidence of his
forgery. But other witnesses suggested other ways this covering could
have formed.
More importantly, on cross-examination Goren was forced to admit that
after the police had removed this covering, he could see original
ancient patina in the critical word "Jesus." With that, the case blew
up.
This should not have been surprising. One of the members of the IAA>s
committee that long ago had declared the inscription a forgery,
supposedly by a unanimous vote, had also written the IAA that she saw
this original ancient patina in the engraving of the inscription.
Although the IAA advertised the committee>s forgery decision as
unanimous, it never was. Many members of the committee expressed no
opinion, but the IAA registered them as "yes" votes. Others committee
members relied on the commanding standing and reputation of Professor
Goren. One member of the committee who would have found the
inscription authentic said he was "forced" to change his mind because
of Professor Goren>s scientific analysis. In short, the committee,
which included no non-Israeli, not even Professor Lemaire who had
originally published the inscription in Biblical Archaeology Review
and vouched for its authenticity, was bum-rushed into a supposedly
unanimous decision.
At the trial, not a single expert in the Semitic script of the period
testified that the inscription was a forgery. Nor did a single
scientist back up Professor Goren>s scientific testimony--and several
scientists testified otherwise.
But it took several years to prove that the emperor had no clothes.
This is a painful example of how the judicial process can be
manipulated by unscrupulous bureaucrats. The Israel Antiquities
Authority hates the antiquities market, which is where this inscribed
ossuary came from. This supposedly drove the prosecution. Until now,
it has been widely assumed by almost everyone who has mentioned the
inscription publicly, based on the IAA committee>s supposed unanimous
decision and the ongoing forgery trial, that this inscription is a
forgery. Now that will end.
But this is not the end of the matter. All the court can decide is
that the prosecution has not proved its case beyond a reasonable
doubt. Logically, the inscription can still be a forgery. It is never
possible to prove to a 100 percent certainty that an inscription is
authentic. Theoretically, there is always one more test that might
reveal it to be a forgery. Even inscriptions found in professional
archaeological excavations can be salted.
And there is still another question: Is the "Jesus" of this
inscription the "Jesus" we know from the New Testament? All three of
the names in the inscription--James (rather Jacob or Yaakov in its
Hebrew form), Joseph and Jesus (Yehoshua in the Aramaic of this
inscription) were very common among Jews at this time. Scholars are
already discussing and writing about whether or not this inscription
refers to Jesus of Nazareth. This is where the discussion should be--
not in the hands of an official committee or in a criminal indictment. |
|
