Archeaology as political weapon:
Fake ossuary leads Israel to look into sellers of antiquities
usatoday.com
An Israeli documentary Wednesday claimed the James ossuary, the ancient burial box bearing a discredited inscription mentioning Jesus, is just the tip of a long-running forgery ring that has duped antiquities collectors worldwide for the last 15 years.
First reports of the ossuary in a 2002 Biblical Archaeology Review created a frenzy over the relic that bears the Aramaic inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Throngs visited the Royal Ontario Museum to see the empty stone box. Scientists all agree the ossuary is a genuine artifact from the era of the New Testament, but many scholars believe the inscription was added recently.
Produced with the help of Israeli Antiquity Authority (IAA) officials, the Israeli investigative news show Ouvda ("fact" in Hebrew), says ossuary owner Oded Golan participated in dozens of forgery sales.
Golan denied the charges on the show, calling them "unbelievable." However the documentary claims an Egyptian craftsman created the forgeries for Golan. Golan would provide inscription designs for the forger, and then sell objects to collectors — like a faked Bible-era lamp for $100,000.
Dealers can sell antiquities in Israel if the items were uncovered before 1977. Ossuaries may typically sell for a few hundred dollars, and they are a regular archaeological find in Israel. From around 20 B.C. until 70 A.D, Jews would commonly transfer the bones of relatives from burial caves to an ossuary placed in family crypts.
Last year, IAA officials announced the ossuary is a fake and reported the discovery of what they called a forgery workshop owned by Golan. In searches, they found the ossuary, reportedly insured for $2 million, kept in a shed atop an apartment building. The find triggered the wider, continuing investigation into a suspected forgery ring of antiquities dealers, collectors and scholars.
"This 'machine' was supported by publication-hungry or perhaps even corrupt academics, 'scientific laboratories,' a well-oiled publishing machine and some suckers who were led to believe (and to lead others to believe) in the authenticity of these items due to religious, political, national, and personal motives," says archaeologist Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University in an e-mail sent to USA TODAY. He assisted the IAA investigation.
And the Egyptologist Ian Ransom suggests in the recently released book Mary and the Ossuary that the forgery ring may have catered to evangelical Christian interest in the Holy Land.
BAR editor Hershel Shanks has defended the ossuary in his magazine, saying the evidence remains inconclusive, and calling for a new study of the inscription. In the journal's upcoming issue, biblical scholar David Noel Freedman suggests linguistic errors in another suspect artifact, the so-called "Jehoash" tablet, may actually be valid Hebrew. Widely regarded as a fake, the tablet describes the collection of money for the repair of the First Temple in Jerusalem. |
