��� Although many have wished to consign the "James Ossuary" to the dust heap of history, it continues to engender passionate comment. My own position on this artifact is still undecided. However, I do not believe that the ossuary, if authentic, tells us much that we did not already know from Galatians, one of the earliest, and most unquestionably authentic of the Pauline epistles, which refers to "James the Lord's brother" (1:19). The most the ossuary can do is confirm something that no one has seriously doubted.
��� If I do choose this moment to enter the discussion, it is because several comments have been made about the Aramaic dialect of this inscription, which are unfounded or misleading. These comments center on the second part of the inscription that reads ahuy d'Yeshua, "brother of Jesus." It has been claimed that certain elements of this phrase are uncharacteristic of first-century Aramaic.
[Detailed grammatical analysis follows.]
��� In summation, the short phrase ahuy d'Yeshua in the James Ossuary is perfectly acceptable Aramaic for the first century CE. Its morphology and its syntax are consistent with expected developments in Aramaic and are paralleled by other occurrences in other texts from the same period or earlier.
��� Is the James Ossuary authentic? Maybe, maybe not. But any final answer will have to come on non-linguistic grounds.
Philologists and epigraphers seem considerably more ambivalent about the inscription than do the archaeologists.
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