THE PLOT THICKENS:

Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, replied to Eric Meyers regarding the "James Ossuary" (via Bible and Interpretation News).

"Internet Rumor Proves Groundless"

Read it all, but note two especially interesting points. First, Shanks promises to unveil the identity of the anonymous archaeologist who claims to have seen the "James Ossuary" in the 1990s without the last part of the inscription ("brother of Jesus"):

Meyers has posted an article on the internet entitled, �Well-known Israeli Archaeologist Casts More Doubt on Authenticity of James Ossuary.� The Israeli archaeologist is not Meyers, who is American, but a source unnamed in the article who claims he �spotted [the ossuary] in a dealer�s shop [in the mid-1990�s] lacking the �brother of Jesus� element in the inscription,� as the subhead on Meyers� article reads. In his article, Meyers tells us that �the archaeologist [his unnamed source] is certain that the ossuary is one and the same as the one whose authenticity is being debated in the press today.� At that time, the source told Meyers, the ossuary lacked the words �brother of Jesus.� A fuller account of this supposed sighting will appear in the March/April 2004 issue of BAR, and I will say no more about it here.

Here I wish to address a second item in Meyers article. Meyers reports that �Sometime in 2001 my [unnamed] source [you will learn his name in the March/April 2004 BAR] alleges that [Oded] Golan through his lawyers offered for sale to The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, the so-called James Ossuary, now in its revised and expanded form, for a sum of $2 million.� That is, since it was seen in the mid-1990s without �the brother of Jesus,� by 2001 it had acquired that addition.

Here's exactly what Meyers said:

�� As an interesting postscript to this story, the dealer�s shop has recently closed and the one-time owner of the ossuary has since moved to Europe. My anonymous source has also provided one other interesting datum that is pertinent to this discussion. Sometime in 2001 my source alleges that Golan through his lawyers offered for sale to The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, the so-called James Ossuary, now in its revised and expanded form, for a sum of $2 million. This information has also been turned over to the Israeli police but, as of this writing, without any tangible result.

This second item is important because, if true, it would show that Golan knew the significance of the inscription even before epigrapher Andr� Lemaire read it for him in 2002. But Shanks replies that it isn't so:

In receipt of such damning evidence, one would think that Meyers would do a little checking before placing this kind of charge on the internet. He could have at least called the International Christian Embassy to verify an unnamed source. Admittedly, Meyers is not an experienced journalist (although he did serve as editor of ASOR�s semi-popular magazine, Biblical Archaeologist), but even a scholar would be expected to check out such a serious charge.

Since Meyers did not think to do this, I placed the call myself. Malcolm Hedding, the executive director of the International Christian Embassy, checked his records and found that he had been visited at 11:00 in the morning on November 28, 2002 [not 2001] by a man named Uri Ovnat, whose business card identified him, not as a lawyer, but as director of the International Marketing Development Enterprises, Ltd. in Ramat haSharon, Israel. The remainder of Hedding�s file consisted only of Lemaire�s article in BAR.

In other words, the visit occurred not in 2001, before Lemaire had seen the ossuary, but after Lemaire�s BAR article appeared in late October 2002.

Ovnat confirms the visit but he and Hedding disagree on whether a price was mentioned.

If what Shanks reports checks out, it would seem to knock a hole in one part of the story of the anonymous archaeologist. It will be interesting to see how Meyers and his source respond. As I've said before in my two previous postings on this (here and here), the whole story needs to come out in full, with all names named, before we can evaluate it properly.