When the case goes to trial, perhaps as early as this spring, the prosecution may call as many as 124 witnesses, and enter hundreds of exhibits -- seized antiquities, tools, blueprints, documents, surveillance tapes -- that it claims will prove the existence of a concerted effort to change history. Last week, Golan was being held by police, charged with obstruction for attempting to interfere with his own case; authorities were seeking a court order to keep him jailed until the end of his trial. On the original charges, he and his co-accused have said they will plead innocent, and that they are victims of bad science and a witch hunt by overzealous bureaucrats who want to end the legal but highly controversial trade in the Holy Land's archaeological heritage. The debate that has raged in scholarly circles about the authenticity of the James ossuary will spill into the public spotlight. If Golan and the others were to be found guilty, it would expose some of the biggest names in archaeology as being naive, perhaps greedy, or possibly worse. Reputations will suffer. And the Royal Ontario Museum's looks to be at the head of the line.
[...]
Shanks hasn't been shy about firing back at the ossuary's more vocal critics. The package he sends me helpfully includes a scathing review of a book by Rochelle Altman, a specialist in writing systems who has frequently asserted that the inscription is full of errors and was written by two different hands. In the May/June 2004 edition of the Review, he launched a sharp attack on Meyers and Zias under the headline "Lying Scholars." He dismissed Zias's claim that he had seen the unaltered ossuary in a Jerusalem shop, quoting the dealer as saying he "had never heard" of the former curator. Next to the story, Shanks published an old photo of the man standing in the door of his shop chatting with an unidentified man. Unfortunately for Shanks, the other figure was Zias (whom Shanks has known for decades).
[...]
Publicly available documents of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service show that the Biblical Archaeology Society generated just under US$5 million in revenue in 2003. Shanks, whose job is described as a weekly "20-hour" position, received $162,000 in salary, while the organization paid a further $66,000 in rent to a company he owns. The charity, which lists grants to "worthwhile projects in the field of archaeology and the Bible" as one of its principal activities, handed out just $7,109 to such projects in 2003. In 2002, when Shanks made $150,000 in salary and $67,000 in rent, it gave away $8,500. One of the biggest beneficiaries was Lemaire, who received a $1,000 "travel scholarship for James ossuary work."
[...]
What he's [that is, Golan] most excited about, however, is a fax that has just arrived from a religious studies professor in France. The scholar writes that two decades ago, his brother-in-law, a former French diplomat in Israel, told him about an ossuary inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," that was in the possession of a Tel Aviv collector. Golan's eyes are shining. He breaks away at one point to take a call from Shanks and fill him in on the latest development.
It's not until I'm well down the highway back to Jerusalem that the tumblers click into place. If Golan never recognized the significance of the inscription until just a few years ago, how would anyone else come to know that he owned such a box? And wouldn't a scholar be interested in following up such a story? Later on, I look up the professor on the Internet. He teaches at the Sorbonne, and once wrote a book with Andr� Lemaire.
(Via Joe Zias on the ANE list.)
No comments:
Post a Comment