2002 James Ossuary Forgery: When Jesus Nearly Existed
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
‘The ossuary is a tangible relic. Whatever its associations in terms of personages, it puts us in contact with an age when there were still people alive who knew Jesus of Nazareth. Written accounts of Jesus may reflect eyewitness reports of his life, but most of the texts were composed decades after the Crucifixion, in Greek, and almost all of the hard copies that still exist were made centuries later.’
Royal Ontario Museum - James Ossuary Exhibit Statement (8.11.2002)[1]
Author’s Note: Religious faith is a personal matter, and nothing to do with anyone else. As it is a product of a certain and unique arrangement of the inner terrain of the mind and body. As such, it should also be ‘free’ of any interference from an outside agency or institution (be it political, religious or whatever). People also have the right to have no religious faith and to maintain the same level of inner privacy accorded to faith-believers. This article is an assessment of an academic ‘mess’ that occurred in 2002 regarding a limestone ossuary dating from 1st century Palestine, but which appeared to carry an inscription suggesting that the bones of James – the purported brother of Yeshua Ben Yoseph (i.e. Jesus Christ) – were once held in it. The supposedly ‘objective’ academic community (with the odd exception) abandoned the ‘no hypothesis’ (a vital first principle of secular knowledge that states that ‘nothing’ is happening, or can be taken as having occurred, until otherwise proven to have done so, through the collection of irrefutable and clearly objective ‘evidence’), and openly took the side of religious belief – stating that the ossuary was the holder of the bones of James – the brother of the biblical Jesus. This attitude turned Western civilisation upon its head, and played into the hands of the so-called biblical scholars, who work from the premise that Judeo-Christian theology is a priori ‘correct’ (i.e. ‘assumed’ to have happened and be a ‘concrete’ fact without any objective evidence), and that ‘faith’ and not ‘knowledge’ is the key mediator of human development. As an attempted counter-swing, (and something akin to the re-establishing of the ‘official line’), the Western academic community produced a ‘corrective’ narrative in the form of a book in 2009, designed for popular consumption and entitled ‘Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – the James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics’. Whilst referencing this collection of disparate articles (with each offering an explanation of the chain of events that led to this embarrassing academic abandonment of knowledge), I was very much aware of the bourgeois hypocrisy that still permeated the tome. Whilst reading very much like a ‘who done it?’ novel, the academic authors all continued to support the capitalist system within which they operate without question, continuing to perpetuate religious myths as ‘facts’ (even whilst attempting to be ‘objective’), and ultimately ‘failed’ to re-establish the supremacy of objective fact over subjective faith. The problem here is that the supposedly ‘objective’ academics continued to court the biblical scholars, as if they were fellow ‘objectivists’. This is surely (and exactly) the operation of the inverted mind-set that Marx and Engels clearly revealed within bourgeois society. Biblical scholars peddle ‘faith’ as ‘fact’, and are not objective academics in any way. Biblical scholars do not operate from the ‘no hypothesis’ perspective, but its exact opposite. Biblical scholars assume that theology was created by a god-construct, is infallible, and superior to secular knowledge. Of course, by ‘biblical scholar’, I am referring to those men and women who have been educated through religious institutions, or who possess a ‘literalist’ interpretation of the bible, and not to those objective academics that specialise in the ‘secular’ study of the historicity of the bible. The latter category works from the premise that the bible is a book created by human beings, and as such, possesses a discernible historical development. The humans that created the bible, also created the theology that fills its pages, and due to the inverted mind-set, incorrectly assumed that the thoughts produced in their own heads, were placed there by an equally imagined god-construct (falsely assumed to exist in or through the environment). What is important to bear in mind is that due to its close proximity with the theistic religious institutions it grew-out from, the bourgeois academic community often makes errors and mistakes – sometimes accidently - but at other times definitely deliberately. This community, for instance, whilst formally ‘rejecting’ the faith-based premise of theistic religion, is often seen ‘protecting’ the very same religious community from the rigours of Scientific Socialism – which fully exposes the inverted thinking of both bourgeois academia and bourgeois religion. The irony is that as long as capitalism exists as the stage of human evolution preferred by the establishment, then bourgeois academic objectivity remains entirely ‘selective’ and ‘self-serving’, lapsing every so often into complete religiosity. It is an observable cycle that can only be broken by a transition into Socialism and the full embracing of non-inverted objectivity. As matters stand, the capitalist bourgeois system maintains a highly aggressive and thoroughly distorting stance towards Scientific Socialism, Marxist-Leninism, the USSR, China and any other aspect of progressive history. This type of flawed academia concocts a fictitious historical narrative towards Socialism and Communism, that is in every aspect ‘religious’ in nature if not in actual content. This false narrative is pursued with a fanatical ‘faith’ in the belief of the falsehood being presented. This assemblage of negative and incorrect ‘facts’ constitutes the ‘pseudo-theology’ that the Western bourgeois establishment fabricates and disseminates to the general public to keep minds ‘poisoned’ against the need to evolve out of, and away from, the state of predatory capitalism. Although the subject at hand – the James Ossuary – appears on the surface to be entirely removed from the subject of Western Anti-Communism, it in fact contains in essence every facet of that misrepresentation. A respectable academic establishment receives unconfirmed information from a dubious source, and legitimises it by treating it as unquestioned ‘fact’.
ACW 1.9.2016
The 2009 book entitled ‘Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics’ (University of North Carolina Press) is an attempt by the bourgeois mainstream academic community to ‘self-heal’, after colluding and conspiring (through the use of poor evidence gathering and methodology) with the forces of religious fanaticism, to mislead the pre-dominantly ‘secular’ Western world into believing that the Judeo-Christian religion was materially ‘real’, and thereby inferring that its theological teachings were to be taken seriously (perhaps even rivalling academic objectivity). This type of duplicity is not unknown within the bourgeois academic community, as it has continuously compromised its objectivity by following political dictates from Western governments, that pursue non-factual narratives and paradigms by lending such distortions ‘academic’ credibility. This is the academic establishment creating ‘false’ logic and facts to manipulate the opinion of the general public toward specific political ends. The Western academic treatment of the history of the Soviet Union and Communist China, for example, are two very obvious examples of this kind of dishonest manipulation, which is not surprising when it is considered that Western academia exists within a capitalist system, the boundaries of which it must never question or attempt to transcend. Only a very few academics (such as Albert Einstein and Grover Furr) have questioned the capitalist straitjacket that Western academia has to currently exist within. Therefore, the Bourgeois universities have to tread a fine line between pursuing cutting-edge research that pushes human understanding forward, whilst continuously being held back by the capitalist economic system (which is invariably presented as both ‘normal’ and ‘natural’). All Communist and Socialist history is presented as being the personification of ‘evil’. This is an odd description from an academic community that assumes itself to be ‘secular’ and ‘objective’, and demonstrates the underlying loyalties that modern academia still holds for the religious institutes (and theological understanding) from which it historically emerged. In fact, bourgeois academia and bourgeois religion share the common roots of bourgeois control of the means of production, and the maintenance of bourgeois class privilege over the working class (that is comprised of the majority of people in society). Just as Communism and Socialism is considered inherently ‘evil’ through the auspices of ‘flawed’ Western academia, religion in the Western world is treated as old fashioned and out of date, but otherwise a harmless and thoroughly ‘good’ distraction in the collecting and analysing of hard data.
Zionist Israel lies at the heart of the James Ossuary deception. Just over a year earlier, before the James Ossuary was placed on exhibition as a ‘real’ proof of the physical existence of (the ‘Jewish’) Jesus Christ, it was alleged that 19 Islamic Terrorists (a number of which have consequently been proven to still be ‘alive’), crashed two planes into the World Trade Buildings in New York, and another into the Pentagon (whilst a fourth apparently came down in a field in rural Pennsylvania). Not long after the explosions (and the deaths of thousands in New York), the police received a call stating that 5 men of ‘Middle Eastern’ ethnicity had been seen celebrating as the planes hit the WTC buildings. When arrested, these five men were found to be of Israeli extraction, working for the Israeli intelligence services.[2] In October of 2001, the US led a small military coalition in an invasion of Afghanistan, which was joined two years later (in 2003) by the full military might of NATO. The intriguing case of the James Ossuary fits in neatly between the events of 2001 and 2003. It seems that Israel, acting in a ‘deniable’ but otherwise ‘colluding’ capacity with the US, conspired to manufacture a Western religious ‘miracle’ of sorts, which was designed to be presented through the Western academic community to give it credibility. After the trauma of an apparently successful ‘Islamic’ attack on important symbols of the Western, capitalist world in the US, the US bourgeoisie turned to ‘religion’ to keep its masses under control, and in a state of irrational and faith-inspired ‘crusader’ rapture. This turn toward religious mania was a deliberate attempt to muster all the power that the inverted bourgeois mind-set possesses, to motivate entire populations to unquestionably support and participate in illegal ‘crusader’ wars, premised upon a Christian sense of self-righteous vengeance. Of course, Western academia played its part fully in its participation in this Israeli-US deception. The point of this psychological operation was to appear to present an archaeological find that proved that Jesus Christ ‘existed’ and was not the figment of religionist imagination. It was probably too far-fetched to fabricate a ‘relic’ directly related to the physical body of Jesus Christ, and so the idea was concocted that perhaps it would be more ‘believable’ and acceptable to sceptics if the existence of Jesus could be proved through a sides ways connection with another of his relatives. James, as the brother of Jesus was chosen because although known within biblical scholarship, the fact that the ‘virgin’ Mary had supposedly engaged in sexual relations (to produce James) was quietly played-down by all the major churches. Not only this, but James was known to have been the founder and leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem, and something of a legitimate challenger to the Roman Catholic assertions that only their ‘popes’ were the true representatives of god on earth. As a consequence, the Protestant church views James as the full brother of Jesus (but ignores his place in Christian history), whilst the Orthodox church views James as a half-brother of Jesus (sired by Joseph in a previous marriage, and therefore not the son of the ‘virgin’ Mary), and the Catholic church interprets James as the son of Clopas and (a different) Mary (who stood near the cross at the crucifixion).[3]
Both biblical scholars and secular scholars work with factualised myths every day, whilst adopting an air of authority about the nonsense they are peddling. Take for example the idea that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, why then is he continuously referred to as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’? Archaeology and history has proven two things; either Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus, or was in fact a Jewish burial ground.[4] In either case, it is impossible for Jesus to have come from that place. It is far more likely that this misunderstanding (perpetuated by the authors of Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus) is premised upon a mistranslation, and that it should in fact read ‘Jesus the Nazarene’ or ‘Jesus the Healer’.[5] The Jewish Talmud also mentions a religiously active person named ‘Yeshu the Nazarene’, a designation that has nothing to do with a place called ‘Nazareth’.[6] This single fact (amongst) many demonstrates the duplicitous nature of a) so-called biblical scholarship, and b) the apparent inability of secular academia to distance itself from imaginary theological constructs. In many ways this is a microcosm of the psychology that permeates capitalist societies, and is indicative of the routine operation of hypocrisy packaged as the true and authentic acquisition of objective knowledge. Although Western academia likes to think of itself as having clear blue water between its hallowed institutions and those representing religion, in fact the separation between church (intuitive knowledge) and university (intellectual knowledge), is not yet fully completed. This explains the rather cosy relation that exists between religion and academia, the odd historical pogrom notwithstanding. This is exactly the fertile psychological ground that the James Ossuary forgery was designed to take-root within, and take advantage of, and every academic institute played its part flawlessly. So bad was this academic acquiescence to church authority and theological mythology, that even the esteemed Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne[7] immediately declared the object genuine – without ever having examined it personally! This was after the Geological Survey of Israel had initially stated that the ossuary was real, (dating to the Roman-Palestine of the 1st century CE), and covered in a layer of accumulated dirt (patina) conducive with a stone artefact that had originated in that time and place. This is where the story takes on a life of its own that fully outgrows the facts. The ossuary in question, a small rectangular box carved out of limestone (big enough to accommodate the long bones of the human body), was in fact a genuine object. It had once been housed in a Jewish stone tomb, and had once held the bones of a human being who had lived and died sometime during the 1st century CE. To view this ossuary in context, however, even if genuine, it was a fairly common object of no particular distinction, other than the Aramaic inscription that ran across one of its sides, which reads in phonetic (Romanised) transliteration:
‘Ya’acob bar Yosaf ahui diYeshua’
Ya’acob = Jacob (Greek), Jacobus, Jacomus (Latin), Gemmes (French), James (English)
Yosaf = Joseph
Yeshua = Joshua
The deliberate deception and manipulation of the mind of the general public, perpetuated not only by popular biblical scholarship, but also by the mainstream, academic community, begins here. In English translation, this Aramaic script should have read:
‘Jacob Son of Joseph, Brother of Joshua’
These three names were very common in 1st century Roman Palestine amongst Jewish people, and in and of themselves, do not signify anything special – other than the fact that inscriptions upon bone ossuaries, although not unknown, were unusual. However, across Western media and throughout the hallowed halls of bourgeois academia, it was invariably (and falsely) stated that the inscription read:
‘JAMES SON OF JOSEPH, BROTHER OF JESUS’
Jesus is a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic name ‘Yeshua’ and despite this Greek rendering NOT appearing on the ossuary, it was widely and routinely explained that the name of ‘Jesus’ was there for all to see. As the entire power of this hoax resides in the assumed presence of the Greek name ‘Jesus’, it is important to look at the history of this awe-inspiring designation, as even academics critically writing about the James Ossuary deception years after its occurrence, still fall into the trap of referring to the Greek name of ‘Jesus’ being present, when it obviously was not. As for biblical scholars, as they occupy the odd world of presenting religious myth as concrete fact, the fact that the Greek name ‘Jesus’ does not appear on the James Ossuary, is used as an almost ‘mystical’ presentation of their own god’s assumed power to test ‘faith’, apparently through the agency of ‘deception’.
(It is also true that the English rendering of ‘James’ for the Aramaic name ‘Ya’acob’ [Jacob] does not appear on the James Ossuary. Again, mainstream academics and biblical scholars, - both before and after the James Ossuary hoax was exposed - routinely referred to the Aramaic ‘Ya’acob’ as the English ‘James’ because of the symbolic power such a name [and association] conjures-up in the religious imagination of the West, particularly when added to the equally non-present ‘Jesus’. In any case, the biblical ‘Jacob-James’ (the brother of Jesus) character, is said to have been executed around 62 CE.)
The Aramaic name ‘Yeshua’ (Joshua) is rendered into Greek as ‘Iesous’, which came into English as ‘Yesus’ and then ‘Jesus’. As the term ‘Jesus’ contains the name of the Greek god ‘Zeus’, this has led to theories that state the name ‘Jesus’ actually refers to ‘Joshua’ being deified in Greece as the ‘Son of Zeus’ (Le Zeus – le sous),[8] as the Roman Emperor Constantine believed Jesus was the rebirth of Apollo (the son of Zeus), although many biblical scholars disagree with this interpretation, as it would suggest a mundane pagan influence for their unique ‘son of god’ theory. It has also been suggested that Joshua’s name was translated as ‘Yah-Zeus’ in Rome, combining Jewish and Greek designations for the divine, to form a compound word to signify an all-powerful deity.[9] The superb British academics Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy suggest that as the Romans kept meticulous legal records, the fact that ‘Jesus’ is not mentioned in any of them, suggests that Jesus either did not exist, or was so unimportant to the Romans, that they did not bother to record details of his trial and execution.[10]
The problem with biblical scholarship is that it takes its lead not from the secular academic community, but rather from church-led, or faith-based study projects, that are a priori set to furnish research results that support the established dogma of theology. Biblical scholarship generally peddles ‘myth’ as ‘fact’, and when their ‘facts’ are exposed as ‘myth’, their response is to attack the objective fact and refer to it as a dangerous ‘myth’. Generally speaking, the irrational basis of biblical scholarship should not detain us for very long, but in this case, the sheer impetus of the James Ossuary deception has its roots deep within this very subject. The Judeo-Christian religious community, not content to follow its myth-related teachings, is always trying to usurp mainstream, secular academia and its objective assertions premised upon concrete, observable, measurable and quantifiable facts. The reality that it was the Aramaic ‘Yeshua’ (Joshua), and not the Greek ‘Jesus’ etched on the side of the ossuary led biblical scholars (and their supporters) to state that this object was from an earlier time ‘before’ their saviour – Yeshua – had his name transliterated into Greek, and must therefore be both genuine and beyond question. In other words, a lack of information was used as a positive method of analysis, to confirm a hypothesis that a groundless assumption was ‘real’. This is exactly where the Biblical Archaeological Review (the Journal of the Biblical Archaeological Society) – both run by Hershel Shanks - comes into the picture with regard to the James Ossuary deception. It was Shanks’s association with the Israeli ‘owner’ of the ossuary – Oded Golan – that served to link the theological history of the ancient Middle East, with the secular, academic institutes of the modern West. Of course, neither Shanks nor Golan were acting out of any religious sense of altruism, but were rather motivated entirely by money (and profit), and the best manner in which to gain as much as possible in the shortest time, with little effort. What is interesting is how well Golan played the ‘unconcerned’ owner who apparently had no idea of the religious value of what he had in his possession, and how Shanks launched a high-profile media campaign designed to present himself as the ‘discoverer’ of one of the greatest finds in history. For reasons only known to Shanks, he approached the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), stating that he would like to offer a world exclusive for the museum, which would have to be displayed on a date he specified, for a very large ‘finder’s fee’. As Shanks was responsible for raising Golan’s asking price, whilst making every effort to generate his own income, he went all out to manipulate the media, and force the academic community into playing his game. It is both remarkable and highly suspicious that he succeeded in his objectives. The mainstream academic Thomas S Bremer explains the chain of events that led to an esteemed academic institute (such as the Royal Ontario Museum) to follow the lead of a financially obsessed biblical scholar:
‘The performance of the James Ossuary as a religiously significant object followed closely the interpretive story being pushed by Hershel Shanks. In fact, in their acceptance of Shanks’s proposal and subsequent reliance on his interpretation of the ossuary as published in the pages of BAR, officials at the ROM abdicated their own curatorial authority. Instead, they allowed those with a financial interest in promoting the ossuary to determine the interpretive framework for their display.’[11]
Incredibly, despite the implicit narrative being established (and pushed through by the establishment) that the James Ossuary was a religious relic of tremendous (and ‘mystical’) importance to a Western civilisation that was still wheeling from the assumed collective devastation of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York, nothing was changed when this object of wonder arrived at the Royal Ontario Museum, not under armed guard, or in a special or purpose-built container for its journey from Israel, but in a broken and bashed ‘cardboard box’, with the ossuary itself enveloped in a thin-layer of ‘bubble-wrap’. Oded Golan – the owner who was receiving a substantial fee for his troubles – had apparently arranged for this ‘religious relic’ to be sent by the cheapest (or ‘strangest’) method of ‘mail’ (travelling first from Tel Aviv to New York, then to Hamilton, and then finally Toronto). Why would a religious artefact (from Roman Palestine) intended for Canada, need to travel from Israel to the USA? As if the bizarre and shoddy form of conveyance wasn’t enough to rouse suspicions that something was gravely wrong, surely the idea that Israel felt it necessary to ‘share’ the object with the USA, when the worldwide unveiling was to happen in Canada? Of course, all this inconsistency was explained away as ‘quirkiness’ on behalf of the owner – Oded Golan. As matters transpired, neither the flimsy cardboard box, nor thin covering of bubble wrap were sufficient to protect the James Ossuary as it traversed the globe, and when it finally arrived at the Royal Ontario Museum, it had been broken into five pieces. This led to the immediate cancellation of the official ‘ritualised’ uncrating of the ossuary for the press, that was supposed to be held on the afternoon of October 31st, 2002. Firstly, there was no ‘crate’, and secondly the museum did not want the press to catch hold of the sheer amateurish nature of the entire affair. Instead, experts were called in to repair the ossuary, and the exhibition was finally opened in accordance with the instructions from Hershel Shanks, on the 8th November, 2002, to coincide with the annual gatherings of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), to ensure the maximum media coverage and interest from the general public. This tactic worked, as in a matter of days, the exhibition attracted around 95,000 visitors. This is hardly surprising, as the Discovery Channel (and other TV media) were fully embracing and endorsing the discovery and the event, as were the worldwide print media through articles trumpeting the find in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and Le Monde, amongst many others. A print media that combined to eulogise a limestone box (without evidence), and to support the religious community without question, whilst routinely perpetuating a relentless (and equally ‘false’) anti-Socialist and anti-Communist rhetoric through their pages. The superficiality of the Western media is clearly displayed by Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, who stated on air (on November 7th, 2002):
‘Heaven’s Crate: scientists have found the burial box of Jesus’ brother James, who was sort of the Emilio Estevez of the Holy Land.’[12]
Why did the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) risk its status as an esteemed academic institute, by siding with religiosity and very poor scholarship and superstition? The reason is found in the fact that the Canadian government had cut the budget it allocated to ROM, and that this had led to severe financial problems and staff cuts at the museum. As matters transpired, ROM made a profit of $270,000 from the entire affair of exhibiting a ‘fake’ religious object to the general public. This ‘sleazy’ approach to the assessment and exploitation of art and historical objects is explained by Thomas S Bremer:
‘Modern museums, from their very origins among wealthy merchants of Renaissance Italy, have been deeply embedded in the economic forces of market capitalism. On the one hand, it may appear that museums operate contrary to the logic of the marketplace. They remove the objects in their collections from the normal channels of circulation that drive commodity markets. On the other hand, this removal itself participates in the logic of capitalistic exchange. As Pierre Bourdieu contends: “Practice never ceases to conform to economic calculation even when it gives every appearance of disinterestedness by departing from the logic of interested calculation (in the narrow sense) and playing for stakes that are non-material and not easily quantified.” By taking objects they hold out of circulation, museums enhance the value of their collections. Through their efforts at authentication, conservation, and interpretation of selected objects, museums “are able to build for themselves a practice of consecration which allows them to accumulate economic capital.” This consecration transforms these objects into something worth more than money; they become the material gods of “heritage” that justify the social order and make it meaningful.’[13]
The stardom of the ROM was short lived, however, as in the summer of 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority declared the James Ossuary to be a fraud, and had its owner – Oded Golan – arrested under suspicion of theft, black-marketing and forgery. After its exhibiting at the ROM, the James Ossuary was returned to Israel where it underwent extensive scientific examination. It was found that although the ossuary was a real object dating from the 1st century Roman occupation of Palestine, the inscription was added in recent times. An authentic layer of dirt (patina) covered the ossuary everywhere except over the inscription – where it was determined that a layer of fabricated ‘dirt’ had been applied (a mixture of chalk and water) that had been first boiled in water at 122 degrees Fahrenheit – far too high a temperature for an ancient Jewish tomb. To forge the ‘new’ inscription, the old and original layer of patina had to be ‘cut’ through to engrave the Aramaic letters. The Aramaic text itself is thought to have been ‘lifted’ out of an academic study of ossuary inscriptions made by Levi Rahmani entitled ‘Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collection of the State of Israel’. The name ‘Ya’acob’ corresponded to inscription number 396 in the catalogue, whilst ‘bar Yosef’ was copied from number 573, and ‘brother of’ was taken from inscription 570. Golan is thought to have scanned the words he needed and after resizing, created a template which he used to etch the characters into the limestone. There was also the issue of the inscription containing both cursive and formal lettering, which would be unusual for a single engraver to have created.[14] When police raided Golan’s home, they not only discovered evidence of fraud, but also a photograph of the James Ossuary taking pride of place upon Golan’s toilet!
Royal Ontario Museum - James Ossuary Exhibit Statement (8.11.2002)[1]
Author’s Note: Religious faith is a personal matter, and nothing to do with anyone else. As it is a product of a certain and unique arrangement of the inner terrain of the mind and body. As such, it should also be ‘free’ of any interference from an outside agency or institution (be it political, religious or whatever). People also have the right to have no religious faith and to maintain the same level of inner privacy accorded to faith-believers. This article is an assessment of an academic ‘mess’ that occurred in 2002 regarding a limestone ossuary dating from 1st century Palestine, but which appeared to carry an inscription suggesting that the bones of James – the purported brother of Yeshua Ben Yoseph (i.e. Jesus Christ) – were once held in it. The supposedly ‘objective’ academic community (with the odd exception) abandoned the ‘no hypothesis’ (a vital first principle of secular knowledge that states that ‘nothing’ is happening, or can be taken as having occurred, until otherwise proven to have done so, through the collection of irrefutable and clearly objective ‘evidence’), and openly took the side of religious belief – stating that the ossuary was the holder of the bones of James – the brother of the biblical Jesus. This attitude turned Western civilisation upon its head, and played into the hands of the so-called biblical scholars, who work from the premise that Judeo-Christian theology is a priori ‘correct’ (i.e. ‘assumed’ to have happened and be a ‘concrete’ fact without any objective evidence), and that ‘faith’ and not ‘knowledge’ is the key mediator of human development. As an attempted counter-swing, (and something akin to the re-establishing of the ‘official line’), the Western academic community produced a ‘corrective’ narrative in the form of a book in 2009, designed for popular consumption and entitled ‘Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – the James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics’. Whilst referencing this collection of disparate articles (with each offering an explanation of the chain of events that led to this embarrassing academic abandonment of knowledge), I was very much aware of the bourgeois hypocrisy that still permeated the tome. Whilst reading very much like a ‘who done it?’ novel, the academic authors all continued to support the capitalist system within which they operate without question, continuing to perpetuate religious myths as ‘facts’ (even whilst attempting to be ‘objective’), and ultimately ‘failed’ to re-establish the supremacy of objective fact over subjective faith. The problem here is that the supposedly ‘objective’ academics continued to court the biblical scholars, as if they were fellow ‘objectivists’. This is surely (and exactly) the operation of the inverted mind-set that Marx and Engels clearly revealed within bourgeois society. Biblical scholars peddle ‘faith’ as ‘fact’, and are not objective academics in any way. Biblical scholars do not operate from the ‘no hypothesis’ perspective, but its exact opposite. Biblical scholars assume that theology was created by a god-construct, is infallible, and superior to secular knowledge. Of course, by ‘biblical scholar’, I am referring to those men and women who have been educated through religious institutions, or who possess a ‘literalist’ interpretation of the bible, and not to those objective academics that specialise in the ‘secular’ study of the historicity of the bible. The latter category works from the premise that the bible is a book created by human beings, and as such, possesses a discernible historical development. The humans that created the bible, also created the theology that fills its pages, and due to the inverted mind-set, incorrectly assumed that the thoughts produced in their own heads, were placed there by an equally imagined god-construct (falsely assumed to exist in or through the environment). What is important to bear in mind is that due to its close proximity with the theistic religious institutions it grew-out from, the bourgeois academic community often makes errors and mistakes – sometimes accidently - but at other times definitely deliberately. This community, for instance, whilst formally ‘rejecting’ the faith-based premise of theistic religion, is often seen ‘protecting’ the very same religious community from the rigours of Scientific Socialism – which fully exposes the inverted thinking of both bourgeois academia and bourgeois religion. The irony is that as long as capitalism exists as the stage of human evolution preferred by the establishment, then bourgeois academic objectivity remains entirely ‘selective’ and ‘self-serving’, lapsing every so often into complete religiosity. It is an observable cycle that can only be broken by a transition into Socialism and the full embracing of non-inverted objectivity. As matters stand, the capitalist bourgeois system maintains a highly aggressive and thoroughly distorting stance towards Scientific Socialism, Marxist-Leninism, the USSR, China and any other aspect of progressive history. This type of flawed academia concocts a fictitious historical narrative towards Socialism and Communism, that is in every aspect ‘religious’ in nature if not in actual content. This false narrative is pursued with a fanatical ‘faith’ in the belief of the falsehood being presented. This assemblage of negative and incorrect ‘facts’ constitutes the ‘pseudo-theology’ that the Western bourgeois establishment fabricates and disseminates to the general public to keep minds ‘poisoned’ against the need to evolve out of, and away from, the state of predatory capitalism. Although the subject at hand – the James Ossuary – appears on the surface to be entirely removed from the subject of Western Anti-Communism, it in fact contains in essence every facet of that misrepresentation. A respectable academic establishment receives unconfirmed information from a dubious source, and legitimises it by treating it as unquestioned ‘fact’.
ACW 1.9.2016
The 2009 book entitled ‘Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics’ (University of North Carolina Press) is an attempt by the bourgeois mainstream academic community to ‘self-heal’, after colluding and conspiring (through the use of poor evidence gathering and methodology) with the forces of religious fanaticism, to mislead the pre-dominantly ‘secular’ Western world into believing that the Judeo-Christian religion was materially ‘real’, and thereby inferring that its theological teachings were to be taken seriously (perhaps even rivalling academic objectivity). This type of duplicity is not unknown within the bourgeois academic community, as it has continuously compromised its objectivity by following political dictates from Western governments, that pursue non-factual narratives and paradigms by lending such distortions ‘academic’ credibility. This is the academic establishment creating ‘false’ logic and facts to manipulate the opinion of the general public toward specific political ends. The Western academic treatment of the history of the Soviet Union and Communist China, for example, are two very obvious examples of this kind of dishonest manipulation, which is not surprising when it is considered that Western academia exists within a capitalist system, the boundaries of which it must never question or attempt to transcend. Only a very few academics (such as Albert Einstein and Grover Furr) have questioned the capitalist straitjacket that Western academia has to currently exist within. Therefore, the Bourgeois universities have to tread a fine line between pursuing cutting-edge research that pushes human understanding forward, whilst continuously being held back by the capitalist economic system (which is invariably presented as both ‘normal’ and ‘natural’). All Communist and Socialist history is presented as being the personification of ‘evil’. This is an odd description from an academic community that assumes itself to be ‘secular’ and ‘objective’, and demonstrates the underlying loyalties that modern academia still holds for the religious institutes (and theological understanding) from which it historically emerged. In fact, bourgeois academia and bourgeois religion share the common roots of bourgeois control of the means of production, and the maintenance of bourgeois class privilege over the working class (that is comprised of the majority of people in society). Just as Communism and Socialism is considered inherently ‘evil’ through the auspices of ‘flawed’ Western academia, religion in the Western world is treated as old fashioned and out of date, but otherwise a harmless and thoroughly ‘good’ distraction in the collecting and analysing of hard data.
Zionist Israel lies at the heart of the James Ossuary deception. Just over a year earlier, before the James Ossuary was placed on exhibition as a ‘real’ proof of the physical existence of (the ‘Jewish’) Jesus Christ, it was alleged that 19 Islamic Terrorists (a number of which have consequently been proven to still be ‘alive’), crashed two planes into the World Trade Buildings in New York, and another into the Pentagon (whilst a fourth apparently came down in a field in rural Pennsylvania). Not long after the explosions (and the deaths of thousands in New York), the police received a call stating that 5 men of ‘Middle Eastern’ ethnicity had been seen celebrating as the planes hit the WTC buildings. When arrested, these five men were found to be of Israeli extraction, working for the Israeli intelligence services.[2] In October of 2001, the US led a small military coalition in an invasion of Afghanistan, which was joined two years later (in 2003) by the full military might of NATO. The intriguing case of the James Ossuary fits in neatly between the events of 2001 and 2003. It seems that Israel, acting in a ‘deniable’ but otherwise ‘colluding’ capacity with the US, conspired to manufacture a Western religious ‘miracle’ of sorts, which was designed to be presented through the Western academic community to give it credibility. After the trauma of an apparently successful ‘Islamic’ attack on important symbols of the Western, capitalist world in the US, the US bourgeoisie turned to ‘religion’ to keep its masses under control, and in a state of irrational and faith-inspired ‘crusader’ rapture. This turn toward religious mania was a deliberate attempt to muster all the power that the inverted bourgeois mind-set possesses, to motivate entire populations to unquestionably support and participate in illegal ‘crusader’ wars, premised upon a Christian sense of self-righteous vengeance. Of course, Western academia played its part fully in its participation in this Israeli-US deception. The point of this psychological operation was to appear to present an archaeological find that proved that Jesus Christ ‘existed’ and was not the figment of religionist imagination. It was probably too far-fetched to fabricate a ‘relic’ directly related to the physical body of Jesus Christ, and so the idea was concocted that perhaps it would be more ‘believable’ and acceptable to sceptics if the existence of Jesus could be proved through a sides ways connection with another of his relatives. James, as the brother of Jesus was chosen because although known within biblical scholarship, the fact that the ‘virgin’ Mary had supposedly engaged in sexual relations (to produce James) was quietly played-down by all the major churches. Not only this, but James was known to have been the founder and leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem, and something of a legitimate challenger to the Roman Catholic assertions that only their ‘popes’ were the true representatives of god on earth. As a consequence, the Protestant church views James as the full brother of Jesus (but ignores his place in Christian history), whilst the Orthodox church views James as a half-brother of Jesus (sired by Joseph in a previous marriage, and therefore not the son of the ‘virgin’ Mary), and the Catholic church interprets James as the son of Clopas and (a different) Mary (who stood near the cross at the crucifixion).[3]
Both biblical scholars and secular scholars work with factualised myths every day, whilst adopting an air of authority about the nonsense they are peddling. Take for example the idea that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, why then is he continuously referred to as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’? Archaeology and history has proven two things; either Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus, or was in fact a Jewish burial ground.[4] In either case, it is impossible for Jesus to have come from that place. It is far more likely that this misunderstanding (perpetuated by the authors of Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus) is premised upon a mistranslation, and that it should in fact read ‘Jesus the Nazarene’ or ‘Jesus the Healer’.[5] The Jewish Talmud also mentions a religiously active person named ‘Yeshu the Nazarene’, a designation that has nothing to do with a place called ‘Nazareth’.[6] This single fact (amongst) many demonstrates the duplicitous nature of a) so-called biblical scholarship, and b) the apparent inability of secular academia to distance itself from imaginary theological constructs. In many ways this is a microcosm of the psychology that permeates capitalist societies, and is indicative of the routine operation of hypocrisy packaged as the true and authentic acquisition of objective knowledge. Although Western academia likes to think of itself as having clear blue water between its hallowed institutions and those representing religion, in fact the separation between church (intuitive knowledge) and university (intellectual knowledge), is not yet fully completed. This explains the rather cosy relation that exists between religion and academia, the odd historical pogrom notwithstanding. This is exactly the fertile psychological ground that the James Ossuary forgery was designed to take-root within, and take advantage of, and every academic institute played its part flawlessly. So bad was this academic acquiescence to church authority and theological mythology, that even the esteemed Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne[7] immediately declared the object genuine – without ever having examined it personally! This was after the Geological Survey of Israel had initially stated that the ossuary was real, (dating to the Roman-Palestine of the 1st century CE), and covered in a layer of accumulated dirt (patina) conducive with a stone artefact that had originated in that time and place. This is where the story takes on a life of its own that fully outgrows the facts. The ossuary in question, a small rectangular box carved out of limestone (big enough to accommodate the long bones of the human body), was in fact a genuine object. It had once been housed in a Jewish stone tomb, and had once held the bones of a human being who had lived and died sometime during the 1st century CE. To view this ossuary in context, however, even if genuine, it was a fairly common object of no particular distinction, other than the Aramaic inscription that ran across one of its sides, which reads in phonetic (Romanised) transliteration:
‘Ya’acob bar Yosaf ahui diYeshua’
Ya’acob = Jacob (Greek), Jacobus, Jacomus (Latin), Gemmes (French), James (English)
Yosaf = Joseph
Yeshua = Joshua
The deliberate deception and manipulation of the mind of the general public, perpetuated not only by popular biblical scholarship, but also by the mainstream, academic community, begins here. In English translation, this Aramaic script should have read:
‘Jacob Son of Joseph, Brother of Joshua’
These three names were very common in 1st century Roman Palestine amongst Jewish people, and in and of themselves, do not signify anything special – other than the fact that inscriptions upon bone ossuaries, although not unknown, were unusual. However, across Western media and throughout the hallowed halls of bourgeois academia, it was invariably (and falsely) stated that the inscription read:
‘JAMES SON OF JOSEPH, BROTHER OF JESUS’
Jesus is a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic name ‘Yeshua’ and despite this Greek rendering NOT appearing on the ossuary, it was widely and routinely explained that the name of ‘Jesus’ was there for all to see. As the entire power of this hoax resides in the assumed presence of the Greek name ‘Jesus’, it is important to look at the history of this awe-inspiring designation, as even academics critically writing about the James Ossuary deception years after its occurrence, still fall into the trap of referring to the Greek name of ‘Jesus’ being present, when it obviously was not. As for biblical scholars, as they occupy the odd world of presenting religious myth as concrete fact, the fact that the Greek name ‘Jesus’ does not appear on the James Ossuary, is used as an almost ‘mystical’ presentation of their own god’s assumed power to test ‘faith’, apparently through the agency of ‘deception’.
(It is also true that the English rendering of ‘James’ for the Aramaic name ‘Ya’acob’ [Jacob] does not appear on the James Ossuary. Again, mainstream academics and biblical scholars, - both before and after the James Ossuary hoax was exposed - routinely referred to the Aramaic ‘Ya’acob’ as the English ‘James’ because of the symbolic power such a name [and association] conjures-up in the religious imagination of the West, particularly when added to the equally non-present ‘Jesus’. In any case, the biblical ‘Jacob-James’ (the brother of Jesus) character, is said to have been executed around 62 CE.)
The Aramaic name ‘Yeshua’ (Joshua) is rendered into Greek as ‘Iesous’, which came into English as ‘Yesus’ and then ‘Jesus’. As the term ‘Jesus’ contains the name of the Greek god ‘Zeus’, this has led to theories that state the name ‘Jesus’ actually refers to ‘Joshua’ being deified in Greece as the ‘Son of Zeus’ (Le Zeus – le sous),[8] as the Roman Emperor Constantine believed Jesus was the rebirth of Apollo (the son of Zeus), although many biblical scholars disagree with this interpretation, as it would suggest a mundane pagan influence for their unique ‘son of god’ theory. It has also been suggested that Joshua’s name was translated as ‘Yah-Zeus’ in Rome, combining Jewish and Greek designations for the divine, to form a compound word to signify an all-powerful deity.[9] The superb British academics Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy suggest that as the Romans kept meticulous legal records, the fact that ‘Jesus’ is not mentioned in any of them, suggests that Jesus either did not exist, or was so unimportant to the Romans, that they did not bother to record details of his trial and execution.[10]
The problem with biblical scholarship is that it takes its lead not from the secular academic community, but rather from church-led, or faith-based study projects, that are a priori set to furnish research results that support the established dogma of theology. Biblical scholarship generally peddles ‘myth’ as ‘fact’, and when their ‘facts’ are exposed as ‘myth’, their response is to attack the objective fact and refer to it as a dangerous ‘myth’. Generally speaking, the irrational basis of biblical scholarship should not detain us for very long, but in this case, the sheer impetus of the James Ossuary deception has its roots deep within this very subject. The Judeo-Christian religious community, not content to follow its myth-related teachings, is always trying to usurp mainstream, secular academia and its objective assertions premised upon concrete, observable, measurable and quantifiable facts. The reality that it was the Aramaic ‘Yeshua’ (Joshua), and not the Greek ‘Jesus’ etched on the side of the ossuary led biblical scholars (and their supporters) to state that this object was from an earlier time ‘before’ their saviour – Yeshua – had his name transliterated into Greek, and must therefore be both genuine and beyond question. In other words, a lack of information was used as a positive method of analysis, to confirm a hypothesis that a groundless assumption was ‘real’. This is exactly where the Biblical Archaeological Review (the Journal of the Biblical Archaeological Society) – both run by Hershel Shanks - comes into the picture with regard to the James Ossuary deception. It was Shanks’s association with the Israeli ‘owner’ of the ossuary – Oded Golan – that served to link the theological history of the ancient Middle East, with the secular, academic institutes of the modern West. Of course, neither Shanks nor Golan were acting out of any religious sense of altruism, but were rather motivated entirely by money (and profit), and the best manner in which to gain as much as possible in the shortest time, with little effort. What is interesting is how well Golan played the ‘unconcerned’ owner who apparently had no idea of the religious value of what he had in his possession, and how Shanks launched a high-profile media campaign designed to present himself as the ‘discoverer’ of one of the greatest finds in history. For reasons only known to Shanks, he approached the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), stating that he would like to offer a world exclusive for the museum, which would have to be displayed on a date he specified, for a very large ‘finder’s fee’. As Shanks was responsible for raising Golan’s asking price, whilst making every effort to generate his own income, he went all out to manipulate the media, and force the academic community into playing his game. It is both remarkable and highly suspicious that he succeeded in his objectives. The mainstream academic Thomas S Bremer explains the chain of events that led to an esteemed academic institute (such as the Royal Ontario Museum) to follow the lead of a financially obsessed biblical scholar:
‘The performance of the James Ossuary as a religiously significant object followed closely the interpretive story being pushed by Hershel Shanks. In fact, in their acceptance of Shanks’s proposal and subsequent reliance on his interpretation of the ossuary as published in the pages of BAR, officials at the ROM abdicated their own curatorial authority. Instead, they allowed those with a financial interest in promoting the ossuary to determine the interpretive framework for their display.’[11]
Incredibly, despite the implicit narrative being established (and pushed through by the establishment) that the James Ossuary was a religious relic of tremendous (and ‘mystical’) importance to a Western civilisation that was still wheeling from the assumed collective devastation of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York, nothing was changed when this object of wonder arrived at the Royal Ontario Museum, not under armed guard, or in a special or purpose-built container for its journey from Israel, but in a broken and bashed ‘cardboard box’, with the ossuary itself enveloped in a thin-layer of ‘bubble-wrap’. Oded Golan – the owner who was receiving a substantial fee for his troubles – had apparently arranged for this ‘religious relic’ to be sent by the cheapest (or ‘strangest’) method of ‘mail’ (travelling first from Tel Aviv to New York, then to Hamilton, and then finally Toronto). Why would a religious artefact (from Roman Palestine) intended for Canada, need to travel from Israel to the USA? As if the bizarre and shoddy form of conveyance wasn’t enough to rouse suspicions that something was gravely wrong, surely the idea that Israel felt it necessary to ‘share’ the object with the USA, when the worldwide unveiling was to happen in Canada? Of course, all this inconsistency was explained away as ‘quirkiness’ on behalf of the owner – Oded Golan. As matters transpired, neither the flimsy cardboard box, nor thin covering of bubble wrap were sufficient to protect the James Ossuary as it traversed the globe, and when it finally arrived at the Royal Ontario Museum, it had been broken into five pieces. This led to the immediate cancellation of the official ‘ritualised’ uncrating of the ossuary for the press, that was supposed to be held on the afternoon of October 31st, 2002. Firstly, there was no ‘crate’, and secondly the museum did not want the press to catch hold of the sheer amateurish nature of the entire affair. Instead, experts were called in to repair the ossuary, and the exhibition was finally opened in accordance with the instructions from Hershel Shanks, on the 8th November, 2002, to coincide with the annual gatherings of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), to ensure the maximum media coverage and interest from the general public. This tactic worked, as in a matter of days, the exhibition attracted around 95,000 visitors. This is hardly surprising, as the Discovery Channel (and other TV media) were fully embracing and endorsing the discovery and the event, as were the worldwide print media through articles trumpeting the find in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and Le Monde, amongst many others. A print media that combined to eulogise a limestone box (without evidence), and to support the religious community without question, whilst routinely perpetuating a relentless (and equally ‘false’) anti-Socialist and anti-Communist rhetoric through their pages. The superficiality of the Western media is clearly displayed by Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, who stated on air (on November 7th, 2002):
‘Heaven’s Crate: scientists have found the burial box of Jesus’ brother James, who was sort of the Emilio Estevez of the Holy Land.’[12]
Why did the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) risk its status as an esteemed academic institute, by siding with religiosity and very poor scholarship and superstition? The reason is found in the fact that the Canadian government had cut the budget it allocated to ROM, and that this had led to severe financial problems and staff cuts at the museum. As matters transpired, ROM made a profit of $270,000 from the entire affair of exhibiting a ‘fake’ religious object to the general public. This ‘sleazy’ approach to the assessment and exploitation of art and historical objects is explained by Thomas S Bremer:
‘Modern museums, from their very origins among wealthy merchants of Renaissance Italy, have been deeply embedded in the economic forces of market capitalism. On the one hand, it may appear that museums operate contrary to the logic of the marketplace. They remove the objects in their collections from the normal channels of circulation that drive commodity markets. On the other hand, this removal itself participates in the logic of capitalistic exchange. As Pierre Bourdieu contends: “Practice never ceases to conform to economic calculation even when it gives every appearance of disinterestedness by departing from the logic of interested calculation (in the narrow sense) and playing for stakes that are non-material and not easily quantified.” By taking objects they hold out of circulation, museums enhance the value of their collections. Through their efforts at authentication, conservation, and interpretation of selected objects, museums “are able to build for themselves a practice of consecration which allows them to accumulate economic capital.” This consecration transforms these objects into something worth more than money; they become the material gods of “heritage” that justify the social order and make it meaningful.’[13]
The stardom of the ROM was short lived, however, as in the summer of 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority declared the James Ossuary to be a fraud, and had its owner – Oded Golan – arrested under suspicion of theft, black-marketing and forgery. After its exhibiting at the ROM, the James Ossuary was returned to Israel where it underwent extensive scientific examination. It was found that although the ossuary was a real object dating from the 1st century Roman occupation of Palestine, the inscription was added in recent times. An authentic layer of dirt (patina) covered the ossuary everywhere except over the inscription – where it was determined that a layer of fabricated ‘dirt’ had been applied (a mixture of chalk and water) that had been first boiled in water at 122 degrees Fahrenheit – far too high a temperature for an ancient Jewish tomb. To forge the ‘new’ inscription, the old and original layer of patina had to be ‘cut’ through to engrave the Aramaic letters. The Aramaic text itself is thought to have been ‘lifted’ out of an academic study of ossuary inscriptions made by Levi Rahmani entitled ‘Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collection of the State of Israel’. The name ‘Ya’acob’ corresponded to inscription number 396 in the catalogue, whilst ‘bar Yosef’ was copied from number 573, and ‘brother of’ was taken from inscription 570. Golan is thought to have scanned the words he needed and after resizing, created a template which he used to etch the characters into the limestone. There was also the issue of the inscription containing both cursive and formal lettering, which would be unusual for a single engraver to have created.[14] When police raided Golan’s home, they not only discovered evidence of fraud, but also a photograph of the James Ossuary taking pride of place upon Golan’s toilet!
For months after the exposure of the fraud, the ROM continued to make the case for the ossuary’s authenticity, despite the fact that it had been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the object was a fake religious icon designed to take advantage of people’s religious feelings and gullibility. Only quietly did the ROM finally retreat from this position of overt support for the James Ossuary. Western academia makes mistakes all the time, sometimes out of legitimate trial and error, but more often and not, out of political pressure and religious bias. Just as the two fundamentalist Christians – George Bush and Tony Blair were leading the Western world into a catastrophic war with the Middle East, an object appears on the horizon that offer apparently ‘concrete’ (or at least ‘limestone’) proof that perhaps Jesus really existed after-all (despite the complete lack of objective evidence). As the bombs fell killing hundreds of thousands of innocents across the Afghanistan (and then eventually Iraq), for a short time in the West, the warmongering powers that be, concocted a mass deception exercise that appeared to prove the physical existence of Jesus, no doubt as a moral boost for the new crusade that had just been unleashed.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2016.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2016.
[1] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), Introduction Page 8. ROM statement greeting visitors just before they entered the James Ossuary exhibition room – oddly suggesting a ‘religious’ interpretation to an object of secular academic interest.
[2] The Five Dancing "Israelis" Arrested On 9-11 http://www.todayscatholicworld.com/mossad-agents-911.htm
Accessed 25.8.2016
[3] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), The Brother of Jesus in Toronto – By Thomas S Bremer (Pages 31-58) – Page 35
[4] Nazareth – The Town that Theology Built http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html Accessed 26.8.2016
[5] Nazarene or Nazareth? http://www.thenazareneway.com/nazarene_or_nazareth.htm Accessed 26.8.2016
[6] Freke, Timothy, & Gandy, Peter, The Jesus Mysteries – Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?, Thorsons, (2000), Page 169. ‘Yeshu’ is a shortened version of ‘Yeshua’, or ‘Joshua’. The authors stae: ‘The fact that we have a mention of ‘Yeshu the Nazarene’, is not extraordinary. The Nazarenes were a Jewish religious sect and the use of the word does not imply ‘from Nazareth’.
[7] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), Archaeological Context and Controversy – The Bones of James Unpacked, by Byron R McCane, Page 19. Andre Lemaire is reported as stating: ‘It seems very probable that this is the ossuary of the James in the New Testament. If so, this would also mean that we have here the first epigraphic mention – from about 63 CE – of Jesus of Nazareth.’
[8] Iesous in Greek http://www.sabbathcovenant.com/christianitythegreatdeception/IesousinGreek.htm
Accessed 26.8.2016
[9] Yeshua, Jesus, or YH-Zeus? http://www.thenazareneway.com/yeshua_jesus_real_name.htm Accessed 26.8.2016
[10] Freke, Timothy, & Gandy, Peter, The Jesus Mysteries – Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?, Thorsons, (2000), Pages 163-194 – The Missing Man. The biblical account of Jesus and his life is wrought with inconsistencies, contradictions, falsehoods and illogicalities, all often occurring in single texts. In one telling example, Page 176 states: ‘The most telling moment in the gospels, however, is when Mark has Jesus quote from the Old Testament in his arguments against the Pharisees. Nothing surprising about this – except that Jesus quotes from the mistranslated Greek version of the Old Testament, which suits his purpose precisely, not from the original Hebrew, which says something quite different and unhelpful to his argument. That Jesus the Jew should quote a Greek mistranslation of Jewish Holy Scripture to impress orthodox Jewish Pharisees is simply unthinkable. It does make sense, however, if the whole incident were made up by one of the hundreds of thousands of Greek-speaking Jews who no longer spoke their native tongue and could not read their scriptures untranslated, hence attributing to Jesus their own misunderstandings.’
[11] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), The Brother of Jesus in Toronto, by Thomas S Bremer, Page 45
[12] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), Introduction by Ryan Byrne & Bernadette McNary-Zak - Page 1. The text continues: ‘It fell to scholars, specifically biblicists and epigraphers, to repackage James as a central Christian figure and cause for religious excitement. It fell to the media to sensationalise the find and polemicize its potential theological meaning.’
[13] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), The Brother of Jesus in Toronto, by Thomas S Bremer, Page 50
[14] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), Archaeological Context and Controversy – The Bones of James Unpacked, by Byron R McCane, Pages 27-28
[2] The Five Dancing "Israelis" Arrested On 9-11 http://www.todayscatholicworld.com/mossad-agents-911.htm
Accessed 25.8.2016
[3] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), The Brother of Jesus in Toronto – By Thomas S Bremer (Pages 31-58) – Page 35
[4] Nazareth – The Town that Theology Built http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html Accessed 26.8.2016
[5] Nazarene or Nazareth? http://www.thenazareneway.com/nazarene_or_nazareth.htm Accessed 26.8.2016
[6] Freke, Timothy, & Gandy, Peter, The Jesus Mysteries – Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?, Thorsons, (2000), Page 169. ‘Yeshu’ is a shortened version of ‘Yeshua’, or ‘Joshua’. The authors stae: ‘The fact that we have a mention of ‘Yeshu the Nazarene’, is not extraordinary. The Nazarenes were a Jewish religious sect and the use of the word does not imply ‘from Nazareth’.
[7] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), Archaeological Context and Controversy – The Bones of James Unpacked, by Byron R McCane, Page 19. Andre Lemaire is reported as stating: ‘It seems very probable that this is the ossuary of the James in the New Testament. If so, this would also mean that we have here the first epigraphic mention – from about 63 CE – of Jesus of Nazareth.’
[8] Iesous in Greek http://www.sabbathcovenant.com/christianitythegreatdeception/IesousinGreek.htm
Accessed 26.8.2016
[9] Yeshua, Jesus, or YH-Zeus? http://www.thenazareneway.com/yeshua_jesus_real_name.htm Accessed 26.8.2016
[10] Freke, Timothy, & Gandy, Peter, The Jesus Mysteries – Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?, Thorsons, (2000), Pages 163-194 – The Missing Man. The biblical account of Jesus and his life is wrought with inconsistencies, contradictions, falsehoods and illogicalities, all often occurring in single texts. In one telling example, Page 176 states: ‘The most telling moment in the gospels, however, is when Mark has Jesus quote from the Old Testament in his arguments against the Pharisees. Nothing surprising about this – except that Jesus quotes from the mistranslated Greek version of the Old Testament, which suits his purpose precisely, not from the original Hebrew, which says something quite different and unhelpful to his argument. That Jesus the Jew should quote a Greek mistranslation of Jewish Holy Scripture to impress orthodox Jewish Pharisees is simply unthinkable. It does make sense, however, if the whole incident were made up by one of the hundreds of thousands of Greek-speaking Jews who no longer spoke their native tongue and could not read their scriptures untranslated, hence attributing to Jesus their own misunderstandings.’
[11] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), The Brother of Jesus in Toronto, by Thomas S Bremer, Page 45
[12] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), Introduction by Ryan Byrne & Bernadette McNary-Zak - Page 1. The text continues: ‘It fell to scholars, specifically biblicists and epigraphers, to repackage James as a central Christian figure and cause for religious excitement. It fell to the media to sensationalise the find and polemicize its potential theological meaning.’
[13] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), The Brother of Jesus in Toronto, by Thomas S Bremer, Page 50
[14] Byrne, Ryan & McNary-Zak, Bernadette, Editors, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus – The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for religious Relics, The University of North Carolina Press, (2009), Archaeological Context and Controversy – The Bones of James Unpacked, by Byron R McCane, Pages 27-28