Today, the world pauses to reflect upon the life, death, and resurrection of a man who is said to have walked the earth some two millennia ago. Yet, for many, the figure in question is shrouded in doubt. To them, the man who is claimed to have lived, been executed, and then risen again belongs not to history but to myth—a construct born of the fervent imaginations of adherents to what they regard as an illogical worldview.
I have encountered numerous arguments asserting that, far from performing the deeds attributed to him in the New Testament, this Jesus never existed at all. According to such views, he is merely a literary invention. Some go further, proposing that the Gospels themselves were fabricated—perhaps even by the Romans—and that no historical Jesus ever walked the earth. In a previous Easter article, I addressed this issue, exploring the historicity of Jesus by drawing attention to references found in sources beyond the Bible. Some of these sources mention him alongside Pontius Pilate, thereby lending weight to the Gospel narratives. Curiously, while critics readily accept the existence of Pilate, they often resist the notion that Jesus himself was a historical figure.
Today, however, I invite my readers to consider an ancient Jewish custom. In the time of Jesus, burial practices were marked by urgency and reverence. The dead were typically interred swiftly—often before sunset on the very day of death—and, save for exceptional circumstances, bodies were not left unburied overnight. The deceased would be washed, anointed with spices, and wrapped in linen cloths before being carried in procession to a family tomb hewn from rock.
Such tombs commonly comprised one or more chambers, with benches or burial niches carved into the stone. Once the body had been laid to rest, the entrance was sealed with a large stone.
Mourning followed, both in the home and at the tomb, where lamentation and expressions of condolence formed part of the ritual. Over time, the body would decompose, and in certain cases, the bones were later gathered and placed in an ossuary. During Jewish burial practices of the late Second Temple period, these ossuaries were typically fashioned from stone—most often limestone or a locally available soft chalk.
In 2002, an Israeli antiquities collector, Oded Golan, brought to public attention an ossuary he had possessed since the mid-1970s, unaware until much later of the significance of its inscription. The previous year, Golan had invited the French Semitic epigrapher Andre Lemaire to examine the artefact. An epigrapher specialises in the study of inscriptions carved or written on durable materials such as stone, metal, or pottery, and their work includes reading, deciphering, dating, and interpreting such texts. A Semitic epigrapher focuses on inscriptions from the ancient Near East. In Lemaire, Golan could scarcely have chosen a more eminent authority.
The findings proved to be something the world never expected. Inscribed in Aramaic were the words: “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” Those acquainted with the New Testament were struck with amazement, while critics reacted with scepticism when the discovery was made public.
Ordinarily, ossuary inscriptions follow a standard formula: the name of the deceased, followed by that of the father. The inclusion of a brother’s name is unusual and typically indicates either that the brother financed the ossuary or that he was a person of considerable renown. One may reasonably speculate which explanation applies in the case of Jesus.
Unsurprisingly, the authenticity of the inscription was swiftly called into question—and, to some extent, remains so. In 2003, a panel from the Israeli Antiquities Authority contended that the phrase “brother of Jesus” had been added later. Their argument rested on the observation that, while the patina—the thin surface layer formed over time through natural exposure—on the box appeared ancient, the patina within the grooves of the disputed inscription did not, suggesting it may have been artificially applied.
In late 2004, Oded Golan, together with Robert Deutsch and others, was indicted on charges of forgery. Deutsch, an Israeli epigraphist and antiquities dealer, was suspected of involvement in a forgery network. The trial commenced in September 2005 and continued for seven years. In 2012, all defendants were acquitted, the court ruling that the prosecution had failed to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the contentious portion of the inscription was forged.
Although the court neither confirmed nor refuted Golan’s claims—its role being limited to adjudicating the charge of forgery—the balance of scholarly opinion and published evidence has tended to favour the inscription’s authenticity. Should this prove to be the case, the implications are profound.