Religion is a fraud...
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/6119188.htm http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/06/18/jesus.box/index.html http://www.sunspot.net/news/sns-othernews-james,0,1822417.story?coll=bal-f eatures-specials 'Jesus' box ruled a forgery BY THOMAS H. MAUGH II Los Angeles Times The burial box purported to have held the bones of "James, brother of Jesus" — once hailed as among the greatest discoveries of New Testament archaeology — is a fraud, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. Although the stone box itself is authentic, the inscription linking it to James is a modern forgery that was cleverly disguised with an artificial patina that made it appear to be 2,000 years old, a committee of experts has unanimously agreed. "The inscription appears new, written in modernity by someone attempting to reproduce ancient written characters," the authority's statement said. The committee also said that another recently discovered artifact, the so-called Jehoash inscription purporting to be an account of repairs made to Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, was a more obvious fraud that may have been produced by the same forger. If genuine, the two artifacts would have been among the most important ever found for both Christianity and Judaism. The first was claimed to be the only archaeological evidence of the existence of Jesus. The second was purportedly the only non-Biblical evidence of the existence of the great Temple. Both were owned by Jerusalem collector Oded Golan, who claimed to have bought them from antiquities dealers but could not remember the details of the transactions. Golan denied the authority's allegations Wednesday in a statement to the Associated Press. "I'm certain that the committee is wrong regarding its conclusions," he said, but he is unlikely to draw much support. "This proves beyond the pale that the inscription is modern," said Kristin Romey, managing editor of Archaeology Magazine, which will publish a manuscript from committee members later this year. "These are some of the top people in the field. It is pretty conclusive." The James bone box — technically, an ossuary — first came to light in October 2002 with the publication of an article in the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review. Paleographer Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne University in Paris described the 20-inch-long limestone box, which was inscribed with the Hebrew phrase "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." A report from the Geological Survey of Israel supported the antiquity of the ossuary and Lemaire vouched for the authenticity of the inscription. Time magazine called it possibly "the most important discovery in the history of New Testament archaeology." Golan claimed to have bought it for $200 to $700 from an antiquities dealer without realizing its importance. Experts later said that, if genuine, its value would be more than $1 million. The lack of archaeological provenance made many experts suspicious. "Nobody knew where it came from," Romey said. "People wanted to believe in it, but everybody was holding their breath." To settle questions about the authenticity of both artifacts, the antiquities authority organized a blue-ribbon panel to study them. The key evidence turned out to be geological. Geologists Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University and Avner Ayalon of the Geological Survey of Israel identified three distinct coatings on the surface of the ossuary: • A thin brown veneer of clay and other minerals cemented to the rock surface, the so-called varnish created by bacteria or algae on rocks over long periods. • A crusty natural coating of patina that formed from deposition of calcium carbonate as water evaporated from the surface of the stone over the centuries. This patina is similar to the scale left behind in a teakettle. • A unique composite material that Goren called the "James Bond" because it was bonded only into the incised letters of the inscription. This material was powdered chalk that was suspended in water and daubed onto the inscription. Isotopic studies showed that the calcium carbonate crystals in the "James Bond" were produced by the evaporation of heated water, while those on the rest of the patina were produced by evaporation of water at room temperature. That isotopic evidence is "particularly damning," Romey said. The committee concluded that the forger found the words and phrases used in the inscription on genuine artifacts, scanned them into a computer, resized them so they were all the same size, then used a program such as Photoshop or Pagemaker to create a puzzlingly authentic template. The committee identified potential sources for each word or phrase. "If I were a forger, that's the way I would do it," said archaeologist P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University. Using the template, the forger than incised the letters through the original varnish and patina of the genuine ossuary, then applied the fake "James Bond" to the letters to make them appear equally old. The conclusion that the Jehoash inscription is fraudulent was less controversial because most researchers already doubted its authenticity. The shoebox-size tablet, whose existence was revealed in January, is inscribed with 15 lines of Hebrew-Phoenician text — very similar to a passage in the Old Testament — about repairs to the Temple. The patina seems to contain microscopic carbon fragments and gold globules, presumably from the burning of the Temple. Experts immediately attacked the tablet because of obvious grammatical errors. That assessment was affirmed Wednesday by committee member Avigdor Victor Horwitz, an epigrapher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Not one passage on the tablet was without a linguistic mistake, he told a news conference. "The person who wrote the inscription was a person who thinks in modern Hebrew," he said. "A person thinking in Biblical Hebrew would see it as ridiculous." Also, the patina on the letters was almost identical to the James Bond on the ossuary, except that it included carbon particles and fine metal droplets to simulate exposure to fire. Furthermore, Goren discovered that this patina could easily be rubbed off the letters, revealing unmistakably fresh engraving marks. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
