The Story That Will Not Die

From the San Francisco Chronicle: Ossuary hoax case may collapse Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service Thursday, October 30, 2008 (10-30) 04:00 PDT Jerusalem - -- The high-profile trial of two Israeli antiquities experts accused of faking a burial box containing the remains of Jesus' brother and other priceless artifacts faced a humiliating collapse Wednesday after a Jerusalem judge advised the prosecution to consider dropping the proceedings after more than three years in court. "After all the evidence we have heard, including the testimony of the prime defendant, is the picture still the same as the one you had when he was charged?" District Court Judge Aharon Farkash pointedly asked public prosecutor, Adi Damti. "Not every case ends in the way you think it will when it starts. Maybe we can save ourselves the rest." The discovery of an ossuary or burial box inscribed "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" created a sensation when first displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2002. If authentic, it would be the only physical evidence ever discovered directly linked to the family of Jesus. But the owner of the ossuary, Israeli engineer and collector Oded Golan, was arrested by Israeli police in 2003, and then charged a year later along with four others on 18 counts of forgery, fraud and damaging archaeological artifacts. 'Unholy Business' In her new book on the case entitled "Unholy Business, A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land," author Nina Burleigh appears to believe that Golan is guilty, but suspects his lawyers have raised enough doubts to avoid conviction. The often explosive testimony has given a rare insight into the shadowy world behind the apparently cultured facade of priceless antiquities. Witnesses have described furtive encounters with Arab grave robbers, international smuggling and transactions involving hundreds of thousands of dollars based on a handshake. But the collapse of the prosecution's case would be a major embarrassment for the Israeli police and Israel Antiquities Authority. They maintain the defendants faked the burial box along with other biblical-era relics that were then sold for huge sums of money and sent to major collections and museums around the world. "This was fraud of a sophistication and expertise which was previously unknown," said Police Comdt. Shaul Naim, who headed a two-year police investigation. "They took authentic items and added inscriptions to make them worth millions." Scholars appointed to a special committee convened by the Israel Antiquities Authority accused Golan and his co-defendants of taking valuable ancient relics and adding inscriptions to increase their value. Shuka Dorfman, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, had described the charges against Golan as "the tip of the iceberg. These forgeries have worldwide repercussions," he said after the indictments were filed. "They were an attempt to change the history of the Jewish and Christian people." But under cross-examination by defense attorneys, many experts recanted some of their findings. Judge Farkash's comments, which were excluded from trial transcripts but said in open court, came after more than 80 witnesses and 10,000 pages of testimony including evidence and cross-examination of Golan and leading archaeologists and scientists from around the world. No definitive proof "Have you really proved beyond a reasonable doubt that these artifacts are fakes as charged in the indictment? The experts disagreed among themselves. Where is the definitive proof needed to show that the accused faked the ossuary?" Judge Farkash asked prosecutor Damti. "You need to ask yourselves those questions very seriously, and if necessary consult with your superiors in the public prosecutor's office." The two most important items said to be fakes were the James ossuary - a limestone burial box in use during the time of Jesus and a black stone tablet inscribed with 14 lines commemorating renovations to the Temple in Jerusalem by the biblical King Joash. Golan, a 57-year-old world-renowned expert who started collecting antiquities when he was 8 years old, has consistently denied all charges during the more than three years of proceedings. "The James ossuary and the Joash Tablet are 100 percent authentic. I have never faked an archaeological artifact in my life," he has said. To date, witnesses have included antiquities dealers, museum curators, experts and professors of archaeology, history, epigraphy and chemical isotopes from leading universities and museums in Israel and around the world. In four days of testimony, multimillionaire collector Shlomo Moussaieff described scenes where dealers, professors and even Israeli diplomats came to his home, produced rare antiquities from their pockets and negotiated sales worth thousands of dollars. On one occasion, Moussaieff sent his personal banker with Golan to buy some rare seal impressions from a Palestinian villager. They parked their car on a dirt road near the border with the West Bank and when the Palestinian arrived they gave him a bag containing $150,000 in cash. Charges dropped for 2 Charges against two of the defendants were dropped during the trial. Another man pleaded guilty to a minor charge unrelated to the main accusations, leaving Golan and antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch, who were alleged to have been the leaders of the supposed forgery ring. "I have never faked anything nor committed any crime," said Deutsch. "The authorities have ruined my reputation and I have lost my university teaching position because of the baseless charges leveled against me. When this is over, I will sue them for slander." Meanwhile, Judge Farkash has advised the prosecution to think about continuing the case before reconvening the trial in January. E-mail Matthew Kalman at foreign@sfchronicle.com. This article appeared on page A - 15 of the San Francisco Chronicle

James Ossuary Back in the News

Time Magazine online (now owned by CNN) has a feature on the James Ossuary. For the record, I'm not convinced the Ossuary (or the other relics referred to in the article) is a fraud, but I'm not convinced it is genuine, either. Exposing the 'Jesus' Brother' Fraud By Tim McGirk / Jerusalem Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008 For as long as man has worshipped a god, there have been forgers, crafty hucksters who seize on a believer's desire to possess material proof of the divine. In Jerusalem, it is a bountiful trade. The old adage is that if all the splinters of the True Cross were gathered from across Christendom, it would yield a wooden crucifix the size of a Manhattan skyscraper. Even back in the Middle Ages, pilgrims visiting Jerusalem told of hawkers who sold counterfeit bones and relics of saints. But indisputable historical evidence that Jesus Christ, or any of the other Biblical prophets, truly existed is something that eludes religious scholars. There was therefore much excitement in 2001 when a reclusive Tel Aviv collector, Oded Golan, announced that a stone reliquary had come into his possession inscribed with the words "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." The discovery of the ossuary was hailed in some quarters as a spectacular archaeological find — solidly circumstantial proof, at last, of Christ's existence. For it would have held the remains of the Apostle James, who was killed in A.D. 62 and is described in the Bible as Jesus' brother. When the James ossuary toured Canada in October 2002, it attracted thousands of the curious and faithful. Some visitors kneeled in quiet prayer. But back in Israel, police detectives, along with a growing posse of biblical scholars, were growing skeptical of the ossuary's authenticity. After a two-year investigation, police in December 2004 charged the antiquities collector and four others of forgery, alleging that the James ossuary was a clever fake and that Golan had masterminded an international ring of thieves that over the past 20 years had duped major museums and collectors out of millions. Put on trial, Golan denied the charges, and some experts and the pious rallied to his side. Nevertheless, one of the detectives insisted, "Oded Golan played with our beliefs, the beliefs of Jews and Christians. That is why it's the fraud of the century." The extraordinary story of how Israeli detectives built a case against Golan and his alleged cohorts is the subject of Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land by Nina Burleigh, a former TIME staffer who now writes for People. In fast, noir-ish prose — imagine Sam Spade in the Holy Land — Burleigh tracks her story through the twilight world of Arab grave robbers and smugglers to the glimmering salon of a billionaire collector in Mayfair whose mission, writes Burleigh, is "proving the Bible true." Past accounts of the James ossuary are fiercely partisan, written by debunkers or true believers. But Burleigh keeps her balance, and her humor, as she sifts — far more diligently than many archaeologists — through the evidence. She also has unprecedented access to all the major players in the James ossuary debate: dogged police detectives, sharp-witted antiquarians, Bible-besotted collectors and suspected forgers of near genius. Like any other Holy Land story, it's a potent mix of religion and politics. As Burleigh writes, "Where historians seek clues to the puzzle of the ancient worlds, evangelical Christians seek proof of the literal interpretation of the Bible and nationalist Israelis want evidence of ancient Jewish inhabitation." The James ossuary provided all of that, and more. At first detectives from the Israel Antiquities Authority suspected that the ossuary was authentic but had been stolen from a site by Arab grave diggers and sold to Golan. Israeli sleuths say they discovered that the limestone casket was indeed authentic, and dated back to the correct period of A.D. 60. But the key inscription, linking the object to Jesus Christ, was a clever fake. An analysis of the patina also revealed the presence of Tel Aviv tap water. In his defense, Golan claims it was because his mother occasionally scrubbed the ossuary with soap and water, not realizing its historical value. Believers and scientists alike were shocked by the accusations that not only was the James ossuary a fake but so were two other rare objects of biblical significance: an inscribed pomegranate and the gold-flecked Jehoash tablet, which both supposedly came from Solomon's Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6th century B.C. Those two relics are linked to Golan's workshop, say police. As Burleigh describes it, the debate over the authenticity of these sacred items pitted scientists against believers. She writes, "The faithful — those who believe in a higher, supernatural power that leaves a material record of itself for man to literally hold and behold — must also confront and grapple with the painful presence of doubt." Meanwhile, Golan's trial, with its parade of more than 75 scientists and biblical scholars, is likely to drag on for another year. But Golan maintained in an interview with TIME that he is innocent of all charges and that since the trial began experts have come forth to prove that both the inscriptions on the James ossuary and the Jehoash tablet are genuine. Even after the judge finally decides whether Golan was an innocent collector or a master forger, it's likely that the debate between skeptics and believers over the James ossuary — and its supposed proof of Christ's historical existence — will rage on long afterward.