Thursday, November 04, 2004

THERE'S A PAGE DEVOTED TO THE JAMES OSSUARY AND THE JOASH INSCRIPTION at the Biblical Archaeology Society website, as noted by Mark Goodacre. This Update � Finds or Fakes? page has lots of papers, editorials, notes, etc. from BAR and elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure that the Joash inscription is a fake, for reasons I've already given, and I have yet to be convinced that the full inscription of the James ossuary is genuine. Granted, I haven't invested a lot of time in either, since neither has been relevant to my research over the last couple of years. As I think I've said before, anyone who wants to defend the authenticity of either needs to do it in the realm of the peer-review journals and the professional monographs. If defenses appear in specialist journals or monographs, I would be grateful if readers would draw my attention to them. Meanwhile, I'm inclined to ignore the issue � unless, of course, a whim to do otherwise seizes me.

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