From the WSJ Opinion Archives
THINKING THINGS OVER
A Stone Box, Christ and History
Science can't ignore Jesus.
In the year of our Lord 2002, the most remarkable news in all Christendom was the appearance of a stone mortuary box bearing the Aramaic inscription, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." It may once have contained the bones of James, brother of Jesus of Nazareth and early Christian leader in Jerusalem, who was stoned to death in A.D. 62.
André Lemaire of the Sorbonne writes in the Biblical Archaeology Review that this is the likely history of the ossuary, a box used by Jews at the time of Christ to contain the bones of the deceased after the body's flesh had been allowed to decay. Mr. Lemaire calculates that in ancient Jerusalem the combination of a father named Joseph and sons named James and Jesus would happen by chance only about 20 times over two generations, and that a brother would be mentioned only if he were of unusual prominence or importance. The ossuary is currently on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
Like other artifacts with religious overtones, it has excited controversy. One Rochelle Altman, a semi-retired Medieval English Ph.D. who hosts a Web discussion group, has denounced it as a forgery. Eric Meyers, a Duke expert on ossuaries, says he has "serious questions about authenticity," but his hang-up is that it was purchased on the antiquities market rather than dug up by a trained archeologist. Oded Golan, a Tel Aviv engineer and antiquities collector, says he bought the box sometime before 1976, and that the import of its inscription was not recognized until Mr. Lemaire inspected it.
The critics assert that differences in lettering style suggest that the phrase "brother of Jesus" was added by a second hand. Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, points out that Mr. Lemaire is himself one of the world's leading paleographers, or experts in ancient writing, and says several similarly qualified experts agree that the inscription was by one hand. Also, extensive scientific tests described in the original article show that the box and inscriptions are of ancient origin.
Mr. Shanks and Ben Witherington III are about to publish "The Brother of Jesus," a book on the James ossuary and its implications. (Christians who believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary see James as a cousin or half-brother.)
No doubt the controversy will continue forever. Too bad the box wasn't found in mint condition by someone with a Ph.D., but I don't see how science can afford simply to ignore objects without such a provenance, which include the Dead Sea Scrolls. To me, Occam's razor--the simplest explanation is the likeliest one--suggests that the James Ossuary is what it seems, the earliest recorded reference to Jesus of Nazareth.
Extra-Biblical references to Christ are often said to be few, but that is not the same as none. We know about the death of James, for example, from Josephus, a Jew who wrote the history of his people after joining the Roman cause. He describes James as "the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ/Messiah."
Isaac Asimov, famous for scientific writings, also wrote a two-volume "Guide to the Bible." He speculates that James was denounced and killed because his Christian faction stood for pacifism when the Zealots were agitating against Roman rule. They openly rebelled four years later, leading Rome to destroy the temple in A.D. 70 and scatter the tribes into the diaspora.
Received versions of Josephus contain a second and controversial reference to Jesus, called the "Testimonium Flavianum." This is simply too Christian to be true. A Jewish/Roman historian would not write, for example, "He was the Messiah." The scholarly debate is over whether this whole passage was inserted by Christians copying Josephus, or whether it was an actual reference doctored up with Christian doctrine.
The latter interpretation is supported by a separate Arabic translation of the Testimonium reported by a 10th century Bishop in Asia Minor. This is described in the exhaustive "The Historical Jesus: a Comprehensive Guide" by Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz. (I was led to it by a remarkable Web site, www.earlychristianwritings.com, maintained by Peter Kirby in Placentia, Calif.)
The Roman historian Tacitus discussed Nero blaming Christians for the burning of Rome. He explained, "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate. . . ."
Mara bar Sarapion, a first-century Syrian stoic imprisoned by the Romans, wrote his son a private letter, commenting on punishment of the Athenians for killing Socrates and the Samians for burning Pythagoras. He continued "Or what did it avail the Jews to kill their wise king, since their kingdom was taken away from them from that time on?"
Theissen and Merz also report mentions in anti-Christian rabbinic sources, in Pliny the Younger and Suetonius. Julius Africanus (c. 170-240) comments on an earlier and lost history by Thallus reporting that darkness covered the world at the crucifixion. "Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse. This seems to me to be irrational."
To a person of faith, this history probably matters little. The miracle is the progress of Christianity from a persecuted cult to the religion of Rome to history's most potent religious force. If it no longer has a firm hold on the Western mind, it's also true that in the Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan and China, Christians are dying for their faith, just as James did in A.D. 62.
Most scholars, barring the stray atheist, have already accepted Jesus of Nazareth as a historical person. The non-biblical sources, adding historical credence to the Gospels, show why. And now a simple stone box reaches to us across the centuries as another thing to ponder in our hearts.
Mr. Bartley is editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
