The James Ossuary has been quiet for quite a while, but in the ramp-up to Easter things always tend to get louder.
A new article that contends for the inscription’s authenticity has been published by Amnon Rosenfeld, Howard R. Feldman, and Wolfgang E. Krumbein, and is available as a free download from the Open Journal of Geology.
I’m still chewing upon their analysis.
Peace,
-Steve
(HT Jim Davila & The Bible Places Blog — and yes they posted it on April 1, but this doesn’t look like a joke. 🙂 )
Hmm I’m still not quite convinced as of yet. I still believe presently that, at the very least, the latter part of the inscription is a forgery; the ossuary was in the ownership of an Israeli Engineer and Artifact collector for quite some time, him now being on trial for 44 counts of forgery.
Aye, their analysis doesn’t really give much credence to the second half of the inscription as genuine as I’m not convinced that what they’re pointing at (for example in Figure 8) is what they say it is, and my guess that those are the best photos they’ve got.
There is little doubt (at least in my mind) that the ossuary is ancient and that the first half of the inscription is real. I’m still skeptical about the second half.
Peace,
-Steve