The James Ossuary

A first century AD limestone ossuary (bone-box) bearing the Aramaic inscription: "Ya'akov Bar Yosef Achui DeYeshua" (= Ya'akov, son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus).

The ossuary was most likely used as the final resting place of the skeletal remains / bones  of Ya'akov, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth (also known as "James the Just,"  St. James, and St. Diego [in Spanish]), who was mentioned in the New Testament and by the first century historian Josephus Flavius (Antiquities of the Jews). Ya'acov (James) was the head of the Judeo-Christian community in Jerusalem around 37 AD and the first bishop of Jerusalem. He was stoned to death at the order of the Sanhedrin in 63 AD.

The James Ossuary was reportedly discovered in Silwan (in East Jerusalem) and was sold in the mid-1970s in the local antiquities market in Jerusalem by a licensed Palestinian dealer, and reached an Israeli antiquities collector without recognizing its importance. In 2000, the ossuary was examined by Prof. André Lemaire (a Hebrew and Aramaic expert, from the Sorbonne University), who identified that the ossuary should most likely be attributed to Ya'acov (James), the brother of Jesus of Nazareth. Prof. Lemaire published an article about the ossuary in Biblical Archeology Review (BAR) and the ossuary was featured in a special exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto in late 2002.

Each one of the names appearing on the ossuary (Ya’acov, Yoseph, Yeshua) was a fairly common name among Jewish males in Jerusalem during the first century AD. However, the combination of the names (e.g. A father with the name Yoseph, who had one child with the name Ya’acov and another with the name Yeshua), was extremely rare and therefore drastically increases the probability of associating the ossuary with Ya’acov (James), the son of Yoseph (the husband of Maria), whose brother was Jesus of Nazareth.

In 2002-2006, the ossuary and its inscription was independently examined by a large number of experts from around the world, including experts in the fields of geology, geo-microbiology, patina, stone, engraving technologies, archaeology, paleography, isotopy, ossuaries, ancient names, and statistics, including Prof. André Lemaire (Sorbonne University), Dr. Ada Yardeni (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Prof. Roni Reich (Haifa University and the Israel Antiquities Authority), Prof. Wolfgang Krumbein (Oldenburg University, Germany), members of The Israel Geological Survey (Dr. Rosenfeld and Dr. Ilani), the ROM Museum Laboratories in Toronto (Dr. Ed. Keall and others), Prof. James Harrell (Toledo University, USA), Prof. Gabi Barkai (Bar Ilan University) and others. The inscription was identified by all as an authentic inscription from the first half of the first century AD.

Scientific tests, microscopic photographs and other tests performed on the ossuary unequivocally indicate that a natural patina developed inside the grooves of the inscription slowly over many centuries. Micro-biological organisms (bacteria) that lived on the stone and inside the grooves of the inscription, when the ossuary was in the burial cave, created a biological patina. This biological patina layer (which over the years becomes an integral part of the stone) was identified by the experts inside the grooves of several letters.

The Jerusalem District Court, which heard testimonies from dozens of experts who examined the ossuary, ruled that claims made by the Israel Antiquities Authority that half of the inscription was new - were baseless allegations and rejected the Israel Antiquities Authority's request to confiscate the ossuary from the collector (Oded Golan).

Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University conducted a statistical study using the distribution of names in first-century Jerusalem, based on the hundreds of ossuaries discovered in Jerusalem and other historical sources. He found that on the basis of the combination of names appearing on the James ossuary, the rarity of the mention of siblings on ossuaries, and population statistics of the relatively brief period in which ossuaries were in use, there is close to a 100% probability that the inscription on the ossuary refers to James the brother of Jesus.

The ossuary was published in the scientific corpus of the ancient inscriptions of Israel. "Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae / Palaestinae - Volume 1 Jerusalem, Part 1: 1-704."

In a 2019 survey conducted by the Ha'aretz newspaper (Nir Hasson), Israeli archaeologists defined the ossuary as the most important archaeological find discovered in Israel in the last 70 years.