jerusalem. while the name joseph appears on 7 percent, jesus on 4 and james on 2 percent, fuchs concludes it s improbable that another family combining these three names existed. it is very likely, in my opinion, the james on this ossuary is the james who is the brother of jesus. the likelihood that this could be some other family with those three names, where the father is joseph and the two brothers are james and jesus, seems very unlikely. two thousand years ago, everything changes for the brothers, jesus and james, when joseph dies. we really don t know when
back in 1970s jerusalem, there is a vibrant market for antique ossuaries. i didn t see anything particular in this ossuary. it was sat for many years at my parents apartment together with several other ossuaries that i purchased at that time because i didn t put any special attention to this ossuary. but in april 2002, golan invites andre lemaire, a renowned scholar of ancient aramaic, to examine some items in his collection. lemaire s attention is immediate drawn to the unidentified ossuary golan bought 30 years before. lemaire deciphers the mysterious inscription. it reads, james, son of joseph, brother of jesus. he found that there is a very high probability that it
james together as children. joseph sent james into the forest to gather sticks. jesus also went with him. the gospel continues: an abominable snake bit james on the hand, and as he lay dying, the boy jesus ran to james and did nothing but blow on the bite, and immediately the bite was healed. james is put there with jesus from the very beginning. we see an organic connection
matthew 1:25 says literally, joseph was not knowing her in the carnal sense until she gave birth to jesus. now, any normal reading of that sentence implies she went on to have more children after that, and his brothers and sisters are in fact his brothers and sisters. the bible tells us very little about the early life of jesus. the gospels really fast forward almost totally until he s 30 years old, and he s the son of god. what about all those missing years when he was a teenager playing around with his brothers, getting into trouble? written around 100 years after jesus death, the infancy gospel of thomas is a collection of stories about his childhood. there is a peculiar story about james, and it s an interesting picture of jesus and
an ossuary, scientifically dated to the time of christ. on its side, an inscription in ancient aramaic which reads james, son of joseph, brother of jesus. it came just as we d crossed the millennium threshold. we d already had the y2k bug. we had the pope s millennial visit to the holy land, and this seemed to be another one of those sort of millennial happenings. it s claimed that this box, measuring 10 inches by 20, is no less than the burial casket of james, the brother of jesus christ. the ossuary is so important, not just for the fact that it says, the brother of jesus,