Controversy over the authenticity of the James ossuary continues, despite media reports that suggested otherwise in covering the judgment advanced by a committee of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, Hershel Shanks, presents his survey of the current state of the question on the journal's web site:



The day after the Biblical Archaeology Review published an article last October on the extraordinary inscription, "James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus," scratched on a stone bone box from Jerusalem, it appeared on the front page of almost every paper in the world.



On June 18, 2003, a committee appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) declared the inscription to be a forgery. The bone box, or ossuary, was indeed ancient, but the inscription was added in modern times, the committee found.



It may indeed be a forgery and, if so, let's hope the forger will be caught and put in jail.



But I'm still not convinced that it is a forgery.



Jeremy Lott also writes on the subject at American Prowler.