The Texas Monthly notes in a guest piece by Nina Burleigh that some Religious Right group, with the name of "The Nazarene," is grifting at $69 a pop for people to see the fake James ossuary, on tour for 8 weeks in the Metromess. The story adds that none of the Israeli court controversy will be discussed as part of the exhibit. Nor has a finalized list of other display items been given, but they all apparently belong to unconvicted seeming forger Oded Golan. "The Nazarene" website is likewise taciturn, but does note that for those not set out enough by $69, swag will be available at a gift shop.
Riffing on what Israel Finkelstein said during Golan's trial, about how this would spur other fakes, when I talked about old Concordia Seminary student peer Jeff Kloha going to Hobby Lobby's Museum of the Bible, I called it the "BAR syndrome." And on Hobby Lobby's fake scrolls, I noted it even suckered James Charlesworth.
My Goodreads view of Burleigh's book about the forgery follows:
Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land by Nina Burleigh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Nina Burleigh gives us a story within a story in "Unholy Business." The shell, or outer story, is the trade in fraudulent and illicit genuine antiquities, with her focus being on the fraudulent ones.
That's the first "f" - the "forgery."
It's quickly united with "faith" and "fundamentalism." Fundamentalist and conservative evangelical non-fundamentalist Protestants, after centuries of their forefathers skewering the Catholic hankering for relics, are shown to be roundly hoist by their own petard. Maybe they're not after body parts, like saints' bones, but ostraca, etc, with Hebrew or Greek writing, let alone an ossuary? Different story.
(That's not to overlook the Jews in the story wanting a reinforcement of their connection with their heritage, whether their religious beliefs are that literalistic or not.)
Then, along comes the James ossuary to make the story inside a story, and to bring in the fourth "F," of filthy lucre. Long before this incident, Biblical Archaeology Review publisher Herschel Shanks was looked at askance by some for some of the ads his magazine ran and other things that had the possibility of boosting either the trade in illicitly acquired actual archaeological relics, or else a trade in forgeries.
Shanks, never a man to shy away from a good controversy, also gets hoist by his own petard. The book is worth it alone for her description of him:
"Shanks is an odd duck — lawyer, crank, P.T. Barnum and Indiana Jones all rolled into one man."
Sorry, folks, but "biblical" archaeology still isn't that scientific and, to the degree that it is, it hasn't verified a lot of biblical historicity.
That said, on a reread, after several moves, at a new library, new city, I moved the rating down from five stars to four. Without a second edition or a follow-up volume, this book was written too soon, in a sense. And it does have enough minor errors (or one larger one, claiming in one spot the temple was destroyed in 62) that it's not quite five stars. Given the wheels of Israeli justice grinding slowly even compared to America, as Burleigh notes, Golan's trial didn't finish until 2012. And, arguably due in part to sloppiness in investigation, he was acquitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O... Wiki's piece on the ossuary is a decent but not fantastic background source. It contains notable errors, including that no paleographer of repute has challenged Lemaire and Yardeni, when epigrapher (similar to paleographer) Rochelle Altman early on (before Golan's trial) repeatedly called the second half of the inscription a forgery. I added this to the Wiki page; see if it sticks.
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