Was the missing ossuary from Talpiot the same as the James ossuary?
This entire discussion assumes and depends on the assertion that the James ossuary is itself authentic, which is highly disputed.26 If it is a fake, this issue is a moot point. Or even if the ossuary is authentic, but the words “brother of Jesus” have been added, as some have charged, then the Talpiot Hypothesis is weakened considerably.
The James ossuary appears in a 1976 photo produced by Oded Golan (owner of James ossuary) at his trial.27 Reportedly, former FBI agent Gerald Richard testified in the Israeli court proceedings that the photo came from Golan's home and did indeed date to the 1970s, as indicated by tests performed in the FBI photo lab.28 Jacobovici has even admitted that if the James ossuary was photographed in the 1970s, it could not be from a tomb that was discovered in 1980, the date of the Talpiot Tomb find.29
The dealer who supplied Oded Golan with the James ossuary said that it came from Silwan, not Talpiot. The dirt found in the ossuary backs up that claim.30 Plus, Silwan is within sight of the temple, as required by the Eusebius citation below.31
According to ancient historian Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 2:23), James was buried on the same location where he was stoned, near the temple. This is not near the Talpiot location.32
The martyrdom of James, illustrated by Jan Luiken in the 1685 edition of the Martyr's Mirror. Courtesy of the Mennonite Library at Bethel College.
Amos Kloner and Joe Zias disagree with James Tabor regarding the tenth ossuary: Amos Kloner retrieved the tenth ossuary and Joe Zias catalogued it at the Rockefeller Museum while he was the curator there. As the original scholars who did the work, they clarified the issue as follows:33
The measurements of the tenth Talpiot ossuary are significantly different from that of the James ossuary. The James ossuary measures 50.5cm x 25cm x 30.5cm, while the tenth ossuary measured 60cm x 26cm x 30cm, with the latter measurements appearing in Kloner's original article, years ago.34 So the tenth Talpiot ossuary is 20 percent longer than the James ossuary.
There was no name on the tenth ossuary—it was plain. So it was not even photographed. Plain ossuaries without inscriptions or ornaments were then placed in the inner courtyard of Rockefeller Museum while Zias was the curator there, and that is where the tenth box was taken. So it was not the James ossuary.
Stephen Goranson of Duke University states that Tabor has known of the discrepancy between his view and the Kloner/Zias view, at least since November 23, 2006, after complaining about Goranson's writing in the Jerusalem Perspective.35
Tabor acknowledges straightforwardly: “I am not sure if the 10th ossuary is or is not the one we now know as the ‘James ossuary’” But he still thinks that when Kloner wrote his original article in 1996, that “he had nothing to go on but the registration number and dimensions, so he writes ‘plain.”’ If Kloner did see and remember the tenth ossuary, “that is for him to say.”36
So far, scholarship has sided firmly with the work of Kloner and Zias, and against the hypothesis that the tenth ossuary is that of James the brother of Jesus. Goodacre concludes: “At this point it looks highly unlikely that the James ossuary is the missing tenth box from the Talpiot tomb, unless the data we possess requires correction”37 Jonathan Reed stated: “I do not think Kloner would have missed that; I refuse to believe it.”38 Witherington concurs with the reports of Kloner and Zias, including some personal e-mails from the latter.39 The almost uniform view is that the tenth ossuary was never missing or stolen; it has been accounted for since the beginning. But since it had no name on it and the dimensions are significantly different, it is very probably not the James ossuary.
Do the patinas match on the Talpiot ossuaries and the James box?
Zias charges that the film shows experts “scraping material from the ossuary, under the worst possible conditions.” So Zias concludes that the “experts” involved in this testing “have no expertise whatsoever with local materials”—one was reportedly an authority in auto crashes!40
Details showing the patinas of the James ossuary (left) and the Jesus ossuary (right). Photos: Left: Drew Cunningham/Getty Images Right: Mariana Salzberger, Courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority via Getty Images.
Witherington says about the comparison of patinas: “This is not actually surprising [sic] at all since you can find terra rosa in various locales in and around Jerusalem.”41
Ted Koppel reported: “We called Robert Genna at the Suffolk County Crime Lab and he said: ‘The elemental composition of some of the samples we tested from the ossuaries are consistent with each other. But I would never say they are a match....No scientist would ever say definitively that one ossuary came from the same tomb as another. …”42
This entire discussion assumes and depends on the assertion that the James ossuary is itself authentic, which is highly disputed.26 If it is a fake, this issue is a moot point. Or even if the ossuary is authentic, but the words “brother of Jesus” have been added, as some have charged, then the Talpiot Hypothesis is weakened considerably.
The measurements of the tenth Talpiot ossuary are significantly different from that of the James ossuary. The James ossuary measures 50.5cm x 25cm x 30.5cm, while the tenth ossuary measured 60cm x 26cm x 30cm, with the latter measurements appearing in Kloner's original article, years ago.34 So the tenth Talpiot ossuary is 20 percent longer than the James ossuary.