Joseph Zias on the 10th Ossuary and the James Ossuary March 20 (Expanded March 22)

Here is a full email from Joseph Zias, one of those who worked on this tomb about the 10th tomb.

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If there is one thing that angers academics here in Jerusalem, directly connected to the story, it is how Cameron and the BAR crowd have willfully manipulated data in a most dishonest and cynical way to sell the their film, book as well as the book called The Jesus Dynasty upon which much of the story is based.
One can see this manipulation and deliberate deception in the following posting by someone from Toronto (surprised ?) supporting the premise of the film and the books. He writes as follows when questioned about the film:

Here is a full email from Joseph Zias, one of those who worked on this tomb about the 10th tomb.

_________

"
If there is one thing that angers academics here in Jerusalem, directly connected to the story, it is how Cameron and the BAR crowd have willfully manipulated data in a most dishonest and cynical way to sell the their film, book as well as the book called The Jesus Dynasty upon which much of the story is based.
One can see this manipulation and deliberate deception in the following posting by someone from Toronto (surprised ?) supporting the premise of the film and the books. He writes as follows when questioned about the film:

The Facts
The history of the James son of Josef, brother of Jesus ossuary which the IAA and nearly the entire academic community have written off as an attempt to con the public including the ROM was a few years ago declared by Tabor and Gibson to have come from what they call their the "Tomb of the Shroud." which is based on a handful of badly decomposed fragments from a burial shroud. This was done to attract media attention which they did and the impt. fact to remember is, that the tomb was robbed twice once in 1996 and again in 2000. No one bought it, aside from Tabor and Gibson and a few naive followers. They attempted to show on the basis of a small detail on the ossuary that the ossuary in question, James which Oded Golan claims to have been purchased in the 1970’s actually was from their 2000 find ! All of us knew this was a cheap attempt to manipulate public interest, Shroud=Jesus=James the brother. Few bought into it.

In the meantime the BAR crowd along with the Canadians decided to resurrect the 1996 British documentary on the Talpiot tomb. Time was right, Dan Brown, Baigent and a host of others had successfully conned people into believing the Da Vinci Code as history and Baigent had come up with a book entitled Jesus Papers in which he claims to have seen some papers evidently written by JC himself.

So time was right to move the narrative of the James ossuary, from the Tomb of the Shroud in Silwan to the Talpiot Jesus Family tomb, one valley over, same period and why not, as the Canadians claimed to have found the tomb of the Jesus Family, and James the brother of Jesus was missing from the scheme. No one will know, particularly the public, if it is hyped well enough. The problem now was how to give it some ‘respectability’ some ‘hard science’ There were some problems however as one expert hired by the defense in the current trial recently declared in BAR that the ossuary had been out of it’s tomb environment for 150 years (sic) . We all knew that it was exh. in the ROM for a few months but 150 years, was it taken to France by the priory to some chateau and then returned to Jerusalem ? James sounds like a frequent flier or as we say for those of you who know Hebrew, Frequent Fryer .

Patinas
In order to obtain patina samples, why not turn to that same IL geological organization which had earlier authenticated several of the allegedly fraudulent objects such as the Jeohash Temple inscription, the oil lamp with all those ritual symbols, which any first year student would immed. recognize as a forged object. Several were more than willing to comply despite the fact that they were earlier shamed by the academic community having been once burned and now the possibility of being burned twice. I suppose that once you have lost your creditability, there’s nothing more to lose except face and for some that comes cheap when millions of dollars are riding on it. What’s ones reputation worth dollar wise in academia ?

The Patina Testing For certain legal reasons I cannot go into this in detail other than to say that A-the US lab which ran some of these tests specializes in such things as car homicides, run of the mill forensic issues and have nothing whatsoever to do with archaeology. B had they sampled other patinas in other collections they would have found that all ossuaries found in Jerusalem basically would share the same geological features, same time period, same stone duh ! C. According to the BAR expert, James was outside the tomb for 150 years and developed a somewhat unique ‘patina fingerprint" did ‘double name’ Mary (aka as Billy Bob) and the rest of the ‘menage’ share the same geological characteristics with James ? I’d bet the farm they did.

The Missing Ossuary
I’ve seen better plots in the daily soap opera’s. For starters as we have said again and again, the 10Th ossuary which was removed from the tomb, was despite what the BAR crowd say, was never, never given a final number in the tomb nor missing. Final numbers are only given in the IAA upon receivership, by the curators. By this time the ossuary has been seen by those excavating the tomb and others in the IAA, inc. myself, Professor Kloner, LY Rahmani and a few others. Any ossuary which entered the Rockefeller Museum along with Rahmani who was writing his magum opus and PhD. on ossuaries, which will for decades remain the standard reference work on ossuaries, would have noticed any ossuary with an inscription, particularly since the ‘James ossuary" was decorated with two rosettes on the front, traces of red paint and an inscription on the reverse. In terms of museum protocol this was a ‘keeper’ and for lack of space those plain white ossuaries inclusing the 10th one,
were recorded, numbered, measured, cataloged and stored in a safe open inner courtyard, along with tens and tens of others. The 10th ossuary fell into the category of discard. It’s that simple it was not permanently stored inside along with the other 9, not measured in the tomb, not photographed, it was simply stored away. In the intervening years, the elements, despite several attempts by myself to find inks which were weather resistant, took their toll on the provenience of the ossuaries and the numbers disappeared. Tabor knew this as he was told by myself personally well in advance of the film this month. In fact, I advised him that he was traveling a slippery path working with SJ and rapidly losing his academic standing in the community with all this as well, first it was his total support of the James ossuary, his attempt to secure some bone fragments stored in Tupper Ware in Tel Aviv, (the IAA refused) evidently to clone the DNA of James or what they would
probably call the Second Coming, The Cave of John the Baptist with Gibson which no one accepted , the Jesus Dynasty, which few if any accepted. The list was growing, his somewhat cynical reply to my remarks will appear sometime in the future.

Conspiracy theories
Ignoring every thing which I had related to Tabor that day, including the fact that Tabor’s claim that the dimensions of the ‘missing 10th ossuary’ was identical to the dimensions of James sounded like the slam dunk they were looking for, to authenticated their conspiracy claim. Fortunately, a Jrsm scholar totally unconnected to the controversy decided to look up the dimensions of the two and published the facts, Tabors claim that the dimensions of the two were identical was purely an invention, hoping to sucker a few more people into the scheme.

So here we have a few problems with James the Elder, A- he was declared to be forged, he moved from valley to valley, with short episodes outside the tomb in the ROM and somewhere else for 150 yrs before being re-interred, in Silwan or Talpiot (take your pick) and now here’s the real clincher….. Remember that Tabor, Gibson and the Canadians now claim that the ossuary was not ‘outed’ in Silwan in 2000 but 1980 (the year it was excavated) from the Talpiot tomb of Jesus Family and then taken under the noses of the IAA.

Oded Golan, the owner who is currently on trial produced a few weeks ago, a photo of James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus, with a time stamp 1976 !!!
So much for the creditability of all those involved in this scheme which I have maintained from the beginning.

Feel free to pass it on to the SBL crowd this weekend.

Joe Zias, Jerusalem

Anthropology/Paleopathology "

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My comments: There is no reason to think the tenth tomb is the James Ossuary. It was handled according to normal procedure as Amos Kloner also notes in his audio interview.

One more addition. I am not sure this discussion is advanced by attributing motives to people, when we cannot not know why they do what they are doing. Everyone will have to answer for why they have done what they have done one day. Readers should sort through Zias’s tone used here. Nonetheless, I do not see that as altering some of the facts which Zias treats here about the tenth tomb (as it corroborates what Kloner said). Nor does it alter the sense I have received from many I interviewed that they felt their contributions to the special were not put in a proper context (as for example, Tal Ilan and Stephen Pfann noted to me personally.)