James, the brother of Jesus?

On Nov. 26, my family and I caught the subway at Toronto's Union Station and began the pilgrimage north to the Royal Ontario Museum. It was the final day of the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. We were headed to see one of the star attractions of the conference although it was located far to the north of the convention site.

The main attraction for this year's meeting, anticipated for months in advance, was the appearance of the Franco-Algerian philosopher of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida. Just weeks before the meeting, however, James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus came bursting forth from the grave after nearly 2,000 years to steal the limelight leaving behind an empty ossuary as his brother left behind an empty tomb. I had attended a special session of the Society of Biblical Literature on Sunday afternoon where an international team of scholars had reviewed the evidence for and against identifying the James of the ossuary as the brother of Jesus Christ. Now I would examine the evidence for myself.

An ossuary is a container for the secondary burial of the deceased's bones after the deterioration of the flesh following the primary burial in a tomb. The custom of secondary burial was practiced in the city of Jerusalem in the first century. Eric Meyers of Duke University claimed that secondary burial without an ossuary would have been more common for someone of James' social status. Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne in Paris, the discoverer of the ossuary, said that secondary burial was the dominant custom in Jerusalem where tradition says James was martyred.

The lobby of the Royal Ontario Museum was filled with a towering evergreen Christmas tree covered with crystal and gold ornaments reaching up into a golden mosaic dome crowned with the inscription: "That all men may know His work." Adele Reinhartz of Wilfred Laurier University in Canada who moderated the Sunday session had noted that if this was the ossuary of James, then the unique identification of his brother in the inscription meant that James remained in the shadow of his more famous brother in death as he had in life. Certainly authentication of the ossuary would impact our understanding of the holy family. What would it mean for our understanding of Mary's virginity? At the Royal Ontario Museum, the tree marking the birth of the one brother stood in sharp juxtaposition to the ossuary associated with the death of the other brother.

The ossuary sat alone on a pedestal encased in glass in a third floor room with red walls and voluminous white inscriptions in both English and French. Two semi-opaque screens veiled the ossuary and the visitors' eyes were drawn to the walls. The small, illuminated limestone box was not noticiable upon first entering the room.

Andre Lemaire described the box as trapezoid in shape, made of limestone with soil samples indicative of eastern Jerusalem. The ossuary was far less ornate or well structured than the three ossuaries regularly on display at the museum with their symmetrical shapes, red paint, and two or three rosettes on the front side. The James ossuary had one clearly visible rosette on the right and the shadow of another on the left of the side opposite to the inscription. Meyers raised the question as to why the inscription would have been written on what appears to be the backside of the ossuary. Had it been recycled for use by James? Had it been recycled for use by a forger? Lemaire had described the inscription as being written clearly in classical Aramaic script, 9 centimeters in length and 9 millimeters in height. Still, knowing this, the inscription appeared small for such a big commotion. The inscription started near the right hand margin of the ossuary and covered about two-thirds of the distance to the left-hand side of the box, running from right to left as Semitic languages are want to do. It reminded me of a first-grader's beginning efforts at writing on a Big Chief Tablet -- beginning with perfect block letters, neatly and carefully drawn, but growing weary and careless by the end of the line. The first three words were as clear to read as the daily paper, even though there was no space between the words: "Yaakov bar Yosef," that is, "Jacob (or James) son of Joseph." The remainder of the inscription is more difficult to read for a number of reasons. The best known of these problems is the crack that occurred when the ossuary was shipped to Toronto. The crack begins at the upper lip of the ossuary just above the end of the inscription and runs at an angle to the right cutting through the inscription just about the dalet, the "of" in "brother of Jesus." The crack turns right beneath the inscription and runs parallel with the top and bottom of the box, continues around the right end corner, through the narrow end of the ossuary, and then turns and continues three-quarters of the way through the side with the rosettes. Only the remaining narrow end is untouched by the crack.

There is general consensus among scholars that the second part of the inscription reads "akhui diYeshua" -- "the brother of Jesus." What they cannot agree about is its authenticity or its significance.

It is an experience to visit a museum surrounded by a group of scholars that is engrossed in examining rather than simply viewing an exhibit.

"Oh yes, there's that cursive shin."

"And that's that strange dalet."

"What is that strange foot on that dalet?"

"It looks like it's just a hole in the limestone."

"The limestone has a smooth surface for the first half of the inscription, while the surface is rough under the second half of the inscription."

Indeed, the difference in surface might well explain the roughness in text of the second half of the inscription.

Amidst the inscriptions upon the red walls that loomed over the small limestone box were descriptions, genealogical charts, and quotes from other ancient sources.

The genealogical tables gave three perspectives on the make-up of the holy family. One represented the Protestant view, that Mary and Joseph had children together, including James, after the birth of Jesus. A second presented the Eastern Orthodox view which preserves the perpetual virginity of Mary by identifying Jesus' siblings as stepsiblings born to Joseph by a prior marriage. A third table presented James as a kinsman, a cousin, of Jesus. While adoption might represent another option, it is clear that if the inscription is a true reference to James, bishop of Jerusalem, called the Just, then as "son of Joseph," James is a closer relative than a mere kinsman or cousin.

Two texts quoted upon the walls of the ossuary display are of particular importance. One is from the Jewish historian Josephus who gives us our only non-Christian reference, and the other is from St. Paul who gives us the only biblical reference. Josephus reported the martyrdom of James in Jerusalem at the hands of the chief priest Ananus in Jewish Antiquities 20:200. Josephus calls James "James the brother of Jesus, the one called Christ." Steve Mason of York University in Canada and John Painter of Charles Sturt University in Australia noted that the names of James and Jesus were so common in ancient Judea that Josephus felt he had to qualify the Jesus he was referring to as "the one called Christ." The question then arises as to whether the author of the inscription would have needed to make such a differentiation if he were identifying his client with the founder of the faith. Only Galatians 1:18-19 identifies James as the brother of Jesus within the New Testament and there he is called "the brother of the Lord," rather than "the brother of Jesus."

Would not the inscriber have felt the need to be more specific as well? Clearly the issues raised and theories to explain the ossuary and its inscription have only begun to multiply among scholars.

As I moved on to visit the rest of the Royal Ontario Museum I suddenly realized with a start that I was more moved devotionally by the Byzantine icons and the Medieval statuary and stained glass than I had been by the ossuary that may have contained "the brother of our Lord." I returned to the ossuary to stand at a distance and contemplate the implied significance of the artifact. While I felt greater appreciation for the ossuary's connection with my faith, I never gained the sense of awe that one expects in the presence of a relic of the faith. The strongest pull was to once again analyze the inscription.

Perhaps it is only fitting to close with the thoughts of Jacques Derrida who had been forced to share the stage with Jacob bar Joseph, the brother of Yeshua. When asked what his thoughts were regarding the ossuary at his Sunday evening plenary session, Derrida said that the ossuary is archaeology, archaeology is science, and science is knowledge. Knowledge is good but knowledge is not faith. Faith and knowledge are both necessary but we must disassociate them from each other. When faith becomes dependent on such things, on knowledge, it is a "travesty" and it is "the end of faith."

Wynn is director of the Learning Enrichment Center at Southeast Missouri State University and teaches in the department of philosophy and religion.