Name:brentl •
Title: James Ossuary and Oded Golan •
Date posted: 03/06/07 16:53
Q: I'm a little surprised no mention has been made about Oded Golan (the owner of the James Ossuary). He was indicted in 2004 along with some others for operating a forgery ring. Some facts about him:
1) When Israeli police busted into his apartment they found inscribing tools, unused patina, blank tablets, some forged and half-finished tablets, among much other parapheranalia.
2) I may be wrong, but I thought at one point Golan actually admitted to the forgeries?
3) He was busted for a forged "Jehoash tablet" that supposedly detailed repairs done to Solomon's temple (would have been quite a large find as it would be the only artifact proving the existence of the templ)
4) During this trial, an FBI agent testified that a photo of the James Ossuary, showing it in Golan's home, was taken in the 1970s. Of course this would make it impossible to have been discovered with the rest of the tomb in the 1980s.
The list kinda goes on and on. But no mention of any of this? I was quite entertained and compelled by the program until they brought in the James Ossuary, which shot the credibility almost completely for me. Does anyone know any more about this? And especially why it wouldn't have been mentioned in the program?
Name:kbob •
Date: 03/07/07 1:01
A: If youread up on the case of the James Ossuary that is current;y still goin , on (it started back up Feb 27, 2007) You will find that one of the possible explanations of the assumption that there is a photo of the ossuary from the 70's is that in 1978 the law changed wich meant if you had an ancient artifact bought or otherwise acquired before 1978 then it was yours to keep. However, if you acquired it after that it was automatically property of the state. Now i'm not a genius but I can clearly see why one would want everyone to believe that an acient artifact in my posession was acquired pre 1978. And hey, if you are such a good artifact forger them does it not stand to reason you could also doctor a photo? No one ever mentions that.
Name:KRS •
Date: 03/07/07 2:23
A: I'm surprised it had to you going that long, the use of second/third century gnostic texts to identify someone with a first century historical figure is quite a stretch in itself.
As for the James Ossuary, the other thing that has come out (the day after the film) is that the James Ossuary was not the tenth ossuary from the site. This was stated by the archeologist who examined the site initially and removed the ossuaries when he was interviewed by the Jerusalem Post. He noted that the dimensions are wrong, and the tenth ossuary did not have an inscription on it.
As for doctoring a photo, its possible, but less likely. The James ossuary still has some questions, and I initially questioned the conclusions of the last group to examine it (since there were some questions about their methodology), but when I found out the guy was a forger, and apparantly a very good one, I pretty well figured the odds were pretty far against its genuineness.
