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One of the most sensational religious announcements in recent memory came last October, when a French scholar reported the discovery of a limestone burial box inscribed, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”
If authentic, the burial box, or ossuary, provides the earliest evidence by at least six decades for the existence of James, Joseph, and Jesus. It also provides tantalizing evidence about the nature of their inter-relationships.
Claims and counterclaims have been made regarding the authenticity of the James ossuary. Most scholars in paleography, epigraphy, and Herodian-period Aramaic believe it is probably authentic.
Objections to the authenticity of the inscription on the box have been answered. Some early skeptics, noting apparent differences in the handwriting, suggested that the Jesus phrase could have been added by a forger, either in ancient or modern times. However, the inscription has been studied under an electron microscope and shows the same signs of age as the box itself. The more weathered floral markings on the back of the box are easily explained by the fact that the ossuary was likely carved long before it was used by James’ family or friends.
Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, and I advance the case for the authenticity of the box in the new book The Brother of Jesus. We also discuss the implications of the ossuary.
Strangely, no one has stopped to ask what the James box tells us about Easter and about James’ own faith.
The earliest evidence we have about those to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection is found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. That letter was written a couple of decades after Jesus’ death, around 52-53 A.D., and well before any of the Gospels were written.
It is striking that in I Corinthians 15:3-7, Paul mentions a variety of people to whom Jesus appeared, but only three are said to have had private encounters with the risen Jesus—Peter, James (the brother of Jesus), and Paul himself. This is of no small importance. John 7:3-5 says that James and the other brothers of Jesus did not believe in him during his earthly ministry.
The event that transformed James from a doubter into not only a believer but the leader of the earliest church in Jerusalem was the Easter appearance of Jesus. It is rare—indeed almost unprecedented—to mention a person’s brother on an ossuary inscription. Of all the hundreds of inscribed ossuaries from the period 20 B.C. to A.D. 70, only one other one mentions a brother. When something other than the name of the deceased and his father is mentioned, it is because something special and honorific needed to be added for explanation.
This James is distinguished from others because he was the brother of that Jesus, the one who rose from the dead.
Had there been no Resurrection, there would have been no mention of Jesus on James’ burial box. Why not?
At that time, crucifixion was the most shameful way to die, and no one would brag on a burial stone about being related to a crucified Jew if nothing beyond crucifixion had happened. The form of the Aramaic inscription is emphatic — the last part of it reads literally “His brother is Jesus.” The inscriber wanted to make clear that the deceased James had the honor of being related to this more famous person.
We live in a Jesus-haunted culture but also in a culture that is largely biblically illiterate. Almost anything passes for knowledge of the historical Jesus or the historical James. We also live in a visually oriented and scientifically minded culture that demands concrete, tangible evidence for claims of faith. In the ossuary of James we now have visual testimony that there was once a family that included James, Joseph, and Jesus, a family that lost two sons to martyrdom— one to crucifixion, one to stoning. But the ossuary is not a grim reminder of mortality. It is powerful testimony to hope. Early Jews who practiced the reburial of bones in an ossuary did so because they believed in a positive afterlife beyond death, and most of them did so because they believed in bodily resurrection. But James and the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus in Jerusalem had a special reason for affirming this belief. They had seen what Shakespeare would centuries later call “the ocular proof.” Jesus had appeared to James and others and changed their lives forever. An inscriber signaled that in James’ ossuary lay a man whose more famous brother had already risen from the dead. There was then hope for James of a similar future, and, as it turns out, hope for all of us as well.
The question remains as to whether we will rise to the occasion and embrace that hope.
Ben Witherington III is professor of New Testament Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, and the co-author of The Brother of Jesus (Harper, 2003)—a book about the James ossuary.
A prolific author, Dr. Witherington has written 15 books and six commentaries, including The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (1995), Paul Quest: A Study of the Apostle from Tarsus (1999). Witherington is a John Wesley Fellow for Life, a research fellow at Cambridge University, and a member of numerous professional organizations, including the Society of Biblical Literature, Society for the Study of the New Testament and the Institute for Biblical Research.
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