The James Ossuary is a plain limestone box of the kind used in and around Jerusalem in the first century to hold the bones of the dead after the flesh had decayed. What makes it extraordinary is an inscription cut in cursive Aramaic along one side, read as "Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua", "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus." Announced in 2002, it was hailed as possibly the first archaeological artifact to mention Jesus of Nazareth, since James "the brother of the Lord" is named in the New Testament and by the historian Josephus. Almost at once the find became controversial, both because it had no documented excavation history and because experts disputed whether the crucial words "brother of Jesus" belonged to the original inscription or were a modern addition. It stands here not as a venerated relic but as a contested archaeological object of the highest potential significance.
Andre Lemaire's 2002 publication in Biblical Archaeology Review presented the inscription as plausibly, though not certainly, referring to the biblical James, brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church, an identification resting on the statistical rarity of finding all three names, James, Joseph and Jesus, together on one first-century ossuary in that configuration. The Israel Antiquities Authority's 2003 committees examined the patina, the thin mineral crust that forms on ancient stone over centuries, and concluded the lettering of "brother of Jesus" showed different patina characteristics from the rest of the inscription; defense experts at the trial disputed this and presented their own findings supporting an ancient, unified inscription. Judge Aharon Farkash's 2012 verdict acquitted collector Oded Golan of forgery while explicitly declining to rule the inscription genuine, a legal outcome, not proven forgery rather than proven authenticity.