See James Tabor’s site for many posts. Links to related info is below.
James Ossuary The James ossuary and inscription are valid. This link is to a scientific report titled The Geochemistry of Intrusive Sediment Sampled from the 1st Century CE Inscribed Ossuaries of James and the Talpiot Tomb, Jerusalem – https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=96876
Extracts from that report:
Since the inscription alone does not provide unequivocal evidence of an ossuary’s provenance we have sought another means to test this remarkable claim. For this purpose we embarked on a geochemical program of sampling and chemical analyses of soils flushed into the James and Talpiot tomb ossuaries, in addition we sampled a group of random ossuaries from tombs throughout Jerusalem (Figure 2a, Table 1). We reasoned that the Talpiot tomb ossuaries would produce a chemically identifiable population because a landslide, linked to a major earthquake that struck Jerusalem in 363 CE, dislodged the stone blocking the entrance into the tomb allowing soil and mud to flood the tomb. The excavators reported that when found the ossuaries were covered to a depth of over 0.5 m of soil (Kloner & Gibson, 2013). The absence of stratification in the sediment flooding the tomb and position of the ossuaries in their niches with lids on indicate that flooding occurred in a single short-lived event (Shimron & Shirav, 2015). Unlike the neighboring Patio and other tombs ( Tabor & Jacobovici, 2012; Table 1) which missed the soil onslaught, the Talpiot tomb, like Pompeii covered with volcanic ash, became almost instantaneously sealed from most additional geological and geochemical processes. The latter affect most tombs by the addition of moisture carrying organic materials, soil, windblown dust and anthropogenic contaminants. Consequently the Talpiot tomb ossuaries were sent on an evolutionary path which differed from ossuaries in other tombs.
Employing chemical (ICP, SEM and Pb isotope) analyses we have found, based on chemical data alone, that the ossuary of James is far more similar to ossuaries removed from the Talpiot tomb than it is to any other group of ossuaries we sampled.
Finally, we have shown that detailed chemical analyses of soils sampled from ossuaries can, within limits, be useful in provenancing such artifacts. Our conclusions are made possible here by the incidental coalescence of a number of geological phenomena: 1) the unique chalk-chert geochemistry of East Jerusalem’s bedrock; 2) a powerful earthquake which shook the region in antiquity; and 3) the generation of tectonic slides one of which caused flooding and burial with soil of the Talpiot tomb and ossuaries therein. It is remarkable that the ossuary of James, which must have followed a different evolutionary path for the latter 30 years of its existence, and in spite of the considerable contamination therein with metallic fragments, still manifests a unique geochemical signature consistent with the chemistry of other Talpiot tomb ossuaries.
Comment to a post at Tabor’s Patreon:
Terry Traster, Patreon Member, 9/29/2024 – Here are some notes Per Hannah Cotton Corpus Inscriptionum Judaeae/Palaestinae Volume I Jerusalem Part 1-704 Yeshua = Joshua/Jesus; Yaacov = Jacob/James. There were 3 or 4 ossuaries with no inscription in the Talpiot Garden tomb. Joses as in the brother of Jesus per Mark 6:3 only appears on ossuary #475 There are 2 ossuaries that have “brother of” #085 Shimi son of Asiya brother of Hanin #531 James son of Joseph Brother of Jesus.
There are 3 James ossuaries
- #067 Aha and his son James
- #327 James
- #531 James son of Joseph brother of Jesus
There are 7 son of Joseph ossuaries:
- #083 Pinhas #148 Shovai
- #407 Euptolemos
- #474 Jesus
- #531 James
- #535 John
- #536 John
There are 3 Jesus son of inscriptions:
- #109 Dositheos
- #156 “Jesus a son of…..” grafitto on a burial cave wall
- #474 Jesus son of Joseph
Jesus had 4 brothers: James, Joses, Simon and Jude. In [Terry Traster] opinion, #531 James and #475 Joses are accounted for in the Garden Tomb. In Christian Tradition, Simon died around 107 A.D. and Jude died after 70 A.D. They should not be expected to be in the Garden tomb.
Is the “Brother of Jesus” Inscription on the James Ossuary a Forgery? The burial box of James, the brother of Jesus, BAS Staff, November 18, 2025
Read the full article “Predilections—Is the ‘Brother of Jesus’ Inscription a Forgery?” by Hershel Shanks in the September/October 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
