tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13586336414509917042024-03-05T00:07:53.230-08:00James Ossuary Trial JerusalemObservations from the Jerusalem District Court By Matthew KalmanMatthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-68610288025704283302014-05-21T06:39:00.000-07:002014-05-21T06:39:46.287-07:00'Jehoash Tablet' returns to ownerOded Golan gets back the tablet, which may be the only known remnant of Solomon’s Temple, after an 11-year legal battle with Israel Antiquities Authority.<br /><br />by Matthew Kalman<br /><br />HAARETZ, May 21, 2014<br /><br />An inscribed stone that may be the only remnant of Solomon’s Temple has been returned to its owner after an 11-year legal battle waged by the Israeli government.<br /><br />The Jehoash Tablet, also known as the “Bedek Habayit” inscription, is back in the hands of Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan, who plans to put it on public display in a major museum.<br /><br />Golan finally retrieved the tablet and hundreds of other items more than two years after he was acquitted of forging priceless antiquities in a seven-year criminal trial and nearly a year after the High Court finally rejected a last-ditch appeal by Israel's state attorney and the Israel Antiquities Authority.<br /><br />After more than a decade of confrontation, Golan tells me he does not wish to be rushed into his next move.<br /><br />“Now I should exhibit it,” he says. “When, where, how – I don’t know. I’ll make a decision in the next year.”<br /><br />“But it should go on display in a major museum so the public can see it for themselves, together with all the test results carried out before and during the trial,” he says.<div>
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<b>READ THE FULL STORY <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/outside-edge/.premium-1.591953" target="_blank">HERE</a></b></div>
Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-7974101934305029392013-12-25T09:50:00.000-08:002013-12-25T09:50:00.216-08:00Christmas Cracker<h1 style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(214, 29, 0); border-collapse: collapse; border-left-color: rgb(214, 29, 0); border-right-color: rgb(214, 29, 0); border-top-width: 0px; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 2.166em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.154; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; width: 460px;">
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Ancient burial box claimed to have earliest reference to Jesus</h1>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Limestone burial box is typical of first century Jerusalem and has chiselled on side "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"</span><br />_______________________________________<br /><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/matthew-kalman"><b>Matthew Kalman</b></a> in Tel Aviv<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian">The Guardian</a>, Wednesday 25 December 2013 16.41 GMT</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Tel Aviv antiquities collector Oded Golan with the stone burial box bearing the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Photograph: Matthew Kalman/<a href="http://theguardian.com/" target="_blank">theguardian.com</a></b></span></div>
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For 2,000 years, pilgrims and archaeologists have hunted for physical evidence of Jesus and his family, without success. But now an ancient burial box claiming to contain the earliest reference to the Christian saviour is about to go on public display in Israel after its owner was cleared of forgery. It has not been seen in public since a single, brief exhibition in Toronto in 2002.</div>
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The modest limestone burial box, known as an ossuary, is typical of first century Jerusalem, and is owned by Oded Golan, an Israeli antiquities collector. Chiselled on the side are the words "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."</div>
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James the Just was the first leader of the Christians in Jerusalem after the Crucifixion. He was executed for apostasy by the local rabbinical court.</div>
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At that time, Jews were not buried but laid in a cave. The bones were collected after a year and placed in an ossuary. Thousands have been discovered, some of them inscribed with names to identify whose bones they contain. One other ossuary mentions a brother.</div>
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"This is the oldest evidence that mentions the name of Jesus Christ," said Golan, who bought the box in the 1970s but did not realise its significance until Sorbonne Professor Andre Lemaire noticed it in Golan's collection.</div>
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Lemaire published his findings in 2002 and the ossuary was briefly displayed at a Toronto museum, causing a worldwide sensation.</div>
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But sceptics questioned its authenticity. In 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority seized the ossuary and appointed an expert committee who dubbed it a fake. Golan was arrested and charged with forging the mention of Jesus.</div>
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After a 10-year investigation and criminal trial, Golan was found innocent of forgery in 2012. Despite the verdict, doubts remain.</div>
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"Because of the differences in the depth and the clarity and the kerning between the first half of the inscription that mentions James son of Joseph, and the second half, I'd be willing to wager that the second half was added in modern times," said Professor Christopher Rollston of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.</div>
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But others disagree.</div>
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"The inscription is written in the Jewish script, it was done with a sharp instrument and I think it was done by the same hand. It is an authentic inscription," said Professor Gabriel Barkay of Bar-Ilan University.</div>
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Golan cites expert evidence from the trial showing the patina - a biological crust formed on ancient objects - inside the grooves of the inscription.</div>
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"There is no doubt that it's ancient, and the probability is that it belonged to the brother of Jesus Christ," said Golan.</div>
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Although Golan's trial ended last year, the ossuary was returned only a few weeks ago by the Israel authorities. Golan plans to put it on public display, together with the expert opinions from the trial, so that scholars and the public can decide for themselves whether this box did truly contain the bones of the brother of Christ – a unique piece of concrete evidence of the family of Jesus.</div>
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Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-25573166652111443202013-12-01T22:32:00.004-08:002013-12-01T22:32:44.131-08:00Deutsch Files $3 Million Suit Against Israel Antiquities Authority<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Suit
says that the police investigation, lengthy trial and public
denunciation by officials nearly dealt a death-blow to Deutsch’s
academic career and caused the loss of millions of dollars in past and
future business.</i><br /><br />By Matthew Kalman<br /><br />BIBLE & INTERPRETATION<br />December 2013<br /><br />
Nearly
two years after the spectacular collapse of the Jerusalem archaeology
forgery trial and his sweeping acquittal on all charges, Robert Deutsch,
proprietor of the Archaeological Center in Old Jaffa, has filed suit
demanding more than $3 million in damages from the Israel Antiquities
Authority, the Jerusalem District Attorney and individual officials
behind the 10-year prosecution. Deutsch, one of the most prominent
antiquities dealers in Israel, was acquitted in March 2012 on all six
charges against him after being accused of “forgery with the intention
of aggravated fraud” of various artifacts together with Tel Aviv
antiquities collector Oded Golan and others.<br /><br />Deutsch filed suit
on 28 November in the Tel Aviv District Court against the Israel
Antiquities Authority, its director Shuka Dorfman, the head of its
anti-theft unit Amir Ganor, the Jerusalem District Attorney and
Assistant District Attorney Dan Bahat who led the prosecution. He is
seeking 12 million shekels ($3.4 million) in damages – an astronomical
sum for Israel. In an interview, Deutsch said the multi-million-dollar
damages demanded were “a drop in the ocean” compared to the wreckage
wrought to his reputation and business by the affair. Deutsch was never
accused of any involvement with the alleged forgery of either the James
Ossuary or Jehoash Tablet, but when those items propelled the sprawling,
18-count indictment sheet into the headlines, as the main co-defendant
his name was yoked to the allegations against Golan.<br />
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<b><i>READ THE FULL STORY <a href="http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2013/12/kal378001.shtml" target="_blank">HERE</a></i></b><br />
<br />Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-86332040780786122832013-11-10T22:23:00.002-08:002013-11-10T23:36:31.597-08:00Scientific vandalism<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">How the IAA and Israeli Police wrecked the James ossuary </span></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stain of stupidity: The red smear left by the application of silicon by the Israel Police Forensics Laboratory in their fruitless attempt to prove forgery has contaminated the word "Yeshua" (Jesus) inscribed on the ossuary and destroyed much of the little patina that remained</td></tr>
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BY MATTHEW KALMAN<br />
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Tel Aviv<br />
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It could be the earliest inscription of the word “Jesus” ever found, but we may never know. In their fruitless zeal to prove that the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” was forged by Oded Golan or an Egyptian craftsman working under his direction, the Israel Antiquities Authority permitted a series of destructive tests that proved nothing and may have destroyed the chances of ever knowing the truth.</div>
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The worst contamination can be seen in the reddish stain now smeared across the word “Yeshua” (Jesus) in the photograph above.</div>
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The Israel Police Forensics Laboratory applied red silicon to the inscription to create a mold that might show it was a modern addition. The procedure proved nothing, but it left reddish stains in the grooves of the letters and ripped out the ancient patina that covers archaeological items and helps determine their authenticity.<br />
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“In the summer of 2004 the Israeli police, with permission of the IAA, made a red silicon mold of the inscription destroying the 'letter patina' by pulling out this 'soft' patina which cannot be observed anymore, thus, destroying evidence. Consequently, the alleged small amount of masking letter patina is absent now and cannot be studied further,” observed Amnon Rosenfeld and Shimon Ilani, the geologists who first studied the ossuary before it was revealed to the public in 2002.<br />
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I believe that the casting of the silicon affected Golan’s defense so he was deprived in such a way that it strengthens the reasonable doubt regarding his guilty charge - Judge Aharon Farkash</h3>
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Superintendent Yehudah Novoslaski, deputy for signs and material in the Forensic Department of the Israeli Police, told the Jerusalem District Court that he produced a silicon mold and photographed it. “I found differences in the engraving tools between the first part of the inscription ‘Ya’akov Bar Yosef’ and the second part ‘brother of Yeshua’,” he told the court. But the judge was not convinced.<br />
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“There is no dispute that the casting of the silicon by the forensics people changed the physical condition of the inscription of the ossuary,” said Judge Farkash.</div>
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There was some confusion as to how the silicon mold came to be made. Jonathan Pagis, the police officer who led the investigation, told the court he asked the forensics laboratory to “examine” the ossuary, not to carry out invasive tests. Pagis said he gave no orders for the mold to be taken.</div>
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The silicon casting “polluted” the ossuary, said Orna Cohen, a member of the IAA committee of experts that ruled the ossuary was a fake, but ended up testifying for the defense.</div>
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“I saw a picture of what happened to the ossuary. What trauma it had. In fact when using the casting silicon for taking a mold you have to put some substance that separates the object from the silicon, because the silicon sticks to everything and pulls it out,” she told the court. “Even if there was a patina I guess that the patina was drawn out.”</div>
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She said the inscription was now “contaminated. It will be hard to say anything about the ossuary itself.”<br />
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Judge Farkash concluded that, far from assisting the prosecution, the forensic damage had hampered the defense case to such an extent that it actually worked to the advantage of Golan.<br />
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“There is a possibility of a high degree of confidence that the casting of the silicon removed other materials that were in the inscription of the ossuary. This damage prevented Golan from examining the ossuary itself with the help of experts on his behalf in order to review counter opinion to contradict the opinion of the prosecution," said Judge Farkash. “We are dealing with a criminal case... we have to determine the accuracy of the evidence. In this situation, in light of the principles of the case law cited above regarding the failings of the investigation, and considering the entirety of the evidences for this charge, I believe that the casting of the silicon affected Golan’s defense so he was deprived in such a way that it strengthens the reasonable doubt regarding his guilty charge.”</div>
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Oded Golan said he would check the damage to the ossuary and see if can be restored.<br />
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“It’s not in the same condition as before the trial. The inscription was defaced, contaminated. They poured red silicon into the inscription and they let it dry and when they took it out they took the patina. It’s ruined. I have to evaluate the damage, see if it can be restored and if there is the possibility of carrying out further tests on the inscription in future that will allow us to show its authenticity. The government said the second half of the inscription was forged – the words “brother of Jesus” – and that’s where the major damage has been done,” Golan said.</div>
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Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-29497583705334315582013-11-10T12:31:00.003-08:002013-11-10T13:42:44.683-08:00IAA releases the ossuary<div class="story-headers" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; height: auto !important; line-height: 12px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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Public will be able to see limestone box that may have been casket for Jesus’ brother </h1>
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Ancient burial box is inscribed 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus'</h2>
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BY <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/authors?author=Matthew%20Kalman">MATTHEW KALMAN </a>/ NEW YORK DAILY NEWS</h2>
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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2013, 2:46 PM</h2>
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TEL AVIV — A modest limestone casket could be the first object ever found from the family of Jesus Christ.<br />
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The stone burial box bearing the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" has been hidden from public view at the Israel Antiquities Authority since 2003.<br />
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But now it has been released to be displayed around the world, following a 10-year legal battle in which Israeli authorities failed to show that Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan faked the ancient Aramaic lettering on the box.<br />
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Golan bought the box for a pittance in the 1970s from an East Jerusalem antiquities dealer and had it for more than 25 years before Sorbonne professor Andre Lemaire pointed out the staggering significance of the letters scratched in the side.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: start;">Close-up of the Aramaic inscription 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus' engraved on the side of the stone burial box</b><br />
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"I never knew that Jesus had a brother," said Golan.<br />
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The box is just 20 inches long and one foot wide, carved from a single piece of reddish limestone with a flat lid — typical of the burial boxes used by the Jews of first-century Palestine.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;"><b>Close-up of the word 'Jesus' in the Aramaic inscription engraved on the side of the stone burial box. If authentic, it is the earliest known example of the name of Jesus</b></span><br />
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It was last displayed in Toronto in 2002, causing a worldwide sensation. But the celebrations were short-lived.<br />
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The Israeli Antiquities Authority seized the ossuary, and its experts said the words "brother of Jesus" had been added to the original inscription. Golan was arrested in 2003 and put on trial.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;"><b>Tel Aviv antiquities collector Oded Golan retrieving the burial box with the inscription 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus' from the Israel Antiquities Authority. The IAA seized and held the box throughout a ten-year investigation and trial. Golan was acquitted in 2012.</b></span><br />
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In March 2012, Golan was acquitted of forgery, but some experts still maintain the box is a fake. Golan and other experts are convinced it is the real thing.<br />
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In an exclusive interview Golan said it is time for people to hear the whole story.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Tel Aviv antiquities collector Oded Golan retrieving the burial box with the inscription 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus' from the Israel Antiquities Authority. The IAA seized and held the box throughout a ten-year investigation and trial. Golan was acquitted in 2012.</b></span></span><br />
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"The inscription is ancient for sure. We proved that at the trial,” he said. “It's time to have this debate in a public exhibition, and let people decide for themselves."<br />
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In their zeal to prove their allegations, the Israeli authorities may have wrecked the chances of conclusive scientific tests.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;"><b>Tel Aviv antiquities collector Oded Golan with the stone burial box bearing the inscription ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’</b></span><br />
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"It's not in the same condition as before the trial. The inscription was defaced, contaminated,” Golan said. “I have to evaluate the damage, see if it can be restored and if there is the possibility of carrying out further tests on the inscription in future that will allow us to show its authenticity."<br /><br />Golan says he won't be parting with it again - no matter how much he is offered. “In the long term it will remain in Israel," he vowed.<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-32748572928904758892013-10-17T01:31:00.001-07:002013-10-17T01:53:21.682-07:00The final verdict<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Supreme Court says Israel cannot hold Jehoash tablet but challenges antiquities trade</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Return of disputed Temple treasure ordered over objections of Israel
Antiquities Authority - confirms total collapse of decade-long
prosecution</i></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">THE JEHOASH TABLET: Scholars and the public will finally get to see it for themselves<br />
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<b>By Matthew Kalman</b><br />
Foreign Correspondent In Jerusalem<br />
<a href="http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2013/10/kal378016.shtml" target="_blank">BIBLE & INTERPRETATION</a><br />
October 2013<br />
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The Israel Antiquities Authority has failed in its last-gasp attempt to confiscate the controversial Jehoash Tablet from Israeli collector Oded Golan. In a verdict handed down on Wednesday, the three-judge appeal panel of Supreme Court justices decided by 2-1 that the inscribed tablet must be returned to Golan, who was acquitted last year of forging after a ten-year prosecution and trial.<br />
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The Supreme Court ruling caps a crushing defeat for the Israel Antiquities Authority following the sweeping 2012 acquittal of Golan and dealer Robert Deutsch on multiple charges of archaeological forgery. Israeli prosecutors advised by the Israel Antiquities Authority had argued that even though they continue to believe the inscription is a modern forgery, the reverse of the stone had been “dressed” in ancient times and was therefore classified as an antiquity that should belong to the state. But those arguments were rejected by the majority decision of the court. Oded Golan is now poised to reclaim both the tablet and the more famous item, the James ossuary, along with dozens of pieces confiscated by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israeli police at the time of his arrest in 2003. Golan greeted the decision as “good news.” He says he plans to put both the ossuary and the tablet on public display.<br />
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The latest about-turn could be the final twist in a nail-biting finale to the decade-long pursuit of Golan. However, a sternly-worded ruling by the same court in September suggests that the battle over the future of the antiquities trade is just beginning.<br />
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In an 8,000-word ruling handed down on September 29, a panel of three Supreme Court Justices rejected Golan’s appeal against his conviction and sentence on three minor charges and used the opportunity to declare war on the antiquities market. Branding the trade in antiquities “damaging” and motivated by “avarice,” the ruling authored by Supreme Court Justice Daphne Barak-Erez depicts “a world of collectors exchanging treasures teeming with trembling hands and heart - often within the law, and sometimes without,” and notes with approval that “in most countries of the world there is a general ban on the trade in antiquities, because of their recognition as a national resource.” She further observed, that this "conception also serves as the basis for the antiquities law” in Israel.<br />
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The ruling places the Supreme Court on a potential collision course with the Israel Museum and other major archaeological collections in the country, which all display items purchased from the market. Israel Museum curators and experts have described a complex and well-oiled procedure of verification and testing carried out in the museum laboratories to determine the significance and authenticity of items offered by dealers. Many of the Israel Museum’s most notable archaeological exhibits, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, royal seal impressions and coins were purchased on behalf of the museum from the antiquities market and not discovered in authorized archaeological excavations.</div>
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READ THE FULL STORY IN BIBLE & INTERPRETATION <a href="http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2013/10/kal378016.shtml" target="_blank">HERE</a></div>
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Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-49275366110159223472013-08-01T00:34:00.000-07:002013-08-01T02:15:52.520-07:00Jehoash Tablet no longer a forgery? Israel wants to keep it<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">An Israel Antiquities Authority official with the Jehoash Tablet at the Israeli High Court on Wednesday. The tablet was broken in two along an existing crack while in the safekeeping of the IAA (Copyright Photo: Matthew Kalman)</span></i></td></tr>
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<i>EXCLUSIVE</i></div>
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By MATTHEW KALMAN</div>
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JERUSALEM, August 1 - In a stunning about-turn, after losing a 10-year legal effort to prove that an Israeli antiquities collector faked an inscription from Solomon’s Temple, Israel’s deputy state attorney begged the high court in Jerusalem on Wednesday to allow the Israeli government to keep the artifact on the grounds that it is “an antiquity.”<br />
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Oded Golan, the Israeli antiquities collector who was <a href="http://jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.co.il/2012/03/antiquities-collector-acquitted-of.html" target="_blank">acquitted of forging the Jehoash</a> Tablet after a seven-year criminal trial, said he had offered to loan it to a museum for study and public display, but he would fight the attempts by the state to confiscate it.<br />
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The rectangular black stone Jehoash tablet - about 12 inches long, 10 inches wide and just over 3 inches thick - is inscribed with a chiselled inscription of 15 lines in ancient script similar to a famous passage from the Second Book of Kings recording repairs made by King Jehoash to the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem around 800 BCE. If authentic, it is the only item yet found that may have come from Solomon's Temple, built around the 9th century BCE and destroyed by the Babylonians 300-400 years later.<br />
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Golan was acquitted of all forgery charges in March 2012, nine years after he was first arrested on suspicion of forging the inscription. He was also acquitted of forging the words “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” on a stone burial box, and dozens of other items including seal impressions linked to biblical figures, inked inscriptions on pottery sherds and a richly-decorated ancient stone lamp.<br />
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“Since, according to the state, it is not an antiquity, it cannot now contend that it owns the tablet”</h3>
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The Jehoash Tablet has never been displayed in public – except in the Jerusalem District Court of Judge Aharon Farkash. It was seized by Israeli police in 2003 together with hundreds of other items, including the James ossuary, in a series of raids on Golan’s home, office and warehouses.<br />
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Following Golan’s arrest, a panel of experts appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority declared the Jehoash Tablet and the James ossuary fakes. Golan and four others were <a href="http://jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.co.il/2004_12_01_archive.html" target="_blank">indicted in December 2004</a> on multiple counts of forgery and accused of being members of an international antiquities forgery ring. None of the charges held up in court.<br />
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A year after Golan’s acquittal, Judge Farkash ordered the prosecution to return the Jehoash Tablet, the James ossuary and the other items to Golan.<br />
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But after arguing for a decade that the Jehoash Tablet was a fake, the prosecution has suddenly decided it is an antiquity, and therefore the property of the state under the 1978 Israel Antiquities Law.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Israeli prosecutors have reversed a decade-long criminal pursuit of the Jehoash Tablet forgers and now say it is an antiquity that should be in the possession of the state </i><i>(Copyright Photo: Matthew Kalman)</i></span></td></tr>
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The stunning about-turn – from branding the tablet a fake and pursuing a decade-long witchhunt for its forger, to deciding that it was a valuable antiquity that must only be under control of the Israeli state – has become the central plank of the government appeal now before Israel’s high court.</div>
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The Israeli government is effectively demanding that Golan be punished despite being acquitted by confiscating the Jehoash tablet.<br />
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In a scathing departure from his usually cautious comments throughout the case, Judge Farkash accepted that the return of the Jehoash Tablet should await the appeal decision by the high court, but he pointedly dismissed the prosecution argument.<br />
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“The state insisted on its view that this was not an antiquity, but a forged antiquity. Since, according to the state, it is not an antiquity, it cannot now contend that it owns the tablet according to the Antiquities Law, and therefore by law it should be returned to Golan,” Farkash wrote in a decision issued on February 12, 2013.<br />
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During an appeal hearing in the Israel High Court in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Deputy State Attorney Naomi Katz-Lulav argued that while the state still believed the inscription was fake, the stone itself was “ancient.”<br />
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“We say it’s an antiquity,” Katz-Lulav told the three-judge panel. “We want to keep it.”<br />
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The words for “ancient” and “antiquity” are the same in Hebrew: <i>atiqa</i>.<br />
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“We understand the situation differently now. It’s ours and we have the right to do whatever we want with our property”</h3>
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The judges pointedly asked how the prosecution could reverse its earlier argument that the tablet was fake, including evidence from its own expert witness that the stone was recently inscribed and came from abroad. They also wondered how the prosecution could argue that the stone came from Israel, and so belonged to the state, when the only evidence attesting to its origins was hearsay defence evidence that the antiquities dealer who sold it to Golan told him it had been discovered in the late 1990s near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Throughout the trial, the prosecution had branded that evidence as manufactured to try and prove the authenticity of the item. <br />
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“We understand the situation differently now. It’s ours and we have the right to do whatever we want with our property,” Katz-Lulav said after the hearing “We don’t need to give a reason.”<br />
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She suggested that sometime in the future, it may be discovered to be genuine.<br />
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“It is unthinkable that such an item should be in private hands,” she told the court.<br />
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An archaeologist sitting in the public gallery during the hearing laughed out loud at the prosecution argument, pointing out that all stones are “ancient,” since they were created millions of years ago. It was only the addition of the inscription that transformed an “ancient” stone into an “antiquity” – an inscription that the prosecution continues to denounce as fake. </div>
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“The prosecution wants to have their cake and eat it,” said the archaeologist. “Their argument is complete nonsense.”<br />
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But the judges were apparently smitten with the tablet and asked for it to be produced in court so they could handle it themselves. The tablet was once offered for sale to the Israel Museum for four million dollars. It was broken in two while in the custody of the Israel Antiquities Authority and was brought to court in a plain wooden box, protected by plastic wrap.<br />
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“Today we felt a piece of history, we held it in our hands,” said Justice Yoram Danziger, chairman of the panel, clearly moved after holding the only item known that may have adorned the temple. “Clearly, the Jehoash Tablet must be considered in a separate category to all the other items.”<br />
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After adjourning to chambers to discuss the issue, the judges returned and, defying the logic set out in Judge Farkash’s decision, suggested a compromise whereby the state would keep the Jehoash Tablet and negotiate returning more than 250 other items seized from Golan.<br />
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“Their position is ridiculous and the suggested compromise is completely unacceptable,” Golan told this reporter after Wednesday’s court hearing. “I should just give it to the state after they put me through this for the past ten years? Why? I already told them I was willing to loan it to a museum and submit it for testing.”<br />
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“Now, after they failed to destroy me, they expect me just to give them the very item they said I faked. The offer suggested by the court will not happen. I will negotiate with the prosecution and try to offer some other possibilities and hopefully the high court will accept it,” he said.</div>
Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-22704896421992804262012-12-28T02:43:00.000-08:002013-01-03T02:45:24.161-08:00Is Israel hiding the secret source of Christianity?<a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/89182/" target="_blank">THE TIMES OF ISRAEL BLOG</a><br />December 28, 2012<br /><br />Were the final resting-places of the family and disciples of Jesus discovered 30 years ago and then hidden as part of a religious-political conspiracy?<br /><br />The archaeological controversy swirling around two Roma-era burial tombs in Jerusalem refuses to die. Indeed, it has become something of an ugly academic slugfest.<br /><br />In one corner stands the Israeli archaeological establishment represented by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor Amos Kloner of Bar-Ilan University, backed by various respected archaeologists and scholars. In the other stands Simcha Jacobovici, the filmmaker and self-styled “Naked Archaeologist,” backed by another group of respected archaeologists and scholars.<br /><br />Read the full story and discussion that follows (featuring James Tabor, Joe Zias, Todd Frederick, Yisrael Medad and Steven Fine) <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/89182/">HERE</a>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-33133704075103667382012-07-20T03:21:00.000-07:002012-07-20T03:21:57.032-07:00<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://thejerusalemreport.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/amazon-kindle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://thejerusalemreport.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/amazon-kindle.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My authoritative story on the James ossuary trial in The Jerusalem Report is now available in a Kindle edition via Amazon <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008L41146" target="_blank">HERE</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-1037717180963798632012-06-18T10:37:00.000-07:002012-06-18T10:37:23.054-07:00Raiders of the Lost RelicsMy new story on Biblical archaeology in the holy land in <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Raiders-of-the-Lost-Relics/132247/" target="_blank">The Chronicle of Higher Education Review</a><br />
<br />Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-34235399451593452092012-06-13T23:23:00.000-07:002012-07-20T03:23:31.015-07:00Archaeology in a hole<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008L41146" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR KINDLE EDITION</a></td></tr>
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<b>LETTER FROM THE EDITOR / MATTHEW KALMAN</b><br />
<i>From The Jerusalem Report, issue dated July 2, 2012</i><br />
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Nearly 10 years have passed since the world learned of the discovery of a 1st century burial box bearing the words “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” and a black stone tablet with an inscription that brought to life a passage from the Second Book of Kings describing repairs to Solomon’s Temple by King Jehoash around 800 BCE.<br />
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Both items, if authentic, would be the first physical artifacts ever found from the family of Jesus and the First Temple. It’s no wonder they caused a worldwide sensation, and that their subsequent exposure as fakes and the arrest of Oded Golan, a Tel Aviv antiquities collector accused of forging them, sparked international interest, even outrage.<br />
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The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), with the Israel Police, gathered testimony around the world and seized hundreds of suspect artifacts. The treasure trove included ancient stone lamps, engraved jugs, pottery shards inscribed in ink, seals and seal impressions known as bulae. Golan, we were told when he was indicted with four others in December 2004 and accused of masterminding an international forgery ring, was falsifying history for personal gain.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: medium; text-align: -webkit-auto;">UNDER SUSPICION: Oded Golan at home with his treasures</b></td></tr>
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“I believe we have revealed only the tip of the iceberg. This industry circles the world, involving millions of dollars,” said IAA director Shuka Dorfman. “Beside this, Indiana Jones looks small.”<br />
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But it wasn’t true. No one else was arrested. The zealotry of the IAA came unstuck when the case against Golan and his remaining co-defendant, antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch, collapsed in spectacular fashion at the Jerusalem District Court in March. Judge Aharon Farkash cleared them of all forgery charges and had some harsh words for the police, prosecution and the IAA.<br />
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<b>The Israel Antiquities Authority came unstuck with the collapse of the case against Oded Golan and Robert Deutsch</b></h3>
Farkash said the police forensics laboratory had contaminated the ossuary by blundering through tests that proved nothing and left the inscription scientifically useless for future research. He said the prosecution had failed to prove a single one of the forgery or conspiracy charges brought with such fanfare against Golan and Deutsch. His jaw dropped in disbelief when prosecutor Dan Bahat refused to return the items to Golan, Deutsch and two more collectors. Now the prosecution and the IAA must present a detailed case for confiscating each item.<br />
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But Farkash was careful to say that the not guilty verdict did not mean the items were authentic.<br />
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The IAA continues to hold by its theory that they were forged by an Egyptian craftsman, Marco Ghatas, who worked with Golan in Tel Aviv. The IAA blamed their failure on the refusal of Ghatas to testify, but the judge said the prosecution evidence simply did not stand up to scrutiny.<br />
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The updated story is told in this issue for the first time. I was the only reporter in the courtroom throughout the 120 sessions of the seven-year trial. I heard most of the 12,000 pages of testimony, listened to most of the 126 witnesses and saw most of the 200 exhibits. But I still can not say for certain whether the items are genuine or not.<br />
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Even those who are convinced that the items are fake are distressed at the increasingly bizarre actions of the IAA and its publicity-seeking director Dorfman.<br />
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<b>I was the only reporter in the courtroom throughout the seven-year trial. I heard most of the 12,000 pages of testimony and listened to most of the 126 witnesses. But I still can not say whether the items are genuine</b></h3>
The IAA’s most egregious mistake was the arrest in 2005 of Hanan Eshel, a Bar-Ilan University archaeology professor who rescued several parchment scroll fragments from the Bar Kochba era that he bought from a Bedouin trader. The IAA charged him with criminal conduct.<br />
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“Hanan discovered pieces of biblical Judean scrolls, acquired them, looked after their restoration in the Israel Museum, published them and presented them to the IAA,” says David Jeselsohn, a prominent collector and leading donor to Bar-Ilan who provided the purchase money. “It was the first and only time that the State of Israel was given such a gift. Instead of thanking Hanan, he was detained by the IAA, was presented to the media as a criminal and Shuka Dorfman even had the audacity to bring charges against Hanan at court.” Jeselsohn tells me he thought it was “a bad joke” when he heard that Bar-Ilan was giving its prestigious Guardian of Zion Award to the IAA and that Dorfman would be accepting the prize.<br />
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Jeselsohn believes that the Jehoash tablet is a fake, but he describes the prosecution as “a bizarre and hallucinatory trial” against “an imaginary ring of antiquities forgers.” He says the IAA “acted imprudently, senselessly, foolishly and regrettably, with malice.” He called on the IAA to compensate and apologize to Robert Deutsch, Golan’s co-defendant who was acquitted on all charges.<br />
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With the IAA still refusing to hand back the artifacts, the case could drag on for some time. I will continue to follow it.</div>
</div>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-33182439059833301802012-05-30T11:12:00.002-07:002013-08-01T02:33:55.162-07:00Oded Golan sentenced: future of James ossuary, Jehoash tablet and other treasures still uncertainBy MATTHEW KALMAN<br />
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May 30, 2012<br />
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JERUSALEM - The Tel Aviv antiquities collector acquitted in March after a seven-year trial of faking the burial box of Jesus’s brother, an inscribed tablet that may have adorned Solomon’s Temple, and dozens of other valuable antiquities, was sentenced Wednesday to a month in jail and fined 30,000 NIS for three minor charges of illegal trading in antiquities and handling goods suspected of being stolen.<br />
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Judge Aharon Farkash, vice-president of the Jerusalem District Court, ruled that Oded Golan will not have to serve a custodial sentence because he was held by Israeli police for more than a month after his arrest in 2003.<br />
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Judge Farkash, who had earlier threatened to order the destruction of the burial box, or ossuary, inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” a black stone tablet recording repairs to the Temple by King Jehoash in 800 BCE and other items seized from Golan, delayed a decision on the final ownership of the items, which could be worth millions of dollars.<br />
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Judge Farkash rejected prosecution arguments that all the items connected to the 41 forgery charges on which Golan was acquitted should be confiscated, but he also did not order their immediate return as requested by the defense.<br />
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Instead, Farkash ordered the prosecution to present detailed arguments by July 1 justifying the confiscation of each item, including dozens of ancient seals and seal impressions, inscribed pottery, lamps, decanters and other artifacts seized on suspicion of being fakes.<br />
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Farkash also revealed that he had been petitioned by two other collectors – Shlomo Moussaieff and George Weill – for the return of items belonging to them.<br />
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“Antiquities theft in the land of Israel has become a national plague,” Judge Farkash said in an eight-page written decision that he read out to an almost empty courtroom. “Antiquities theft damages various sites spread out across the land of Israel, sites which are an inseparable part of the history and culture of this land and its inhabitants, who lived here from thousands of years ago until the present day. Antiquities theft also damages the ability of experts to document the history of the people of Israel in its land.”<br />
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Judge Farkash said the work of the Israel Antiquities Authority in stopping the theft and forgery of historical items was essential in protecting the heritage of the holy land. He said the only way to cut down on illegal excavations and the robbery of historic sites was to discourage the illegal antiquities trade.<br />
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The judge also called for a reform of Israel’s antiquities laws and suggested that collectors, as well as dealers, should have to provide the authorities with periodic lists of the items in their collection.<br />
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Oded Golan said he was still studying the decision and had not yet decided whether to appeal the sentence.<br />
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“I respect the decision of the court,” Golan told this reporter. “However, the decision may be based on a mistaken interpretation of Israeli law. All three minor charges on which I was convicted, and to which I freely confessed in my first interview with the police in 2003, relate to antiquities found outside the borders of the State of Israel. Under Israeli law, the Israel Antiquities Authority has no jurisdiction over them and no authority in matters related to them.”<br />
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“My interest is to save, keep and document important antiquities found in Israel and the West Bank. Unfortunately, the Israel Antiquities Authority have failed to prevent the loss of some 1.5 million pieces discovered in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, which have left the country,” Golan said.<br />
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He added that the remarks by the judge had “implications for any antiquities collector, most of whom save valuable items for posterity and donate them to museums so the wider public can benefit from them.”<br />
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“The reforms suggested by the judge may even further harm the protection of antiquities found in Israel and encourage people to take them out of the country,” he said.Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-22851562879565087372012-05-29T08:26:00.002-07:002012-05-29T08:26:23.966-07:00Judge to decide fate of ossuary, Jehoash tablet<span style="font-size: large;">Scholars say items should be preserved; J'lem judge could order items destroyed under "ruling of Solomon."</span><br />JERUSALEM POST<br />May 29, 2012<br /><br />By MATTHEW KALMAN<br /> <br />A Jerusalem judge will announce on Wednesday whether he has decided to order the destruction of a burial box that could have held the bones of the brother of Jesus and an inscribed tablet that could have come from the First Temple.<br /><br />At a Jerusalem District Court hearing in April, Judge Aharon Farkash said he might exercise “the judgement of Solomon” and order both items to be destroyed.<br /><br />The stone burial box, or ossuary, dates to the first century CE and has an Aramaic inscription that reads "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." The black tablet is inscribed with a passage recording repairs by King Jehoash around 800 BCE. Its surface is spattered with sub-microscopic globules of gold that suggest it might have survived a fire in which golden items melted into tiny airborne particles.<br /><br />If genuine, the items are the only artifacts yet recovered that can be linked directly to the family of Jesus and the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and could be of considerable historical significance.<br /><br />Last March, at the end of a trial lasting nearly seven years, a Tel Aviv collector was acquitted of faking the two artifacts and other antiquities by Judge Farkash, vice president of the Jerusalem District Court.<br /><br />But Judge Farkash reserved judgment on whether the ossuary or the stone tablet were authentic because of disagreements between the world’s leading experts.<br /><br />On Wednesday, Judge Farkash will pass sentence on the defendant, Oded Golan, who was acquitted on 41 charges of forgery, fraud and other serious crimes, but found guilty of three minor misdemeanors of trading in antiquities without a license and handling goods suspected of being stolen.<br /><br />At a hearing in April, the prosecution demanded a tough sentence including jail time and said that the ossuary, the tablet and many other items should be confiscated by the court, even though Golan had been acquitted of all charges related to them.<br /><br />“Maybe I’ll order them to be destroyed and neither side will have them,” said Judge Farkash in comments that were not recorded in the official court transcript.<br /><br />It would be “the judgement of Solomon,” said Judge Farkash.<br /><br />“Neither of you will have the ossuary or the Jehoash tablet. They broke once already, they can be broken again. Just destroy them,” he said.<br /><br />The ossuary cracked into two pieces 2002 while it was being shipped to an exhibition in Canada and was repaired by restorers at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The Jehoash tablet broke along an existing crack in 2003 while it was being handled by investigators at the Israel Police forensic laboratory.<br /><br />The judge also suggested that the items might be put on display for the public.<br /><br />“Maybe they should be exhibited at the Israel Museum as items from this trial suspected of being fakes,” he said.<br /><br />Experts who gave evidence for both sides last night urged Judge Farkash not to destroy the items.<br /><br />Andre Lemaire, the Sorbonne scholar who published the first analysis of the ossuary in 2002 and has stood by its authenticity, said its destruction would be “scandalous” and “a manipulation of historical evidence.”<br /><br />“It would be necessary from a scientific point of view to start a new suit, on a real basis this time, for voluntary destruction of historical evidence and tentative manipulation of history,” Professor Lemaire told The Jerusalem Post.<br /><br />Christopher Rollston, professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Emmanuel Christian Seminary who appeared as a prosecution witness, said “it is never prudent to destroy antiquities, regardless of the controversy surrounding them.”<br /><br />“I would certainly not wish to see the Ya'akov ("James") Ossuary destroyed. Indeed, to destroy the ossuary would only fuel the controversy, effectively turning this ossuary into an archaeological martyr of sorts. I wish to see it returned to its legal owner,” he said.<br /><br />Prosecution witness Israel Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, agreed that the ossuary should not be destroyed, but said it should not be returned to Golan. “The Israel Antiquities Authority has a place for alleged forgeries in their storehouses – why not put this item there too for posterity?” Finkelstein suggested.<br /><br />Defence counsel Lior Bringer said the items should be returned immediately to Golan, who said he has not yet decided what to do with them.<br /><br />“The prosecution is asking the court to punish the defendant for crimes for which he was acquitted,” said Bringer. “Golan admitted to the three minor charges he was convicted of in the first police interview. On these charges there was no need for a trial at all.”<br /><br />“He spent more than two years under house arrest and was in prison twice. He has suffered enough,” said Bringer.Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-43034361461680489512012-05-12T13:59:00.002-07:002012-05-12T13:59:37.835-07:00Court says 'not guilty,' Antiquities Authority demands punishment<div class="left_content">
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<span class="datetime" id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_article_control_lblDateAndHour">JERUSALEM POST </span></div>
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<span class="datetime" id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_article_control_lblDateAndHour">May 12, 2012</span>
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<span class="teaser" id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_article_control_lblTeaser">Antiquities
Authority determined not to return dozens of items to Israeli collector
accused of faking burial box of Jesus's brother.</span>
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<img alt="Antiques collector Golan " id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_article_control_image" src="http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?ID=193637" style="border-width: 0px; height: 236px; width: 370px;" title="Antiques collector Golan " />
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<span class="photographer" id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_article_control_photographer">(Reuters)</span></div>
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The Antiquities Authority, backed by State Attorney Moshe Lador, has launched a
desperate rearguard action to reverse its humiliating defeat in a seven-year
trial that ended with the acquittal of an Israeli collector accused of faking
the burial box of the brother of Jesus and an inscribed stone tablet that may
have hung on the wall of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.<br /><br />The latest twist
came during a routine sentencing hearing at the Jerusalem District Court last
Tuesday, two months after the stunning collapse of the high-profile
prosecution.<br /><br />Prosecutor Dan Bahat revealed that the Antiquities Authority
was determined not to return dozens of items, including the burial box and the
stone tablet to their owner, despite his acquittal on all the relevant
charges.<br /><br />Bahat compared it to returning drugs to a dealer acquitted on a
technicality.<br /><br />Oded Golan, 60, was cleared in March on 41 counts of
forgery, fraud and other serious crimes related to what antiquities officials
and police had described as a worldwide, multi-million-dollar network designed
to falsify history and dupe museums and collectors into buying worthless fakes.
Golan was convicted on three minor counts of handling goods suspected of being
stolen and dealing in antiquities without a license.<br /><br />The case attracted
worldwide attention because of a stone burial box, or ossuary, inscribed with
the Aramaic legend “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus.”<br /><br />The
prosecution was unable to prove its assertion that the words “brother of Jesus”
were a modern addition and Golan was cleared of faking them.<br /><br />If genuine,
the ossuary is the only known artifact that could be directly connected to the
family of the historical Jesus.<br /><br />Golan was also acquitted on all charges
relating to a black stone tablet inscribed in ancient Hebrew recording repairs
to the Temple carried out by King Jehoash around 800 BCE. If genuine, it is the
only item yet discovered that may have adorned the First Temple.<br /><br />In
December 2007, Amir Ganor, head of the antiquities authority anti-theft unit and
the architect of the fraud trial, said the Antiquities Authority would return
return more than 200 artifacts seized from Golan.<br /><br />“I am holding the
exhibits under a court order,” Ganor told the court. “When the trial is over, I
imagine I will be happy to get rid of everything I have in the storeroom and
return it to Oded Golan, including the ossuary.”<br /><br />The trial has now ended,
but even though Golan was acquitted on all charges related to the most important
artifacts in the case, the prosecutor demanded the permanent confiscation of all
the items. He also urged the judge to impose a maximum sentence for the three
minor misdemeanors even though it was Golan’s first offense.<br /><br />“I do not
agree that there is an absence of a criminal history. There were illegal
activities,” Bahat charged, prompting a sharp rebuke from Judge Aharon
Farkash.<br /><br />“You are trying to mount a new trial,” said the judge, who even
referred to a “witchhunt” against Golan.<br /><br />The Antiquities Authority has
shown no sign that it accepts the not guilty verdict. Its spokesmen continue to
describe the items in the trial as fakes and the authority appears to be
determined to punish Golan despite losing the case.<br /><br />Bahat said the
decision to seek confiscation of the property and a harsh sentence had been
taken personally by the state attorney.<br /><br />GOLAN, WHO was imprisoned twice
by police for short periods during the investigation and then held under house
arrest for more than 700 days, as well as losing untold income over the 10-year
investigation and trial, said he had expected the court to order the immediate
return of the hundreds of items and documents taken by the police and hoped the
judge would not impose further punishment.<br /><br />Bahat presented two apparently
contradictory arguments to the court. First, he said that since the judge had
ruled the items were not fakes as charged in the indictment, they were in fact
real antiquities and Golan was therefore not a collector but a dealer and so had
an obligation to maintain a full inventory of his stock.<br /><br />Judge Farkash
pointedly reminded him that this accusation had not even been hinted at in any
of the 44 crimes listed in the indictment.<br /><br />“I don’t recall that in any of
the charges you accused him of this crime of being an unlicensed dealer. How can
you now ask me to consider this when deciding on the sentence?” asked the judge.
“You are now asking me to take into consideration that he didn’t maintain an
inventory. I don’t recall that was included in any of the 18 counts,
either as a specific charge or within any of the charges on the
indictment.”<br /><br />Bahat then performed an abrupt about-turn, arguing that,
despite Golan’s acquittal, the “likelihood” is that the items were
fakes.<br /><br />“In my opinion, it is inconceivable that the items should be
returned to the accused,” said Bahat. “I say there is no choice.”<br /><br />Bahat
said it would be unacceptable for Golan to benefit from the ossuary or other
artifacts.<br /><br />“He can sell it, exhibit it. I cannot countenance that if the
item is fake that he should get it back,” said Bahat, suggesting the items be
given to the Israel Police forensics laboratory for educational
purposes.<br /><br />But Judge Farkash seemed unimpressed, particularly as he had
singled out the forensics laboratory in his verdict for severe criticism for
contaminating the ossuary inscription during testing, rendering it
scientifically worthless.<br /><br />“If the ossuary is a fake, it’s not an
antiquity. How can I not return it to the accused?” he asked.<br /><br />The judge
suggested, only half-joking, that the items be put on display at the Israel
Museum in special exhibition of artifacts from the trial. Golan himself says he
has not yet decided what to do with them.<br /><br />But Golan’s attorney Lior
Bringer was scathing about the prosecution tactics.<br /><br />“The prosecution is
asking the court to punish the defendant for crimes for which he was acquitted,”
said Bringer. “Golan admitted to the three minor charges he was convicted of in
the first police interview. On these charges there was no need for a trial at
all.”<br /><br />“He spent more than two years under house arrest and was in prison
twice. He has suffered enough,” said Bringer.<br /><br />But the Antiquities
Authority seems determined to enforce its will through the courts rather than
academic discussion – and to pursue legal action against anyone who dares to
challenge its diktat. The authority ordered the unprecedented prosecution of the
late Prof. Hanan Eshel of Bar-Ilan University for buying important artifacts and
studying them before handing them over to the state. Last week, the authority
was back in court in Nazareth, prosecuting a resident of Zipori for “damaging”
an ancient tomb that he discovered and was trying to preserve.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The writer
is editor-in-chief of </span>The Jerusalem Report. <span style="font-style: italic;">His dispatches from the trial
are at <a href="http://www.jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">www.jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.com/</a></span>
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</div>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-24123807316602670942012-04-08T08:10:00.001-07:002012-04-08T08:10:32.381-07:00WHY I BELIEVE THIS BOX CONTAINS JESUS'S BROTHER<div style="clear:both;width:534px"> <p>SUNDAY EXPRESS, April 8, 2012<br /></p> </div> <img src="http://images.dailyexpress.co.uk/img/dynamic/10/285x214/313400_1.jpg" alt="Story Image" width="285" /> <p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Oded Golan was acquitted of forgery charges</b></span></p>By MATTHEW KALMAN<br /><br />ODED Golan was just 10 when he stumbled across a small clay tablet inscribed with ancient lettering while walking with his parents near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. It proved to be the oldest dictionary yet unearthed, seven lines of a phrase book for merchants in two ancient languages, Akkadian and Sumerian, and nearly 4,000 years old.<br /><br />Within days, Professor Yigael Yadin, the father of modern Israeli archaeology, came knocking at the door of the family home in Tel Aviv, asking to see “Mr Golan”, not realising that the learned scholar who had sent him a postcard describing the find was a schoolboy.<br /><br />Golan escorted the professor to his bedroom to show him the artefact and agreed to let Yadin take it back to Jerusalem for analysis. His mother served tea and biscuits.<br /><br />By the age of 50, after a lifetime of collecting antiquities, Golan was renowned among scholars for owning one of the finest archaeological collections in the world. His Tel Aviv apartment, lined with glass-fronted display cases crammed with ancient pots, weapons, cultic vessels and altars became a place of pilgrimage for academics and dealers. Thousands more pieces were stored in warehouses. However, his hobby was about to land him in jail and make him an object of international ridicule.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace;font-size:6;" >"</span><b><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace">It will remain part of my collection. I don’t intend to sell it</span></span></b><span style="font-family:courier new,monospace;font-size:6;" >"</span><br /> <i>Oded Golan</i><br /><br />In 2002, Andre Lemaire, a visiting professor of ancient languages from the Sorbonne, was leafing through the albums of Golan’s collection when he came across a photograph of a Roman-era burial box, or ossuary, made of limestone with the eye-popping inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” in ancient Aramaic.<br /><br />Lemaire published the sensational find in the Biblical Archaeology Review. It made headlines around the world. Thousands of people flocked to the first public exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Golan was hailed as the owner of the only item ever discovered that might be connected with the family of Jesus Christ. Academic articles, books and documentaries debating the significance of the ossuary, whose value was conservatively placed at £1.2million, followed.<br /><br />The celebrations were shortlived. The Israel Antiquities Authority seized the ossuary and subjected it to tests by two panels of experts. It also seized a black stone tablet with an inscription from King Jehoash in the 9th century BC that might be the only item recovered from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.<br /><br />In June 2003 the experts declared both items fake. Golan was arrested and held in jail for a month. Police raided his home, office and warehouses around Tel Aviv, seizing hundreds of items along with tools, computer files and half-finished artefacts that led them to believe Golan was the mastermind behind an antiquities forgery ring that was milking museums and collectors around the world of millions of dollars.<br /><br />Golan said he had bought the ossuary 25 years earlier from an Arab dealer in the Old City of Jerusalem. “I never faked an antiquity in my life,” he insisted.<br /><br />In December 2004, he and four others were indicted on 18 counts of forgery, fraud and obtaining money by deception. Golan was placed under house arrest for two years, more than a year of which he had to spend at the home of his elderly parents.<br /><br />When the trial opened in the Jerusalem District Court in September 2005, Golan faced 44 charges. His reputation was in ruins.<br /><br />The Israel Antiquities Authority staked its reputation on the trial, recruiting experts from around the world who testified the items were fake. By the time Judge Aharon Farkash retired to consider his verdict in October 2010, he had presided over 120 sessions, examined 200 exhibits (some of them entire books) and heard more than 12,000 pages of testimony from 126 witnesses.<br /><br />The case revealed furtive encounters with Arab tomb robbers, high finance, skulduggery, smuggling and transactions involving hundreds of thousands of dollars based on a handshake and paid in cash behind the apparently cultured facade of collecting priceless antiquities.<br /><br />“This was the first time that a court was asked to rule on a question of antiquities forgery,” Judge Farkash said last month, summarising testimony from experts in archaeology, the Bible, chemistry and geochemistry, geology, paleography and more. The list of witnesses read like a who’s who of the world’s leading scholars but as the judge wryly noted in his verdict, even the professors appearing for the same side disagreed with one another and sometimes even with themselves, changing their minds as time passed.<br /><br />“If you, the world’s leading experts in this field, cannot agree with each other on the authenticity or otherwise of these items, how do you expect me, a mere judge, to reach a conclusion?” he said, before delivering his 475-page verdict on March 14.<br /><br />Golan was exonerated of forgery, acquitted on 41 of the charges and found guilty on just three minor counts of unlicensed antiquities trading and holding items suspected of being stolen.<br /><br />Judge Farkash warned that the verdict did not mean the items were necessarily genuine or that the “Jesus” on the ossuary was Jesus Christ but his ruling rescued Golan’s treasures from the dustbin of history. “I was never worried about the ossuary or the Jehoash Tablet,” Golan said after the verdict, “I cannot guarantee that it belonged to the brother of Jesus Christ but it is definitely ancient. I have no doubt about it.”<br /><br />Born into a wealthy Tel Aviv family, Golan studied engineering and became a serial entrepreneur with successful businesses in travel, architectural seminars, property development and educational software.<br /><br />Back in his apartment, Golan said he last saw the ossuary two years ago in court. “It will remain part of my collection. I don’t intend to sell it. I will have to consider over the coming months about whether to lend it to a museum or other institution for public exhibition.”<br /><br />He said he was surprised at the explosion of interest in the ossuary because he knew little about Christian history and had never connected the inscription to Christ. “I purchased it in the mid or late-Seventies in East Jerusalem from one of the dealers in the Old City,” he said. “I didn’t recognise either its importance or its value for a long time. I didn’t even know that Jesus had siblings.<br /><br />“No one can say for certain it is connected to the family of Jesus but there is a very high likelihood it is. If it really is the burial box of Jesus’s brother, it is a very exciting artefact. It is truly a historic item with a strong emotional importance.”Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-61262580914730862602012-03-15T00:01:00.000-07:002012-03-14T22:34:58.968-07:00Israeli cleared of forging Jesus' brother's burial box relic<div> <h1> </h1><div class="x940 masthead"> <div class="column-1"> <div class="widget code html widget-editable viziwyg-section-1023 inpage-widget-6240044"> <div class="widget topIndependentLogo"> <a title="The Independent" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/"> <img title="The Independent" alt="The Independent" src="http://www.independent.co.uk/independent.co.uk/editorial/logo/independent_Masthead.png" border="0" /></a><a title="The Independent" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/"> </a> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <h3> </h3> </div> <div> <div> <span> MATTHEW KALMAN </span> </div> </div> <div> <p> Jerusalem </p> </div> <div> <p> THE INDEPENDENT Thursday 15 March 2012 </p> </div><div> <span> <p>A burial box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” was reprieved from the scrapheap of history yesterday when a Jerusalem judge exonerated the Israeli antiquities collector accused of forging it.</p> </span> <div> <p>The verdict, delivered by Judge Aharon Farkash in a tiny, crowded courtroom in the Jerusalem District Courthouse, ended a nine-year ordeal for the accused, Oded Golan, 60, but it will do little to extinguish the decade-long scientific controversy over the authenticity of the limestone box, which has raged since it was first displayed to the public at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2002.</p><p>If genuine, the burial box, or ossuary, is the first physical artefact yet discovered that might be connected with the family of the historical Jesus Christ.</p><p>Mr Golan had been accused of adding the second half of the inscription linking it to Jesus, and then fabricating the patina, the bio-organic coating that adheres to ancient objects, to pass it off as genuine.</p><p>But Judge Farkash said the prosecution had failed to prove any of the serious charges against Golan and acquitted him on all but three minor charges of illegal antiquities dealing and possession of stolen antiquities. Robert Deutsch, a codefendant, was acquitted on all charges.</p><p>“The prosecution failed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt what was stated in the indictment: that the ossuary is a forgery and that Mr Golan or someone acting on his behalf forged it,” Judge Farkash told the court, summarizing his 475-page verdict.</p><p>He noted that it was the first time a criminal court had been asked to rule in a case of antiquities forgery.</p><p>The spectacular collapse of the trial, nine years after Mr Golan was arrested and thousands of items were seized from his home, office and warehouses in Tel Aviv, was a severe blow to the Israeli police and Israel Antiquities Authority, who claimed they had exposed “the tip of the iceberg” of an international conspiracy selling fake artefacts to collectors and museums worldwide.</p><p>But Judge Farkash acknowledged that the collapse of the criminal trial did not signal the end of the scientific debate over the authenticity of the ossuary.</p><p>“This is not to say that the inscription on the ossuary is true and authentic and was written 2,000 years ago,” he said. “We can expect this matter to continue to be researched in the archaeological and scientific worlds and only the future will tell. Moreover, it has not been proved in any way that the words ‘brother of Jesus’ definitely refer to the Jesus who appears in Christian writings."</p><p>“The indictment... accused Golan of faking antiques in different ways. For certain items, I decided that it was not proven, as required in criminal law, that they were fake. But there is nothing in these findings which necessarily proves that the items were authentic,” said the judge.</p><p>“All that was determined was that the means, the tools and the science available at present, along with the experts who testified, was not enough to prove the alleged fraud beyond reasonable doubt,” he said.</p><p>Judge Farkash was particularly scathing about tests carried out by the Israel police forensics laboratory which, he said, had probably contaminated the ossuary, making it impossible to carry out further scientific tests on the inscription.</p><p>Mr Golan, who was accompanied to court by his elderly parents, said he was “delighted at the complete and total acquittal I have received here today.”</p><p>“We brought experts from all over the world who testified that the inscriptions on the items that were suspected of being fakes are completely authentic,” he said.</p><p>“What we tried to do here has set an international precedent,” said Prosecutor Dan Bahat. “This is the first time someone has brought the issue of antiquities forgery before a court.”</p><p>In December 2004, Golan and four other defendants were charged with 18 separate counts of forgery, fraud and obtaining money by deception. They were accused of faking not just the James ossuary, but a huge number of antiquities including a stone tablet recording repairs by King Joash to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, an inscribed decanter apparently used in the Temple service, ancient seals, inscribed pottery and dozens of other items.</p><p>“We have grounds to believe that there are many more fake artefacts circulating, both in private collections and museums in Israel and abroad that we haven’t found yet,” Jerusalem police chief Shaul Naim said at the time. </p><p>“I believe we have revealed only the tip of the iceberg. This industry circles the world, involving millions of dollars,” said IAA director Shuka Dorfman. “Beside this, Indiana Jones looks small.”</p><p>In autumn 2005, the trial opened in the Jerusalem District Court of Judge Aharon Farkash. Mr Golan was indicted on 15 of the 18 counts, accused of a total of 44 separate crimes, the most serious of which carries a seven-year sentence. He spent the first 18 months under house arrest.</p><p>In sharp contrast to the worldwide publicity that accompanied the discovery of the ossuary and Mr Golan’s subsequent arrest, the trial attracted little interest. For five years, hearings were conducted in a tiny courtroom with just a dozen people in attendance, including only one reporter.</p><p>When Judge Farkash eventually retired to consider his verdict in October 2010, charges against two defendants had been dropped and one more had been convicted and sentenced on a minor count of deception. Farkash had presided over 116 sessions, heard 133 witnesses, examined 200 exhibits – many of them entire books and scholarly papers – and heard nearly 12,000 pages of witness testimony. The prosecution summation alone ran to 653 pages.</p><p>Throughout the lengthy proceedings, Judge Farkash kept returning to two central points: whether the items under suspicion were fakes, and whether the defendants or someone acting on their behalf had faked them.</p><p>The prosecution presented three main arguments to prove that Golan had faked the “brother of Jesus” part of the ossuary inscription: scholarly, scientific and circumstantial.</p><p>The scholarly evidence was provided by experts in palaeography and ancient inscriptions who testified that the words “brother of Jesus” appeared to have been inscribed by a different hand and were highly unusual in ossuaries from the period. The scientific evidence derived from an examination of the patina that showed it had a different oxygen isotope composition to the other letters and the surface of the box. The circumstantial evidence rested on tools, soil samples and half-finished objects seized from Golan’s home and warehouses that appeared to be the raw materials for faking antiquities and covering them with a false patina.</p><p>But what began as a worldwide conspiracy with more anticipated arrests and certain convictions slowly began to unravel. Despite the confident predictions, nobody else was arrested and no more fakes were found. Not a single forgery emerged from a museum. The “tip of the iceberg” was melting.</p><p>In court, lawyers for Mr Golan and Robert Deutsch, his codefendant, produced equally eminent experts to challenge the findings of each prosecution witness. Sometimes the opposing witnesses came from the very same university campus.</p><p>Professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, a member of the IAA experts’ committee and the main prosecution witness, originally testified that the patina in the word “Jesus” could not have formed under natural conditions and must be a later addition. Under intense cross-examination, Professor Goren was forced to change his original testimony, agreeing with defence experts that there was indeed authentic patina in a groove of the final letter. Professor Goren suggested this was because an “ancient groove” had been incorporated by the forger into the newly-carved word.</p><p>“Scientific debates should be discussed and resolved in peer-reviewed literature and scientific conferences, not in court,” said Professor Aldo Shemesh, an isotope expert at the Weizmann Institute and expert defence witness, echoing the majority view among the long procession of world-renowned professors from Israel, America and Europe who joined the five-year progress through the modest courtroom.</p><p>Mr Golan, 60, made an unlikely criminal. One of Israel’s leading collectors of antiquities, his Tel Aviv apartment resembles a museum, lined with glass-fronted cabinets displaying hundreds of ancient items. Hundreds more are stored in several warehouses. He was born into the city elite. His grandfather founded one of Israel’s major insurance companies and the family purchased land in Israel’s early years that is now worth millions. His mother, now retired, is a world-renowned biochemist and his brother, who died during the trial, was a leading Israeli publisher.</p><p>Mr Golan trained as an engineer and became a serial entrepreneur with successful businesses in travel, architectural seminars and educational software. He is also an accomplished photographer and plays concert-level classical piano on the white baby grand in his living room. If he is guilty of masterminding an international forgery ring, it’s not because he needs the money.</p><p>“I never faked any antiquity,” said Mr Golan, who thinks he bought the ossuary in the 1980s from a dealer in the Old City of Jerusalem. A photograph he produced at the trial, dated by an FBI expert to the 1980s, shows the ossuary complete with inscription on the balcony outside his bedroom.</p><p>“I cannot guarantee that it belonged to the brother of Jesus Christ but it’s definitely ancient. I have no doubt about it,” he said.</p><p>A guilty verdict would have convinced most observers that the inscription is fake, and therefore historically worthless. But even though Mr Golan was found innocent, many of the experts will continue to doubt the authenticity of the James ossuary.</p><p>“My tests showed that the patina coating the ossuary was more or less homogenous, but the patina coating the inscription was completely different,” said Professor Goren. </p><p>“The entire patina that coated the inscription was obviously not the same as the patina coating the rest of the ossuary, which is highly suspicious… Somebody created or simulated an authentic patina but in modern times,” he insisted<i>.</i></p><p><i>Matthew Kalman is editor in chief of The Jerusalem Report.</i></p> </div> </div>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-79631474702950792072012-03-14T18:49:00.000-07:002012-03-16T00:50:28.200-07:00Associated PressAt one point, the prosecutor brought a camp stove, chalk, beaker and other ingredients to show how easy it is to make fake patina, said journalist Matthew Kalman, a frequent trial observer. The defense then used the same technique to show that fake patina doesn't stick to stone.<br /><br />"It began to look like a high school chemistry class," said Kalman, editor of The Jerusalem Report magazine.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">- Daniella Cheslow, "Oded Golan, James Ossuary Proponent, Acquitted of Antiquities Fraud," AP, March 14, 2012</span>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-32714212563041649452012-03-14T17:41:00.003-07:002012-03-16T00:45:43.158-07:00The Times of Israel“The trial was a collision of two worlds — criminal prosecution and scholarly archaeology,” said journalist Matthew Kalman, the editor of The Jerusalem Report and the only reporter to cover the entire trial.<br /><br />“The two simply speak different languages,” he said. “The verdict will not make a difference to the archaeologists arguing about the whether the artifacts are authentic.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">- Matti Friedman, “Oded Golan is not guilty of forgery. So is the ‘James ossuary’ for real?,” THE TIMES OF ISRAEL, March 14, 2012</span>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-18935575454346031152012-03-14T16:38:00.003-07:002013-08-01T02:05:06.742-07:00Jerusalem Court Acquits Antiquities Collector of Forgeries After 7-Year Trial<img alt="Jerusalem Court Acquits Antiquities Collector of Forgeries After 7-Year Trial 1" src="http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/photo_19339_landscape_large.jpg" /> <br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;"><i>(Drew Cunningham, Getty Images) Whether the artifact above held the bones of Jesus' brother is still a question among archaeologists.</i></span></div>
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<br /><br />By Matthew Kalman<br />Jerusalem<br />CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION<br />March 14, 2012<br />In a case that has roiled scholars around the world in a broad range of disciplines, the Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday acquitted an Israeli antiquities collector, Oded Golan, of forging dozens of priceless archaeological artifacts, including an inscription on the burial box, or ossuary, of James, brother of Jesus.<br />"It is not every day that a court hears a case involving as many topics as this one," wrote Judge Aharon Farkash on the second-to-last page of his 475-page verdict.<br />"The complexity of the trial derived among other things from the fact that this was the first time that a court was asked to rule on a question of antiquities forgery, especially in the framework of a criminal trial," he said.<br />During the seven-year trial, the court heard testimony from experts in archaeology, the Bible, chemistry and geochemistry, geology, grammar and language, paleography, and more.<br />The list of witnesses—74 for the prosecution and 52 for the defense—that trooped through Judge Farkash's tiny courtroom reads like a who's who of the world's leading scholars in many of those fields.<br />But in transplanting their academic prowess from lecture hall to courtroom, the scholars swiftly became aware of the chasm separating scholarship from criminal law. For each world-renowned expert wielded by the prosecution, defense attorneys deployed an authority of equal eminence. Often, the experts taking up the cudgels on opposing sides came from the very same campus.<br />And, as the judge wryly noted in his verdict, even when the professors were appearing for the same side, they disagreed with one another—and sometimes even with themselves, changing their minds as time passed.At several points during the trial, the judge's frustration became clear. "If you, the world's leading experts in this field, cannot agree with each other on the authenticity or otherwise of these items, how do you expect me, a mere judge, to reach a conclusion?" he asked.<br /><div>
As a result, the spectacular acquittal of Mr. Golan and of Robert Deutsch, an inscriptions expert—Israeli officials initially said the defendants were connected to an international forgery ring—on all the most serious charges will do little to calm the academic debate raging over the authenticity of dozens of items listed among the 18 charges on the indictment sheet. Those items include the limestone ossuary, an inscribed tablet attributed to the ninth-century-BC King Jehoash, and an inscribed decanter. The last two items might have come from the Temple in Jerusalem.<br />"My conclusion," Judge Farkash told the court, "is that the prosecution failed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt what was stated in the indictment: that the ossuary is a forgery and that Golan or someone acting on his behalf forged it. This is not to say that the inscription on the ossuary is true and authentic and was written 2,000 years ago," he said. "This matter is expected to continue to be researched in the archaeological and scientific forum and the future will tell."</div>
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André Lemaire, a biblical epigrapher and director of studies at l'École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, who first published the ossuary inscription in 2002, said he had always believed in his original judgment.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Forged 2,000 Years Ago?</span><br />"I never doubted the authenticity of the whole inscription, even after reading carefully all the arguments presented against it. I am confident that further scientific tests will not change the situation," Mr. Lemaire told The Chronicle.<br /><br />Meir Ben-Dov, a witness for the defense and the only archaeologist to attend most sessions of the trial, said the entire process had been "nonsense."<br /><br />"These debates should be taking place in an academic seminar, not a court of law," Mr. Ben-Dov said.<br /><br />"I myself am convinced that there is no evidence of forgery. If it was forged, maybe it was forged 2,000 years ago," said Joel Kronfeld, emeritus professor in the department of geophysics and planetary sciences at Tel Aviv University, who appeared for the defense. "There are just no compelling results that show us there is any forgery."<br /><br />Across the Tel Aviv University campus, Yuval Goren, a prosecution witness and professor in the department of archaeology and ancient Near Eastern civilizations, was equally insistent in the opposite direction.<br /><br />"I examined the materials covering the ossuary and the inscription, and we found out that the materials covering the inscription were not created in the natural processes typical of the Judean mountains area over the last 2,000 years," said Mr. Goren.<br /><br />"Since the verdict is not guilty, it means the accused had, first of all, very good lawyers but also there was no legal way to connect between them and the fraud. But it doesn't really change much about the scientific conclusions because they are unrelated," he insisted. "I think the scientific data still stands for itself."<br /><br />His view is supported by James E. West, adjunct professor of biblical studies at the Quartz Hill School of Theology and moderator of an influential online forum on biblical archaeology.<br /><br />"Golan has harmed the field of archaeology in incalculable ways," said Mr. West. "Whenever real, and important, discoveries are made, the public will view them with skepticism because now there will always underlie them the potential that they too are fakes. It may have been a good verdict for Golan personally—but for the field of 'biblical archaeology', this is a sad day, a bad day, and in truth, a tragic day."<br /><br />Israel Finkelstein, another professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, was also a prosecution witness. He continues to believe the items are fakes and says archaeologists should avoid any item not found in a supervised excavation.<br /><br />"A judicial procedure is one thing and an academic investigation—and debate—is another," said Mr. Finkelstein. "As far as I can judge, there is enough evidence against the authenticity of the inscription on the ossuary and the Jehoash inscription."<br /><br />Eric M. Meyers, director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke University, said the failure to prove the items were forged "in no way means that they are authentic. The burden of proof that falls on the prosecution in a criminal case must rise to a high level of proof beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that the defendants have been acquitted thus does not end the matter of the quest to decide authenticity. This leaves much opportunity for academic opinion to continue to believe that these artifacts are not authentic and to question their provenance."<br /><br />Antonio Lombatti, an Italian church historian, said he expected the debate to continue. "If the carbon dating of the Turin shroud in 1988 didn't put the word 'end' to the debate, I won't expect a trial verdict to have the last word on a Jewish ossuary," he said.</div>
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Originally published here: <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Jerusalem-Court-Acquits/131164/">http://chronicle.com/article/Jerusalem-Court-Acquits/131164/</a></div>
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Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-43161001062187420882012-03-14T05:13:00.000-07:002012-03-14T05:14:56.473-07:00Antiquities collector acquitted of forgery charges in ‘James ossuary’ case<img src="http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/images/v2/gam-masthead-red.png" /> <div> <div> <img src="http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01384/LUM16_141102D_J_1384707cl-8.jpg" alt="The media are given a preview of The James Ossuary on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Nov.14.2002 - The media are given a preview of The James Ossuary on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Nov.14.2002 | Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail" height="349" width="620" /> <div style="font-style: italic;"> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">The media are given a preview of The James Ossuary on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Nov.14.2002 (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)</span></p> </div> </div> <div> <h4> MATTHEW KALMAN </h4> <h5 style="font-weight: normal;"> <span>Jerusalem— </span> <span>Special to Globe and Mail Update</span> </h5> <h5 style="font-weight: normal;">Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2012<br /></h5> </div> </div> <p>A Roman-era burial box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” was reprieved from the scrapheap of history on Wednesday when a Jerusalem judge completely exonerated an Israeli antiquities collector who had been accused of forging it.</p><p>The verdict, delivered by Judge Aharon Farkash in a tiny, crowded courtroom in the Jerusalem District Courthouse, ended a seven-year ordeal for the accused, Oded Golan, 60, but it will do little to extinguish the decade-long scientific controversy over the authenticity of the limestone box which has raged since it was first displayed to the public at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2002.</p><p>If genuine, the burial box, or ossuary, is the first physical artifact yet discovered that might be connected with the family of the historical Jesus Christ.</p><p>Mr. Golan had been accused of adding the second half of the inscription linking it to Jesus, and then fabricating the patina, the bio-organic coating that adheres to ancient objects, to pass it off as genuine.</p><p>But Judge Farkash said the prosecution had failed to prove any of the serious charges against Mr. Golan and acquitted him on all but three minor charges of illegal antiquities dealing and possession of stolen antiquities. Robert Deutsch, a co-defendant, was acquitted on all charges.</p><p>“The prosecution failed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt what was stated in the indictment: that the ossuary is a forgery and that Mr. Golan or someone acting on his behalf forged it,” Judge Farkash told the court, summarizing his 475-page verdict.</p><p>He noted that it was the first time a criminal court had been asked to rule in a case of antiquities forgery.</p><p>The spectacular collapse of the trial, nine years after Mr. Golan was arrested and thousands of items were seized from his home, office and warehouses in Tel Aviv, was a severe blow to the Israeli police and Israel Antiquities Authority, who claimed they had exposed “the tip of the iceberg” of an international conspiracy selling fake artifacts to collectors and museums worldwide.</p><p>The verdict will be welcomed by those who hope that the ossuary will finally provide a physical connection to the historical Jesus.</p><p>But Judge Farkash, who said he had heard from 126 witnesses and sat through 120 sessions that produced more than 12,000 pages of testimony, acknowledged that the collapse of the criminal trial did not signal the end of the scientific debate over the authenticity of the ossuary.</p><p>“This is not to say that the inscription on the ossuary is true and authentic and was written 2,000 years ago,” he said. “We can expect this matter to continue to be researched in the archaeological and scientific worlds and only the future will tell. Moreover, it has not been proved in any way that the words ‘brother of Jesus’ definitely refer to the Jesus who appears in Christian writings.’</p><p>Judge Farkash was particularly scathing about tests carried out by the Israel police forensics laboratory that he said had probably contaminated the ossuary, making it impossible to carry out further scientific tests on the inscription.</p><p>Mr. Golan, who was accompanied to court by his elderly parents, said he was “delighted at the complete and total acquittal I have received here today.”</p><p>“We brought experts from all over the world who testified that the inscriptions on the items that were suspected of being fakes are completely authentic, following research work by dozens of experts,” he said.</p><p>Prosecutor Dan Bahat said the case had been complicated by the refusal of a key witness, who was suspected of helping to forge many of the items, to come from Egypt to testify.</p><p>“What we tried to do here has set an international precedent,” said Mr. Bahat. “This is the first time someone has brought the issue of antiquities forgery before a court. Regarding at least one object, a decanter, the court found it was fake.”</p>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-61480147257676409212012-03-12T22:46:00.002-07:002012-03-12T22:47:08.999-07:00MK production for Channel 4 News: The 'Jesus' box: clever forgery or genuine article?<object id="flashObj" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0" height="260" width="370"><param name="movie" value="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1"><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"><param name="flashVars" value="videoId=1503050000001&playerID=69900095001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAEabvr4~,Wtd2HT-p_VhJQ6tgdykx3j23oh1YN-2U&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true"><param name="base" value="http://admin.brightcove.com"><param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="swLiveConnect" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashvars="videoId=1503050000001&playerID=69900095001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAEabvr4~,Wtd2HT-p_VhJQ6tgdykx3j23oh1YN-2U&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" swliveconnect="true" allowscriptaccess="always" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" height="260" width="370"></embed></object>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-40365535966880164542012-02-29T15:21:00.001-08:002012-02-29T15:21:49.495-08:00Channel 4 News interview: Jesus Tomb claims<object id="flashObj" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0" height="260" width="370"><param name="movie" value="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1"><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"><param name="flashVars" value="videoId=1481299872001&playerID=69900095001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAEabvr4~,Wtd2HT-p_VhJQ6tgdykx3j23oh1YN-2U&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true"><param name="base" value="http://admin.brightcove.com"><param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="swLiveConnect" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashvars="videoId=1481299872001&playerID=69900095001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAEabvr4~,Wtd2HT-p_VhJQ6tgdykx3j23oh1YN-2U&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" swliveconnect="true" allowscriptaccess="always" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" height="260" width="370"></embed></object>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-7779406275674955862010-10-05T09:52:00.000-07:002010-10-05T09:53:23.975-07:00Judge Considers Verdict in 5-Year-Long Jesus Forgery Trial<div> <div> AOL News, October 5th<abbr title="2010-10-05T12:05:23-05:00"><br /><br /></abbr></div></div><div><div><div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/team/matthew-kalman" target="_blank"> <img src="http://o.aolcdn.com/os/news/art/matthew-kalman_pic" alt="Matthew Kalman" /></a><p><b> <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/team/matthew-kalman" target="_blank">Matthew Kalman</a></b> <span>Contributor</span></p> <span><span>AOL News</span></span> </div> <div> <div> <div> </div> </div> </div><div> JERUSALEM (Oct. 5) -- The discovery in 2002 of a limestone burial box with the Hebrew inscription "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" electrified the world of archaeology. If genuine, the burial box, or ossuary, would be the only archaeological artifact yet found with a possible direct link to Jesus of Nazareth.<br /><br />Amid international fanfare, the ossuary went on display at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum and swiftly spawned numerous articles, scholarly studies, several documentary movies and at least four books.<br /><br />But experts at the Israel Antiquities Authority declared it a modern-day forgery. Israeli police seized the burial box and arrested its owner, Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan. In December 2004 he was charged with faking the ossuary and dozens of other items, including an inscribed tablet linked to King Joash, which, if authentic, would be the only physical evidence from the Temple of Solomon.<br /><br /><div><img src="http://o.aolcdn.com/photo-hub/news_gallery/6/8/688822/1286231226318.JPEG" alt="Oded Golan points to an inscription on an ossuary believed to have held the bones of Jesus' brother James" /><div> <span style="font-size:78%;">AFP / Getty Images</span></div><div><b><span style="font-size:78%;">Oded Golan points to the Hebrew inscription "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" on the burial box at the center of a five-year forgery trial in Israel.</span></b></div></div><br />The indictment leveled 44 charges of forgery, fraud and deception against Golan and 13 lesser counts against a co-defendant, antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch. The trial of Golan, Deutsch and three other defendants opened at the Jerusalem District Court in September 2005.<br /><br />Last Sunday, the defense ended its summing up with just two men left in the dock, bringing to an end five years of court proceedings that spanned 116 sessions, 133 witnesses, 200 exhibits and nearly 12,000 pages of witness testimony. The prosecution summation alone ran to 653 pages.<br /><br />Yet despite the flood of strong scientific testimony, the feeling in the tiny courtroom, where fewer than a dozen people (including only one reporter) have followed the proceedings, was that the prosecution had failed to prove the items were forgeries or that Golan and Deutsch had faked them.<br /><br />Judge Aharon Farkash, the wheelchair-bound polymath who has overseen the marathon trial, wondered aloud on several occasions how he could be expected to deliver a legal ruling on what was essentially a scientific question that the experts themselves could not resolve.<br /><br />In October 2008, just three years into the proceedings, Farkash pointedly asked whether the trial should continue after the prosecution and Golan had presented their evidence.<br /><br />"Have you really proved beyond a reasonable doubt that these artifacts are fakes as charged in the indictment? The experts disagreed among themselves," Farkash told the prosecutor.<br /><br />Summing up last March, lead prosecutor Dan Bahat made a startling admission. "If the ossuary had been the only thing on trial, we probably would not have carried on with the process," he said.<br /><br />Bahat was not even in court to hear the judge wrap up the trial and retire to consider his verdict.<br /><br />Scientists and lawyers have spent months arguing over the patina -- a thin crust of material formed by micro-organisms that covers all ancient objects. The prosecution accuse Golan of creating a fake patina, which he applied to new inscriptions on ancient objects. Defense experts say there is patina inside the grooves of the inscriptions that could not have been formed in the past two centuries.<br /><br />Golan said he had never faked anything.<br /><br />"I feel that I succeeded to prove that the most important items should be at least 200 years old. They could not be forged because there is ancient, authentic, natural patina which has been developed gradually over at least 200 years in both the James ossuary and the Joash tablet," Golan told AOL News.<br /><br />"They lost the case, there's no question. On the main issues they were completely wrong. They are not forgeries. It's not only that they could not prove there was a forgery. With the James ossuary and the Joash tablet, I believe that we proved their authenticity with experts in patina, in geology, in stone, in engraving," he said.<br /><br />At times, the courtroom has seemed more like a doctoral seminar than a legal proceeding. The world's leading experts on archaeology, biblical history, Semitic languages, ancient stones and inscriptions, geology, isotopes (both stable and carbon-14), biology, chemistry, microscopy and glue have participated in an often fascinating and sometimes embarrassing collision of scholarship and criminal law.<br /><br />The court has heard from grave robbers, dealers in the shady antiquities market, billionaire collectors and tireless investigators who spend freezing nights in the desert waiting to catch tomb raiders. There have been stories of mysterious Egyptian forgers, cash payments of thousands of dollars in parked cars on West Bank back roads, sting operations at airport customs and warehouses crammed full of priceless ancient artifacts.<br /><br />Judge Farkash said Sunday he would try to plow through all that material and deliver a verdict as soon as possible. It could take several months.<br /><br />The criminal, scholarly and scientific implications of his verdict are immense. If genuine, the artifacts are of historic importance and worth millions. An acquittal would be a severe setback for the Israel Antiquities Authority and its special investigators, who accused Golan and his co-defendants of making millions of dollars as part of an international chain of forgers planting sophisticated fakes in the world's museums. It would also be an acute embarrassment for the isotope experts at the Israel Geological Survey and professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, who spent many days on the stand defending scientific tests they said showed the items must be fakes.<br /><br />A guilty verdict, on the other hand, would destroy the reputation of one of the world's leading collectors of biblical antiquities and drive the entire Israeli market underground. The Israel Antiquities Authority has made no secret of its desire to shut down the trade in Bible-era artifacts, which they believe encourages grave robbers, who spirit the choicest finds out of the country.<br /><br />Government officials and many scholars say the market is riddled with forgeries, and they are skeptical of any item that does not come from a licensed, supervised excavation where its provenance can be proved. But Golan said he had never seen a forgery that wasn't immediately obvious and pointed out that some of Israel's greatest archaeological treasures came from dealers. Indeed, the most striking example is one of the most important biblical finds ever: the Dead Sea Scrolls, which a Bedouin shepherd sold to an Israeli professor half a century ago.</div>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-46972408192303659772010-07-16T03:48:00.001-07:002010-07-16T03:49:23.539-07:00Is Holy Land Archaeology Being Hyped by Politics?<div> <div> AOL NEWS, July 15 2010<abbr title="2010-07-15T21:52:46-05:00"><br /><br /></abbr></div></div><div><div><div> <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/is-holy-land-archaeology-being-hyped-by-politics/19556460#" target="_blank"><span></span></a></div></div> </div> <div> <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/team/matthew-kalman" target="_blank"> <img src="http://o.aolcdn.com/os/news/art/matthew-kalman_pic" alt="Matthew Kalman" /></a><p><b> <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/team/matthew-kalman" target="_blank">Matthew Kalman</a></b> <span>Contributor</span></p> <span><span>AOL News</span></span> </div> <div> <div> <div> JERUSALEM (July 15) -- Bible-era scholars say they are getting fed up with headline-grabbing archaeological discoveries that seem more influenced by modern political agendas and showmanship than by scholarship.<br /><br />Some recent announcements have been tainted with "exaggeration and speculation the likes of which haven't been seen since pieces of the 'true cross' were found all across Europe in the Middle Ages," said Jim West, adjunct professor of biblical studies at the Quartz Hill School of Theology and moderator of an influential online forum for Bible scholars.<br /><br />The latest possible case in point came this week, when Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University announced that she had unearthed "the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem" after sifting debris from a site between the Temple Mount and the City of David, in Jerusalem. The fragment of clay tablet about 1 inch square is inscribed with cuneiform lettering in ancient Akkadian, the everyday language of Jerusalem in the 14th century B.C.<br /><br /><div><img alt="Israeli archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology holds the clay fragment at her Jerusalem office on Monday." src="http://o.aolcdn.com/photo-hub/news_gallery/6/7/676144/1279235877091.JPEG" /><div><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Gali Tibbon, AFP / Getty Images</b></span></div><div> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Israeli archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology holds the clay fragment containing "the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem" at her office on Monday.</b></span></div></div><br />The claims Mazar's team attached to that tiny shard, however, were massive. Dr. Mazar said the discovery provides "solid evidence of the importance of Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age" and "lends weight to the importance that accrued to the city in later times, leading up to its conquest by King David in the 10th century B.C.E." Her colleague Wayne Horowitz said there was "a great likelihood, because of its fine script and the fact it was discovered adjacent to in the acropolis area of the ancient city" that the fragment was part of "royal missive." Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University said the clay used testified "to the likelihood that it was part of a tablet from a royal archive in Jerusalem containing copies of tablets sent by the king of Jerusalem to Pharaoh Akhenaten in Egypt."<br /><br />Within hours, experts on ancient Jerusalem were wondering how such a tiny fragment could produce such a wealth of history.<br /><br />"We already knew there was a king in Jerusalem at the time," says Meir Ben-Dov, a veteran archaeologist who explored the same area with Mazar's grandfather from 1968 onward. "It's the first time they've found a little shard here, but it doesn't tell us anything we didn't know already. This find has no significance."<br /><br />This is not the first time Mazar has come under fire from colleagues for making grandiose claims. In August 2005, she unearthed an impressive building from the 10th century B.C. and tagged it as the palace of King David. Earlier this year, she said a large stone wall discovered by her grandfather and Ben-Dov was built by Solomon, provoking a withering response from the scholarly community.<br /><br />But Mazar is hardly an exception. Many scholars are concerned that archaeology is being used to score political points in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And nowhere more so than around the City of David, a rich archaeological mound just south of the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque identified in the 19th century as the possible site of King David's ancient city, now covered with crowded Palestinian housing.<br /><br />The City of David is in the village of Silwan in east Jerusalem, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War but which Palestinians considered the only acceptable capital of an independent Palestinian state. Because of its historical significance, the site has been declared an Israeli national park, but it is managed by El-ad, a right-wing Israeli group that also seeks to move Israeli residents into the contentious neighborhood. Some find the mix of politics and archaeology combustible.<br /><br />"My primary concern is that archaeology is being turned to political use and as nothing but a means to raise funds for ideologically driven projects. This certainly seems to be the case in the City of David dig," Quartz Hill's West says.<br /><br />Last Sunday, Ir Amim, a Jerusalem co-existence group, petitioned Israel's High Court to end El-ad's control of the site and return it to the National Parks Authority. "The state of Israel has privatized one of the most sensitive historic sites in the country -- and transferred it to the hands of a private organization with a clear political agenda," says Yehudit Oppenheimer, the group's director.<br /><br />But bullhorn archaeology isn't the sole domain of the Israeli right. Shimon Gibson of the independent Albright Institute of Archaeological Research was greeted with loud skepticism in 2004 when he declared a cave west of Jerusalem to be the hiding place of John the Baptist. Earlier this month, professor Adam Zertal of Haifa University identified a site as "Sisera's hometown, as mentioned in the book of Judges" based on the discovery of a single bronze linchpin from a chariot wheel. Further afield, Christian archaeologists have made numerous contested claims to having found <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/scholarly-squad-debunks-biblical-discoveries-noahs-ark-related-and-otherwise/19460930" target="_blank">Noah's Ark</a> in Turkey.<br /><br />While El-ad tries to prove King David's ancient links to Jerusalem, Palestinians are trying to do the opposite. Thousands of tons of debris potentially rich in archaeological treasures have been hauled off the Temple Mount without proper supervision during mosque renovations in the past decade. Until recently, an official guide to the mosque for visitors denied that Solomon's Temple had ever stood there.<br /><br />There have been riots over unfounded claims by Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel headed by Sheikh Raed Salah that Israeli excavations are undermining the foundations of Al-Aqsa, threatening it with collapse.</div> </div> </div>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1358633641450991704.post-88598883605886900532009-09-15T22:24:00.000-07:002009-09-15T22:32:37.918-07:00Radio Interview: The Book & The Spade<a href="http://www.radioscribe.com/1193tbts.mp3">Radio interview with Gordon Govier on The Book & The Spade September 2009, Pt 1</a>Matthew Kalmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277300314060736852noreply@blogger.com0