Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics

224 Pages·2009·1.048 MB·English

by  Ryan Byrne, Bernadette McNary-Zak

Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus
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∫ 2009 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Designed by Kimberly Bryant
Set in Whitman by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for
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The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Resurrecting the brother of Jesus : the James Ossuary
controversy and the quest for religious relics / edited by Ryan
Byrne and Bernadette McNary-Zak.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8078-3298-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. James Ossuary. 2. James, Brother of the Lord, Saint.
3. Protestant churches—Doctrines. I. Byrne, Ryan.
II. McNary-Zak Bernadette.
bs2454.j3r47 2009
225.9%3—dc22 2009002896
cloth 13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
ryan byrne & bernadette m nary-zak
c
Archaeological Context and Controversy
The Bones of James Unpacked 19
byron r. m cane
c
The Brother of Jesus in Toronto 31
thomas s. bremer
Finding True Religion in the James Ossuary
The Conundrum of Relics in Faith Narratives 59
bernadette m nary-zak
c
Christian Artifacts in Documentary Film
The Case of the James Ossuary 73
milton moreland
Anatomy of a Cargo Cult
Virginity, Relic Envy, and Hallowed Boxes 137
ryan byrne
Overcoming the James Ossuary and the
Legacy of Biblical Archaeology 187
jonathan l. reed
Epilogue
Objects, Faith, and Archaeoporn 207
ryan byrne & bernadette m nary-zak
c
Index 211
Illustrations
The James Ossuary in the Royal Ontario Museum 2
The Royal Ontario Museum 52
The decorated ossuary of Caiaphas, high priest of Jerusalem 199
Small sarcophagus from Asia Minor 201
vi
Acknowledgments
This book is one of the products of a collaborative teaching and learning
e√ort in the Department of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in the
spring of 2004. Seeking a way to work interdepartmentally and to provide
an upper-level research opportunity for our students, four of this volume’s
authors created a seminar course on the James Ossuary phenomenon. The
course allowed us to work closely with four undergraduate students, Rob-
ert Edgecombe, Lindsey Hammond, Marion Heckethorn, and Mary Claire
Gi≈n, who were eager to explore and understand various aspects of the
public response to this object. In many ways, their work was the founda-
tion for the essays in this volume, and therefore we are especially grateful
to them.
Our work was funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant for
Faculty Career Enhancement (Local Initiative). We are grateful to those
who helped make this funding possible and for the institutional support
that we received from our colleagues at Rhodes College, especially Pro-
fessors Robert Llewellyn, Robert Strandburg, and Ellen Armour and the
members of the Department of Religious Studies. Special thanks go to
Professors Georgia Frank, Byron McCane, Leigh Schmidt, and Jonathan
Reed, who graciously accepted our invitation to speak at the college on
topics pertaining to the James Ossuary phenomenon and spent time in
conversation with our students. Our study of the James Ossuary phenome-
non was further enhanced by conversations with Professor Jonathan Z.
Smith at the Midwest Regional Meeting of the American Academy of
Religion in Chicago in April 2004, during which our students presented
some of their finds and participated in a panel discussion in a special
session on religion and education. We are especially grateful to Professor
Smith and to those in the American Academy of Religion and the Society
of Biblical Literature for their interest in, and support of, our work.
This study would not have been possible without those in the city of
Toronto who were willing to meet with Professor Thomas S. Bremer and
vii
Acknowledgments
Robert Edgecombe to share their thoughts on the ossuary and its display.
We are particularly grateful to the Royal Ontario Museum, whose sta√
provided invaluable assistance. Special thanks go to Ed Keall, Francisco
Alvarez, Suzan Sabir, and the security guards at the James Ossuary display.
We would also like to extend our gratitude to Terry Donaldson of the
University of Toronto, Professor John Kloppenborg, Professor John Mar-
shall, Professor Peter Richardson, Professor Leif Vaage, June Alloway, Tom
and Kay Hayes, Frank Petersen, and Rev. Dr. Fritz T. Kristbergs.
Finally, we are grateful to the anonymous readers of an earlier version
of this manuscript and to Elaine Maisner and the sta√ of the University of
North Carolina Press, including Tema Larter and Jay Mazzocchi, for their
work in bringing this volume to publication.
viii
| ryan byrne & bernadette mcnary-zak
Introduction
World Exclusive! Evidence of Jesus Written in Stone
Thus ran the cover of the popular newsstand magazine Biblical Archaeology
Review (bar) in the autumn of 2002.∞ In a private antiquities collection,
Sorbonne professor Andre Lemaire had discovered an Aramaic inscrip-
tion on an ancient Jewish ossuary—a burial box for skeletal remains—that
read, ‘‘Jacob [James] son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’’ The find was her-
alded as the final resting place of James, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth.≤
The New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Le Monde, and
other newspapers around the world acclaimed the ossuary as perhaps the
greatest archaeological find of all time. The Lehrer News Hour, 60 Minutes,
the Discovery Channel, the Tonight Show, and the New Yorker all o√ered
perspectives on the potential significance of the discovery. On Novem-
ber 7, 2002, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart o√ered the barb: ‘‘Heaven’s
Crate: scientists have found the burial box of Jesus’ brother James, who
was sort of the Emilio Estevez of the Holy Land.’’ The abstruse pop culture
reference was apt, in part because James had never enjoyed a prominent
role in Protestantism, while Catholicism could not grant him a blood rela-
tionship with Jesus, the son of a perpetual virgin. In other words, the
religious public needed a kind of introduction to James. It fell to scholars,
specifically biblicists and epigraphers, to repackage James as a central
Christian figure and cause for religious excitement. It fell to the media to
sensationalize the find and polemicize its potential theological meaning.
These choices of deliberate interpretation o√er us an instructive look at
the commercialization of biblical antiquity, the academy’s dialogue with
1