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

The Brother of Jesus in Toronto

31| thomas s. bremer The Brother of Jesus in Toronto At the Royal Ontario Museum (rom) in Toronto, Ontario, o≈cials regularly receive ‘‘all sorts of strange inquiries,’’ according to Ed Keall, former head of the museum’s Department of Near Eastern and Asian Civilizations . Thus, Keall initially regarded the call he received in October 2002 from Hershel Shanks, editor and publisher of the Biblical Archaeology Review (bar) as just another ‘‘crank call.’’∞ But as he listened to the caller’s proposal, Keall’s curiosity grew. Shanks o√ered to arrange for the rom to be the first institution to display the James Ossuary, a newly discovered artifact of great archaeological and religious significance. Although ossuaries are rather common (the rom already had several in its collection), this particular burial box, according to Shanks, bore an inscription of monumental importance: ‘‘James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,’’ written in the Aramaic of first-century Palestine. Experts who had examined the ossuary had concluded that this small stone box had held the bones of the biblical character James, the purported brother of Jesus of Nazareth. Keall’s initial skepticism gradually gave way to intrigue. He still had questions, but Shanks pressed for a quick answer. He insisted that the rom display the ossuary in time for the annual meetings of religious scholars that would be convening in Toronto in November, only six weeks away.≤ This seemed like an unreasonable request; the museum usually needed six months to a year to prepare this sort of exhibit. But Keall, as he recalls the conversation, ‘‘was talking with a very high-pressure person.’’ Shanks threatened to take his o√er elsewhere.≥ Bowing to the pressure, Keall agreed to at least present the o√er to the museum’s top administrators. When Keall told William Thorsell, the chief executive o≈cer of the thomas s. bremer 32 rom, and other museum administrators of Shanks’s o√er, they were immediately ‘‘enthusiastic to pursue it.’’∂ But caution tempered their enthusiasm somewhat. A newly discovered object of unknown provenance, held by an anonymous collector and not subjected to the usual scrutiny of experts in the field, left the rom vulnerable to rushing into a regrettable situation. On the other hand, museum o≈cials welcomed the opportunity to display what Shanks would call ‘‘the most astonishing find in the history of archaeology—an inscription that many scholars believe is the first attestation of Jesus of Nazareth in the archaeological record.’’∑ With museum attendance down for the year, the possibility of a high-profile object like the James Ossuary appealed to them. Thorsell instructed Keall to go ahead and explore the possibility of bringing the James Ossuary to the rom.∏ The exhibition of an object at a major institution like the rom does more than merely enhance the museum’s gate receipts. In this case, the display of the James Ossuary in Toronto contributed to its transformation from an unknown stone box in the collection of an Israeli antiquities dealer to an object of cultural importance at the center of heated debates regarding its scholarly merits and theological implications for various Christians. At the museum, this ancient box became a very modern object, appealing to modern sensibilities and entangled in the discourses of modernity .π Moreover, the public interest generated by the museum exhibition would benefit those with a financial stake in the ossuary, people like its owner, Oded Golan of Israel, as well as Shanks, whose Biblical Archaeology Society profited from the 2003 book on the ossuary that he cowrote with Ben Witherington. Indeed, the rom’s agreement to show the James Ossuary confirmed its worth as a highly valued commodity. displaying the ossuary Agreeing to display the James Ossuary was a risky proposition for o≈cials at the rom. The prestige, even the legitimacy, of a museum as a cultural institution rests on the authority of its expertise, and, as Steven Lavine and Ivan Karp point out, museums can lose their audiences if that authority is called into question.∫ A key issue in maintaining the authority of a museum is the authenticity of the objects it exhibits and the validity of claims about those objects. Museums rely on expert curators with specialized knowledge and professional experience to establish authenticity and de- The Brother of Jesus in Toronto 33 velop appropriate exhibits for the public display of items in its collection. But...