c. 2003 Religion News Service

TEL AVIV, Israel _ Hundreds of clay figurines from the ancient Israelite and Canaanite era line the walls of Oded Golan’s apartment, neatly ordered by period and content, museum-style. On the floor of an enclosed balcony looking out onto the street below are several white limestone boxes from Roman times _ similar to the now-famous “James ossuary” that for years sat inconspicuously in Golan’s storage room.

The story of the ossuary’s recent discovery in Golan’s private collection has little to do with the long and venerable history of Christian archaeological exploration of the Holy Land.

It has more to do with the contemporary Israeli passion for archaeology, as a modern link to the land of ancient Jewish heritage.

Golan, 48, a collector born and bred directly in that tradition, first began gathering odd bits of antiquity in the early 1960s while on youthful hikes across the country in an era when field exploration of the Holy Land was a popular pastime for citizens of the young Israeli state.

“No one else in my family were archaeology buffs,” the reclusive but affable Golan recalled in an interview at his home in a comfortable old quarter of Tel Aviv. “But I went hiking a lot, from the Negev and to the Galilee, with my family and on my own. … And everywhere I went I would pick up something. It came from something inside of me.”

In the early 1960s, as a young teen, Golan joined a dig with the celebrated Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin.

Yadin, a brilliant strategist of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, had resigned his post as army chief of staff in 1952 to return to his first love, archaeology. Using the archaeologist’s tools, Yadin had set out to systematically explore the biblical sites made famous in ancient Israel’s battles. Those included Hazor, the Galilee town the Bible says Joshua conquered and King Solomon fortified, and the Dead Sea Jewish fortress of Massada, where rebel Jewish forces committed mass suicide rather than surrender to Roman legions in 74 A.D.

“In the early 1960s, I helped in the excavations at Massada,” recalls Golan. “Yadin was already a legend by then. Yadin believed that by exploring the archaeology of the land, he could illustrate the connection between the Bible and the modern-day land of Israel.”

By the time Golan was drafted into the army at 18, he was a serious collector, patronizing the Arab-owned antiquities shops of East Jerusalem’s Old City and the adjacent Silwan Valley. As had occurred in the case of the 1940s discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, such shops were a place where plundered antiquities often made their way to market via Bedouin and peasant farmers who roamed the far reaches of the countryside.

“I probably bought the `James’ ossuary while I was in the army or as a student,” says Golan. “Ossuaries were an item that were relatively cheap to acquire, but they were still important and rare.

“Ossuaries were inexpensive because not many people wanted to have a bone box in their living room. Yet they were relatively rare because they were only produced in the period between about 6 B.C. and about 70 A.D.,” he said. “That fact also allows one to date the artifact with relative accuracy.”

The custom of collecting bones of the deceased for secondary burial in ossuaries was most prevalent among the Jewish residents of Jerusalem. But the practice died out quickly, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.

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Ossuaries bearing an inscription naming the deceased and his patrimony are prized by any collector.

Of the 900 ossuaries that have been discovered and cataloged by Israel’s Antiquities Authority, fewer than 230 bear an inscription.

“Only about 10 percent of the residents of Jerusalem in that period knew how to read. So ossuaries that were inscribed related either to people who had been literate themselves or had literate members of family,” Golan said.

Even so, Golan said he thought little about the meaning of the Aramaic names “Ya’acov (James), Yoseph (Joseph) and Yeshua (Jesus),” as he encountered them in the shop of an East Jerusalem antiquities dealer. The dealer, as he recalls, told him only that the item had come from somewhere in the Silwan Valley, an area replete with ancient grave sites.

“Several of the letters in the Aramaic word `Ahui,’ or `brother,’ are very faint, and so I didn’t make out the word,” he said. “I related the names to a typical Jewish genealogy of father, son and grandson. I didn’t even know that Jesus had a brother named James.”

In addition, Golan knew that Yeshua was a fairly common name of the period. According to the Antiquities Authority’s inventory, 4 percent of the males mentioned in the inscribed ossuaries were named “Yeshua.” “Yoseph” is twice as common, and “Ya’acov,” or James, is the most rare, with only 2 percent of the males bearing such a name.

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For years the ossuary languished in Golan’s parents’ home, he said, and then later in his own apartment. It wasn’t until last March, when Andre Lemaire, the famed Sorbonne paleographer, or ancient handwriting specialist, was visiting Golan, that the piece came to light.

“I had asked Lemaire to examine another inscription, connected to a Cohen, a priest from the Temple period,” said Golan. “While he was visiting my apartment, I showed him a few photographs of other items that I had, including the ossuary in the storage room. Lemaire was the first to make the connection. He asked me if I could retrieve it from the basement.

“Lemaire asked me to send the ossuary to experts at the Israel Geological Survey institute in Jerusalem, where they subjected it to an electronic scan to determine the approximate date of the item and of the inscription.”

Handwriting experts largely concurred that the style of the letters was particularly suitable to the period between 30 and 70 A.D.

As the evidence of authenticity seems to mount, Golan remains uncertain about his plans for the ossuary. On the one hand, he says that at the moment, the artifact is not for sale. At the same time, it appears unlikely it will just return to his beloved apartment-cum-gallery _ on the balcony instead of in the basement.

“I think that it should be on display before people who are interested in it, either as an antiquity or as a religious object of emotional attachment.

“But I’ve only just begun to think about all of this,” he adds. “Until just recently, it was sitting in a storage room.”

DEA END FLETCHER