April 30, 2003 7:30 PM
Brother of Jesus?
The discovery of the inscribed, first-century ossuary near Jerusalem generated immediate attention from the media and the scholarly community alike. “This could well be the earliest artifact ever found relating to the existence of Jesus…the earliest known documentation of Jesus outside the Bible,” reported the New York Times in October 2002. The Aramaic inscription on the ossuary reads, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” In their new book The Brother of Jesus, Hershel Shanks, editor of the esteemed Biblical Archaeology Review and the first to break the ossuary story, and Ben Witherington, a prominent expert on the New Testament and early Christianity, reveal the story of this discovery and its implications for understanding Jesus, his family and the early Jewish Christian movment. The authors spoke about the latest convincing evidence of the ossuary’s authenticity and the tremendous religious implications of this find.