James Ossuary Lost Tomb of Jesus" are not supported by the overwhelming majority of scholars. James Ossuary The James Ossuary is a 1st-century limestone box that was used for containing the bones of the dead. An Aramaic inscription in the Hebrew alphabet meaning "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" is cut into one side of the box. The inscription is considered significant because, if genuine, it might provide archaeological evidence for Jesus of Nazareth. However, while the ossuary itself is accepted as authentic to the time period, the inscription itself could be a modern forgery. The existence of the ossuary was
James Ossuary was forged more than 50 years ago. In 2004, an analysis of the ossuary's Petrography and oxygen isotopic composition was conducted by Avner Ayalon, Miryam Bar-Matthews and Yuval Goren. They compared the "δ"O values of the letters patina from the James Ossuary, with the patina sampled from the uninscribed surfaces of the same item ("surface patina"), and with surface and letters patinas from legally excavated ossuaries from Jerusalem. Their study undermined the authenticity contention of the ossuary. However, Dr James Harrell, professor of Archaeological Geology at the University of Toledo, provided an explanation for this "δ"O discrepancy. He suggested that