A casket with the bones of Jesus' brother, found in Israel, was presented at an exhibition in the United States. Photo

The casket with the bones of Jesus' brother James, which was found in Israel, is considered "the most significant object from the time of Christ." And this valuable Christian relic was presented at an exhibition in the United States.

The 2000-year-old ossuary has the engraved name of the Son of God's brother. This funeral box is on display at Pullman Yards in Atlanta as part of an exhibition that includes 350 historical objects from the time of Jesus, writes DailyMail.

According to researchers, the limestone box bears an inscription in ancient Aramaic that reads "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Since the names correspond to the names of the brother and father of Jesus of Nazareth, many speculate that the box once contained the remains of James the Just, the first Christian leader in Jerusalem after the crucifixion, experts say.

According to historians, during the first century, Jews buried their dead in caves and later collected the bones to place them in ossuaries.

However, like many other biblical archaeological finds, the James' Casket became the subject of controversy shortly after its public discovery in 2002.

In 2003, the owner of the ossuary, Oded Golan, was accused of forging the inscription, and experts claimed that he had added the phrase "brother of Jesus" to the limestone. Golan, on the other hand, emphasized that the artifact was genuine. And after a ten-year trial, the Israeli antiquities collector was acquitted.

Although all charges were dropped against Golan, the judge said that the verdict "does not mean that the inscription on the ossuary is authentic or that it was written 2000 years ago."

"We conducted several chemical tests, including the inscription itself, which is the most important element of the ossuary. And we proved that the entire inscription is authentic - it was engraved several thousand years ago," Oded Golan emphasized this week.

If authentic, James' ossuary would be the oldest physical evidence of Jesus' life, experts say. However, the box was found empty, meaning the bones were lost long ago.

The story of James and his ossuary

The Bible mentions Jesus' brothers several times: James, Jude, Simon, and Joses. James' name always appears first, emphasizing that he was the eldest among them.

It is known that James died a martyr's death in 62 AD, when he was stoned to death by order of the high priest. And according to other sources, the scribes and Pharisees threw him down from the top of the Temple and then beat him to death in 69 AD.

According to early church history, the chief priests aimed to stop the spread of the idea that Jesus was the Savior after the crucifixion, so they killed all his followers.

Golan said that he bought the osuar in Israel when he was still an engineering student. "At the time, I didn't realize its importance at all," the collector said.

A study conducted in 2015 aimed to determine whether the James' ossuary could have come from the tomb believed to belong to the family of Jesus.

It is known that the tomb of Talpiot was found in the south of the Old City in East Jerusalem in 1980 and contained six funeral boxes with the names of Jesus' brother, father and mother.

Earlier, OBOZ.UA wrote about the Ossuary of James as 1 of 7 convincing proofs that Jesus was a real person.

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