The James Ossuary is a 1st-century limestone bone-box carved in Aramaic 'Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua' — 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.' It surfaced around 2002 from the private collection of antiquities dealer Oded Golan, with no archaeological provenance whatsoever — no known tomb, no excavation record. Israel's Antiquities Authority declared the inscription a modern forgery and indicted Golan; a marathon trial ran from 2004 to 2012 and ended in acquittal, the judge ruling that forgery had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt while explicitly declining to certify the inscription as genuine. Experts still divide sharply, with some epigraphers arguing the 'brother of Jesus' clause was added later. Even if fully authentic, all three names were extremely common in 1st-century Judea, so the box cannot be tied to Jesus of Nazareth's family. It remains a genuinely contested artifact, not a place one can visit or stand at.
- Where it is
- Unknown provenance; Jerusalem-area attribution, held in Israel
- Scripture
- Matthew 13:55 · Galatians 1:19 · Acts 15:13