In the spring of 2002, a collector of ancient Jewish artifacts requested an expert in ancient writing to identify the Aramaic inscription on a limestone box he had purchased some years earlier. The box, 20 inches long and 11 inches wide, is an ossuary, commonly used by Jewish people during a certain time frame, which includes the New Testament period, to store the bones of deceased loved ones.
An ossuary with an Aramaic inscription is not uncommon. But the names inscribed on this particular box give it some amazing possibilities: “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” Could this box have been the resting place for the remains of James the brother of our Lord? Of the hundreds of ossuaries with Aramaic inscriptions, only two make reference to a brother. This has led scholars to assume the brother in these rare cases must have been someone important.
We’re told that ancient Jerusalem may have had a population of 40,000 people, and that James, Joseph, and Jesus were such common names that there could easily have been 20 Jameses who had a father named Joseph and a brother Jesus. On the other hand, we’re reminded, it’s not likely that more than one of them would have had a brother so notable as to have his name mentioned.
This ossuary will be an archaeological point of interest for years to come, and its authenticity with regard to belonging to James, the Lord’s brother, will remain an unanswered question. We’ll never know for sure.
There’s one point, however, about which we can feel absolutely certain. The man who wrote our New Testament Book of James, and whom we believe to be the son of Joseph and brother of Jesus, would have been far too humble to have planned such a boastful reference to himself, and neither would he have given permission to his surviving friends to have done so.
If James had written his own inscription, it would likely have been something similar to this: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ . . .” (James 1:1). James would never have pulled rank. Once he became a believer, his relation to Jesus of Nazareth was servant to Lord, and no longer brother to brother. We do not know if the bones of this good man ever rested in this ossuary. But if they did, his survivors heaped honors upon him which he himself would have modestly declined.