The murky trade in modern religious relics
The urge to have a relic associated with some loved one, some hero, some person of great spirituality, is as an old as humanity. It is a quite understandable emotion. For Christians it may take on added dimensions, but they are not alone in their emotions.
But as soon as anything becomes much desired it becomes valuable, and once something becomes valuable it will be faked. The early Protestant reformers were keen to abolish the traffic in relics. They did not succeed, for Catholics continued to revere such things.
But in recent times, especially in the Holy Land, the advent of wealthy American evangelical Protestants has promoted a new and even murkier trade. The traffic in relics of Biblical times has moved on to creating items that are claimed to provide “the first archaeological evidence” for the historical Jesus.
At the heart of the case was a stone ossuary, a casket for bones used by Jews in the century or so before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The inscription on it claimed it was James, son of a Joseph, brother of Jesus.
Are these meant to be James the Just, Jesus himself, and Joseph, of the New Testament. Or are they merely a record of very common names at the period, with no such connection? Was the inscription faked by someone involved in an illegal relic trade?
Inner story
The inner story of this trade is told by American journalist Nina Burleigh in Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land (Robson Books, £16.99hb). Ms Burleigh, then a staffer on the popular magazine People, tells her story in a breezy accessible style which some purists may not care for. But she is excellent at catching the all too human dimensions of the people involved. And what she reveals is chilling.
At the heart of the story is Oden Golan, who brought the ossuary to the attention of the world. It was promoted by the Biblical Archaeology Society, Discovery Channel and the Royal Ontario Museum. But his activities, it was alleged by prosecutors, are part of a larger picture of fakery involving Biblical and New Testament relics.
Odem Golan was charged by the Israeli agency in charge of archaeology with forgery and trading in faked artefacts. After a contentious seven-year trial he was acquitted of all but three minor charges. The judge, however, pointed out this did not mean that the inscription was genuine, but only that the state had failed to make its case.
The ossuary became associated with another discovery, the so called ‘Lost Tomb of Jesus’, which prompted the notion that a burial at Talpiot had contained the remains of Jesus and his wife Mary Magdalene. (“Oh dear,” I can hear some readers sigh. “Not that stuff again.”)
Manuscript
Associated with this was writer Simcha Jacobovici, more recently the author of The Lost Gospel, which attempted to ‘decode’ a long-known manuscript to prove that its inner story revealed the truth about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. This book, though it became a New York Times bestseller (not that that means much in some cases), was rejected by all serious New Testament scholars.
It was yet another instance of dubious claims being sensationalised by the media, largely to exploit two markets, that of those who delights in conspiracies, and those anxious to prove the Bible true. These are not in the main Catholic or Orthodox, or even Palestinian Christians. Much of the media hype is driven by the beliefs and hopes of American evangelicals. But if there is a tomb of Jesus (as is claimed), with human remains that have been tested for DNA (whatever that is meant to show), one cannot help but wonder where this leaves evangelical opinion in relation to the Resurrection.
The matter ultimately is a theological one for many Christians, most of whom still believe in a physical resurrection of Christ. The burden of these extraordinary claims is not to support Christianity, but in actuality to undermine it a subtle way. These fakers (whoever they may be) are no friends of the Christian faith of millions.
