Bob Jenkins
June 16th 2003, 01:19 AM
From http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-03/bonebox.html
Writing in an Israeli newspaper, Joe Nickell
Supposedly recently discovered, the James ossuary--a limestone mortuary box that purportedly held the remains of Jesus' brother--is the subject of controversy. It has captured the attention of theologians, secular scholars, laity, and journalists around the world. Some have rushed to suggest that the inscription on it is the earliest-known reference to Jesus outside the bible, providing archaeological evidence of his historical existence.
"World Exclusive!" proclaimed Biblical Archaeology Review. "Evidence of Jesus Written in Stone," the cover continued; "Ossuary of `James, Brother of Jesus' found in Jerusalem." Urged the contents page: "Read how this important object came to light and how scientists proved it wasn't a modern forgery."
Such excitement, such joy - finally the world has archeological proof of the historical Jesus. Except that "proof" would not hold up to scrutiny. There is proof that put to shame the over-eager announcement.
Writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, André Lemaire
... believes both the artifact and its inscription authentic
continuing with Joe Nickell:
... on one of the James ossuary's long sides, the inscription consists of a single line of twenty small Aramaic characters. It reads (from right to left): "Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui diYeshua"--that is, "Jacob [English James], son of Yosef [Joseph], brother of Yeshua [Jesus]."
André Lemaire continues:
"that this is the ossuary of the James in the New Testament," [which] "would also mean that we have here the first epigraphic mention--from about 63 c.e.--of Jesus of Nazareth"
continuing with Joe Nickell:
[quote]The ossuary's inscription (a portion of which is shown here) seems suspiciously sharp-edged for its apparent age. {ah, but he's only a layman, right? But this is the forst [sic] doubt we are presented with]
Lemaire believes the inscription has a consistency and correctness that show "it is genuinely ancient and not a fake." The box was examined by two experts from the Geological Survey of Israel at the request of BAR. They concluded that the ossuary had a gray patina (or coating of age). "The same gray patina is found also within some of the letters," he wrote, "although the inscription was cleaned and the patina is therefore absent from several letters." They added, "The patina has a cauliflower shape known to be developed in a cave environment." The experts also reported they saw no evidence of "the use of a modern tool or instrument" (Rosenfeld and Ilani 2002).
Unfortunately, the cleaning of the inscription--an act either of stupidity or shrewdness--is problematic. It might have removed traces of modern tooling. And when we are told that the patina is found "within some of the letters," we should certainly want to know which ones, since scholars have debated whether the phrase "brother of Jesus" might be a spurious addition (Altman 2002; Shuman 2002).
It is even possible for traces of patination in an inscription to be original when the carving is not. That could happen if--as is the case of the James ossuary--shallow carving was done over a deeply pitted surface. The patinated bottoms of remnant pits could thus remain inside the fresh scribings.
In any case the patina may not be all it is claimed. According to one forgery expert, because patination is expected with age, "The production of a convincing patina has therefore been of great interest to those engaged in faking or restoration" (Jones 1990). Although false patinas are most commonly applied to metalwork, stone sculptures and artifacts--including fake "prehistoric" flint implements--have been treated to create the appearance of antiquity (Jones 1990). For example, the versatile forger Alceo Dossena (1878-1937) produced convincing patinas on marble (a hard, metamorphic limestone) that gave his works "an incredible look of age" (Sox 1987).
The patina traces of the James ossuary inscription have already been questioned. Responding to the claim that patina was cleaned from the inscription, one art expert notes that genuine patina would be difficult to remove while forged patina cracks off. "This appears to be what happened with the ossuary," he concludes (Lupia 2002).
Provenance
The reason for questioning the patina is that additional evidence raises doubts about the ossuary's authenticity. To begin with, there is the matter of its provenance, which concerns the origin or derivation of an artifact. Experts in the fields of objets d'art and other rarities use the term to refer to a work's being traceable to a particular source. For example, records may show that an artifact came from a certain archaeological dig, was subsequently owned by a museum, and then, when the museum sold off some of its collection, was bought by a private collector
...
With the James ossuary, the provenance seems to be, well, under development. In his BAR article, André Lemaire (2002) referred to the "newly revealed ossuary" which he would only say was "now in a private collection in Israel." A sidebar stated that on a recent visit to Jerusalem, "Lemaire happened to meet a certain collector by chance; the collector mentioned that he had some objects he wanted Lemaire to see." One of the objects was the James ossuary (Feldman 2002).
...
According to Golan [the collector identified by the Israeli Antiquities Authority who are looking into the matter of looting the artifact] , he bought the ossuary in the Old City (old Jerusalem) "in the 1970s," paying a few hundred dollars to an Arab antiquities dealer he can no longer identify (Van Biema 2002; Adams 2002; Wilford 2002). He has said that it was the box's engraving that interested him, yet nothing in the phrase "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" ever "rang a bell" in Golan's mind (Adams 2002). Incredibly, the sensational inscription had to wait three decades before finally being appreciated by André Lemaire
...
Not only the box's provenance was lost but also, reportedly, its contents which might have helped establish its provenance. "Unfortunately," stated André Lemaire (2002), "as is almost always the case with ossuaries that come from the antiquities market rather than from a legal excavation, it was emptied." I lamented this reported state of affairs to a reporter (Ryan 2002), observing that the bones could have been examined by forensic anthropologists to potentially determine cause of death. James was reportedly thrown from the top of the Temple and stoned and beaten to death (Hurley 2002), so his skeletal remains might show evidence of such trauma.
As it turns out, Lemaire did not mention--perhaps he did not know--that Mr. Golan has a Tupperware container of bone fragments he says were in the ossuary when he acquired it. One piece is as large as one-half inch by three inches, and has raised questions about potential DNA evidence. Yet, according to Time magazine, Golan will not allow the fragments "to be displayed or analyzed" (Van Biema 2002).
Now we take a trip to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto for a look at the box in question.
continuing with Joe Nickell:
... I was surprised to see that the ossuary was far from being "unadorned" as Lemaire (2002, 27) reported. He stated that "The only decoration is a line forming a frame about 0.5 inch (1.2 cm) from the outer edges," but he is mistaken. Significantly, on the side opposite the inscribed side are circular designs, badly worn but unmistakably present.
Now, ossuaries are usually decorated on only one side (Royal 2002), presumably the one intended to face out during storage. If a name was added (possibly with an identifying phrase), it was apparently carved after purchase by someone such as a family member (Figueras 1983, 18). A look at a number of ossuaries (Figueras 1983; Goodenough 1953) shows that the name might be engraved on the decorated side if there were space for it; otherwise it might be cut on the top, an end, or the back. Wherever placed, it "probably faced outwards where it could be read" (Altman 2002a).
In the case of the James ossuary, there would have indeed been room on the front, yet the scribe elected to carve the inscription on the back. (A possible reason for this will soon become evident.)
Furthermore, the box's decorations--the carved "frame" Lemaire referred to which outlines all four sides, plus the circular designs--are badly worn, whereas the inscription seems almost pristine. That is, the decorations are blurred, partially effaced, and (like much of the surface) pitted. Yet the lettering is entirely distinct and blessed with sharp edges, as if it were of recent vintage. My colleagues and I were all struck with that observation. So was an Israeli engineering professor, Dr. Daniel Eylon, of the University of Dayton, who noted that "sharp edges do not last 2,000 years."
...
Examining photographs of the inscription for scratches accrued over time, he stated: `The inscription would be underneath these scratches if it had been on the box at the time of burial, but the majority of this inscription is on top of the scratches" (Eylon 2002).
The inscription's off-center placement is even in an area of the back that suffers the least damage. Commenting on what is termed biovermiculation–that is, "limestone erosion and dissolution caused by bacteria over time in the form of pitting and etching"--one art historian states: "The ossuary had plenty except in and around the area of the inscription. This is not normal" (Lupia 2002). Indeed, that is one of the first things I had observed in studying the James ossuary. It suggested a forger might have selected a relatively smooth area of the back as a place to carve the small, neat characters.
Early on, the text of the inscription itself raised doubts among experts familiar with Aramaic scripts. They observed that the "James, son of Joseph" portion was in a seemingly formal script while the "brother of Jesus" phrase was in a more cursive style. This suggested "at least the possibility of a second hand," according to one expert (McCarter 2002). Another states, "The second part of the inscription bears the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition and is questionable to say the least" (Altman 2002b). But the perceived dichotomy in styles may simply signal that the forger was an inexpert copyist or that the effect results from the vagaries of stone carving.
We now have stronger doubts and confidence enough to brand the box as a fake. However it does not end there.
http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enZone=Views&enDisplay=view&enPage=ViewsPage&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article^l1569
By Rochelle I. Altman October 29, 2002/
As an expert on scripts and an historian of writing systems, I was asked to examine this inscription and make a report. I did.
The bone-box is original; the first inscription, which is in Aramaic, "Jacob son of Joseph," is authentic. The second half of the inscription, "brother of Jesus," is a poorly executed fake and a later addition. This report has already been distributed on at least two scholarly lists.
Please note that the fraud is so blatant that I did not bother to go into extreme detail on whether the faked addition is supposed to be Hebrew or Aramaic. (If that's a vav, – then it's Hebrew, not Aramaic; if it's yod, then it's says 'my brother', not 'his brother' or 'brother of'. By no stretch of the imagination can one claim this to be in Aramaic... 'of' in Aramaic is 'di'.)
You have to be blind as a bat not to see that the second part is a fraud...
Here is the report:
Report on the "James" ossuary inscription
I carefully checked many photos and writings on ossuaries and covenants before sending you my report. I make no claim to be an expert on ossuaries, but inscriptions and scripts are another story. It might be in order to warn you that I have a great deal of experience at spotting ancient frauds and forgeries.
There are a few things we have to bear in mind about ossuary inscriptions.
First, according to Rahmani (1981, 1982) on Jerusalem burial practices, most ossuaries are from the period between 30/20 BCE-70 CE -- but by no means all.
Second, human remains are not dug up and displaced without very good reasons. Ossuaries show up in quantity when burial space is at a premium.
Solutions to the burial space problem are quite varied. In Classical Greece, for example, low status people were buried in space-saving one-person shaft graves (with a tiny round marker on the spot with the necessary data). The Keramikon in Athens is full of these. In Italy, from the Renaissance until the late 19th-century, after 3 years, unless a family could afford an ossuary or pay another three years rent, the bones were dumped in a mass grave site -- usually a convenient quarry or crevice or what have you, filled with dirt layer by layer. In Athens, ossuaries are still used (metal boxes nowadays); again, that three-year rent period runs. Even in modern Louisiana, along the Mississippi water seepage makes it impossible to dig graves of a reasonable depth; burials are in family mausoleums and bones are pushed down to make way for the latest arrival.
As ossuaries, after all, contravene the normal rules for Jewish burial, the appearance of so many ossuaries in the period before the destruction of the Temple is strong evidence that the cemeteries around Jerusalem were in a space-crunch. (The post-70 reduction in ossuaries follows naturally enough from the removal of enough people from the area to reduce the need for bone- boxes.)
It is not a question of "popularity" at all (which when one thinks about it, is a most peculiar way to think about the subject), but a lack of burial space... which also gives us information about population density of a given area. (Oddly enough, there does not seem to be very much in the literature that addresses this point for the relevant period; yet the correlation between the space constraints indicated by the rise in ossuaries and the density of the population of a given area is rather obvious.)
Third, while today, grave markers are carved by pros, this was not the case in these Jewish ossuary inscriptions. The apparently wide variations in ossuary inscriptions come from a simple fact: these ossuary inscriptions are covenants, vows to affirm continuing respect for the deceased in spite of having disinterred his/her remains. As with any other vow, the text must be in the hand of the one making the vow. Thus (as is noted in the literature), a surviving member of the family painted on, or scratched into, the (usually) limestone box the memorial data. In some cases a professional would carve over the handwriting exactly as written. (BTW, this is the standard practice for all professionally carved covenants.)
In other words, all those ossuary inscriptions are holographs. Needless to say, in such a mass of individual writing, literacy varied tremendously from semi-literates who wrote only upon occasion to school-boys to scholars. [What is relevant to sorting out the apparent lack of relation between status and ossuary is not the wealth or social status of the individual(s) (up to three sets of same-family bones can show up in an ossuary), but the level of literacy and status of the survivors. Thus, there is a relationship between status and inscription... but we would need information on the "survivors" in each case to know who, what, when, how, and why.]
From the writing on the ossuary inscriptions, some are clearly written by youngsters and semi-literates who did not have complete control of graph sizes and could not hold a straight line. Others are clearly the holographs of literate people.
James inscription was written by two different people
The inscription on the "James" ossuary is a bit more complicated. First it has been gone over by a professional carver; the words are excised (not incised). Second, it was written by two different people.
Translated, with the amendments to the original spelling as given in the article, the inscription reads:
Jacob son of Joseph brother of Joshua.
The emended translation does not indicate the way the words are actually written, which is in two distinct groups:
Ossuary was genuine, inscription was faked
That does it unless, of course, these experts can be discredited as to the facts.
Writing in an Israeli newspaper, Joe Nickell
Supposedly recently discovered, the James ossuary--a limestone mortuary box that purportedly held the remains of Jesus' brother--is the subject of controversy. It has captured the attention of theologians, secular scholars, laity, and journalists around the world. Some have rushed to suggest that the inscription on it is the earliest-known reference to Jesus outside the bible, providing archaeological evidence of his historical existence.
"World Exclusive!" proclaimed Biblical Archaeology Review. "Evidence of Jesus Written in Stone," the cover continued; "Ossuary of `James, Brother of Jesus' found in Jerusalem." Urged the contents page: "Read how this important object came to light and how scientists proved it wasn't a modern forgery."
Such excitement, such joy - finally the world has archeological proof of the historical Jesus. Except that "proof" would not hold up to scrutiny. There is proof that put to shame the over-eager announcement.
Writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, André Lemaire
... believes both the artifact and its inscription authentic
continuing with Joe Nickell:
... on one of the James ossuary's long sides, the inscription consists of a single line of twenty small Aramaic characters. It reads (from right to left): "Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui diYeshua"--that is, "Jacob [English James], son of Yosef [Joseph], brother of Yeshua [Jesus]."
André Lemaire continues:
"that this is the ossuary of the James in the New Testament," [which] "would also mean that we have here the first epigraphic mention--from about 63 c.e.--of Jesus of Nazareth"
continuing with Joe Nickell:
[quote]The ossuary's inscription (a portion of which is shown here) seems suspiciously sharp-edged for its apparent age. {ah, but he's only a layman, right? But this is the forst [sic] doubt we are presented with]
Lemaire believes the inscription has a consistency and correctness that show "it is genuinely ancient and not a fake." The box was examined by two experts from the Geological Survey of Israel at the request of BAR. They concluded that the ossuary had a gray patina (or coating of age). "The same gray patina is found also within some of the letters," he wrote, "although the inscription was cleaned and the patina is therefore absent from several letters." They added, "The patina has a cauliflower shape known to be developed in a cave environment." The experts also reported they saw no evidence of "the use of a modern tool or instrument" (Rosenfeld and Ilani 2002).
Unfortunately, the cleaning of the inscription--an act either of stupidity or shrewdness--is problematic. It might have removed traces of modern tooling. And when we are told that the patina is found "within some of the letters," we should certainly want to know which ones, since scholars have debated whether the phrase "brother of Jesus" might be a spurious addition (Altman 2002; Shuman 2002).
It is even possible for traces of patination in an inscription to be original when the carving is not. That could happen if--as is the case of the James ossuary--shallow carving was done over a deeply pitted surface. The patinated bottoms of remnant pits could thus remain inside the fresh scribings.
In any case the patina may not be all it is claimed. According to one forgery expert, because patination is expected with age, "The production of a convincing patina has therefore been of great interest to those engaged in faking or restoration" (Jones 1990). Although false patinas are most commonly applied to metalwork, stone sculptures and artifacts--including fake "prehistoric" flint implements--have been treated to create the appearance of antiquity (Jones 1990). For example, the versatile forger Alceo Dossena (1878-1937) produced convincing patinas on marble (a hard, metamorphic limestone) that gave his works "an incredible look of age" (Sox 1987).
The patina traces of the James ossuary inscription have already been questioned. Responding to the claim that patina was cleaned from the inscription, one art expert notes that genuine patina would be difficult to remove while forged patina cracks off. "This appears to be what happened with the ossuary," he concludes (Lupia 2002).
Provenance
The reason for questioning the patina is that additional evidence raises doubts about the ossuary's authenticity. To begin with, there is the matter of its provenance, which concerns the origin or derivation of an artifact. Experts in the fields of objets d'art and other rarities use the term to refer to a work's being traceable to a particular source. For example, records may show that an artifact came from a certain archaeological dig, was subsequently owned by a museum, and then, when the museum sold off some of its collection, was bought by a private collector
...
With the James ossuary, the provenance seems to be, well, under development. In his BAR article, André Lemaire (2002) referred to the "newly revealed ossuary" which he would only say was "now in a private collection in Israel." A sidebar stated that on a recent visit to Jerusalem, "Lemaire happened to meet a certain collector by chance; the collector mentioned that he had some objects he wanted Lemaire to see." One of the objects was the James ossuary (Feldman 2002).
...
According to Golan [the collector identified by the Israeli Antiquities Authority who are looking into the matter of looting the artifact] , he bought the ossuary in the Old City (old Jerusalem) "in the 1970s," paying a few hundred dollars to an Arab antiquities dealer he can no longer identify (Van Biema 2002; Adams 2002; Wilford 2002). He has said that it was the box's engraving that interested him, yet nothing in the phrase "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" ever "rang a bell" in Golan's mind (Adams 2002). Incredibly, the sensational inscription had to wait three decades before finally being appreciated by André Lemaire
...
Not only the box's provenance was lost but also, reportedly, its contents which might have helped establish its provenance. "Unfortunately," stated André Lemaire (2002), "as is almost always the case with ossuaries that come from the antiquities market rather than from a legal excavation, it was emptied." I lamented this reported state of affairs to a reporter (Ryan 2002), observing that the bones could have been examined by forensic anthropologists to potentially determine cause of death. James was reportedly thrown from the top of the Temple and stoned and beaten to death (Hurley 2002), so his skeletal remains might show evidence of such trauma.
As it turns out, Lemaire did not mention--perhaps he did not know--that Mr. Golan has a Tupperware container of bone fragments he says were in the ossuary when he acquired it. One piece is as large as one-half inch by three inches, and has raised questions about potential DNA evidence. Yet, according to Time magazine, Golan will not allow the fragments "to be displayed or analyzed" (Van Biema 2002).
Now we take a trip to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto for a look at the box in question.
continuing with Joe Nickell:
... I was surprised to see that the ossuary was far from being "unadorned" as Lemaire (2002, 27) reported. He stated that "The only decoration is a line forming a frame about 0.5 inch (1.2 cm) from the outer edges," but he is mistaken. Significantly, on the side opposite the inscribed side are circular designs, badly worn but unmistakably present.
Now, ossuaries are usually decorated on only one side (Royal 2002), presumably the one intended to face out during storage. If a name was added (possibly with an identifying phrase), it was apparently carved after purchase by someone such as a family member (Figueras 1983, 18). A look at a number of ossuaries (Figueras 1983; Goodenough 1953) shows that the name might be engraved on the decorated side if there were space for it; otherwise it might be cut on the top, an end, or the back. Wherever placed, it "probably faced outwards where it could be read" (Altman 2002a).
In the case of the James ossuary, there would have indeed been room on the front, yet the scribe elected to carve the inscription on the back. (A possible reason for this will soon become evident.)
Furthermore, the box's decorations--the carved "frame" Lemaire referred to which outlines all four sides, plus the circular designs--are badly worn, whereas the inscription seems almost pristine. That is, the decorations are blurred, partially effaced, and (like much of the surface) pitted. Yet the lettering is entirely distinct and blessed with sharp edges, as if it were of recent vintage. My colleagues and I were all struck with that observation. So was an Israeli engineering professor, Dr. Daniel Eylon, of the University of Dayton, who noted that "sharp edges do not last 2,000 years."
...
Examining photographs of the inscription for scratches accrued over time, he stated: `The inscription would be underneath these scratches if it had been on the box at the time of burial, but the majority of this inscription is on top of the scratches" (Eylon 2002).
The inscription's off-center placement is even in an area of the back that suffers the least damage. Commenting on what is termed biovermiculation–that is, "limestone erosion and dissolution caused by bacteria over time in the form of pitting and etching"--one art historian states: "The ossuary had plenty except in and around the area of the inscription. This is not normal" (Lupia 2002). Indeed, that is one of the first things I had observed in studying the James ossuary. It suggested a forger might have selected a relatively smooth area of the back as a place to carve the small, neat characters.
Early on, the text of the inscription itself raised doubts among experts familiar with Aramaic scripts. They observed that the "James, son of Joseph" portion was in a seemingly formal script while the "brother of Jesus" phrase was in a more cursive style. This suggested "at least the possibility of a second hand," according to one expert (McCarter 2002). Another states, "The second part of the inscription bears the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition and is questionable to say the least" (Altman 2002b). But the perceived dichotomy in styles may simply signal that the forger was an inexpert copyist or that the effect results from the vagaries of stone carving.
We now have stronger doubts and confidence enough to brand the box as a fake. However it does not end there.
http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enZone=Views&enDisplay=view&enPage=ViewsPage&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article^l1569
By Rochelle I. Altman October 29, 2002/
As an expert on scripts and an historian of writing systems, I was asked to examine this inscription and make a report. I did.
The bone-box is original; the first inscription, which is in Aramaic, "Jacob son of Joseph," is authentic. The second half of the inscription, "brother of Jesus," is a poorly executed fake and a later addition. This report has already been distributed on at least two scholarly lists.
Please note that the fraud is so blatant that I did not bother to go into extreme detail on whether the faked addition is supposed to be Hebrew or Aramaic. (If that's a vav, – then it's Hebrew, not Aramaic; if it's yod, then it's says 'my brother', not 'his brother' or 'brother of'. By no stretch of the imagination can one claim this to be in Aramaic... 'of' in Aramaic is 'di'.)
You have to be blind as a bat not to see that the second part is a fraud...
Here is the report:
Report on the "James" ossuary inscription
I carefully checked many photos and writings on ossuaries and covenants before sending you my report. I make no claim to be an expert on ossuaries, but inscriptions and scripts are another story. It might be in order to warn you that I have a great deal of experience at spotting ancient frauds and forgeries.
There are a few things we have to bear in mind about ossuary inscriptions.
First, according to Rahmani (1981, 1982) on Jerusalem burial practices, most ossuaries are from the period between 30/20 BCE-70 CE -- but by no means all.
Second, human remains are not dug up and displaced without very good reasons. Ossuaries show up in quantity when burial space is at a premium.
Solutions to the burial space problem are quite varied. In Classical Greece, for example, low status people were buried in space-saving one-person shaft graves (with a tiny round marker on the spot with the necessary data). The Keramikon in Athens is full of these. In Italy, from the Renaissance until the late 19th-century, after 3 years, unless a family could afford an ossuary or pay another three years rent, the bones were dumped in a mass grave site -- usually a convenient quarry or crevice or what have you, filled with dirt layer by layer. In Athens, ossuaries are still used (metal boxes nowadays); again, that three-year rent period runs. Even in modern Louisiana, along the Mississippi water seepage makes it impossible to dig graves of a reasonable depth; burials are in family mausoleums and bones are pushed down to make way for the latest arrival.
As ossuaries, after all, contravene the normal rules for Jewish burial, the appearance of so many ossuaries in the period before the destruction of the Temple is strong evidence that the cemeteries around Jerusalem were in a space-crunch. (The post-70 reduction in ossuaries follows naturally enough from the removal of enough people from the area to reduce the need for bone- boxes.)
It is not a question of "popularity" at all (which when one thinks about it, is a most peculiar way to think about the subject), but a lack of burial space... which also gives us information about population density of a given area. (Oddly enough, there does not seem to be very much in the literature that addresses this point for the relevant period; yet the correlation between the space constraints indicated by the rise in ossuaries and the density of the population of a given area is rather obvious.)
Third, while today, grave markers are carved by pros, this was not the case in these Jewish ossuary inscriptions. The apparently wide variations in ossuary inscriptions come from a simple fact: these ossuary inscriptions are covenants, vows to affirm continuing respect for the deceased in spite of having disinterred his/her remains. As with any other vow, the text must be in the hand of the one making the vow. Thus (as is noted in the literature), a surviving member of the family painted on, or scratched into, the (usually) limestone box the memorial data. In some cases a professional would carve over the handwriting exactly as written. (BTW, this is the standard practice for all professionally carved covenants.)
In other words, all those ossuary inscriptions are holographs. Needless to say, in such a mass of individual writing, literacy varied tremendously from semi-literates who wrote only upon occasion to school-boys to scholars. [What is relevant to sorting out the apparent lack of relation between status and ossuary is not the wealth or social status of the individual(s) (up to three sets of same-family bones can show up in an ossuary), but the level of literacy and status of the survivors. Thus, there is a relationship between status and inscription... but we would need information on the "survivors" in each case to know who, what, when, how, and why.]
From the writing on the ossuary inscriptions, some are clearly written by youngsters and semi-literates who did not have complete control of graph sizes and could not hold a straight line. Others are clearly the holographs of literate people.
James inscription was written by two different people
The inscription on the "James" ossuary is a bit more complicated. First it has been gone over by a professional carver; the words are excised (not incised). Second, it was written by two different people.
Translated, with the amendments to the original spelling as given in the article, the inscription reads:
Jacob son of Joseph brother of Joshua.
The emended translation does not indicate the way the words are actually written, which is in two distinct groups:
Ossuary was genuine, inscription was faked
That does it unless, of course, these experts can be discredited as to the facts.