Jesus and the Ossuaries ─ What Jewish Burial Practices Reveal About the Beginning of Christianity

In 2002 an inscribed limestone ossuary or burial box was taken from a private collection and revealed to the world. The most astonishing thing about this ossuary was the inscription which read `James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus'. This book is not about the discovery per se (which is covered in a number of other books) but it seeks to use the discovery as an opportunity of highlighting and investigating Jewish burial practices of which it is a part. Putting questions of authenticity asie, Evans discusses a corpus of other ossuaries, largely Palestinian and dating mostly from c.20 BC to AD 70, which provide a context for the find. He explains how these ossuaries and other inscriptions and texts provide insights into burial practices, customs, names, family relationships, social standing, religious beliefs and how they clarify the teachings of the New Testament.

CRAIG A. EVANS is the Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the author or editor of more that 30 books on the New Testament and its Jewish backgrounds. His recent publications include Who Was Jesus? (2001) and The Missing Jesus: Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament (2003).