Author: David Noel Freedman
David Noel Freedman holds the Endowed Chair in Hebrew Biblical Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He has produced more than three hundred scholarly books, including The Leningrad Codex: A Facsimile Edition (1998), which made the world’s oldest and most complete extant manuscript of the Hebrew Bible available to the public.
The (Almost) Perfect Fake and/or the Real Thing
The following discussion is about the two most notorious inscriptions that have turned up in recent years: the Proclamation of King Jehoash of Judah (putatively ninth century b.c.e.) and the Ossuary of Jacob (James) the Son of Joseph and the Brother of Jeshua (Jesus) (putatively first century c.e.).1 The former is written in Classical (Biblical) …