The Justice Ministry has been given six months to decide how to proceed in the trial of an antiquities dealer suspected of forging a purported reference to Jesus on an ancient burial box and a stone tablet with biblical passages, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.
Both items were hailed as major archaeological finds but subsequently claimed by the Israeli Antiquities Authority to be clever forgeries.
The ministry has been forced to reevaluate the case after the Jerusalem District Court judge in the case advised the prosecution to reassess its position in the three-year-old trial because it failed to prove that the key suspect, Tel Aviv antiquities collector Oded Golan, had indeed faked the biblical-era artifacts, according to the Post.
The burial box, or ossuary, bears the inscription, "James, son of Joseph brother of Jesus," leading some scholars to believe it was used to store the remains of James, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth. The 15-line inscription on the tablet was thought to have described First Temple "house repairs."
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