I’m no scholar…I’m no epigrapher…I’m no expert of any kind except, perhaps, my own ignorance… But when I look at the inscription, what I see are two different layers of markings… An older, finer, lighter one, and then markings over the top of the first, which are deeper, longer, and more caustic. Indeed, it appears to my untrained eye that the two markings have been read one on top of the other like two sheets of film placed over each other and that, therefore, the letters in “Jesus son of Joseph” belong to different or combined parts of inscriptions/markings. Below is a graphic indicating what appears to me to be the major parts of the second, deeper inscription/marking…unrelated to the first (and thereby destroying any mention of “Jesus” and possibly “Joseph” in the finer inscription).
If there is good reason to doubt my ability to comprehend ossuary inscriptions in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek (there is), my conclusion does make better sense of at least two questions… If the deep/caustic strokes are part of the light/fine strokes, then 1. why should the hand of the inscriber suddenly change style so radically in the middle of a character and 2. why should that hand have made such bold and unnecessary strokes branching away from the characters themselves which are no part of their form? Not only does my hypothesis answer these questions better, but it makes sense in light of typical ossuary usage in which a single ossuary was many times used to store the bones of more than one person (multiple inscriptions/markings for multiple occupants).
Problems: I do not know what the name(s) would thereafter be if we separated this deeper/caustic layer from the other… Neither do I know if the deeper/caustic layer actually says anything. Perhaps the big X mark (partially in picture on far right) should be included in this layer? What do you think about the idea that scholars may actually be reading two different marking layers as if they were one and ignoring the bits that don’t fit?
michelle Says:
hey dude! just thought of you, hope you’re well :) miss seeing you around… m.