Kathy Reichs - Cross bones

Jake palmed the pit and popped another olive.

“Another expert studied registered names in first-century Palestine and came up with figures of fourteen percent for Joseph, nine percent for Jesus, and two percent for Jacob. Crunching these numbers, a French paleoepigrapher named André Lemaire calculated that only 0.14 percent of the male population of Jerusalem could bear the name ‘Jacob, son of Joseph.’”

Pit out. Olive in.

“Based on the assumption that every male had approximately two brothers, Lemaire calculated that roughly eighteen percent of the men named ‘Jacob, son of Joseph’ would have had a brother named Jesus. So over two generations, only 0.05 percent of the population would likely be called ‘Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’”

“How many people lived in first-century Jerusalem?” I asked.

“Lemaire used a figure of eighty thousand.”

“Of whom about forty thousand would have been male,” Ryan said.

Nod. “Lemaire concluded that in Jerusalem during the two generations before seventyC. E., no more than twenty people could have fit the inscription on the James ossuary.”

“But not everyone ended up in an ossuary,” I said.

“No.”

“And not every ossuary was inscribed.”

“Astute points, Dr. Brennan. But the mention of a brother is rare. How many Jacobs, sons of Joseph, had a brother, Jesus, who was famous enough for that relationship to be marked on their ossuaries?”

I had no answer so I replied with a question.

“Do other name experts agree with Lemaire’s estimate?”

Jake snorted. “Of course not. Some say it’s high, others say it’s low. But what are the chances of this whole cluster of names in one tomb? The Marys, Joseph, Jesus, Jude, Salome. The probability must become infinitesimal.”

“Is this the same Lemaire to whom Oded Golan first revealed the James ossuary?” I asked.

“Yes.”

My eyes drifted to the heel bone with its peculiar lesion. I thought of Donovan Joyce and his bizarre theory of Jesus living on to fight and die at Masada. I thought of Yossi Lerner and his bizarre theory of Jesus’ bones ending up at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.

Believing it was Jesus, Lerner had stolen the skeleton we were calling Max. But Max’s age at death had proven Lerner wrong. My skeletal estimate put him at forty to sixty. That estimate also made Max too young to be the octogenarian who had penned Grosset’s Jesus scroll.

Now Jake was suggesting another bizarre theory, and another candidate. Jesus had died by crucifixion, but his body hadn’t risen, it had remained in its tomb. That tomb had become the final resting place of the Jesus family. That tomb was in the Kidron. Looters had found that tomb and stolen the James ossuary from it. Jake had rediscovered that tomb and recovered the remains of ossuaries and individuals the looters had left behind. I had blundered onto a hidden loculus in that tomb, and found a burial no one else had. The shrouded bones of Jesus.

My stomach went from a flutter to a knot.

I lay down my sandwich. One of the toms began a slow ooze toward it.

“Was James well-known in his day?” Ryan asked.

“You better believe it. Let’s back up a bit. Historical evidence suggests Jesus was born to a lineage known as Davidids, direct descendents of David, a tenth-centuryB. C. E. king of Israel. According to Hebrew prophets, the Messiah, the final king of a restored nation of Israel, was to come from among this royal line. The Davidids, with their radical revolutionary potential, were well-known to the Herod family, who ruled Palestine at the time, and to the Romans, right up to the emperor. These ‘royals’ were watched very closely, and at times, hunted down and killed.

“When Jesus was crucified in thirtyC. E. for his claim to messianic kingship, his brother James, next in the Davidid line, became top dog in the Christian movement in Jerusalem.”

“Not Peter?” Ryan asked.

“Not Peter, not Paul. James the Just. That fact is not widely known, and rarely given proper consideration. When James was stoned to death in sixty-twoC. E., for basically the same kind of messianic claims as Jesus, brother Simon stepped up to the plate. After a forty-five-year run, Simon was crucified under the emperor Trajan, specifically because of his royal lineage. Guess who came up to bat next?”

Ryan and I shook our heads.

“Athird relative, Judas, took over the movement in Jerusalem.”

I thought about that. Jesus and his brother claimants to the messianic title of King of the Jews? Okay. I could buy into a different political perspective. But what else was Jake suggesting? Jesus still in his tomb?

“How can you be certain that the Kidron tomb dates to the right period?” My voice sounded tense. I felt suddenly edgy.

“Ossuaries were only used from about thirtyB. C. E. to seventyC. E. ”

“One of the inscriptions is in Greek.” I waved a hand at the Tupperware lying on the counter. “Maybe these people weren’t even Jewish.”

“The mixture of Greek and Hebrew is very common in first-century tombs. And ossuaries were used only for Jewish burial.” Jake anticipated my next question. “And almost exclusively in and around Jerusalem.”

“I thought Christ’s tomb was under the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, outside the Old City,” Ryan said, rolling a slice of Muenster around a pickle.

“So do a lot of folks.”

“You don’t.”

“I don’t.”

“Jesus was from Nazareth,” I said. “Why wouldn’t the family plot be there?”

“The New Testament indicates Mary and her children took up residence in Jerusalem following the crucifixion. Tradition has it Mary died and was buried here, not up north in Galilee.”

There was a long silence during which the tom slunk to within inches of my feet.

“Let me understand this.” The cat skittered backward at the sound of my voice. “You’re convinced the James ossuary inscription is real.”

“I am,” Jake said.

“And that the thing was looted from the tomb we visited.”

“Rumors have always placed the ossuary’s origin in that location.”

“And that that tomb was the final resting place of Jesus’ kin.”

“Yes.”

“And that the lesion in this shroud calcaneus suggests one of the tomb’s occupants was crucified.”

Jake nodded silently.

My eyes met Ryan’s. They found not a hint of a smile.

“Have you shared your theory on this tomb with Blotnik?”

“I have. Though obviously not the crucified calcaneus. You just found that. I still can’t believe it.”

“And?”

“He blew me off. The man’s a pigheaded cretin.”

“Jake?”

“You’ll see when you meet him.”

I let that go and switched tacks.

“You snitched specimens from the bones adhered to the smashed ossuaries and from the bones dumped on the tomb floor and sent them for DNA testing. When?”

“I held samples back when I turned the collection over for analysis and reburial. I sent them off for testing right after our phone conversation. Your comments confirmed what I hoped. mtDNA might show maternal relationships among individuals in the tomb, and aDNA might at least tell gender.”

Again, my eyes went to the bones on the counter. A question formed in my mind. I wasn’t yet ready to pose it.

“Normally, bodies were left for one year to decay, then the bones were collected and sealed in ossuaries, right?” Ryan asked. “Then why was the shroud person left in the loculus?”

“According to rabbinic law, a dead man’s bones had to be collected by his son. Perhaps this man had none. Perhaps it had to do with his manner of death. Perhaps some crisis prevented the family from returning.”