Yeshua is never far away
Posted under: 
On March 14, 2012, Judge Aharon Farkash declared Oded Golan innocent of all charges of forgery!
What does that mean??
This is part of a larger article you can find linked at the bottom. This has been a story going on now for almost 10 years. I remember first reading about it back then and I’m glad to see its still being brought to the attention of the public. I believe the find is authentic and more than that I believe this story is timely with the return of our Messiah. He wants us to KNOW HIS NAME!
Jeremiah 23:27
Which think to cause my people to FORGET MY NAME by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ARTICLE FOLLOWS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In Israel:
Yeshua Is Never Far Away
I’ll never forget when terrorist pioneer Yasser Arafat explained to the whole world that Jews had never been in “Palestine,” and there had never been a King David, a King Solomon or Solomon’s Temple. In fact he said that Jesus was the first Palestinian!
You should have heard Israeli journalists’ howls of indignation. “Everybody knows,” they said, “Jesus was a Jew!”
In Israel, Yeshua is everywhere. Every tour bus carrying Christian tourists, every building Israelis are constructing to accommodate Christian (and Jewish) visitors to the sights made so famous by the Man from Galilee. Certainly most secular Israelis have a sort of love-hate relationship with their countryman, Yeshua.
On a recent visit to Israel, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the Arab “Green Prince” agent for Israel’s Internal Security Service (Shin Bet), came to tell of his conversion from Islam to Christianity. Many Israelis now understand that Christians of the “born-again” type are about the only friends Israelis have.
Likewise, Umar Mulinde, the ex-Muslim who was born again to faith in Yeshua, held large campaigns in his native Uganda proclaiming that a true Christian believer who lives by the Bible will love the Jewish people. Israeli news coverage is always very positive with stories of Christians like Mosab and Umar, and, in fact, with other Christian personalities and politicians who come to encourage Israel to stand strong.
Indeed, I remember when I first arrived in Israel in 1967. I had graduated a couple of years before from Southern Methodist University, and there was a certain sentiment among the high-brow professors in those days that the person of Yeshua really probably never existed. At least there was reason for doubt.
So I was quite amazed when I moved to Israel to find that no Jew in this land doubted for a minute that the person of Yeshua was a real historic figure, and that he was born and raised in Israel, taught and did miracles in Galilee, until finally, the Romans crucified him in Jerusalem.
Most secular Jews today would say, “Yeshu” (the way non-Messianic Jews pronounce Yeshua’s name) “was a good Jew. Even a prophet.”
The culprit, they would explain, was Paul – who took Yeshua’s teachings and created a new religion for the Gentiles by making Yeshua into God.
So much for the scrambled history. But at least they got the first part right: Yeshua was born in Bethlehem, lived for the most part in Galilee and died in Jerusalem.
But it doesn’t stop there. Archeologists dig up not just ancient synagogues but also remnants of all kinds of churches built here and there.
Traditional churches mark places all over ancient Jerusalem, claiming to be the spot where Yeshua or his disciples had been.
FRAUD TRIAL OF THE CENTURY
And now for ten long years Israelis have followed the saga of the so-called “Forgery Trial of the Century” which first burst onto the world stage in 2002.
It started with one of the world’s leading collectors of biblical antiquities, a 60 year-old Israeli named Oded Golan. Over a generation, he has collected thousands of artifacts from dealers throughout the Middle East.
Back in the 70’s, he purchased an ossuary, which he says he thinks came from an antiquities shop in Jerusalem once owned by an Arab antiquities dealer, Ot’man Waz-waz. (It was so long ago that he says he is not absolutely sure which dealer he bought it from.)
If the James Ossuary inscription is authentic, this is the only archeological evidence with a direct connection to Yeshua’s family. The spectacular importance of the ossuary and the massive scale of the case against Golan have led the case to be considered the “forgery trial of the century.”
~ Matthew Kalman
An ossuary is a stone box – a depository for storing bones of the dead after the decomposition of the body. It was a First Century method to save space. This box came from the Silwan area in the Kidron Valley, southeast of the Temple Mount. According to archaeologists, Jews used ossuaries of this type only from about 20 B.C. until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
Owning an ossuary from the First Century is indeed a precious treasure. Nevertheless, Golan says he was unaware for some 35 years that he owned anything more than an anonymous bone box. At some juncture he realized that the box had a faint but still visible Aramaic inscription carved into the stone – Yaakov, bar Yosef, akhui di Yeshua (James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus).
The famous editor of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) Hershel Shanks first heard of the ossuary from his friend Professor Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne who had recently examined the box. Shanks immediately realized the potential significance of the ossuary described by Prof. Lemaire, a world-class paleontologist and archaeologist who specializes in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions.
ONE HITCH
There was one hitch. The box was not uncovered in a controlled dig by archeologists, but was brought to an antiquities dealer probably after being looted by grave diggers. It was thereby classified as an “unprovenanced” antiquity.
Shanks nevertheless decided to order a scientific examination of the inscription by the official Geological Survey of Israel (GSI). The GSI geologist “found no reason to question the authenticity of the inscription.”
Shanks then brought in Father Joseph Fitzmyer, the world’s leading expert in Aramaic (the language of the inscription) who also confirmed that the inscription was paleographically sound.
Shanks, feeling there was considerable evidence that the James ossuary was genuine, asked Professor Lamaire to write an article on the ossuary and its inscription – which he did.
READ THE REST OF THE AMAZING STORY AT THE LINK BELOW
http://www.maozisrael.org/site/News2?abbr=maoz_&page=NewsArticle&id=9364
On March 14, 2012, Judge Aharon Farkash declared Oded Golan innocent of all charges of forgery!