“returners from Exile Would Do Well to Caution Young Archeologists to Pay More Respect to Things Sac

The returners from exile would do well to caution their young archeclogists to exercise more care in their announcements and to pay more respect to things sacred to Christians, Pere Vincent, the famous archeologist of the Dominican Biblical School of Archeology in Jerusalem and the author of several important Palestine archeological monographs, said in the course of a lecture which he has delivered here dealing with the reports of the lecture delivered in Berlin a few months back by Dr. Sukenik, of the Hebrew University, in which he was said in the general press to have claimed that an inscription reading “yehoshua bar Joseph”, that he had found on an ossuary, was in a handwriting such as Jesus would have used, and that it was probably the Tomb of Jesus.

The ossuaries generally post-dated the time of Christ by several centuries, Pere Vincent declared to-day, and the ossuary with the inscription to which Dr. Sukenik referred in his lecture was a forgery made in the time of the Turks.

When Dr. A. L. Sukenik returned to Jerusalem last January, shortly after the sensational report alluded to by Pere Vincent had been published in the general press of Europe and America, the Hebrew University issued a communique in which it stated that in Berlin Dr. Sukenik had delivered a lecture before the Berlin Archeological Society on the subject of “Jewish graves of Jerusalem at the Time of Jesus”. This lecture was based upon material which was gathered by Dr. Sukenik for many years and will shortly be published by the Archeological Institute of Germany in the form of a book entitled “Jewish Palestine Ossuaries”. The Hebrew University takes this opportunity, the statement proceeded, to express its regret at the sensational newspaper reports ascribing to Dr. Sukenik a false statement concerning the so-called Tomb of Jesus. Many new Testament names have been found on ossuaries in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, including that of Jesus; but Dr. Sukenik was most careful to declare expressly that there could be no thought of any identification of such tombs or ossuaries.