Cool Archaelogical Discovery Corroborates the New Testament

In yet anoth­er case of archael­o­gy con­firm­ing the bib­li­cal record, schol­ars recent­ly announced the dis­cov­ery of an ancient ossuary bear­ing the inscrip­tion James, son of Joseph, broth­er of Jesus.

The rel­ic has been dat­ed to just before 70 A.D., which jives with the bib­li­cal dat­ing of the death of James.

You can read the details at Chris­tian­i­ty Today (very pro), Nation­al Geo­graph­ic (pret­ty neu­tral), and the New York Times (slight­ly skep­ti­cal).

Inci­den­tal­ly, you might be intrigued to note that the inscrip­tion pro­nounced pho­net­i­cal­ly sounds like “Yacob son of Yussef broth­er of Yeshua.”

Yacob? Who’s Yacob?

James and Jacob are both legit­i­mate Eng­lish equiv­a­lents of the Hebrew Yacob.
Betcha did­n’t learn that in Sun­day School…

I’ve heard that this dates back to trans­la­tion of the King James Bible. As you prob­a­bly know, names are often rad­i­cal­ly changed when Angli­cized, and often for non­pho­net­ic rea­sons. The sto­ry I heard claimed that the trans­la­tors of the King James Bible decid­ed to dub the broth­er of Jesus James as a thank-you to their spon­sor. It sounds like an urban leg­end to me, but stranger things have hap­pened.