Jodi Magness, a professor at the University of North Carolina, will give a lecture titled "Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James" at 7 p.m. Monday, March 7, in the Todd Wehr Center, Room 128.

In 2002, the antiquities world was shocked by the announcement of an ossuary (a box used to store bones in secondary burial) from first-century Jerusalem. The box was inscribed "James the son of Joseph the brother of Joshua."

While some scholars argued that this piece related to the family of Jesus, others were skeptical whether the inscription was authentic, and if it could be associated with any particular person. Tests conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority raised further questions about the box, and eventually the collector who possessed it was charged with antiquities fraud and brought to trial.

Prof. Magness has been an active participant in the debate about this particular find, and she also brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to help understand the whole controversy in light of Jewish burial customs in the first century.

She holds a senior endowed chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania (1989).

Her research interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic periods, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. She has participated on 20 different excavations in Israel and Greece.

Prof. Magness is a member of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Program Committee of the Society of Biblical Literature. She has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), and the Board of Trustees of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

The lecture is sponsored by the Arts and Lecture Series, the Humanities Division, and the departments of Religion and Classics.