Israeli archaeological experts said today that an inscription on an ancient stone box suggesting it once contained the bones of Jesus's brother, James, was a forgery.
The burial box and its Aramaic inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" had excited speculation that it could be the earliest physical reference to the founder of Christianity outside the New Testament.
But the director of Israel's Antiquities Authority, Mr Shuka Dorfman, called it a hoax.
"The ossuary is real. But the inscription is fake. What this means is that somebody took a real box and forged the writing on it, probably to give it a religious significance," Mr Dorfman told Reuters after a news conference on the matter.
James, who was believed to have been stoned to death in 62 AD, is mentioned in the Gospels as Jesus's brother. Jews and Protestants accept this but Catholics -- who believe Christ's mother Mary was a virgin all her life - say he was a cousin.
Dr Gideon Avni, the archaeologist who chaired a committee of archaeological experts investigating the find's provenance since March, told reporters the conclusion was unanimous.
The committee concluded that "even if the ossuary is authentic, there is no reason to assume the bones of Jesus's brother were inside". He also said the stone used in the making of the box was more typical of Cyprus and northern Syria than ancient Israel.
The committee's report said the inscription of the "James Ossuary" cut through the stone's patina, or natural fossilised sheen, and appeared to be in modern text, written by someone attempting to reproduce ancient biblical fonts.
However, the experts could not pinpoint the time when the inscription was forged.
An Israeli antiquities collector bought the ossuary in the 1970s but had no idea of its significance. Last year he invited Mr Andre Lemaire, a renowned French scholar of ancient texts, to examine it.
Mr Lemaire concluded the inscription was genuine.
Ossuaries were used by Jews in Jerusalem from 10 BC to AD 70 to hold skeletal remains of bodies near caves. Many believed that once decomposed, the dead could be resurrected with the coming of the Messiah.
Only a few hundred ossuaries of the thousands unearthed contain inscriptions, reserved for the dead of high status.