Just down the street from where I work is the Royal Ontario Museum. Just last week the museum received what is being claimed as one of modern archaeology's most valued finds in connection with the early Church - the ossuary of St James the Brother of Jesus. It is making headlines daily. Even the fact that it has been damaged in transit has been widely reported while the director of a documentary about it muses on how to include this fact in his filming and make it an even greater sensation! But what is all this fuss really about?

Archaeologists themselves are worthy of a separate science that could make them a worthy object of study . . .

No sooner than some claimed that the inscription on the ossuary makes mention of James the Brother of Jesus, others stepped forward to deny it, while others began predicting what impact this would have on institutional Christianity.

This is not the first time such claims have been made by modern archaeologists. The findings at Qumran, for example, were to have thrown all Christian theology out the window. Some suggested that what was found was the "true record" of Jesus' teachings, His true background and that of His disciples, John the Baptist and the like.

In fact, very few people would ever really know anything about the writings discovered at Qumran and this allowed aggressive sects to try and "pitch" their views to members of traditional Christian Churches by saying that their groups, and their groups alone, were true as Qumran had finally shown . . .

There is a strong appeal to such "Johnny come lately" finds. Another example, although not related to archaeology, is the "Gospel of Thomas" and the modern fascination with it as representing the "true" image of Jesus "as He really was."

What is truly amazing, when the dust settles following the fast and furious debates, is how the defenders of the Gospel of Thomas can say it has anything to do with Christ when its final sentence suggests that only men can find salvation.

Archaeology has its own set of rules by which it "proves" reality. It largely has to do with discovering, dating and legitimating a physical witness to the past.

It matters not whether Pontius Pilate is acknowledged as having existed by period writers. It matters not how he figures in the Church's experience of faith and salvation in Christ. What matters, in the final analysis, is whether archaeologists can produce a piece of some ancient substance that actually has Pilate's name on it. And, of course, they have . . .

The same was true of crucifixion. Until recently, the only REAL evidence that people ever died by being nailed, hand and foot, on a cross-wise gibbet beginning with Phoenician times was a nail from the first century still stuck in the ankle bone of its teen-aged victim - something that was also on gruesome display at the museum down the street.

Now archaeology has come across an ossuary that is apparently being identified with St Jacob or James, the "Brother" of Jesus.

The revisionism of Christian faith has been almost immediate. Even American comedian Jay Leno had a comment on it during one of his recent shows!

What does it mean - Jesus had a brother? What can we deduce about Jesus' family life from this find? What other debunking of Christian faith could there be as a result of this box?

An obvious point of departure for all this could be the life of St James himself. He is actually one of our own Church leaders, Jerusalem's first bishop in fact. Somehow, one would think the archaeologists would come and interview one of us before conducting their investigation . . .

James was actually the son of Joseph the Betrothed from a previous marriage. Pseudepigraphical works like the "History of Joseph the Carpenter" presents a picture of Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, that is different from that which is traditional in the Catholic West.

Joseph, in the East, is not the virile, young virginal man that we see portrayed in the images of, for example, the Shrine of St Joseph of Mont-Royal at Montreal, Quebec.

The East sees Joseph has an elderly man with children from a previous marriage and who acts as guardian to the Virgin Mary and her Child, Jesus.

Cousins and half-brothers are not distinguished in many languages, including Hebrew and Ukrainian. Everyone is a "brother" or a "sister!"

James has always been affectionately called by the Church as "Brother of the Lord" or even "Brother of God."

James or Jacob was also very pious, as one would expect given the example of his father, Joseph the Carpenter.

He was, in fact, a "Nazorite" or a Jew who practiced monastic-like austerities such as abstinence from all wine, letting his hair grow etc. in accordance with the rules of consecration of the Old Covenant.

He came to believe in his Brother, Jesus, and became a prominent member of the Jerusalem Christian community, whose first bishop he became.

His strict Nazorite Judaism continued in James' Christian life. The Judaic Rite of the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem included many Jewish religious observances that outwardly made these Christians virtually indistinguishable from the pious Jews of their time.

For example, they would participate in the Temple worship and practices, something even St Paul, the greatest critic of imposing such on Gentile Christian converts, did.

The Christians of Jerusalem celebrated the Liturgy of the Word, or first part of their Eucharistic Liturgy, in the Temple, and only then retired to a designated location to continue with the Liturgy of the Eucharist and Holy Communion.

St James headed the Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem and his word carried great authority as we see in the 15^th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.

The fasts of Wednesday and Friday and the rule of prayer at least three times daily were established at that Council, among others, practices the Orthodox Christian Church continues to scrupulously observe and maintain to this day.

James' liturgy influenced the development of others and it is still the daily liturgy of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. The Eastern Orthodox Churches now celebrate the Greek form of the Liturgy of St James on his feast day or November 5^th more widely than ever before. It is also celebrated by others on the Sunday after the Nativity, a second feast of St James and sometimes a third time that is designated by a monastery's Archimandrite.

Intimations of this liturgy are already contained in the Acts of the Apostles, as Fr. Peter Gillquist and others of the Evangelical Orthodox group in the Antiochian Orthodox Church have shown through their excellent scriptural studies. "Leiturgoukon" as Fr. Gillquist wrote in "Becoming Orthodox" is how the Acts described the Apostles at worship - "And you don't even have to know Greek to know what that word means!"

When the Christians grew in strength and numbers, certain Pharisees looked to James to speak to them and tell them to return to the Judaism of their ancestors. Again, they seem not to have had any idea as to the fact that James was actually the head of the Church of Jerusalem as its first bishop!

Placed high on the Temple ramparts, James, instead, rallied the Christians around the Name of Christ and preached to others to have faith in Him as well!

His shocked onlookers then simply pushed James off the Temple to make him quiet . . .

Falling to the stone below, James was done to death by additional stoning.

During His life of preaching the Gospel, Jesus was once told by a listener of His Words that His Mother and brothers were waiting for him.

He replied by saying that all those who heard His Word and practiced it in their daily lives were members of His family.

Certainly, St James was therefore a true brother to Jesus in both ways, in terms of natural ties as the son of Joseph the Carpenter, the foster-father of Jesus, and in terms of the life of Grace.

The stone box that will be on display in the museum down the street here can be shown to be the ossuary or relic-box of the remains of St James by modern archaeology.

As such, it is simply a priceless find in connection with the life of the Brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem.

For Christians, it provides material evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of one who lived His faith in the Lord Jesus and lost his life for Him so that he might find it again in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The little stone box is a reminder to us all that we too may join the spiritual company of Christ's relatives by faith and the Communion of His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.