Questions are swirling over the ownership and authenticity of an ancient container believed to have held the bones of Jesus's brother while Canadian museum authorities await permission to repair the damaged limestone container.

Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, yesterday named Oded Golan, 51, a Tel Aviv engineer and antiquities buyer, as the owner of the James ossuary, whose inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" has been touted as possibly the earliest written reference to Christ found outside the Gospels.

But some scholars are skeptical about when the inscription, particularly its last third, was made on the side of the 2000-year-old box and how it should be interpreted.

Moreover, there is the fuzziness of its provenance -- how and when it was supposedly excavated by an Arab shepherd, not a trained archeologist, from a now non-existent cave near a Palestinian suburb of Jerusalem before wending its way to Mr. Golan. That contributes, in some eyes, to its inconclusivity.

In the meantime, Mr. Golan -- who previously was described only as "Joe" or "an antiquities collector from Jerusalem" -- finds himself at the centre of an investigation by Tel Aviv police.

Last month, he was called in for questioning after investigators at the Israel Antiquities Authority notified them of their belief that he may have illegally acquired the 2000-year-old artifact. Under Israeli law, an artifact discovered within the borders of Israel after 1978 is considered state property.

It was shipped last week to Toronto where it is scheduled to go on public view for about seven weeks at the Royal Ontario Museum starting Nov. 16 -- though it was damaged in transit.

Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, the Washington magazine that broke the sensational news of the discovery, said at a press conference on Oct. 21 that Mr. Golan told him he had bought the ossuary 15 or 16 years ago for about $500 (U.S.) from a dealer. However, Mr. Golan reportedly told police that he'd had it since some time in 1967, before the state property law was enacted.

Mr. Shanks attempted to explain the discrepancy yesterday which, he acknowledged, "is confusing. I was confused." When André Lemaire, author of the Archaeology Review story and chair of the Hebrew and Aramaic philology and epigraphy section at the Sorbonne in Paris, first saw the ossuary in March of this year, he asked Mr. Golan: "How long has it been here?" Fifteen or 16 years, Mr. Golan replied.

But, according to Mr. Shanks, Mr. Golan thought the "here" meant his apartment, which he has occupied since the mid-1980s. Previously, the ossuary had been housed for at least 10 years in the apartment of Mr. Golan's parents, Mr. Shanks said.

While this still creates a discrepancy of nine or 10 years -- between 1967, when Mr. Golan was 16 and first obtained the ossuary, and 1976-77, when it was in his parents' possession -- no one is denying the scientific dating of the box, which irrefutably places it from the first century AD. (James, the younger brother of Jesus, is believed to have been killed circa 62 AD.)

For Simcha Jacobovici, the award-winning Toronto-based filmmaker who's making a documentary on the ossuary, this fact makes talk about when Mr. Golan purportedly obtained the artifact beside the point.

What's more, he accused the Antiquities Authority of "playing a cynical game. They make no real efforts to keep items from the antiquity market. They basically close their eyes and allow collectors to buy them. You can describe their position like this: 'If it's worthless, it's yours; if it's worth something, it's ours.' "

Some scholars, meanwhile, say more work has to be done on the interpretation of the "brother-of-Jesus" part of the inscription. Rochelle Altman, a U.S. epigraphy expert writing this week in Jewsweek, an on-line Jewish publication, argues the inscription is the work of two different people, with the first part "genuine" but the last part having "the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition [that is] questionable to say the very least." Other scholars have noticed the discrepancy, but wonder whether it's the result of a hired craftsman or craftsmen who didn't read or speak Aramaic and inaccurately followed written instructions.

Dan Rahimi, the ROM's director of collections and management, said yesterday that Mr. Golan agreed on Sunday that repairs should be made to the James ossuary after new cracks were discovered when it was unpacked.