If you're going to fake a Biblical antiquity, keep it simple.

And don't mention Jesus.

These and other lessons can be gleaned from Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land (Harper Collins), a new book about the James Ossuary, once purported to have held the bones of Jesus's brother and now exposed as a fake, unveiled to the world six years ago this week at the Royal Ontario Museum. In a narrative befitting the intrigue and mystery surrounding the shadowy world of antiquities and archeology in Israel – the only country of origin in the world where it is legal to sell such things – Nina Burleigh tells a tale of greed and ambition mixed with political and theological yearning.

It's a volatile combination.

Christians are anxious to find some tangible proof that Jesus existed, since, besides the Bible, there is none, Burleigh says. Israelis, meanwhile, are keen to find archeological evidence of a Jewish presence in the Holy Land as described in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.

"They are new people in a new country, and are seeking a historic tie to the land," Burleigh, a former Time reporter, says in a telephone interview from her office at People magazine.

The owner of the ossuary, Oded Golan, is now on trial in Israel for forging the inscription on the bone box reading "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," and a tablet claimed to have come from the first Temple of Solomon.

If real, the two objects would have had profound theological and political implications. The ossuary would challenge traditional teachings about Jesus's family, while the tablet would prove the existence of the temple, believed to have been located where the Al Aqsa Mosque now sits in Jerusalem.

Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, it's one of the most disputed places on the planet, historically and theologically significant to the world's three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The Jehoash Tablet, a sandstone slab with 16 lines of text inscribed outlining repairs to Solomon's Temple in wording remarkably similar to verses in the Old Testament Book of Kings, seemed to prove the existence of the temple – and so cementing Jewish claims to the disputed site.

"To have that piece of evidence would have bolstered the claims of those who want to march onto the mount and take it," Burleigh says.

But, as Burleigh points out in the book, 16 lines of text, seemingly drawn straight from ancient Hebrew writings, was "too good to be true" for many skeptics. Most archeological discoveries contain only a few words or letters at best.

Such questioning led to scientific examinations of the tablet and eventually to Golan, a Tel Aviv businessman, avid collector of antiquities and owner of both the tablet and the ossuary. For many experts, the mentioning of Jesus on the ossuary also seemed too good to be true, alerting them to a possible fraud.

Searches of Golan's home and warehouses turned up Tupperware containers and baggies full of ancient dirt and charcoal, needed to age a fake object, and carving tools.

In one search, the James Ossuary was found sitting atop a disused toilet, an odd place, police felt, for a box purported to have once contained the DNA of Jesus's family.

In her book, Burleigh outlines how such objects are faked, a practice she says has been going on for centuries as local dealers played on the emotions of religious pilgrims eager to find a physical connection to the Bible's stories.

"They've been making stuff for Christians to take back home for generations," she says. "They've taken back many, many heads of John the Baptist."

The key, scientifically, is getting the patina right. Patina is the natural discolouration of an object over time. Natural patina can be faked by soaking old dirt or charcoal into an object, and then heating it, Burleigh says in the book.

Often, genuinely old objects are given new inscriptions, with the fake patina put into the inscriptions to make it seem that the wording also dates to ancient times. Sophisticated forgers, Burleigh says, might even incorporate old scratches into the new inscriptions, since the scratches would already contain old patina.

The next stage is to get experts to authenticate it, a process Burleigh says requires as much skill and art as the patina. Here, the trick is to find experts on whose emotions the forger can play, perhaps a Biblical scholar keen to prove its stories true, or a patriotic Israeli excited to find proof of a fabled Jewish temple.

"They get so excited, they can't resist," Burleigh says.

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Later, when doubts are raised, the fight becomes one of conflicting science, with experts on both sides lined up to argue for or against an object's authenticity.

Add in the egos of those involved and the often subjective nature of the science itself, Burleigh says, and a conclusive decision as to whether something's a fraud seems almost impossible.

And that, she says, is where the Golan trial over the alleged forgery of the tablet and ossuary sits today. Burleigh leaves little doubt she believes he is guilty, but says Golan might still elude conviction amid confusion over the conflicting scientific testimony at his trial.

"They are putting the science (of archeology) on trial, and the subjective underbelly of the science is being exposed here, big time."

Indeed, the judge in the case last month recommended the prosecution drop the charges, saying he saw little chance of a conviction.

"After all the evidence we have heard, including the testimony of the prime defendant, is the picture still the same as the one you had when he was charged?" District Court Judge Aharon Farkash asked. "Not every case ends in the way you think it will when it starts. Maybe we can save ourselves the rest."

The trial is set to resume in January.

Frustratingly, Burleigh says, the one piece of evidence that might shift the slow-moving trial from being a battle of scientific interpretations may never be heard in court.

For a time, Burleigh writes, an Egyptian named Samach Marco Shokri Ghattes, who went by the name Marco, was employed by Golan to make fake objects. In transcripts reprinted in the book, Marco describes inscribing a tablet similar to the Jehoash Tablet according to Golan's instructions.

"With a hammer and chisel, following the sketch. He printed out a sheet from the printer and gave it to me," Marco says in the transcripts from a police interview in Cairo.

But because Egypt, an Arab nation, is unlikely to extradite one of its citizens to Israel, Burleigh says Marco is unlikely ever to be called to testify.

"He's the key," she says.

However the trial ends, which is not expected for months or years yet, Burleigh says it is unlikely to end the debate over either the tablet or the ossuary. Both, she says, are simply too important to the narratives of the people who believe in them.

"It is a natural human desire to have something," she says, "to have and to hold and to show that your belief system is true."

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