Joseph, Who was Called Caiaphas

During the creation of a water park in Jerusalem ’s Peace Forest (just south of the Dome of the Rock) in 1990, workers uncovered a burial cave. It was clearly Jewish, as indicated by its 12 ossuaries. Ossuaries are limestone boxes used to store human bones; such burial procedures occurred mainly near the end of the first century BC and in the first century AD. A date for the burial cave (suggested by a coin found in one of the ossuaries) suggests an early first century AD burial. The most elaborately decorated ossuary contained the bones of a sixty-year old man. This ossuary carries two inscriptions that relate to the Caiaphas family. They are identical except for the addition in one of the names of one letter, a difference in the spelling of the Caiaphas name. The inscriptions read:

יהוסף בר קפא = Yhwsp br Qp’ = Joseph, son of Qafa’ and

קיפא (or קופא) = Qyp’ (or Qwp’) = Qafa’ (or Qayafa’)

The name קפא (Qafa) or קיפא (Qayafa) is an Aramaic form. The name “Joseph, son of Caiaphas” does not necessarily mean that Caiaphas was Joseph’s father. Caiaphas may designate simply a family nickname. Thus the inscription may well be understood as Joseph of the family Caiaphas. The elderly man buried in the highly decorated ossuary was Joseph, probably a forefather who had acquired this nickname, which then became a sort of family name—inherited by his descendants.[1]

The gospels refer to the high priest only by the name Caiaphas, but the first century Jewish historian Josephus mentions his name as “Joseph, who was called Caiaphas”: “Besides which, he also deprived Joseph, who was called Caiaphas, of the high priesthood, and appointed Jonathan, the son of Ananus, the former high priest, to succeed him. After which he took his journey back to Antioch .” [2]

Just coincidence? Or could this be the remains of the old high priest himself?