Biggest find since Dead Sea Scrolls

Pressing-On · #1 03-30-2011, 01:50 PM

Seventy metal books found in cave in Jordan could change our view of Biblical history

This ancient collection of 70 tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, could unlock some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity.

On pages not much bigger than a credit card, are images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Adding to the intrigue, many of the books are sealed, prompting academics to speculate they are actually the lost collection of codices mentioned in the Bible’s Book Of Revelation.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...l-history.html

Pressing-On · #2 03-30-2011, 02:02 PM

Jordan vows to recover artefacts 'as important as Dead Sea Scrolls'

Jordan has vowed to use all means at its disposal to recover a set of artefacts allegedly smuggled into Israel that it believes could constitute the most important Christian texts ever found.

Jordan's quarrel is not with the Israeli government, but with Hassan Saeda, a Bedouin farmer in the Galilee, who has possession of the codices and is keeping them in hiding.

According to the Elkingtons, Mr Saeda received the artefacts from a Jordanian Bedouin who discovered them in a cave at some stage between 2005 and 2007, much in the same way the Dead Sea Scrolls were found 64 years ago.

A piece of leather found with the metal books was shown by carbon dating tests to be just under 2,000 years old, potentially placing its provenance within Christ's ministry, while a metallurgical examination on one of the codices found that it was also very old.

Israeli archaeological sources have been dismissive of the find, suggesting that Mr Saeda has appeared "every few years" trying to sell the codices. They said examinations had shown them to be forgeries.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...a-Scrolls.html

Pressing-On · #3 03-30-2011, 02:15 PM

Jordan battles to regain 'priceless' Christian relics

A flash flood had exposed two niches inside the cave, one of them marked with a menorah or candlestick, the ancient Jewish religious symbol.

A Jordanian Bedouin opened these plugs, and what he found inside might constitute extremely rare relics of early Christianity.

If the relics are of early Christian origin rather than Jewish, then they are of huge significance.

"In the upper square [of one of the book covers] we have the seven-branch menorah, which Jews were utterly forbidden to represent because it resided in the holiest place in the Temple in the presence of God.

"So we have the coming of the messiah to approach the holy of holies, in other words to get legitimacy from God."

Location clues

Philip Davies, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament Studies at Sheffield University, says the most powerful evidence for a Christian origin lies in plates cast into a picture map of the holy city of Jerusalem.

"As soon as I saw that, I was dumbstruck. That struck me as so obviously a Christian image," he says.

"There is a cross in the foreground, ....

It is the cross that is the most telling feature, in the shape of a capital T, as the crosses used by Romans for crucifixion were.

Another potential link with the Bible is contained in one of the few fragments of text from the collection to have been translated.

It appears with the image of the menorah and reads "I shall walk uprightly", a sentence that also appears in the Book of Revelation.

But tests by metallurgists on the badly corroded lead suggest that the books were not made recently.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12888421

Pressing-On · #4 03-30-2011, 02:35 PM

Initial metallurgical tests indicate that some of the books could date from the first century AD.

This estimate is based on the form of corrosion which has taken place, which experts believe would be impossible to achieve artificially.

http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news...a-Scrolls.html

Pressing-On · #5 03-30-2011, 02:56 PM

Pretty interesting:

Biblical Scholars Weigh in on Discovery of Metal Plates

Just an update on my last post regarding the supposed discovery of a cache of ancient inscriptions written on metal plates. This find continues to generate interest and a number of biblical scholars, including Margaret Barker, Philip Davies, and Jim Davila, have expressed opinions on the matter, based on what information they’ve been able to get hold of.

http://www.heavenlyascents.com/2011/...-metal-plates/