What is being described as a possible discovery more significant than the Dead Sea Scrolls, has been largely ignored by American mainstream media.
-- From "Derby expert examines 'ancient Christian books'" posted at BBC News 3/30/11
New Testament history expert Margaret Barker, of Borrowash, is examining photographs of the "metal books" found in a cave in Jordan.
She was contacted by British archaeologist David Elkington, one of the few people to have seen them.
It is thought the artefacts might be almost 2,000 years old.
Mrs Barker believes that if the books are genuine, they could be unique evidence of Christian activity as early as 33AD - about the time Jesus is thought to have been crucified.
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From "Could this be the biggest find since the Dead Sea Scrolls?" by Fiona Macrae, UK Daily Mail 3/30/11
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.
The books were discovered five years ago in a cave in a remote part of Jordan to which Christian refugees are known to have fled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. Important documents from the same period have previously been found there.
The prospect that they could contain contemporary accounts of the final years of Jesus’s life has excited scholars – although their enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that experts have previously been fooled by sophisticated fakes.
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From "Could new discovery trump Dead Sea Scrolls? Scholars intrigued but cautious." by G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Correspondent, Christian Science Monitor 3/31/11
Written on lead in Hebrew and Aramaic, the secretly coded books – or codices – were hidden for centuries in a remote Jordanian cave until a traveling Bedouin found them some five years ago, according to a statement released last week by British Egyptologist David Elkington. Depictions of crosses on the lead-bound leaves, coupled with metallurgical analysis, suggest to Mr. Elkington that these might be early Christian texts that pre-date even some letters in the New Testament.
New Testament scholar Craig Evans also hesitates to assume much about the early codices. They could be very significant, he said, if they really do trace to an early Jewish group that regarded Jesus as Messiah. . . .
But “that’s a big if,” says Mr. Evans, a professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. At this point, little is known about the content, purpose, or date of the codices. He says he’s hopeful that they’ll shed fresh light on Christian origins, but he’s not confident they will.
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