July 14, 2011

It has all the elements of a gripping biblical adventure - international intrigue, death threats and a secret hoard of ancient texts.

Described as the most significant discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls, the literary treasure trove of ancient lead and copper codices has exhilarated biblical scholars and historians and ignited international headlines in publications such as the London Daily Mail, Jerusalem Post and Christian Science Monitor.

But the academic community is divided on the authenticity of the tiny texts and some believe the collection is a highly sophisticated forgery.

"It is extremely unlikely that the purported lead codices are authentic artifacts from the early centuries after Jesus," Biblical Archaeology Review Editor Hershel Shanks says. "The way this thing has been fed to the media indicates that the effort is to get media exposure, not to let the public in on an important legitimate discovery."

Ben Witherington, one of the world's leading evangelical scholars and the Amos Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, cautions only time and careful study will determine whether the codices are indeed early Christian writings.

"All I'm prepared to say is this stuff looks interesting," Witherington wrote on his blog. "It needs to go through a battery of authenticity tests as to age, etc. Epigraphers need to analyze the language. Historians of art need to analyze the images. And the (Israeli Bedouin truck driver and codices possessor Hassan Saeda) needs to be carefully cross-examined by a bunch of scholars. Then the codices need to be placed into the hands of a panel of competent scholars to study at length, if and when the authenticity tests show they are ancient, and not yet another modern hoax."

On March 22, a British research team issued a statement announcing the discovery of 70 ring-bound books. Many of the texts – purportedly bearing the earliest image of Jesus Christ, a crucifixion scene and an empty tomb, are written in a form of paleo-Hebrew or Aramaic script. Other texts are in code.

"Early indications are that some of the books could date from the 1st century A.D. and may be among the earliest Christian documents, predating the writings of St. Paul," says team leader David Elkington, an author, British Egyptologist and scholar of the early Christian period. "Leading academics consider that the find may be as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947."

A book and documentary are in the works.

"It is an enormous privilege to be able to reveal this discovery to the world," Elkington says. "But, as ever, the find begs more questions than it answers. The academic and spiritual debate must now commence, and this needs a calm and rational environment to be most productive. So it is vital that the collection can be recovered intact and secured in the best possible circumstances, both for the benefit of its owners and for a potentially fascinated international audience."

A Jordanian Bedouin discovered the codices, many sealed on all sides, in a cave in northern Jordan about five years ago, Elkington says. The hoard was subsequently acquired by Saeda who smuggled it across the border into Israel. Saeda showed many of the artifacts to Elkington who photographed the books. The collection qualifies as a treasure trove under Jordanian law and the Kingdom of Jordan, in what the Christian Science Monitor describes as an "international legal showdown of biblical proportions," is working to repatriate the artifacts. Archeologists in Israel claim the books are forgeries.

However, the Jordan Department of Antiquities told the Jordan Times last month initial carbon tests indicate some of the books could date back to the early 1st century - a time when Christians took refuge from persecution on the east bank of the Jordan River. In May, Jordanian security services retrieved some of the codices from the black market. But most of the texts are still in the possession of Saeda.

"We really believe that we have evidence from this analysis to prove that these materials are authentic," Department of Antiquities Director Ziad Saad told The Jordan Times.

Saad told the BBC the books could be "more significant than the Dead Sea Scrolls."

Margaret Barker, a team member who is working with Elkington, believes the codices are authentic, noting many scholars initially thought the Dead Sea Scrolls were forgeries too.

"My hunch is that they are a collection of ancient items that have been used by the Bedouin people as talismans, and that the various items will prove to be of very different ages," says Barker, former president of the Society for Old Testament Study. "Some, I feel sure, will be ancient. If they are forgeries, my question is what are they forgeries of? I know of nothing exactly like this."

However, L. W. Hurtado, a professor of New Testament language, literature and theology at the University of Edinburgh in England, says there is now a "considerable and persuasive body of evidence that it's all a bunch of hokum."

"The Middle East is well supplied with professional fake-artists who know that there is a ready appetite for artifacts of early Christianity or early Judaism, and people with money to pay for them," Hurtado says. "

In a recent piece in The Sunday Times Literary Supplement, Peter Thonemann, a professor of ancient history at Wadham College in Oxford, wrote Elkington sent him an email with photographs of the codices with "strange sequences of Greek letters curled around depictions of a palm tree, a walled city, a crocodile and oddly, Alexander the Great" and two puzzling phrases, "…without grief, farewell! Abgar, also known as Eision."

Thonemann wrote his research revealed the phrases are identical to a 2nd century Roman tombstone in Madaba, Jordan that is currently on display at the Archaeological Museum in Amman. Thonemann believes the codices are the product of an Amman forger.

"The forger's repertoire is fairly predictable; pseudo-Christian symbols copied from ancient Greek and Judaean coins (palm trees, Hellenistic kings and so forth) interspersed with gibberish-inscriptions clumsily adapted from real ancient texts, Greek and Hebrew," Thonemann wrote. "One can hardly blame the newspapers: no editor could reasonably be expected to resist the combination of Jesus, the Kabbalah, mysterious death threats and a secret code."

Sealed books were used by early Christian writers as a code for secret teaching, Elkington says. At the time, early Christians were heavily persecuted and needed to protect their knowledge, he says.

Philip Davies, an emeritus professor of biblical studies at Sheffield University and an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, says there are many references to ancient lead codices among Christian sects in the 3rd century.

"Up until now, no such book has ever been found," Elkington says. "The existence of a significant hidden collection of sealed codices is mentioned in the Christian Bible's Book of Revelation and in other biblical books."

In Revelation 5, the writer – traditionally understood to be the Apostle John - wrote he was taken to heaven where he saw Jesus holding a "scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals." John wrote only Jesus could open the scroll and that the breaking of the seals would usher in the end time events of humanity.

"The sealed codex is the key to the early Christian vision of heaven," Barker says. "Jesus opens the book, which means that he reveals the secret teaching. Daniel 12:9 mentions words sealed up until the end time, so sealed teaching was not unknown. So too Isaiah 8:16. In addition, there is a text from about 160 A.D. in 2 Esdras 14, especially verses 45-47, which tells of 70 scripture books being hidden away and only 24 books of scripture being made public. What were the secret scriptures?"

However, Hurtado says the Book of Revelation's sealed book is "purely a figurative one."

"It seems to represent the divine plan for history and the accomplishment of the salvation of the world," Hurtado says. "There is no such book to be discovered."

In the end, Hurtado doubts the codices will reveal the future of the world, or even shed light on Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection or how Christianity was born. Hurtado believes the codices will ultimately be exposed as "modern fakes."

"We'd all dearly love to have some major new find that would give us direct contact with the earliest Christian circles, but in fact where progress will come more likely is in careful scholarly work that needs to be done on the early manuscripts that have been lying around for years under-studied," Hurtado says.

Response to End of Morality?

Dear Dr. Wiker: This experiment was so utterly silly that I am surprised that you wasted your considerable brain power on such nonsense. You have chosen much more challenging subjects in the past. Anyway, thanks for trying!!! - H. F.