OT: Oldest Christian Books allegedly Found In A Jordanian Cave
Supposedly Christian in origin and supposedly from the 1st century which supposedly mentions Jesus' crucifixion!
Jordan battles to regain 'priceless' Christian relics
Biblical scholars excited by ‘books’ discovered in Jordanian cave
Pretty exciting!
I wonder when these will show up on Pre-pub? 
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Greg Masone said:
Pretty exciting!
This will be exciting if they are not forgeries.
Greg Masone said:Supposedly Christian in origin and supposedly from the 1st century which supposedly mentions Jesus' crucifixion!
They have not been translated yet. Pretty much all anyone has said about content is that they are in Hebrew and written in a "code." Some people have presumed they are Christian on VERY dubious grounds. The only reasons that I have seen for assigning a Christian context to these are:
- There is a picture of a Menorah and Jews were forbidden to depict the
Menorah because it belonged in the Holy of Holies. - They are books and Christians like books.
Point 1 is blatantly false. We have Menorah depictions in 1st and 3rd C Synagogues and in the Jewish Catacombs of Rome in the 2nd and 3rd C. And these are just the ones I know without any further research.
Point 2 is only partially true. Yes, Christian liked books. But, that statement more properly refers to the Codex which really gets started in use in the 3rd-4th C. It was not all that uncommon to have writing on tablets as far back as Sumer. And these are more like bound tablets than a codex. Notice in the pictures that they are bound on all sides. Once we get past the idea that they are codices, heavenly books (scrolls and tablets) figured prominently in both Jewish and Christian writings. We even have a 1st C picture of a Codex at Pompeii.
Here are some Logos resources for research:
logosres:aehl;hw=Beth-Yerah;off=506
logosres:bav006;art=bav006.art.2;off=29
logosres:aehl;hw=Burial;off=14975
logosres:anch;hw=Writing_and_Writing_Materials
logosres:bkrencbib;ref=Page.p_2167;off=4958
logosres:hrmneiaench1;ref=Page.p_478;off=3060
logosres:bav006;art=bav006.art.2;off=29
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I appreciate the common sense here James, it seems every time something like this occurs - reason is abandoned. I've officially adopted my "wait and see" attitude on this one. Let's get it translated, than let's see if we should get excited.James W Bennett said:They have not been translated yet. Pretty much all anyone has said about content is that they are in Hebrew and written in a "code." Some people have presumed they are Christian on VERY dubious grounds. The only reasons that I have seen for assigning a Christian context to these are:
How foolish will all of this look if it turns out to be a cookbook? (Ok, not very likely but seriously consider the implications.)
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
Thomas Black said:
if it turns out to be a cookbook?
Then what is for dinner? I am looking to try something new.
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I questioned the comparison to the Dead Sea Scrolls which contain a lot of written material whereas these were the size of a credit card. I also was humored by the statement that they might contain some key to understanding the book of Revelation or other Christian belief or writing. All that aside they could be an important discovery if their dating is correct.
"For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power"
Wiki Table of Contents0 -
tom collinge said:Thomas Black said:
if it turns out to be a cookbook?
Then what is for dinner? I am looking to try something new.
Probably an commentary on Num 11:7-8.
“Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. The people would go about and gather it and grind it between two millstones or beat it in the mortar, and boil it in the pot and make cakes with it; and its taste was as the taste of cakes baked with oil. ” (Numbers 11:7–8, NASB95)
As a cookbook I would expect recipes for such classics as
- Mannana cream pie
- Mannanaise
- Mannana's and cream
- Peanut Butter and Mannana sandwiches (Made with unleavened bread of course.)
Who knows what culinary masterpieces are next?!
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
Just don't use today's manna mañana.
Instead of Artificial Intelligence, I prefer to continue to rely on Divine Intelligence instructing my Natural Dullness (Ps 32:8, John 16:13a)
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Thomas Black said:Mannana cream pie
Mannanaise
Mannana's and cream
Peanut Butter and Mannana sandwiches (Made with unleavened bread of course.)Dear Thomas:
I am so relieved that my mouth was not full of coffee as I read that this morning! [:)]
Regards, SteveF
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Thomas Black said:
As a cookbook I would expect recipes for such classics as
- Mannana cream pie
- Mannanaise
- Mannana's and cream
- Peanut Butter and Mannana sandwiches (Made with unleavened bread of course.)
Who knows what culinary masterpieces are next?!
- Fudge & Mannana custard pie
- My Mannana Gourmet popcorn
- Golden Mannana preserves
Searching Logos entire library for manna includes topic look up:
MANNA The food eaten by the Children of Israel in the desert (Exod. 16:14–31,etc.), described in the Bible as ‘small as the hoar frost . . . and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey . . . and the color thereof as the colour of bdellium [i.e. rock-crystal, cf. Num. 11:7–8]. And the people went about and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was of fresh oil.’
There have been many theories to explain this phenomenon. According to one of the most recent it is the secretion of certain tamarisk bushes, Tamarix manifera, Ehr., and occurs when the bush is attacked by the Cocidae, an insect found in the Sinai desert. The secretion has a rough surface and is white at first, changing later to a yellowish-brown color. It becomes sweet, like honey, when kept for a long time. The local Bedouins call it ‘manna of heaven’. They collect it very early in the morning, before the ants wake after the chill of the night, and very quickly, before it melts in the hot morning sun (cf. Exod. 16:21). They store it in tightly closed vessels to protect it from ants and prevent it becoming infested with worms (cf. Exod. 16:20). In the rainy season a Bedouin can collect about 3 lbs in one morning. They cook it into a porridge, which keeps for a long time. The preservation of the name manna in Arabic may be taken as a proof of the accuracy of this supposition.
Negev, A. (1996). The Archaeological encyclopedia of the Holy Land (3rd ed.). New York: Prentice Hall Press.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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Greg Masone said:
I wonder when these will show up on Pre-pub?
I am wondering why they would put these in PrePub? They are certainly in the public domain and given the comments being made, there is some question on the amount of interest we would have in them. I suggest that they go into Community Pricing - being lead (not gold) they should go fairly cheap.[;)]
Blessings,
FloydPastor-Patrick.blogspot.com
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Thomas Black said:tom collinge said:Thomas Black said:
if it turns out to be a cookbook?
Then what is for dinner? I am looking to try something new.
Probably an commentary on Num 11:7-8.
“Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. The people would go about and gather it and grind it between two millstones or beat it in the mortar, and boil it in the pot and make cakes with it; and its taste was as the taste of cakes baked with oil. ” (Numbers 11:7–8, NASB95)
As a cookbook I would expect recipes for such classics as
- Mannana cream pie
- Mannanaise
- Mannana's and cream
- Peanut Butter and Mannana sandwiches (Made with unleavened bread of course.)
Who knows what culinary masterpieces are next?!
Manna-cotti [:p]
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Thomas Black said:
How foolish will all of this look if it turns out to be a cookbook? (Ok, not very likely but seriously consider the implications.)
That was a good episode of the Twilight Zone. One of my favorite surprise endings!
Jerry
Macbook Air (2024), Apple M2, 16gb Ram, Mac Sequoia, 1TB storage
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Jerry Bush said:Thomas Black said:
How foolish will all of this look if it turns out to be a cookbook? (Ok, not very likely but seriously consider the implications.)
That was a good episode of the Twilight Zone. One of my favorite surprise endings!
Jerry
That's the first thing I thought of too when cookbook was mentioned!
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Thomas Black said:
How foolish will all of this look if it turns out to be a cookbook?
Reminds me of the old Twilight Zone episode where a book given to the human race with the title "To Serve Man" is a cook book.
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Thomas Black said:
I appreciate the common sense here James, it seems every time something like this occurs - reason is abandoned. I've officially adopted my "wait and see" attitude on this one. Let's get it translated, than let's see if we should get excited.James W Bennett said:They have not been translated yet. Pretty much all anyone has said about content is that they are in Hebrew and written in a "code." Some people have presumed they are Christian on VERY dubious grounds. The only reasons that I have seen for assigning a Christian context to these are:
Yes, I think it's too soon to get all excited about these. Remember the "Jesus' brother James" ossuary forgery? I'm going to wait until trusted scholars weigh in on this and won't get swept away by the wildly exciting media headlines like "Could lead codices prove ‘the major discovery of Christian history’?"
Larry Hurtado has a good blog post on this: http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/more-on-the-lead-codices/
(Hurtado is a scholar of the New Testament and Christian origins, currently Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology at the University of Edinburgh.)
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Rosie Perera said:
Larry Hurtado has a good blog post on this: http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/more-on-the-lead-codices/
Thank you very much for that link. That was a superb evaluation of the situation. [Y]
However, I still enjoyed the cookbook discussion. [8-|]
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I had a chance to hear Larry Hurtado speak about a year ago in Kansas City, Missouri. Very Good.
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Rosie Perera said:
Larry Hurtado has a good blog post on this: http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/more-on-the-lead-codices/
In a separate post, Hurtado links to this post which has an facinating in-depth discussion of the background and the problems with the discovery:
http://rogueclassicism.com/2011/03/30/lead-codices-silliness/
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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I guess nobody noticed all my "supposedly's" in their effort to dampen an exciting discovery of ::supposedly:: ancient documents.
[8-)]
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Greg Masone said:
I guess nobody noticed
I might have missed the whole thing if you hadn't brought it to our attention. Thanks.
"For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power"
Wiki Table of Contents0 -
I noticed.Greg Masone said:I guess nobody noticed all my "supposedly's" in their effort to dampen an exciting discovery of ::supposedly:: ancient documents.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
Greg Masone said:
I guess nobody noticed all my "supposedly's" in their effort to dampen an exciting discovery of ::supposedly:: ancient documents.
Who's dampening?
What's needed is less hype from the media and more scholarly analysis--which is always slow in coming because they have to figure out if there's money to be made first. I thought all the discussion and links made for stimulating reading.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Greg Masone said:
I guess nobody noticed all my "supposedly's" in their effort to dampen an exciting discovery of ::supposedly:: ancient documents.
I really do apologize if you took offense at my response [:$] It was not meant so much as comment on you or your post as it was a desire to suppress speculation on much of the hype I have seen over the last several days. And I did try to bring things back to forum topic by posting Logos links for further study [:D]
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Todd Phillips said:
scholarly analysis--which is always slow in coming because they have to figure out if there's money to be made first.
[:D]
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Todd Phillips said:
which is always slow in coming because they have to figure out if there's money to be made first
Huh? Definitely not true in my discipline.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:Todd Phillips said:
which is always slow in coming because they have to figure out if there's money to be made first
Huh? Definitely not true in my discipline.
We were talking about ancient artifacts. (Those who find them are often not the ones who study them)
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Todd Phillips said:
We were talking about ancient artifacts. (Those who find them are often not the ones who study them)
Main difference - in my discipline the ancient manuscripts are Buddhist not Christian. Oops - another difference, the manuscripts may be turning to dust (banana leaves) - luckily some were on a bit more durable material.[:)]
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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It's odd that these "books" are so odd. On the one hand, their uniqueness speaks to their legitimacy. Who would bother faking something that no one has ever seen before? But then perhaps that's the appeal, eh? With nothing to compare with, that makes it hard to disprove them by comparison. But that makes them a target of doubt for just that reason. Odd.
ASUS ProArt x570s Creator, AMD R9 5950x, HyperX 64gb 3600 RAM, ASUS Strix RTX 2080 ti
"The Unbelievable Work...believe it or not." Little children...Biblical prophecy is not Christianity's friend.
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Todd Phillips said:Rosie Perera said:
Larry Hurtado has a good blog post on this: http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/more-on-the-lead-codices/
In a separate post, Hurtado links to this post which has an facinating in-depth discussion of the background and the problems with the discovery:
http://rogueclassicism.com/2011/03/30/lead-codices-silliness/
These two links provided extremely valuable information. Thanks Rosie and Todd. [Y]
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Two things to add:
1.) James....thanks for the links!
2.) whatever they contain...they will be "assumed" to trump whatever the word of God says about the same subject...they will have "automatic authority" over the bible. (as perceived by the media and many others.)
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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David Paul said:
It's odd that these "books" are so odd. On the one hand, their uniqueness speaks to their legitimacy. Who would bother faking something that no one has ever seen before? But then perhaps that's the appeal, eh? With nothing to compare with, that makes it hard to disprove them by comparison. But that makes them a target of doubt for just that reason. Odd.
Very true. [Y]
Bohuslav
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Yes, interesting. Will be watching to see what comes out of it.
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley0 -
Clear evidence that whoever wrote them did not know Greek at all.
http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/peter-thonemann-on-the-lead-codices/
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."- G.K. Chesterton
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Ben said:
Clear evidence that whoever wrote them did not know Greek at all.
Ok. Take a deep breath. I can't believe I am arguing for cautiousness in the other direction [:D]
All that comes out of this information from McClellan and Thonemann is :
- that LAST YEAR Thonemann examined
- a BRONZE TABLET that contained
- a GREEK INSCRIPTION and that he reported
- to ELKINGTON that this tablet was forged in the last 50 years
There is no corroboration that this bronze tablet is from the same source or cache as the lead tablets. The fact that it is also one or more sets of bound metal tablets (unusual if not unique) coming from the alleged "archaeologist" Elkington (probably not coincidence) is certainly damaging to the case of the lead tablets, but hardly proof.
Now. let us all wait and see if they are ever allowed to be examined by real scholars. Although I think it more likely that they will go the way of proof for Alien abductions, UFOs, and the Bermuda Triangle: the scholars will not get real access to the articles and so cannot authoritatively debunk them or they will and the fringe will just claim conspiracy and ignore the scholars.
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Okay everyone. Take a deep breath. Go directly to argunet.org where we can collaboratively work this out.[H]
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
Okay everyone. Take a deep breath. Go directly to argunet.org where we can collaboratively work this out.
Hmm...great debate platform concept, not so great implementation. Ten "recent debates" on the first page and only 2 pages worth of them. When you click on the 2 to see the next page worth, it dumps garbage:
exception 'Zend_Controller_Dispatcher_Exception' with message 'Invalid
controller specified (debates)' in
/www/htdocs/v136736/www/argunet/libraries/Zend/Controller/Dispatcher/Standard.php:249
Stack trace:
#0
/www/htdocs/v136736/www/argunet/libraries/Zend/Controller/Front.php(914):
Zend_Controller_Dispatcher_Standard->dispatch(Object(Zend_Controller_Request_Http),
Object(Zend_Controller_Response_Http))
#1 /www/htdocs/v136736/www/argunet/libraries/Zend/Controller/Front.php(223): Zend_Controller_Front->dispatch()
#2 /www/htdocs/v136736/www/argunet/html/index.php(140): Zend_Controller_Front::run('../application/...')
#3 {main}Oh well, nice try MJ. [:)]
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Rosie Perera said:
Oh well, nice try MJ.
I suspect most people, like myself, use the private download version.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Ben said:
Clear evidence that whoever wrote them did not know Greek at all.
http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/peter-thonemann-on-the-lead-codices/
Who knows what might drive a faker, but I find it highly implausible that someone would go to the trouble and bother of faking ancient antiquities such as those pictured in this link and yet not bother to learn or at least adequately replicate the languages being used in their counterfeits...all the time KNOWING that every single detail will be be examined and reexamined to an obnoxious degree. That scenario is even more implausible to me than the idea that the "originals" could themselves be the work of an ill-educated individual who wasn't bothered or concerned with satisfying the obsessive egos of academics two thousand years into the future.
I could be wrong, and I don't really care one way or the other...but I know that "academic certainty" is an oxymoron in many cases. The whole world was under the spell of Wellhausen and the documentary hypothesis farce, and that has been shown to be a sham that a fleet of Mack trucks could drive through without fear of hitting anything of substance (one of my Logos resources, which I can't recall by name, lays this out in detail). Academics think they are so smart, but pride often blinds them...an all too human trait. I could see this particular "archaeological flap" going either way. Time will tell...maybe.
ASUS ProArt x570s Creator, AMD R9 5950x, HyperX 64gb 3600 RAM, ASUS Strix RTX 2080 ti
"The Unbelievable Work...believe it or not." Little children...Biblical prophecy is not Christianity's friend.
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Robert Pavich said:
2.) whatever they contain...they will be "assumed" to trump whatever the word of God says about the same subject...they will have "automatic authority" over the bible. (as perceived by the media and many others.)
Huh? If we didn't make such a fuss over them the media would ignore them. Seems to me that gullible Christians are more of the problem than the media.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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David Paul said:
Who knows what might drive a faker, but I find it highly implausible that someone would go to the trouble and bother of faking ancient antiquities such as those pictured in this link and yet not bother to learn or at least adequately replicate the languages being used in their counterfeits.
I don't find it implausible - tourists can be gullible.
David Paul said:"academic certainty" is an oxymoron in many cases.
Thank heavens - academics deal with the best available knowledge at this time - knowing full well that additional information may change it.
To a subset of generic posters (not specifically addressed to David Paul):
I am very, very tired of the potshots against academics. They deserve the same respect that is deserved by Jehovah's Witnesses, Free-Will Baptists, Catholics, Four-Squarers ... You know there are academics who use Logos and add substantial value to the forums - especially when sharing their knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic... So will everyone who likes the academic potshots immediately cease using all resources that academics have given us - no original language critical apparatus, no lexicons, no discourse grammar, almost no commentaries, and probably no Logos as it uses elements of software that were first developed in an academic environment.
Remember that higher education in the US originated primarily as a religious enterprise - for much of history being educated implied being a pastor or religious. (Yes, I know there are exceptions)
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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James-
I agree that caution needs to be exercised on both ends of this debate, but Thonemann's observation all but eradicates the plausibility of the plates' authenticity. On your four points:
1. Elkington claims to have had the current lead plates in his possession for quite some time. There's no indication the bronze plate came from a separate hoard.
2. There has been no clear description of all the plates in the current hoard, and the fact that the plate examined last year was bronze in no way means it is unrelated to the current hoard. In fact, the plates are very clearly related. So related, in fact, that at least one portion of the bronze plate demonstrably came from the exact same die or mold as one of the lead plates from the current hoard. See here: http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/on-the-lead-vs-bronze-codices/
3. We've not been told the exact nature of all the inscriptions on the current hoard. They are said to have paleo-Hebrew inscriptions and "Messianic symbols," but nowhere does it say it only has those inscriptions, or that there are no Greek inscriptions.
4. Elkington is the one publicizing this hoard, and he's the one who appears to benefit the most from their authentication. I've tried, but I cannot imagine a reasonable scenario wherein Elkington sends out forgeries of totally unique plates late last year for authentication and suddenly has virtually identical authentic plates to send out for authentication this year (with one of them coming from the same die or mold as one of the forged plates).
I believe the evidence is strong enough to reach a firm conclusion. The plates are forgeries.
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Does anyone here know whether there are any examples of Christians writing in paleo-Hebrew script?
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
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James W Bennett said:
They have not been translated yet.
EDIT: "humorous" comment deleted. Realized way past the original play on word in this threads discussion, which has take on a new twist.
I like Apples. Especially Honeycrisp.
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Just posting what seems to be a new article on the plates. Nothing new information wise, but there are some new pictures.
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I still urge caution. Let the scientists, epigraphers, archaeologists, and other academics have access to the complete set of data before jumping to conclusions. While your second point, which comes from information published after my last response, is the strongest evidence supplied to date, the evidence for forgery is still circumstantial. There are other arguments, however implausible, that can be made too account for the circumstantial evidence. We should always speak truth. But that also means not making assertions when we just don't know. Probably the most important stand we can make at this time is not letting other Christians jump the gun and claim either that these are either real or fake. I have already begun seeing disturbing statements by Christians that these are exciting discoveries that can bolster our faith.
Edit: Sorry, this was in reply to Daniel.
Daniel Orrin McClellan said:I believe the evidence is strong enough to reach a firm conclusion. The plates are forgeries.
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Here's another good article on the lead codices and other recent dramatic finds in biblical archaeology, from a Catholic perspective:
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At first I wondered why "from a Catholic perspective" - but I get it. 2000 years or so of been there - done that ; nothing new under the sun; aren't people silly - ourselves included?; God gave us reason - so use it! ... all in all a very Catholic (and some others) perspective.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Rosie Perera said:
Here's another good article on the lead codices and other recent dramatic finds in biblical archaeology, from a Catholic perspective:
Excellent article. The best analysis of the situation I have read yet. Thank you Rosie.
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