stephan huller

They were discovered in the caves of Sacromonte, a hillside outside the old city of Granada, Spain, between 1595 and 1606, and comprise 22 volumes of "lead books", each one consisting of a number of inscribed circular lead leaves, laced together with lead wire and bound within folded lead covers; which were found together with burned human remains, identified by lead plaques as being those of Caecilius of Elvira (Cecilio, Cecil) and eleven followers, supposedly martyred under the Emperor Nero. References in the "books" claim that they were inscribed by Arabic-speaking Christians during the Roman period, and deposited with the martyrs' remains. The books are conserved in the Abbey of the Sacromonte.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Books_of_Sacromonte

DCHindley

Perhaps you could be so kind as to let us in on why you brought up this nugget from history? Have you despaired of the menorah issue to the point that you now think it proves the things are fakes? Or do you think that fakes are what folks want to make them out to be?

I will pull a Stephen Carlson on everyone and declare it all an elaborate marketing campaign perpetuated by, hold your breath, David Elkington. Who? David was involved in publishing an interactive CD that had images and info about Classical culture, with the ability to store user supplied input for research papers, classroom presentations and handouts, etc, called Classical Civilisation for OCR AS OxBox CD-ROM (or via: amazon.co.uk), published by Oxford UP 1/28/10. A teaching aid.

He is also the author of a book, The Lead Codices (or via: amazon.co.uk), "published" 5/11/10 by HarperCollins. This religious history book has never been available on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. It was to come out in Hardcover ($27.99 to $49.99), but not a library has a copy, nor is there any description of it or review. None of the sites that do display it has a picture, nor is it available remaindered or used. In other words, this book was scheduled to come out but never completed the publication process. Someone at HarperCollins didn't think the time was right for it. I mean, there was competition from Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code in 2009.

These same codices were apparently introduced to the world around 2007 by Sasson Bar-Oz, a lawyer representing "Hassan Saeda, a Bedouin farmer in Galilee who says they have been in his family's possession since his great-grandfather found them in a cave in Jordan, a century ago". Even Robert Feather, the metallurgist who published The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran (or via: amazon.co.uk) (2003) and The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran: The Essene Mysteries of John the Baptist (or via: amazon.co.uk), has been promoting the find, trying to prove it's authenticity. Unfortunately, the IAA isn't buying it as authentic, not liking the mixture of fonts apparently from different periods of Hebrew and Greek script.

But there is money to be made. Look at books about the James Ossuary, and the Gospel of Judas. All you need is something genuinely ancient, but unusual, then hype the living hell out of it and connect it to Jesus. I am still convinced that what these are are magical talismans, in spite of the fact that Jewish magicians tended to avoid lead lamellae. There you go, ancient but unusual. You will notice that virtually every single recent news article about them shares one common feature, this is really about Jesus. Hype.

DCH

stephan huller

To be honest, I am not sure whether anyone could be reasonably sure about anything related to the discovery. Of course the IAA's opinion of course weighs heavily in my mind. There is a part of me that wants the discovery to be authentic. There is another part that thinks there is a 'too good to be true' aspect about things. The bottom line is that we will all have to wait until there is more evidence. Some of your points are right on the money so too speak. One thing to note of course - when comparing to the Mar Saba discovery - Morton Smith WAITED for ever to publish anything related to his discovery thus distinguishing the much maligned professor from these people. In other words, he didn't cook up a find to make money from a book deal. No one can claim that at least. I have never been able to uncover a motive for any alleged forgery with respect to that document. But that's another subject for another thread ...