stephan huller

It's amazing to me to find out that I am in complete agreement with Hurtado. What he is saying here is the only reasonable position possible. It is too early to start scoffing because we don't know everything there is to know about early Christianity or the artifact. Nevertheless my hunch is that it isn't Christian.

Minimalist

Too amateurish for his standards!

Cege

About the lead sheets that are "sealed" with lead rings...might they be "sealed" back to back because there is only writing on one side? (rather than some reference to a sealed book in the Revelation that describes only the Messiah opening the sealed book)

Why do the backs of the lead sheets not show evidence of the bias relief writing on the other side? shouldn't the 'backs' of the pages be indented with the same text on the 'fronts'?

ETA: Revelation describes a book sealed with 7 seals. The "books" we've seen so far are "sealed" with more than seven lead rings/"seals".

DCHindley

I thought the same thing. At first I thought they had been inscribed on the back in reverse of normal writing so they would appear on the other side in bas relief as normal text. Then I saw the high resolution images and it became evident that they were cast in molds. The text is only on one side of each sheet.

My guess is that someone created molds, perhaps in clay or wood, into which the letters and symbols were inscribed (again, like a woodcut, in reverse of normal writing). The lines appear to be crudely scratched into the molds. Next, melted lead is poured into the mold to just cover any high spots, and left to cool. After cooling they can be shook loose or pried out with a tool of some kind (maybe the awl used to make the inscriptions). An awl can be used to punch the holes.

The lead wires have ridges that seems to be from an extrusion process, but that would not be a technology they would possess, I would guess. Maybe they too were crudely made from strip molds and shaped onto round wires by hammers.

DCH

DCHindley

gg,

I don't think so, they are much too crudely done to be done by metalsmiths. This looks like a "cottage" industry to me. They are mass produced and fairly amateurish.

Some suggestions:

"Curse texts" (defixions) made by Nabatean Arabs after the bar Kochba rebellion to be placed in Jewish graves, abandoned houses and orchards.

Maybe they were souvenirs for tourists visiting on the mid 4th century CE to see the places where Jesus preached etc, where John the Baptist baptized, and where the Jewish wars had been fought. Using the paleo Hebrew they found on coins of the bar Kochba rebellion, they conjured up something that kind of looked like Hebrew but in actuality didn't make any sense at all.

Who knows?

DCH

mountainman

Could the unknown symbols and runes in such small books actually represent historical evidence of hobbits?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Pete,

Evidence of Hobbits? This is more likely than these books will tell us anything real about first Century Christianity.

If there were actually any important text from this time, it would have been written in plain Greek or Aramaic and would have been circulated, copied and preserved by Christians in the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth...seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and/or twentieth centuries.

I think we should be equally skeptical about claims of pieces of wood being from Noah's Arc and claims of text written in the First century about Jesus Christ.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

stephan huller

I don't mean to disgree with the nay sayers but IF it turns out the books are authentic and IF the books turn out to be from the first or second centuries, I think their value will be immense. With that said, there are some reasons to be suspicious of the discovery. Yet at the same time - as we see with the Mar Saba documents - what are the 'right circumstances for discovery something that no one knew even existed managing to somehow escape the ravages of history?

And this point:

is plainly contradicted by the importance of kabbalah in early Christian, Jewish and Samaritan writings from the early period. Christian and Samaritan especially, both connected with an individual named Mark. I have always argued that this can't be coincidence.

Numerology and kabbalah among Semitic people is quite different from what you find in the Theosophical Society in London. It was originally subversive political information about the circumstances by which a king of Israel would emerge victorious over Edom

When half of the richest 100 people in America are Jewish you know longer have any real need to transmit teachings and traditions about the expected coming of the messiah. The state of Israel was established without the expected appearance of the one to come. It is difficult to overestimate how 2000 years of Jewish messianic theology has been rendered utterly obsolete and ultimately DISPROVED by contemporary political alliances.

Nevertheless all of that would change in a flash if the state of Israel ceased to exist. The Yosippon intimates the original understanding for the galut - the rejection of Marcus Julius Agrippa by the rebels of the first Jewish War.

Things people will never know because they have been left untranslated from the original Hebrew. Bowman is apparently working on an English translation or has been for the last decade. I recommend people read it when it becomes available.

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay,


All skepticism aside, I am amazed that JRR Tolkien took the same number of years (a dozen) to write "The Lord of the Rings" that Eusebius did to write "Historia Ecclesiastica".

I started a thread some time ago which attempted to try and gather up all the christian hoaxes - century by century by century - and the list appears to be fractally endless. an index of fraud concerning "christian" history by century. Nevertheless it is treated as "possible evidence" in a "given mass of cumulative evidence" on the issues at hand. But nothing is further from the truth.


The empty Christian Evidence Museum and Hangers 0001 to 9999 of Rejected Evidence

The analogous scenario that often comes to mind is a "Christian Museum" with no exhibits in the main building at all. There is nothing to actually go and have a look at of value. Of course they keep a "Shroud Replica: and a "Cross Replica" and a "Codex Replica", but there is not one item on display which is not either a replica of a previous forgery, or which itself is not ambiguous (such as the Dura-Europos Exhibit). While the "Christian Museum" is thus totally empty, out the back there are a few hundred acre blocks covered in concrete and massive sheds - like aircraft hangers - which are totally filled up with evidence that has been rejected as bogus by hundreds of earlier generations.

But such is life.

Winter is returning to the south and summer to your north so the best approach is to simply smile and enjoy it all.

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

My recommended read, if and when it becomes available, is Ammianus's obituary to Constantine.