stephan huller

No they haven't presented that one yet - the one everyone cares about it seems. Here's a perfect example of what's wrong with scholarship. If the people associated with the text really cared about the truth they would just present the world with the images of the lead pages in high quality scans and see if someone out there is smart enough to figure out the 'code.' It might be a professor or an expert on some obscure language; it might be a plumber in Queens.

That's what's great about the internet and the work associated with Roger Pearse in particular. Just let the people see the evidence. Let them figure out things on their own and get help if they need it.

The feeling I get of course with most scholars points in the exact opposite direction. It's the priestly impulse to leave everything in a state of darkness and require the use of 'guides' to help sort things out. We saw that with the Dead Sea Scrolls to a degree. I am sure it will develop here too.

In the case of the Letter to Theodore discovered at Mar Saba the struggle isn't with the text itself but with Morton Smith's interpretation of the text. They are now having a 'Secret Mark' conference in Toronto next month but its mostly about 'the priests' rather than the text itself.

The feeling one gets with respect to the discoverer of the book, this Elkington fellow is that he is going to use the book as a launch pad for some idiotic theory about the people the produced the material. This even without the material being translated. A heretic priest. Just show the fucking images! The internet has made books almost obsolete in this respect. We can have conversations about a given subject without going through the filter of 'the authorities.' The problem is of course that no one can make money when information is distributed for free. That's the real reason the images aren't being shown to people.

Sad.

Cege

Another question: where in Revelation does "I will walk uprightly" appear? I have Googled and also searched several translations of Revelation, but I don't find the word "upright" or "uprightly" in any of them.

avi

Well, two problems with the lead: a. the writing is in code, and
b. the writing is NOT in Greek.

avi

stephan huller

There is supposed to be some Greek writing somewhere

DCHindley

I can make out a Greek Rho (looks like English capital "P"), but it is backwards.

DCH

gurugeorge

Hmm, interesting that Margaret Barker thinks they're interesting.

My guess: looking at the lead plates, there look like some stylized tree motifs. Could these refer to the Holy of Holies, the Garden of Eden, in what Dr Barker believes to be a continuous Temple Theology suriving, in part, in Christianity?

I gather Dr Barker believes something like, maybe Jesus was someone in this tradition, or preserving it, who passed it on. (This is in the context of an over-arching theory which sees pre-Diaspora Judaism as not being as "monolithic" as we think, from reading the gospels - as comprised, rather, of streams, one of which was primitive Christianity, another of which was a stream that became the post-Diaspora Judaism we're familiar with.)

For a mythicist, the same idea would work, just the tablets might have been used by the Jerusalem precursors of Paul, or something like that.

In both cases, a genuine mystical priestly/mystical tradition was being passed on (and later through pseudo-Dionysus too perhaps?) but was eventually marginalized by orthodoxy.

So they could be some sort of ritual instruction texts, or instructions for practice, or a combination of both, in a "magical" - i.e. coded - language (as in, say, some of the Mahayana Sutras or Tantras, in the equivalent in Buddhism).

Just freewheelin'

Later note: a quote from the article Toto cited above:-

DCHindley

The high resolution images you previously linked to clearly show these to be cast lead (writing is only on one side of each sheet, meaning they were cast on inscribed molds). David Meadows is being melodramatic when he says there are no cast lead codices. There are indeed cast lead plaques and sheets with writing in relief, as we have here. There are inscribed metal codices to be found. But he is right that there are no cast lead codices.

As someone who enjoys walking through industrial ruins (Youngstown Ohio has a rather large tract of old turn of the century and early 20th century factory buildings near an abandoned modern manufacturing plant). And believe me I have seen many many tin, lead, aluminum, steel and iron plates, cans, containment boxes, or remnants of some once productive equipment, including at one point a huge steam power plant and flywheel used to run an extensive factory's machines via belts, all left to the elements to rust or otherwise corrode in the soup of whatever chemicals and reagents that have crashed upon them from rotting shelves or in the ground from decades of industrial pollution.

Those high resolution images seem to depict genuine corrosion (from weathering and contact between dissimilar metals, plus contact with whatever dross was left over from smelting of who knows what metals). The corrosion holes in one photo could possibly be due to running a current through them in a chemical solution. The generally beat up appearance suggests many years of being stomped and walked over, suggesting they were just dumped in a corner and treated as nothing for a long period of time in a cave where smelting was being undertaken. Obviously not smelting of lead or they would have been reused.

DCH

gurugeorge

Some kind of guild metallurgy secrets? Or alchemy texts?

mountainman

Nice summary

Has Oded got an alibi?

Toto

April DeConick joins the scoffersLead Plate watch on Paleojudaica cites Derby expert examines 'ancient Christian books'Staying with the Sceptics has more on the not-an-archaeologist Mr. Elkington and his theories of vibrational energy.

Larry Hurtado