Amman – Jordan has vowed to use all means at its disposal to recover a set of artefacts allegedly smuggled into Israel that it believes could constitute the most important Christian texts ever found.
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A British team of archaeologists last week announced the discovery of a hoard of ancient texts.
Cast in lead and copper, the sealed texts, known as codices, have already become the subject of intrigue, with at least one of the British archaeologists reportedly facing death threats for trying to rescue the artefacts from privateers intent on breaking them up to sell on the black market.
Other experts, meanwhile, have dismissed the codices as an elaborate hoax and the British team, led by David Elkington, an Egyptologist, and his wife Jennifer, as gullible hucksters.
But the Jordanian government, which has backed the Elkingtons’ work, has stated that the codices are an invaluable piece of world heritage at least on a par with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Jewish texts found in an Israeli cave in 1947.
“They will really match, and perhaps be more significant, than the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Ziad al-Saad, the director of Jordan’s department of antiquities, told the BBC. He said they could be “the most important discovery in the history of archaeology”.
Mr Saeda claims the codices have been in his family’s possession since they were found by his great-grandfather.
Containing messages in Hebrew and Ancient Greek, the codices were etched in code.
A piece of leather found with the metal books was shown by carbon dating tests to be just under 2,000 years old, while a metallurgical examination on one of the codices found that it was also very old.
Israeli archaeological sources have been dismissive of the find, suggesting that Mr Saeda has appeared “every few years” trying to sell the codices. They said examinations had shown them to be forgeries.
Read more at The Daily Telegraph
These findings, if shown to be original rather than forgeries, are priceless and should be given the same respect as an ancient yiddeshe manuscript from the same time period.
Comments #1 and #2 , taken together and as they currently appear, make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Do I detect the heavy hand of censorship?
The article as it’s written makes no sense. Were the artifacts smuggled into Israel by British archaeologists after they found them? Were they sold to the Elkingtons (whoever they are)? If the Jordanian minister of antiquities had them in his family for generations, and they were soooo valuable, why didn’t he bring them to light and have them studied? By the way, Jordan and no arab country recognize the veracity or historicity of the Dead Sea Scrolls so how can he compare the new “finds to the Scrolls??? By the way, the Scrolls have virtually NOTHING to do with “early christianity”. They are all either Tanachic writings or biblical-era books that were not included in the Tanach, plus letters, deeds, etc.