Exclusive: Early Christian Lead Codices Now Called Fakes | Christian Artifacts Are Forgeries | Life's Little Mysteries. Seventy metal books allegedly discovered in a cave in Jordan have been hailed as the earliest Christian documents. Dating them to mere decades after Jesus' death, scholars have called the "lead codices" the most important discovery in archaeological history, and leading media outlets have added fuel to the fire surrounding the books in recent weeks.
"Never has there been a discovery of relics on this scale from the early Christian movement, in its homeland and so early in its history," reported the BBC. [Image] Slowly, though, more and more questions have arisen about the authenticity of the codices, whose credit-card-size pages are cast in lead and bound together by lead rings. Today, an Aramaic translator has completed his analysis of the artifacts, and has found what he says is incontrovertible evidence that they are fakes.
Mixed messages "I noticed there were a lot of Old Aramaic forms that were at least 2,500 years old. Just in time for Easter. Jordan battles to regain 'priceless' Christian relics. 29 March 2011Last updated at 06:30 By Robert Pigott BBC News religious affairs correspondent They could be the earliest Christian writing in existence, surviving almost 2,000 years in a Jordanian cave. They could, just possibly, change our understanding of how Jesus was crucified and resurrected, and how Christianity was born.
A group of 70 or so "books", each with between five and 15 lead leaves bound by lead rings, was apparently discovered in a remote arid valley in northern Jordan somewhere between 2005 and 2007. A flash flood had exposed two niches inside the cave, one of them marked with a menorah or candlestick, the ancient Jewish religious symbol. A Jordanian Bedouin opened these plugs, and what he found inside might constitute extremely rare relics of early Christianity. That is certainly the view of the Jordanian government, which claims they were smuggled into Israel by another Bedouin. Jordan says it will "exert all efforts at every level" to get the relics repatriated.
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