David Elkington and the Lead Codices... More Rubbish...

Sorry for the hiatus. Moved into a new apartment, and now the whole family has come down with a sniffle. :-P It has been madness, but more on that later...

Anyways!

So, Elkington has posted a new video that shows the codices being tested at a lab.

However, taking a close look at the codex that's being tested, it's one of those babble-text examples with little doubt.

These have been turning up in the markets of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and other places throughout the world, each with a different absolute claim of origins and antiquity.

But here's another kicker. Elkington claims the following on his Facebook page:

Thanks to certain critics of this page, we would like to highlight a correction to a small portion of text found within a transcription of the Oxford (OMCS) metallurgical report. Whilst typing from the original copy (the scanned original is also posted on this site ) a sentence was unintentionally omitted, which has since been corrected. Please note that this has no bearing on the final conclusions of the report.

"Unintentionally" my big toe.

Dan McClellan I think put it best a long while ago:

Will Elkington argue for haplography as a result of homoioarcton? [[my note: YEP!]] Possibly, but it can be no coincidence that the edited text supports a fundamental claim that Elkington highlights and emphasizes elsewhere. Elkington has demonstrably altered the report to support his assertions. This is flagrant and egregious deception, and it shows quite conclusively that Elkington is willing to lie and to openly and transparently manipulate scientific data to make his codices appear ancient. They simply are not.

I have no doubt that this set of lab tests will say that the lead is old, as every example is made of ancient lead. However (as I'm sure I've mentioned before) ancient lead is so common that the quantity necessary to make a codex can purchased on eBay for $5. (Here's some more, too.)

However, the report is very clear that the corrosion is not ancient, and the researcher behind the Oxford report (which was the one that was altered), when asked *specifically* what he meant, he pegged the window of construction at a few decades to about 100 years.

Hardly the 2,000 years Elkington claims.

In any case, the academics are fairly unanimous (including those who are on Elkington's supposed "team"): These codices are bogus.

Peace,
-Steve

"Archaic Aramaic Bible" - Weird

Over on BLT, there is a very odd modern Bible that they're showcasing with writing in "Archaic Aramaic" script.

At very first glance I thought it was written in Samaritan, but upon closer examination it seems to be lifted from the Mesha Stele (a Moabite flavor of Phoenician script). I recommend you give it a look and check out the comments. Very, very odd.

Peace,
-Steve

Jordan Lead Codices Page on The Biblioblog Reference Library

On The Biblioblog Reference Library:

In early March 2011 the media reported upon an amazing discovery: Twenty to seventy codices, cast in lead, that potentially held untold secrets about early Christianity. However, from the very beginning something about the discovery appeared improper. Over the course of seven months, an informal group of Bibliobloggers (scholars and students who blog about Biblical Studies) took the time to form a private email list to investigate and discuss the objects and the people behind them. This page serves as a place to showcase their collective insights.

The current consensus is that the Jordan Codices released to date are not authentic.

Read more here. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Jordan Codices: Another Stamp Identified - Marcus Ambiblius' Prutah

(HT to Tom Verenna)

The "weeping  palm" icon was hand-copied very much like the helmet motif on Herod The Great's 8-Prutot Piece (scroll down to the animated gif), only from a poor example.

This motif is only found in one other piece in antiquity, and that is on the coins of Coponius, who was Ambiblius' predecessor (6-9 AD) with slight variation.

I was able to find a good example of a worn specimen that illustrates exactly how similar these illustrations are.

Taking everything into account (as this motif is found on plates that contain repeated, stamped text as well), this yet another strong evidence of forgery/fakery as the iconography on the Codices continues to betray itself as a pastiche of disparate eras, crudely copied en-masse.

Peace,
-Steve

Jordan Codices: More About the Altered Metallurgical Report

(Lead, from Wikipedia.)

So you may be aware about how the informal group of Bibliobloggers who are putting the Jordan Codices and surrounding circumstances under the microscope recently uncovered that one of the metallurgical reports was tampered with on the Jordan Codices Facebook page. (For background, see Tom Verenna's video and Dan McClellan's post about the debacle thusfar.)

In this post, I'd like to go over what was originally stated in parts of that report with some ambiguous language clarified by the researcher who wrote it, Dr. Peter Northover, himself (of whom I am deeply grateful for taking his time to correspond with me).

When I first contacted Dr. Northover (whose late first wife, I found out, was Alison Northover, a highly respected librarian whose legacy for professional development is held today in memory by a prestigious award; it's a small world for us librarians it seems) back in late August before this was reported in the biblioblogs, I brought to his attention that his report was manipulated by the administrator of the Facebook group and quoted it for him.

I also asked him if he was familiar with David Elkington and what exactly he meant by calling the codices "not a recent production" (as that was a phrase that is emphasized by a number of the Codices' supporters).

He, at first, replied rather surprisingly that he did not know who David Elkington was and that he did not recognize the report I quoted. Although he immediately emailed me back while I was drafting my reply, saying that he was able to recall the report after thinking hard about it because, "the first stretch of text was so edited [he] didn't recognise it at all." (And frankly, I cannot blame him.)

He told me:

"I have only seen two of the codices and only one of them open and that just contained inscriptions. The trace element pattern of the lead was consistent with anciently produced lead, although there is so much of that around that it is easy to get some to re-use. [...] I understand there are some copper ones, which are a much better target for authenticity [studies], which may be why I have not seen them."

And when he got to my question about his choice of words, he revealed:

"My own use of the phrase 'not a recent production' implied that the piece I examined in detail had not been made in the last few years, or possibly decades, but I could not rule out a date of, say, a century ago or so."

This struck me as a very different timetable vis-à-vis the claims the Codices' supporters were touting. Ambiguity with, in hindsight, less than sufficient context is something that is easily preyed upon, and that ambiguous language plus a few carefully made edits was able to turn a good portion of the report's original concerns around.

He then revealed that Robert Feather (one of the earliest individuals associated with the Codices in the media) and an unnamed journalistic partner were the individuals who had commissioned the report. At my request he tried to give me an introduction to Feather via email and contacted him at the very beginning of September.

Despite Feather telling Dr. Northover in reply that he would contact me shortly, it has been two weeks and I haven't heard from him (however, I have conversed with Northover several times in that period). Yesterday I decided to try and be bold and reach out to Feather, so I sent him an email explaining who I was and that I had hoped he would contact me back.

As of writing this article, I still have not heard from him; however, I still sincerely hope that will change.

Peace,
-Steve



NOTE: Out of respect, I have withheld quoting Dr. Northover's emails in entirety until I have obtained explicit permission to do so; however, I took great care not to quote him out of context as it would be a great insult to the kindness he has shown to me in taking the time to explain his words. The reason I did this is because we discussed a number of things (don't get any ideas either, this isn't anything scandalous :-) ) that I do not believe he would like posted all over the Internet.

Do Greek Professors Know Greek? What About Aramaic Professors?

A rather surprising story comes from Daniel Streett of καὶ τὰ λοιπά (HT to Jim Davila and James McGrath):

A Test for Greek Professors
In November, 2008, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society on teaching Greek communicatively. As an experiment, I began my presentation by passing out a quiz for attendees to take. I’m guessing it was the first time that had ever happened! Attendance was pretty good–around 30 audience members. Here’s the quiz. See how you can do:

Write the Greek word/phrase for the following common English words or phrases:

1. Yes ______________
2. Chair or Seat ______________
3. Ball ______________
4. Cat ______________
5. Monkey ______________
6. Nine ______________
7. Red ______________
8. Cold ______________
9. Nose ______________
10. To jump ______________
Bonus: “Hello, how are you?” “Goodbye!”_______________________________

What was surprising about it is that, when all was said and done, the highest score was 2 out of 10.

My strength is Aramaic rather than Greek and I got 3 out of 10 off the top of my head ("yes" "cat" and "nose"; Jim beat me!). Like the participants of the experiment, I wager that my grasp of Greek grammar is much stronger than my memorized vocabulary.

There are only three ways to keep vocabulary in your head:

1) Read.
2) Write.
3) Speak.

As an example, doing the same test for Aramaic, I only missed #5 (as monkeys don't tend to come up very often in my line of work -- for the record it is קופא , and now I'll never forget it). :-)

So here's my addition to the challenge: Try your luck in the ancient languages you know. It's an interesting indicator.

Peace,
-Steve

Visualizing the Lead Codices

When trying to explain the rather disjoint collection of stamped scripts and iconography that are found on the faces of the Jordan Lead Codices, I believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. As such, I have put together the following visualization which I believe can express to the average person (who is not familiar with the requisite linguistic and iconographic features) "what scholars see" when they look at the codices by using more familiar imagery.

Click to enlarge it, and 50 points to whoever identifies where all the component parts come from.

The level of difficulty for each piece increases from top to bottom, so stay sharp! :-)

Peace,
-Steve