Not a tourist attraction: The Jordan Codices

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The Jordan Codices could be a new hot tourism attraction in Jordan. The Government in Amman doesn’t agree and calls it a forgery.

The Jordan Codices are an ancient set of seventy lead tablets that could change the worldโ€™s view of Biblical history. Religious scholar and Egyptologist, David Elkington, has been focused on proving the authenticity of these artifacts which may depict the earliest known portrait of Christ.

Just back from Jordan, where he was detained for a month by Jordanian authorities. Jordan authorities think Elkington is a fraud. Elkington thinks the Jordanese government wants to suppress all knowledge of what could be a huge game changer for theology.

Jordan authorities described the findings of David Elkington as baseless, stressing that the cave was not found and the pictures he has have nothing to do with the cave that was visited, which indicates that his insistence on the originality of the codices is groundless and not credible. Jamhawi, the Jordan antiquities department director said that modern technology can be used to create confusion since it can use old materials and draw on it to make almost unrecognizable fake antiquities.
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The Elkingtons still maintain that the codices are credible and are 2000 years old

Held as one of the most important discoveries in archaeological history, yet contested as “modern forgeries”, codices discovered in Jordan almost a decade ago have been proven authentic by British experts.

If the dating was verified, the books would be among the earliest Christian documents, predating the writings of St Paul.

The prospect that they could contain contemporary accounts of the final years of Jesusโ€™s life has excited scholars โ€“ although their enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that experts have previously been fooled by sophisticated fakes.

David Elkingto ย says the books ย could be โ€˜the major discovery of Christian historyโ€™.

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โ€˜It is a breathtaking thought that we have held these objects that might have been held by the early saints of the Church,โ€™ he said.

But the mysteries between their ancient pages are not the booksโ€™ only riddle. Today, their whereabouts are also something of a mystery. After their discovery by a Jordanian Bedouin, the hoard was subsequently acquired by an Israeli Bedouin, who is said to have illegally smuggled them across the border into Israel, where they remain.

However, the Jordanian Government is now working at the highest levels to repatriate and safeguard the collection. Philip Davies, emeritus professor of biblical studies at Sheffield University, said there was powerful evidence that the books have a Christian origin in plates cast into a picture map of the holy city of Jerusalem.

In a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times, the Ion Beam Centre (IBC), based at the University of Surrey, UK, and supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, on November 30 published new evidence of the authenticity of the country’s Lead Codices. ย 

Comprising upwards of 70 ring-bound books made entirely of lead, the codices were found in a remote valley in northern Jordan between 2005-2007, with evidence to suggest that they date back to the 1st or 2nd century AD.ย  Linguistic analysts have claimed that they are the only Hebrew-Christian documents, challenging the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered mid-century in the caves of Jordan Valley. ย 

A codex, forming part of the Lead Codices collection, was on official loan to the IBC for study from the Department of Antiquities.ย  Director of the IBS, Prof. Roger Webb, and Senior Liaison Fellow, Prof. Chris Jeynes, have reported that the codex did not demonstrate the radioactivity arising from atmospheric polonium that is typical of modern lead samples, indicating that the lead of the codex was smelted over a century ago, and is not a product of modern-day manufacturing. ย 

A further report by independent analyst Matthew Hood, an examiner of the erosion of the codices since 2009, has claimed that the โ€œvisible formation of mineral crystals as the metal reverts to organic compounds provides strong evidence of the great age of some of these artifactsโ€. ย ย 

“The suspicion of forgery, shown by the bloggers and a rashly published note in the Times Literary Supplement in 2011, has been disproved by several independent scientific tests of the metal as well as yet unpublished expert study of the writing. No one of those actually involved with research on the codices has any doubt about their antiquity,” the statement said.ย 

In Mach 2017 The Jordan Department of Antiquities (DoA) on Thursday announced that the lead codices it seized with the help of security authorities around seven years ago have not been proven to be authentic so far, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

DoA Director General Monther Jamhawi said that a national team of researchers and specialists scanned the area of the alleged cave where the codices were allegedly found but did not find any relevance between the codices and the cave, particularly as no cavities in the caveโ€™s walls were found.

The department described the findings of British scientist David Elkington as baseless, stressing that the cave was not found and the pictures he has have nothing to do with the cave that was visited, which indicates that his insistence on the originality of the codices is groundless and not credible.ย 

Jamhawi said that modern technology can be used to create confusion since it can use old materials and draw on it to make almost unrecognisable fake antiquities.

Thus, the DoA said all the talk in Elkington’s recent lectures on the issue is not accurate or objective, Jamhawi said, noting that the scientistโ€™s visit to Jordan and addressing the issue without permission is “a clear violation” of regulations.ย 

The DoA chief called for taking information from authorities, noting that the DoA would inform the public of solid data about their national heritage as long as they were proven authentic.ย 

“The Jordan Codices are the earliest Christian documents ever discovered, dating back to the time when Jesus Christ was still alive in 30AD; whereas the Dead Sea Scrolls date back to 75AD,” according to a video published on the “Jordan Heritage” Facebook page and shared by Elkington’s official page “Jordan Codices”.ย 

Speaking in the video, published on March 3 this year, David and Jennifer Elkington say that the Jordan Heritage, a not-for-profit local company, has invited them to Jordan to talk about the codices.ย 

They say the codices show that Jesus and the first Christians lived in Jordan, adding that โ€œsince 2008โ€, a series of tests were conducted at 15 independent labs around the world, whose results all showed that the codices date to the time Christ was alive.ย 

โ€œTests performed at University of Surreyโ€™s Ion Beam Centre last year demonstrated a complete absence of radioactivity,โ€ the video said, indicating that the codicesโ€™ age is authentic and goes back to 2,000 years.ย 

 

About the author

Avatar of Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1977).
He founded eTurboNews in 1999 as the first online newsletter for the global travel tourism industry.

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