Tuesday, April 26, 2011

More "ancient manuscripts" in Jordan?

MORE METAL CODICES? It just goes on: Jordanian police recover 7 ancient manuscripts (AP).

This is a bewildering announcement by Ziad al-Saad, the director of the Jordanian Department of antiquities, which says that these "manuscripts" (no other description) were taken from "local smugglers." Apparently he associates these with the metal codices (70 manuscripts, possibly "the most significant find in Christian archaeology since the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls," whatever that means). The story is not very coherent: the documents were found both by Jordanian archaeologists and then stolen, and then a couple of paragraphs later they were found by a Bedouin.

It sounds as though the Jordanian Government has gotten hold of some possibly ancient "manuscripts" of uncertain nature, but which they seem to be associating with the metal codices and which they are now trying to authenticate. No point in saying more than that until we have more details.

It just had to be seven of seventy manuscripts didn't it? Well didn't it?

HT Joseph Lauer.