[UPDATE: This just gets weirder. Read the "Another Update" entry below. AND THE UPDATE AFTER THAT.]
The BBC has what appears to be a regional-interest story, the region being Derby:
Derby expert examines 'ancient Christian books'This is less clear than it might be, but I hope it means that Margaret Barker has good photos of all the leaves in the lead books. If so this is good news, but it needs to get better. Ms. Barker's textual and philological expertise need to be augmented with the expertise of specialists in other areas such as palaeography, ancient iconography, ancient metallurgy, etc. But this seems to be a start and I look forward to hearing what she finds.
A Derbyshire scholar has been called upon to help investigate the origins of a collection of relics which could be the earliest example of Christian text.
New Testament history expert Margaret Barker, of Borrowash, is examining photographs of the "metal books" found in a cave in Jordan.
She was contacted by British archaeologist David Elkington, one of the few people to have seen them.
It is thought the artefacts might be almost 2,000 years old.
Mrs Barker believes that if the books are genuine, they could be unique evidence of Christian activity as early as 33AD - about the time Jesus is thought to have been crucified.
The fact that the thin lead tablets are bound into books, and their combination of symbols and script, for her "tips the balance" in favour of them being of Christian derivation.
She will now try to help decipher the meaning of the Ancient Hebrew text, most of which is in code.
[...]
Oh, and to seeing good photographs of all the plates released and posted online. Did I mention that?
Also:
Archaeologist Mr Elkington is heading a British team trying to unravel the mysteries of the books and to get them safely into a Jordanian museum.As Doug Chaplain has noted, Mr. Elkington is hardly an archaeologist (the BBC should be able to figure this out). His work seems to involve goofy New Age "energy vibrations" and I see no evidence that it should be taken seriously as any kind of scholarship.
He contacted Mrs Barker on the advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Mr Elkington admits the books have attracted intense interest. During the course of his research, he said he and his wife had been shot at and received death threats.
As an aside, it's interesting to hear that the Archbishop of Canterbury is involved in this too.
Background here.
UPDATE: There's now a Jordan Lead Codices Wikipedia page.
April DeConick: Lead Tablets? Come on.
ANOTHER UPDATE: James McGrath links to a page (link updated to blog rather than Google reader - 6 April) by Daniel McClellan which copies what purports (unverified) to be an e-mail by Oxford scholar Peter Thonemann to Mr. Elkington rejecting the genuineness of a certain bronze tablet bearing a Greek inscription, because the Greek had been poached in part from an early second-century-CE Greek/Aramaic tomb inscription from Jordan published by J. T. Milik in 1958. Got all that? So ... is the e-mail genuine and does it have something to do with this corpus of lead and copper codices? I have e-mailed Dr. Thonemann and will let you know what I find out.
UPDATE (1 April): At least one codex is a forgery, so almost certainly all of them are.
