THERE'S NOW A PRESS RELEASE on those inscribed lead plates:Sealed
Via James McGrath, who got it from Jim West.
The claim is that these are first-century Jewish-Christian documents, but nothing in the description seems to me to point compellingly to any Christian element. The suggestion that the Hebrew text is "in code" is possible (the Mt. Zion stone cup may be a precedent and there are Dead Sea Scrolls in code as well) but it's also convenient and may mean that the plates are just forgeries with gibberish text.
The first order of business is to secure the collection and get it to a safe place where it can be studied properly. The second is to subject it to a rigorous process of authentication, about which I have already commented here (dead link now fixed). If the texts prove to be genuine (I remain skeptical), that will be very exciting indeed.
Meanwhile, is it really quite necessary to make a documentary film about them right now? Sigh.
Stay tuned ...
UPDATE (30 March): More on the inscribed plates here, here, and here. Plus tangentially related posts here, here, and here
