Fake metal codices watch

FAKE METAL CODICES WATCH: The Express has an article on Peter Thonemann's debunking of the fake metal codices: UNHOLY ROW AS NEW EXPERT CALLS ANCIENT SCROLLS FAKES (via David Meadows). For the first time "[a]rchaeologist and biblical scholar" (argh!) David Elkington responds to Thonemann:

Mr Elkington hit back at Dr Thonemann yesterday: “He’s not a biblical scholar, he’s a Greek classicist.

“Dismissing the provenance of the books on the basis of two low resolution photographs by e-mail is out of order.

It's not surprising that Mr. Elkington resorts to a completely irrelevant ad-hominem attack rather than replying to Dr. Thonemann's devastating argument, but it does show that Elkington is getting desperate. (And one has to ask why Elkington himself contacted Thonemann in the first place if he thought his specialty wasn't relevant.) James McGrath takes the article and Mr. Elkington's comments apart in detail here.

Background here (immediately preceding post).