Personally I think it unfortunate that the Jordan tablets were so soon overly associated with Christian origins and claims to antiquity, because together these seem, at least in large part, to have fated the objects to scorn and perhaps eventual oblivion, certainly to enduring controversy. The claim that the tablets might be Jesus’ diaries, for instance, means that the artefacts would be of virtually no value if not truly ancient. By contrast, if the artefacts had been presented as what they appear at face value to be (in my opinion at least), namely, basically modern vintage Jewish amuletic art inspired by traditional Jewish coinage, synagogue art, mysticism, and religious identity in early modern Zionist modes, then the objects could have been more calmly assessed as works of Jewish art and possible ritual (“possible” because we may here be dealing with an idealized depiction of kabbalah of past ages), whose intrinsic value (or lack thereof) would not in the least have hinged upon the question of ancient origins.Dr. Zinner criticizes me at the beginning of the paper for assuming that the only two possibilities were that the objects were either ancient artifacts or modern objects and therefore necessarily forgeries. That is a fair point. In my defense, in the blog post Dr Zinner cites (here) I agreed with Philip Davies that the codices were in principle worthy of further study, so it is not quite true that I found them "unworthy of any serious attention at all":
The parallel that springs to mind in this context, and which surprisingly was never referenced after the Jordan “codices” story emerged, is the early twentieth-century Zionist Bezalel school of art, whose metal products (Hanukkah menorahs, Passover plates, etc.) and arts and crafts in other media regularly incorporated motifs from ancient Jewish coinage, especially that of the Jewish War and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, which is incidentally also often the case with the Jordan lead tablets’ images. ...
I agree that it is worthwhile for someone to try to track down how, where, and when the codices were made. If Philip wants to spend his time doing this, more power to him. But I doubt very much that this will lead to significant evidence that they are ancient productions.Dr Zinner and I agree on the last point: the codices are modern artifacts, not ancient ones. But in any case, he has taken the discussion in a very interesting direction, exploring the possibility that the codices are modern productions that were only later misunderstood to be ancient, and later still further misunderstood to have some early Christian connection. I have read his paper (quickly) and his theory involves many matters about modern Jewish art history that are outside my own expertise. I should add that he reports that Mr. Elkington has cooperated fully with his research, making photographs of all the objects available for it, which is to Elkington's credit.
A few preliminary observations. Ironically the report that at least one of the codices (or amulets or whatever) is made from ancient lead is a significant problem for this theory. If these are modern artifacts that are merely evoking ancient iconography and themes without intention to deceive, why did the artisan go to the trouble of manufacturing them from ancient material? Also, Dr. Zinner offers some intriguing decipherments of the letters on the objects, which, however depend frequently on letters being transposed, written backwards, and omitted. That doesn't make him wrong: as he observes, such things did happen. But every time one has to invoke such irregularities, the proposed decipherment becomes more speculative and less persuasive. And I can't say that I find the proposed parallel with the angel name in the ancient magical treatise Sepher HaRazim persuasive either. Nevertheless, I encourage Dr. Zinner to submit his research for peer-review publication so that it can be properly evaluated by the relevant experts. I am skeptical, but I will watch with interest for any further developments.
Background here with many, many links going back to March of 2011.
