Annual report, May 6th 2016..
The first concern of the Centre is to promote awareness of the lead books and the need to protect and preserve them. The second is to support scholars who are working on the texts and provide a forum for discussion, interpretation and understanding.
This year a panel of scholars – in this case Prof. Robert Hayward, Prof. Philip Davies, Prof. Bernhard Lang, Dr Samuel Zinner and Dr Margaret barker- has made considerable progress on the second of these aims, and we know today a great deal more than we did when the Centre was launched in March 2015.
We have been able to meet in various small groups throughout the year and have kept in touch by email both with each other and with members of the Centre who are working on the date and age of the metals and other aspects of the research. We have looked closely at some results of the metal tests, at the objects themselves in two cases, and we have studied the many hundreds of photographs. We have brought together our various fields of expertise. The investigation is increasingly interesting and intriguing, and shows us that, whatever they may prove to be, the objects are worthy of serious research.
We set up a website on which there are now some short articles dealing with background information and we plan to add to these as more material becomes available. Visitors to the site can now access material not easily available elsewhere about such matters as the nature and significance of the Palaeo-Hebrew scripts.
We believe that the bloggers’ first reaction to the artefacts was unduly hasty, unscholarly and unfair. Their rush to a negative judgement and then precipitate publication of their views has caused us problems which may well be unprecedented in the history of scholarship. We deplore their personal attacks on people who were taking the finds seriously.
The first concern of the Hebrew scholars was to examine the bloggers’ assertions that the objects were recently-manufactured fakes. We have alreadymade two short films to summarise our response to their arguments about the scripts and images on the objects. Another film is in progress. We believe that our response refutes conclusively the case theblogegrs presented and publicised. The films will be posted on this website when the series is completed.
Our second concern was to bring some order to the raw material of our work. SamuelZinnerhascreated a framework for a comprehensive survey and a classification system for the finds. Information in the form of photos has come to us from many sources, and there is now an archive of classified images that enables us to communicate effectively by email.
Our third concern was to begin deciphering the objects. A comparative study of the photoshas revealed certain recurring patterns, and has enabled reconstruction of the original forms from a variety of damaged exemplars. Due to copyright issues and for reasons of greater clarity, we are working with line drawings of the reconstructed items.
This has enabled a study of the individual motifs such as palm trees and menorahs, to see the extent to which they are found elsewhere, for example on coins. This does not prove that the artefacts were manufactured using coin images as templates, but only that the coins and the artefacts are likely to represent the same historical and cultural milieu.
Of thefew objects we have studied in any detail,some reflect Jewish resistance to foreign rule during the period 200 BCE – 200 CE. Further, the received picture of that period may have to change in the light of what the objects suggest. Some of the early Christians, for example, seem to have been involved in the Jewish resistance struggles. Other items indicate another context, but insofar as they all use Hebrew, they have a cultural milieu in common.
The writing on the objects has proved our biggest challenge, and here we learned a great deal through our work countering the statements of the bloggers. Most of this work was done by Dr Zinner. There are Hebrew letter forms from various areas and periods as well as Greek script. Two forms of a Hebrew letter can appear side by side on one object. They can be written in the conventional way or reversed. A Greek letter can function as a Hebrew vowel. These are just a few of the curiosities in the script, but the results are consistent and can be applied to several examples. We have yet to discover the reason for these curiosities.
We hope to publish as soon as the copyright issues are resolved.
It will take many years to ‘prove’ anything. We still await some of the results of metal tests. What is already clear is that the artefacts we have examined exhibit a complex ‘code’ of writing and that several are copies of older texts. The cultural milieu of one text, irrespective of the age of the particular exemplar, is the nationalist and Messianic movement in Palestine from about 200 BCE -200 CE that resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem. Others tell other aspects of the story,with some surprising revelations.
This brief survey represents the fruits of thousands of hours of research by experienced and established experts in the field. Many more disciplines will be needed to increase our understanding of these objects. A small selection of them has already suggested a new understanding of the years in which Christianity emerged, which were the years of turmoil before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. With that destruction, much evidence was destroyed that could illuminate the common roots of the three faiths which emerged from the Hebrew heritage. What these objectsare revealing is likely to change the picture of the Second Temple Period.
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