It’s Nice to See the BBC Catching Up to What we All Knew Months Ago

The BBC is reporting that the ‘lead codices’ are of doubtful authenticity! Ya don’t say…

But then the essay goes on to describe, in fine fashion, the very questionable nature of so many ridiculous claims. It even includes remarks by our own Joe Zias-

Joe Zias, an anthropologist who served for 25 years as a senior curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority, is equally sceptical. The golden rule in archaeology, he says, is simple – when you hear extraordinary claims, ask for extraordinary proof. Mr Zias says the world of archaeology has changed since Hollywood gave us first Indiana Jones and then the Da Vinci code.

And

Joe Zias says the odds are always against any such finding turning out to change the way we look at ancient history as the Dead Sea Scrolls once did. He says he has seen many people bringing artefacts to his museum during his quarter-century as a curator, but the only genuine one was a fragment of Byzantine pottery found by a tourist on Mount Sinai. “It wasn’t going back to the time of Moses, but in 25 years that’s the only thing I ever saw that was authentic,” he says. Now there are those who believe – just as Mr Saeda does – that the Lead Codices are genuine and that they hold important secrets about the ancient world. But the search for truth in the Holy Land has been littered with fakes and forgeries for hundreds of years and when great claims are made for a new discovery, the burden of proof lies with the finders. And the burden is a heavy one.

The BBC may be slow, but when they finally get around to the topic they do a far better job than the Discovery Channel and the History Channel do!