Bibliobloggers managed to do better research than major media outlets and determined relatively quickly the the lead codices that have been making headlines recently are almost certainly fakes. The images on them are identical to ones on bronze plates that the same person “found” once before, and the inscription on those was copied from a book by someone who did not know enough Greek to distinguish between alpha and lambda.
Case closed? Pretty much – except that media outlets seem to be continuing unaware that such progress has been made, or perhaps even trying to downplay its significance. See today’s entry on the subject at Rogue Classicism for some discussion of that, as well as a fairly comprehensive round up of the discussion so far.
And so Tom Verenna (who has also provided updates and some e-mails from Margaret Barker on his blog) has created a Wikipedia entry on the lead codices, and invited the scholars who have been blogging about this subject, and commenting on their separate blogs, to pool their resources, and to do so in the one place the media and everyone else turns to for the most up-to-date, reliable information.I’m not sure whether this is the first time that scholars and other concerned individuals have banded together to get the lead out, as it were, and get the word out, using Wikipedia, but it will be interesting to see whether what effect this has.
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