I’ve been asked repeatedly about this big news concerning some 70 lead books purportedly found in Jordan that may have some bearing on early Christian history. I’ve been taking a “wait and see” approach so far, because it first needs to be established that these books are genuinely ancient. This skepticism is especially warranted in consideration of the slew of fakes and forgeries surrounding the Bible in particular. I wrote an extensive article about one such bogus artifact, the so-called James Ossuary.
Apparently these books can’t even be found at the moment, so they surely could not have been examined by the team of scientists needed to give a proper analysis – and I highly doubt that included among that team, should these texts be deemed genuinely ancient, will be a mythicist. Hence, the scientists will all likely take the a priori position that Jesus Christ is a historical figure and that the early Christian history is largely accurate.
In any event, some scholars are already leaning towards these texts being a hoax.