Faked Antiquities - NEWS!

[Dad Ernie]

Greetings All,

I just received this from ICEJ News Service:

3. BIBLICAL FINDS FOUND TO BE FAKE, DEALER ARRESTED

Two major archaeological discoveries linked to Jesus and the Jerusalem

Temple have been found to be frauds and the antiquities dealer accused of

forging them has been arrested.

Oded Golan is being investigated for fraud, forgery, using forged documents

and perverting the course of justice. He was arrested Monday at his Tel

Aviv home

The fake antiquities included the Jehoash inscription, a shoebox-sized

tablet inscribed with Biblical-style Hebrew instructions on caring for the

Jewish Temple, and an ossuary, or ancient burial box bearing the

inscription, "James, brother of Jesus."

The ossuary with its supposed first-ever direct archaeological link to

Jesus of Nazareth stirred a global sensation before being proved fake.

Police suspect Golan has sold millions of dollars worth of forged

antiquities over the years to various museums and institutions abroad.

Golan denies all allegations.

The Antiquities Authority last month declared both the Jehoash inscription

and the James ossuary to be fakes. The authority said the 20-inch by

11-inch human bones vessel was indeed ancient, but the James inscription

was not. Regarding the Jehoash stone, the body found that "the patina on

the written side of the Jehoash inscription is made of bits of chalk that

contain foraminifers, clay, coal and bits of gold all mixed together. In

nature, a mixture such as this is a virtual impossibility."

Blessings,

Dad Ernie

[Bill]

Interesting.

Wonder what now?

[Ovedya]

A fake ark of the covenant, I suppose.....

[martyr]

Doesn't matter either way to me. Not only do we have faith to know that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, but we have so much more evidence to corroborate the fact that He is who He claimed to be.

Of course, it's interesting to note that when something like this is found out in the Christian realm, the secular world is on it like vultures on rotting flesh. Yet, when secularists forge things, such as false dating methods of the earth, we are supposed to discount any evidence that refutes it(such as the impact on the earth of a worldwide flood and the ice age that came after it).

[OneAccord]

Martyr:

What false dating methods are you referring to?

[martyr]

For one, the carbon dating method is seriously flawed. In reality, it is impossible for the carbon dating method to measure back 100,000 years. Also, carbon dating is based on assumptions that are more than likely false. The main assumption is the belief that carbon intake has been the same since time began. With the industrial age and other advances, it is far more likely that carbon intake is dramatically different than that of 250 years ago.

[nebula]

A little science lesson, while we are at it, to hopefully clear up some confusion.

With a half-life of 5,730 years, C14 dating is ideally suited to determining the ages of artifacts a few thousand years old. It is no good for objects 100 years old, because the intensity of radioactivity has hardly begun to decline. Neither is it useful for objects a million years old, because there is virtually no radioactivity left to measure. Finally, we must remember that the method can only tell us the general era when the sample was part of a living thing; it cannot tell us anything precise; as for example, "this object dates from 2833 BC"; fifty years either way is the very best that is possible.

The dating method therefore tells us when a particular carbon sample was part of a living thing. Obvious applications are the dating of bones, textiles, wood, leather, etc. Pottery and iron-work can be dated, too, because they were produced on charcoal fires; carbon from the wood that made the charcoal will have been incorporated into them.

The radio chemical technique consists of burning the sample in a controlled atmosphere to convert all the carbon, including the C14, into the gaseous compound, carbon dioxide. Then the very tiny amount of radio activity of the C14 is measured.

Among the drawbacks to the radiocarbon method are the limitation of perhaps 50,000-60,000 years at the "old" end of the scale. Beyond this, too little radioactivity remains to measure.

Contamination of the archaeological sample by either older or newer material is a serious problem. The need to destroy a sample of the artifact to get the C14 in the right form for analysis is a serious problem for precious objects. Finally, the rate of production of C14 in the upper atmosphere is now known not to be constant with time. This is because variations in the behaviour of the Sun alter the intensity of the cosmic rays arriving at the Earth. Variations in this factor clearly reduce the ultimate reliability of the dating. Even with these restrictions, radiocarbon dating remains a vital physical tool in the armoury of the archaeologist.

(From: http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/summer/scor...cles/scor12.htm )

[OneAccord]

What method do they use to date archeological digs that provide evidence to Biblical events in the Middle East?

[nebula]

I just found this one:

[OneAccord]

The point I'm trying to get at here is that 'creationists' (for want of a better term) like to call carbon-dating an unreliable if not false method for dating archeological finds EXCEPT when this same carbon-dating method verifies Biblical finds, for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls mentioned in the article above.