[Publius6961]

Aw, c'mon...
Can you just picture an illiterate denizen of northern Jordan the 1950s or 60s deciding, "I'll just find me some copper and lead sheets and fire off a bunch of meaningless, but detailed laborious embossed plates, bury them somewhere and wait 61 years and see what happens... ?

I suppose that's possible.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

You never know...they might turn out to be real after all, but that Thonemann fellow at Oxford is betting his rep as an expert that they are forgeries.

I was disappointed to hear the theories of fakery. But, of course, where there's money to be made, there's always a clever forger around.

[John S Mosby]

Big business in fake religious “antiquities”. Would be interesting to see if the supposed metallurgy report on the lead had a comparator sample of lead with the same trace elements. The “corrosion” of lead would not generally be uniform as a result. If the corrosion is uniform it might be due to the composition of the lead. Impure lead would corrode less uniformly. That said,the most damning evidence is the repeated use of the same non-sensical segment of Greek sentence on a known artifact, as stated by the good Professor. This is a fake.