[jjotto]

From the article:

Their leaves - which are mostly about the size of a credit card - contain text in Ancient Hebrew, most of which is in code.

If the relics are of early Christian origin rather than Jewish, then they are of huge significance.

That's quite a big "If"!

Wouldn't Christian stuff be written in Greek or Aramaic?

[Pharmboy]

Exactly! That's what puzzled me...why not Greek...or Aramaic. I posed the question to a boyhood friend of mine (we grew up together in NYC and he married an Israeli woman 30 years ago and moved there) who has become an amateur scholar on ancient Hebrew. Here's the exchange:

ME: But please explain why those Christians/Jews at the time used ancient Hebrew...I thought that the Aramaic alphabet was used then...

Him:Right, but the replacement didn't occur suddenly; there were still those who knew and used the ancient script for some scriptural writings. Another example of this is the WaYiqrah (Levitcus) scroll that was entirely written in the ancient script and discovered along with the other Dead Sea Scrolls. Additionally, in some of the scrolls, the name of God (Yahweh) was written in the ancient script while the remainder of the texts was in Aramaic script. Finally, all the coins minted by Bar Cokhbah had the ancient script engraved on them.

Nowadays, in commemoration of these coins, the Israeli one shekel and ten shekel coins have a bit of the ancient script engraved on them.

Back to me:Perhaps they used the ancient script to give it more gravity.

[Elsie]

Wouldn't Christian stuff be written in Greek or Aramaic?

Remember, "We heard them all in our OWN language!"

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(Maybe it is written in Reformed Berean.)