Let's pretend there's not much news coming out of Washington, D.C and a reporter yearns to cover something different. And what if the press has missed "the biggest biblical discovery to date," indeed, "arguably the most important religious discovery of all time"?
Sounds interesting. And if those lavish promotional claims turn out to be false, that's a story, too.
A friend of The Religion Guy uses the News360.com app, whose algorithms scan 7,000 newspapers and magazines for articles keyed to the individual's interests. This friend's interests include Christian history, and he was alerted to a Jan. 29 article announcing the discovery of ancient documents that "could revolutionize our picture of Christianity."
A seasoned journalist immediately recalls hoaxes of this sort. Leave aside the deceptive history on Christian origins offered as fact in "The Da Vinci Code" novel, a huge 2003 seller that spawned a movie starring Tom Hanks. A claim of proof Jesus Christ was married that emanated from august Harvard Divinity School was debunked. Evangelicals swooned over spurious reports about finding a manuscript of the Gospel of Mark written in the 1st Century. In 2017, The Guy attempted to assess the Shroud of Turin dispute.
The Jan. 29 article wasn't from a recognized scholarly journal or site but CoreSpirit.com, which informs practitioners, entrepreneurs and curiosity-seekers about magic, esoterica, life enhancement nostrums, transcendence and "ancient wisdom."
By the way, this site is potentially useful for media. The Guy bets journalists know nothing about most of the 800-plus topics covered (e.g. global brain, isolation tank, medical intuition, superhuman agility, urine therapy, tongue cutting, wall crawling, you name it).
Core Spirit neglected to tell readers that its news is not new.
The mysterious "Jordanian Codices," a collection of small, bound-together metal tablets, first won publicity in 2011 and mostly in Britain. Though scholars scoffed, there's been lively chatter across the Internet ever since that reporters can plumb to assess story prospects. The history of where these items came from is confused, but they're now being held by Jordan's antiquities department.