Jesus in Britain – prehistoric ingots of tin from Cornwall discovered in Israel

It can be shocking to discover just how quickly time can go by when one is preoccupied, and this is something I’ve experienced for myself once again over the course of the last few days. To my deep regret, I’ve not published a post on this site for months – not because I’ve run out of material, far from it – but because one particular writing project, coupled with other matters, have demanded my attention.

I’ve had neither the cause nor the opportunity to even revisit some of my writings on Stonehenge in recent times, even though the stats page on this site has long shown a steady stream of visitors to the posts I published dealing with the mediaeval poem The Ruin and my certainty that it was inspired by a traveller’s tale of Stonehenge.

I’ve written about numerous other subjects here, but the one I’m most constantly aware of, I suppose, is the subject of Jesus in Britain, on account of the book I had published in 2009 entitled The Missing Years of Jesus, which you can read more about, if you wish, on this link. I composed this book over a decade ago and I long ago became aware of its failings, but I am still proud of it and I still continue to receive generous-spirited correspondence from others who have read it and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I also continue to either find or else to receive new information that I wasn’t aware of when I wrote my book, such as a detail of another purported visit to Britain “in ancient time” made by Joseph of Arimathea and a young Jesus to a port in what is now Hampshire, from which they found their way up a river to Priddy. To my mind, the subject of Jesus in Britain is enthralling enough anyway, but jewels like the one above serve to keep my interest alive and to bolster my hope that, one day, something seismic will come to light.

At the same time, I received the inevitable slagging from some of our deeply embittered, home-grown maniacs both here in Britain, and also from across the world. Other sections of British society flatly ignored me and rightly so, because I don’t possess a Degree in Archaeology, and what would the world come to if informed amateurs such as myself, albeit one with a Classical education, were to be taken at all seriously when they investigated and held forth upon historical matters? A good many clergy interviewed me when my book was published, while others have since written encouragingly to me, so it would be churlish of me to lump them together with the extreme, uninformed doubters in their midst.

Imagine my joy, therefore, when I came across this wonderful feature by Amanda Borschel-Dan, the Jewish World and Archaeology editor for The Times of Israel. This lady’s highly detailed feature deals with the discovery in Israel of prehistoric ingots of tin that were analysed and shown to have originated in Cornwall, just as I had written about in absolutely meticulous detail about in book.

You can read this magnificent piece for yourself, of course, but I feel it’s important to point out here and now that it’s not some inane drivel or wishful thinking penned by some pot-smoking hippy. On the contrary, there’s everything here that a serious archaeologist or churchman could possibly wish for, such as peer-reviewed papers, photos, histories, isotope and chemical analysis, interdisciplinary scientists and other treasures. Seriously, it’s enough to make even the most cold-hearted British archaeologist swoon with utter joy, the only drawback being that all these wonders add a solid base to the many questions I looked into in my book.

A story comes down to us from antiquity, telling us that when Pythagoras realised that his famous theorem worked, he sacrificed a hundred oxen to the Muse. I have reasons to doubt the veracity of this tale, but it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, because I can recognise the sheer elation of being shown to be right on a contentious issue, especially after having waited for a decade. And on that blissfully happy note, I’m going to cut short what could easily turn out to be an inordinately and increasingly incoherent post in order to celebrate for a few hours.

My warm thanks and intense gratitude go to Amanda Borschel-Dan.