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A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

theguardian.com

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Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#11

Post by GlenTheMachine »

Jedd wrote: post #7

> which would make it the oldest surviving manuscript of the New Testament, copied less than 30 years after Mark had actually written it. I thought it was well understood that 'Mark' didn't write this, at least not the Mark the book is named after, and that we're not really sure who did write that first story, or indeed precisely when or where.

Nowhere in the Gospel of Mark is there a claim of authorship. The book is commonly attributed to John Mark, an associate of Peter, but this is just an (admittedly very early) church tradition.

That being said, it had to have been written by someone, and shorthand that person is often referred to as “Mark”.

Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#12

Post by leoc »

danharaj wrote: post #4
pnathan wrote: post #3

Fascinating stuff. Brings to mind the fact that much of earlier antiquity artifacts were plain looted into museums, etc. Mummies were made into artists' paint, for instance.

There was a fad where posh victorians were really into eating mummies.

If so it wasn't the first outing: https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/british-skulduggery-pr... .

Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#14

Post by rayiner »

> While reserving respect for Holmes’s reforming efforts, Mazza did not pull her punches. The Greens have “poured millions on the legal and illegal antiquities market without having a clue about the history, the material features, cultural value, fragilities and problems of the objects,” she said. This irresponsible collecting “is a crime against culture and knowledge of immense proportions – as the facts unfolding under our eyes do prove.”

That’s an interesting charge. The article repeatedly points out that the Bible Museum didn’t know anything was stolen, and cooperated to return things when they found out. But its the Oxford classics department that is keeping these artifacts hidden, inaccessible to the public or even other researchers for the last century. It was an Oxford professor that tried to sell them illegally, but that was made possible by the secrecy of and opaqueness of Oxford’s stewardship of the collection. Who exactly is the villain?

Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#15

Post by pyuser583 »

sramsay wrote: post #9
pulisse wrote: post #2

A gem from near the end of TFA: > At present, just over 20 papyri are displayed on the museum’s website, out of 5,000. I asked Holmes whether one can therefore conclude that the Greens own around 4,980 papyri that lack reliable provenance. “In general, yes,” said Holmes.

I think the Greens get off way too easy in this article. "In 2017, for example, a consignment of ancient Iraqi cuneiform tablets they had purchased was found to have been smuggled into the US as 'tile samples'." To be more precise: The Green family bought over 5,000 ancient artifacts (mainly cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals from Iraq) -- at one point, wiring money to seven separate bank accounts to do so -- at a…

Greed?! They’re not making money on this.

Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#16

Post by pulisse »

rayiner wrote: post #14

> While reserving respect for Holmes’s reforming efforts, Mazza did not pull her punches. The Greens have “poured millions on the legal and illegal antiquities market without having a clue about the history, the material features, cultural value, fragilities and problems of the objects,” she said. This irresponsible collecting “is a crime against culture and knowledge of immense proportions – as the facts unfolding u…

> The article repeatedly points out that the Bible Museum didn’t know anything was stolen, and cooperated to return things when they found out

What the article repeatedly points out are circumstantial reasons for thinking the Bible Museum very much knew that they were not engaged in legitimate trade. 99.6% of the papyri the museum owns lack provenance and are still inaccessible to researchers and the public, even digitally. Artifacts were declared as "tile samples" when shipped to the US. The museum only returned pieces after years of controversy whose resolution came about without their cooperation (proof that the papyri were stolen was assembled without cooperation from the Greens).

Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#17

Post by thaumasiotes »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #11
Jedd wrote: post #7

> which would make it the oldest surviving manuscript of the New Testament, copied less than 30 years after Mark had actually written it. I thought it was well understood that 'Mark' didn't write this, at least not the Mark the book is named after, and that we're not really sure who did write that first story, or indeed precisely when or where.

Nowhere in the Gospel of Mark is there a claim of authorship. The book is commonly attributed to John Mark, an associate of Peter, but this is just an (admittedly very early) church tradition. That being said, it had to have been written by someone , and shorthand that person is often referred to as “Mark”.

This comes up surprisingly often in discussions of old texts. There are a bunch of related questions you might ask:

- These texts are all attributed to the same author. Were they all written by the same person?

- This text is attributed to a historical person. Did he write it?

- This text is attributed to a single person. Is it the work of a single person? Is it a compilation?

And so forth. It is not in general true that an ancient text has to have been written by someone, unless by "writing the text" you mean nothing more than that a single person copied or bound other sources into one more comprehensive document. (Even that isn't true; there's no conceptual problem with multiple scribes copying different pieces of a long text.)

All that said, I see no problem with using a convenient designation to refer to a hypothetical author. The opinion of other people varies; I have seen the argument made that the reason we don't consider medieval European philosophy to have accomplished anything is that medieval European philosophy texts are generally not attributed to a named author. I think this is ridiculous; if the texts were significant, they would have attributed authors, or conventionalized authors, because of their frequent use in society -- just as, in your example, the Gospel of Mark is attributed to an entity named "Mark" for no particular reason.

Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#18

Post by fernly »

sudosteph wrote: post #5

In case anyone else is interested, I found that the org that handles the the papyri has a really cool write-up about how they handle the digitization process. http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/imaging/imaging.html According to the article: . Over the past century, just over 5,000 of the half-million Oxyrhynchus papyri have been published. So between the large data set and scanning process, I'm hopeful that all of t…

System run by a "power Macintosh G4". Not clear when that web page was composed, but G4 was introduced in 1999 and phased out in 2003.

Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#19

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

pyuser583 wrote: post #15
sramsay wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Greens get off way too easy in this article. "In 2017, for example, a consignment of ancient Iraqi cuneiform tablets they had purchased was found to have been smuggled into the US as 'tile samples'." To be more precise: The Green family bought over 5,000 ancient artifacts (mainly cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals from Iraq) -- at one point, wiring money to seven separate bank accounts to do so -- at a…

Greed?! They’re not making money on this.

Greed applies to possessions, not just money.

Re: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

#20

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

rayiner wrote: post #14

> While reserving respect for Holmes’s reforming efforts, Mazza did not pull her punches. The Greens have “poured millions on the legal and illegal antiquities market without having a clue about the history, the material features, cultural value, fragilities and problems of the objects,” she said. This irresponsible collecting “is a crime against culture and knowledge of immense proportions – as the facts unfolding u…

The article is carefully phrased because one of the parties is much more likely to sue the publishers than the other.
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