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An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

smithsonianmag.com

111–120 of 207 posts

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#111
The article is confusing and unclear and addresses many different topics at once. The digressions about bass-playing are frankly irrelevant.

One could end up thinking all Dead Sea Scrolls are fakes. They are not. The Dead Sea Scrolls are real, but some fragments, sold as originals for millions of dollars to rich collectors, are modern forgeries.

And bad fakes too. Dead Sea Scrolls are made of parchment; the fakes are from leather. Both come from animal skin but parchment is stretched and dried while leather is tanned: mixed with vegetable astringent compounds that cause the skin to contract and harden. The fakes, possibly made from "ancient Roman shoes" (!) were coated with animal glue, and written upon with modern ink that followed the creases and tears of the leather. (Obviously when someone writes on a new piece of parchment that later becomes cracked and torn, there would be no writing inside the cracks).

Now I'm no scholar and I gathered the above from various online articles, but it seems it the deception was pretty obvious, and in fact once someone started doubting all experts agreed and there was no controversy.

I find the world of forgeries fascinating because it speaks of the human mind, how our desire to make something real blocks our perception and any kind of critical thinking. I wish the article spoke of that more rather than the various talents and life history of Mr. Langlois.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#112

“Having done that (and lacking cash to buy Photoshop), he downloaded an open-source knockoff.” Anyone wanna bet it’s GIMP?

Doesn't he have to pay liscence fees if he is using GIMP professionaly? Or do they have exceptions for academic purposes?

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a copy of Enoch 1, 2, 3; but I have not seen it included in any Bible. It is not part of the Apocrypha -- you don't find in the Orthodox Study Bible or a Catholic Bible. What Bible is it in? I would like to get it.

As a protestant I've certainly seen some of the deuterocanonical books in non-Catholic study Bibles. Not the same thing really as Enoch, which I think is a little bit more controversial.

I once owned a copy of The Gospel According to St. Barnabas (English translation - I'm no scholar), a deuterocanonical gnostic text. Very weird and magical. It describes the events of Jesus' descent into Hell, and his return. There are many resonances with "The Egyptian Book of the Dead".

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#114
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> science can’t comment on the “divine inspiration” claim It certainly can. It can point out that there is no evidence that any human writing is divinely inspired, and so claims of divine inspiration are almost certainly false.

See, there's the problem. You called it almost certainly false, but what are the criteria of truth? Science uses induction as a measure, meaning it presupposes that we have faith in the proposition that something will happen again because it has happened in the past. That would be akin to claiming to be immortal, because every time someone died, it wasn't you. With a little additional information, such as the recogni…

> Science uses induction as a measure

No, it doesn't. This is a common misconception, but it is 100% wrong. Science is the business of finding the best explanations that account for all observations.

One of the consequences of this methodology is that it turns out that all known observable phenomena can be described by fairly simple mathematical laws that appear to remain constant over time. But science does not assume this.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#115
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Naturalism insists that anything which is supernatural cannot be scientifically investigated, by definition. No, that is not what naturalism is. That would be circular. Naturalism is the philosophical stance that things that cannot be observed do not exist. Alleged supernatural phenomena cannot ever be definitively ruled out (because new observations may confirm their existence) but to date there has never been an…

Under naturalism there can never be a supernatural phenomena that would prove supernatural things exist. Because once the phenomena reaches a state where it can be measured it ceases to be supernatural and becomes a thing of scientific investigation. And while its not in a state that could be measured there is nothing to investigate. Or put it another way - naturalism is a world view that would kill any supernatural…

Naturalism could demonstrate the existence of things that today are called supernatural. Ghosts. Demons. Deities. All of these things could be demonstrated naturalistically if they were observable. In that case they would no longer be "supernatural" but they would still be qualitatively different from what is today understood to be "natural phenomena".

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Catholic Church at the Council of Rome formally defined what books were considered authentic and which ones were not (and this list was, with some reduction, also used by Protestants). The Book of Enoch was a bit contentious because of the quotation in an inspired book - but it was ultimately determined to be not inspired, and the quotation not necessarily either. (I.e. Imagine if scripture quoted a Roman decree…

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Well... I mean science did make books and science can be quite inspiring. Literally inspired books seem possible if you get the right combination to write and I'm sure there could be a study on how to literally inspire someone to write... Perhaps add too much DMT to the brain.

That said, without being silly about words the bible could be full of science but their concept of science is very different from our own, how they view the world is quite different... But we sometimes are blind and make assumptions about their views. Often people discredit those in the past with assuming they know better. Like the mystery of how we lost concrete and why bricks were so popular.

And for some silly reason people often say "Science" as if it disproves things. As if a mere word could really be an argument. Science in fact can prove lots things and yes, a fair amount of the Bible is already proven and can make one curious about what is possible.

Stuff changes but some things remain the same - we still have modern day immortal jellyfish, what other creatures could have lived back then? If the live span of a mammal like a whale is so long imagine other creatures of the past. More ancient, and older than the Greenland shark. How could other animals be if they used a similar technique to the jellyfish?

Snakes with tiny legs still exist though the amount of legs very, and no I was not referencing Tetrapodophis amplectus, nor lizards but actually snakes forced to crawl (because their tiny legs are useless) so you can look that one up. Look up python legs.

Animals can talk and use tool (Well trained birds come to mind, but many birds are able to do this, and some mammals easily mimic humans like many dog species rather it be a laugh or scream of a fox. Whales have speech patterns like humans, perhaps the giant beasts of the past could be similar to whales with speech? Kind of a scary idea of a smart land whale with human like whale speech patterns) who is to say what the world was like? What it sounded and acted like? How intelligent it could have been. So many curiosity's. Very scary ideas too. Land killer whales could be very frightful as they are very good at finding human weaknesses if they get angry enough...

The idea of the Pharaoh's snake a popular chemical used by magician's back then would be quite magical and still is today. If you want to feel like summoning a monster try those chemicals. It got it's name for a good reason.

Now can I explain everything in the Bible? Well no of course not, nor do I think everything is literal and even the Bible itself says this in multiple places. But to say "science" is quite silly. It's like saying man can never fly nor sail because of science. Depending on your point of time well science would say you are correct, but that does not mean it is impossible. Science leaves room for all sorts of discovery if you are willing to look with a bit of faith and be willing to see the impossible.

We use our grand imagination to examine the past but it's fragmented at best. Science is good at making predictions but not everything can be predictable from unknown factors and ever changing variables. It's a helpful tool though to bring a sense of order and control until you dig too deep or your assumptions last too long, like the lack of fat dinos compared to how we view whales with similar bones. Etc etc.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#117

> he downloaded an open-source knockoff Reading this snapped me out of my Gell-Mann amnesia.

Gimp eh? Well we're not going to put that in the article. We're serious people.

Might have been Paintshop Pro (which wasn't ever open source, but that could just be a sloppy rendition of "shareware").

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#118
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reference. I have read Enoch 1 and it is a wild story that in my view is pure fantasy (e.g., giants were 300 cubits tall!?). I have always just assumed that Jude and Peter were quoting some authentic version from earlier and the version I have read was the creation of an imposter.

Enoch is not a man. Enochion was the name of the famous third-eye that supposedly (if we believe the story in the book) existed in the pre-atlantian era of the super-giants, cyclopes, who peacefully co-existed with giant reptiles. The eye allowed them to see things thru, so it was called the eye of wisdom. As the civilization progressed and got immersed in sin, the visions that the eye saw became intolerable, and ove…

Have you read the Bible? Or the book being referenced at all? Enoch is very clearly a man.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#119

Isn't the whole bible a collection of fictional stories / articles? Who cares if some one tacks on extra "forged" chapters? What does forged even mean in this context?

Isn't the whole US constitution a collection of human-made sentences? Who cares if some one tacks on extra "forged" sentences? What does forged even mean in this context?

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#120

The book of Enoch (a non-canonical pseudopigraphal book) is a wild story that expounds on the strange events of Genesis 6:1-4 and is quoted by Jude and Peter. The fact that some of the DSS versions contain forgeries is interesting. I have always suspected there were a very ancient Enoch texts that are now lost and what we do have contains many forgeries.

This got me thinking: what exactly defines a forgery here? Ancient Jewish texts were almost certainly based on previous oral tradition and underwent all sorts of changes over the years before they came to be written down as the texts we know today, and there were probably different versions of the written texts too – the non-canonical ones just got mostly lost as they didn't get copied so much (or at all). So is a te…

In this case a forgery is something claiming false provenance i.e. was written by some crafty tradesman within the last century but claims to have been found in a cave not disturbed since the 3rd century.

For most of the known text we have a pretty good idea about where the earliest written copy comes from and serious academic is careful about ascribing truth to anonymous late 1st and 2nd century greek texts written in modern day Turkey and describing events happening decades earlier.

Christian theologians and biblical scholars however kind of have to take 2nd century anonymous texts from people who could not have been direct witnesses to the events described as gospel value because without those accounts there is no new testament.

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