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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

#2

Post by pulisse »

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.

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

#4

Post by danharaj »

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.

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

#5

Post by sudosteph »

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 these (and other) ancient manuscripts will be shared publicly. I love imagining all the potential studies we can do with proper machine learning once we have the data set.

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

#7

Post by Jedd »

> 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.

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

#8

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

That's disputed, not "well understood". Precisely when or where are also disputed, as you said.

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

#9

Post by sramsay »

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 cost of $1.6 million. And they did this despite having been warned by their own legal counsel that the transaction was probably illegal.

They subsequently paid a $3 million fine.

They continue to insist that all of this was "inexperience" on their part. I think it was simple greed, combined with their certainty that any part of the cultural heritage of the world that pertains to Christianity properly belongs in the hands of American evangelicals.

I appreciate Holmes's candor, but let there be no mistake. He was hired to cover their asses.

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