
400-year-old Bible stolen from US is found in Netherlands - BobbyVsTheDevil
https://www.apnews.com/fac7326cd5dc4a89bf11599638100da4
======
mikorym
Once upon a time I unassumingly pondered upon my university library's sale.
This type of thing happened every term and every term I would skip a class or
so to pore over the treasures.

And this time, indeed there was a treasure. The first thing that struck me was
the big sticker on the first page that said "DO NOT REMOVE FROM LIBRARY" and
"DO NOT THROW OUT". Well, I am not sure exactly what it said, but that was the
general drift.

As the honest, hardworking, minimum wage person that I am... I promptly
alerted the librarian on shift. The librarian (and his team of white walkers)
then rather alarmedly started digging through the books in search of similar
labels.

At the end of the day I wasn't even thanked. Honesty goes a long way to making
one a poor student and without booze money.

So you want to know what the book was? I'll give you a hint. There were two
volumes. And the writer was "more modest than Newton".

I estimate that the two volumes are worth about USD 8000 together.

~~~
booleandilemma
_At the end of the day I wasn 't even thanked._

Sounds like the librarian is yet another person trying to cover his own ass.
Instead of showing gratitude, he probably wants to pretend the whole incident
never happened.

~~~
tptacek
How much gratitude do you generally expect for simple, ethical actions that
take almost no effort on your part?

~~~
yeahwhatever10
Generally you would expect a simple amount of gratitude that takes almost no
effort on their part. Like "Thank You".

~~~
nitrogen
It seems the amount of gratitude should also be proportional (albeit with a
small coefficient) to the loss that was prevented.

~~~
nitrogen
It's interesting that the voting on this comment has fluctuated up and down.
If anyone happens across this old thread and would like to provide a
counterargument, I'd be interested in reading it.

~~~
nitrogen
Interesting that this was also downvoted, as well as other very reasonable
comments in the thread. Some very odd patterns. My original comment went up to
3 and down to 0, second is at 0, and some other comments are gray enough to be
somewhere between -2 and 0. Let's see if the experiment continues.

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mongol
On the topic of stolen books, an employee at the Royal library in Sweden stole
a number of ancient books, some of which turned up in the US. The case ended
with him blowing himself up.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/books/swedish-royal-
libra...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/books/swedish-royal-library-
recovers-stolen-1597-atlas-in-new-york.html)

~~~
anbop
An asshole to the very end. His suicide injured 11 other people.

------
nneonneo
Ah, the book theft involving Caliban Book Shop. I worked in an office opposite
that book shop for almost five years - walked right past that book shop every
day, and had no idea they were centrally involved in moving millions of
dollars of stolen books.

Sometimes, crimes really do happen right under your nose.

~~~
EnderViaAnsible
Stories like this remind me that trust is an indispensable aspect of
civilization. Ultimately we have to trust our road workers to do good work,
our bank tellers to be honest, and apparently our archivists not to steal what
has been entrusted to their care.

Also, it reminds me that our justice system(s) are mostly about punishment,
because we can't actually prevent crimes, just act once they are already
committed.

We must trust because we cannot verify, except in Phillip K. Dick novels and
Tom Cruise movies. (China's dystopian work in this area notwithstanding.)

~~~
cerealbad
trust has become implicit with mass surveillance. the only thing left to do is
to read minds, but that's almost an afterthought for distraction and hysteria.
what does it matter what you think or believe when everything you do is
closely monitored and reinforced?

a reciprocal strategy develops (trust the trusted) even if you have no
surveillance,technology or civilization. trust transactions begin with a
certain fixed amount and then the balance shifts based around the perception
of the participants.

intercepting perceptions, can circumvent trust/distrust which scales nicely if
you can have sparse networks and centrally distributed information on the
cheap. you can even customize interceptor information for specific networks,
to create all types of down stream effects.

so how has it become implicit? well, you can use technology now to create your
own trust/distrust network of information, then you can train this thing to
judge new information for you, and most importantly you can expose (or hide)
any biases you might have with adversarial networks. this will lead to a new
type of trust, a type of meta-mathematical consensus, where machines just make
trust decisions far better than humans can, and ideology starts to become
replaced by dataology. data dissidents may find ways to circumvent trust
networks as impostors or use cloned disposable networks, but crime and
problems associated with resistance to existing orders will decline
precipitously, you may be against roads but you need to use them all the same.

you may even see an emergent class of rebel/terrorist/revolutionary celebrity,
since the novelty of not using a valid and accurate trust network geared
towards ones preferences will be the same as not using the internet or banking
systems for mass communication or commerce. parallel societies can easily
exist without conflict, but the mass of humanity always moves together in the
direction of simplification, and it's easier to trust machines, so far they
have a much better track record than people, given their rapid adoption in
almost every critical human sector. the trade off is that machines become
difficult to build, repair and understand, but being a human becomes a lot
easier, and one serves the other.

this may seem naive to people inside technology networks, but i expect a type
of generational dependence to grow, and things that work are rather hard to
obsolesce once they establish a critical mass of global adoption. people trust
machines, computers, the internet, they will grow to entrust them with trust-
proofs.

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imjasonmiller
What surprised me was that according to the director of the American Pilgrim
Museum in The Netherlands [1], they asked him to send the Bible by regular
mail. He opted to bring it to the American embassy in The Hague instead.

1 [https://www.bndestem.nl/binnenland/400-jaar-oude-in-vs-
gesto...](https://www.bndestem.nl/binnenland/400-jaar-oude-in-vs-gestolen-
bijbel-gevonden-in-leiden-ik-kreeg-opeens-een-brief-van-een-
detective~a9bfff17a/) (Dutch)

------
AnaniasAnanas
Here is another case for anyone interested. Sadly in this instance the court
decided to let the thief keep and auction it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
> Wearing blue latex gloves, [the FBI agent] displayed the Bible, carefully
> opening its weathered pages.

Don't archivists dealing with old books use their bare hands as they are
kinder on the paper?

~~~
contingencies
Hands contain oils, mold spores, bacteria, etc. and are certainly not good for
fibrous media. Strategies depend upon what kind of media you have. Disposable
cotton gloves are very popular. If you are interested in further research, the
Getty is one of the world authorities on antiquities handling, they probably
have a page or guide about it someplace. (Source: I have an art collection on
antique paper myself, and have made efforts in the past to optimize handling
and storage.)

~~~
matwood
For books, clean, dry, bare hands is recommended by the Library of Congress,
the British Library, and Library of Canada. They explicitly recommend against
using gloves.

[https://thediscoverblog.com/2019/04/05/the-gloves-come-
off/](https://thediscoverblog.com/2019/04/05/the-gloves-come-off/)

~~~
contingencies
Interesting summary, though the argument is limited to old worn books that are
still physically sturdy and they explicitly disclaim the recommendation for
art and photographs.

