
A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel - theprop
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/09/a-scandal-in-oxford-the-curious-case-of-the-stolen-gospel
======
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?

~~~
pulisse
> 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).

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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](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.

~~~
fernly
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.

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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.

~~~
sramsay
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.

~~~
pyuser583
Greed?! They’re not making money on this.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Greed applies to possessions, not just money.

~~~
pyuser583
That’s fair.

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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.

~~~
GlenTheMachine
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”.

~~~
thaumasiotes
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.

~~~
Jedd
Actually, more specifically, I have a problem with:

> All that said, I see no problem with using a convenient designation to refer
> to a hypothetical author.

And that is -- it's not terribly convenient if it distracts the under-informed
reader about the provenance of the source material.

In this specific case there's the insinuation of authority by proximity /
familiarity.

While it's a convenient designation, continuing to imply the author of the
primary source of the new testament was someone we can identify gives it more
credibility than attributing the story to an unknown source, or an amalgam of
sources.

Compare and contrast, say, Greensleeves -- a piece that everyone in the UK and
AU recognises as indicating soft-serve ice cream is in the area, where the
composer / author 's actual identity is at best secondary -- attributing a
work of fiction to a (likely wrongly) named author grants credence that may be
inappropriate.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Bah. Everyone knows the sound of an ice cream truck is Turkey in the Straw. ;D

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jimhefferon
> I have stolen, removed or sold items

No Oxford comma?

~~~
htfu
One may not wield it while suspended from the institution.

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pnathan
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.

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

~~~
leoc
If so it wasn't the first outing:
[https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/british-skulduggery-
pr...](https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/british-skulduggery-proved-a-
healthy-export-155731.html) .

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ngcc_hk
Is this still an on-going investigation?

------
Merrill
Paging Inspector Morse.

