It's amazing how much fraud goes on in the study of ancient manuscripts, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars, often, these days, oddly, in highly religious circles.  Here's the final part of my discussion of fraud connected with New Testament fragments from about five and a half years ago (May, 2020). ****************************** An article appeared in The Atlantic this past week that exposes academic fraud at the highest levels, involving millions of dollars, unscrupulous scholars, and evangelical Christians so intent on proving the truth of the Bible that they were willing, even eager, to engage in unethical and fraudulent activities to do so.  It seems weird, but the case involves Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. The article was written by one of the country’s best investigative journalists, Ariel Sabar, who earlier had exposed for once and all the modern forgery known as “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” in another article in the Atlantic  (I’ve blogged on this forgery a number of times as the story unfolded; just search for “Jesus’ wife” on [...]

OK, I am at the tail end of this thread on mummy masks and the alleged discovery of a first-century fragment of Mark’s Gospel.   This thread was first posted in 2015.  Here is how I ended it then. But I did want to provide access to an interesting article and penetrating set of questions on the issue published a week ago on CNN by my friends Candida Moss and Joel Baden (they crank out a lot of articles on issues in biblical studies, especially as items appear in the news).  Candida is a Professor of New Testament at Notre Dame and Joel is a Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale.  I’ve re-posted this article with permission.  It comes from CNN: Was oldest gospel really found in a mummy mask? ****************************** (CNN) Media outlets have been abuzz this week with the news that the oldest fragment of a New Testament gospel -- and thus the earliest witness of Jesus' life and ministry -- had been discovered hidden inside an Egyptian mummy mask and was going to [...]

  In our age of the superiority of non-expertise, occasionally an authority speaks out who reveals the truth.  Here is a case in point, when a true expert on ancient papyri explains what's going on with those mummy masks I've mentioned in earlier posts. Again, this is from 2015; things have changed in terms of the specific case, but not necessarily in terms of the frauds that some people are willing to engage in for the sake of their historical and religious claims. Here is what I said about it nine years ago. ****************************** One of the things that I find disconcerting about all the discussion about whether it is legitimate to destroy mummy masks in order to get NT papyri is that the only people who seem to know anything about what has been found (this alleged first century copy of the Gospel of Mark) are not experts in the specific fields in which expertise is required, both to dismantle masks and to date papyri.  As it turns out, they're all friends [...]

Here is my second re-post from 2015 about destroying ancient mummy masks in hopes of finding manuscripts. In yesterday’s post I cited an article by Mary-Ann Russo that explained the situation about the mummy masks that were being destroyed in order to acquire papyrus fragments of the New Testament.  The scholar mainly cited in that article as being involved in that process was Craig Evans, a friend of mine with whom I have had several public debates.  Craig feels that he has been somewhat misrepresented in this article, and sent me a clarification.  I have asked and received his permission, and this is what he says:  (NOTE: after this paragraph is a lengthier explanation and justification of what they are doing when destroying mummy masks): Last summer I gave a presentation on the number, age, and reliability of New Testament manuscripts. In this lecture I described the effort under way in recent  years to recover manuscript fragments, including biblical manuscripts, from ancient cartonnage, including mummy masks. All of these materials are from Egypt. [...]

Is it OK to destroy ancient mummy masks in hopes of finding yet something more valuable out of them? I have just returned from my annual professional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, where thousands of biblical scholars come to read academic papers to one another, sit on panels to review books or discuss topics, and, well, schmooz.  These days I mainly schmooz.  But I did go to a few sessions, including one particularly intriguing panel discussion of a fantastic new book on the corrupt ways manuscripts are allegedly discovered these days, written by papyrologist (expert in the study of ancient papyri manuscripts) Roberta Mazza, Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts  Among the intriguing topics that come up in her full-scale attack on scholars who rely on the black market to get their "ancient manuscripts" was the issue I've dealt with before on the blog, the case of the "first-century Gospel of Mark" (which was decidedly not from the first century, we found out) said to be [...]