Loading...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).
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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 the blog and you’ll see the posts). Sabar has a forthcoming book on the topic, Veritas: A Harvard Professor, A Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, due out in August. I have read it in manuscript, and it is damning indeed.
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Amen. Why indeed?
Thanks for the post, Bart. To get to your second question first, my experience is that many “true believers,” whether in politics, business or religion, have no compunction using lies and deceit in the service of their higher cause. Secondly, as to your first question, most of the Evangelicals I’ve met have little interest in – and frequently little knowledge of – Jesus’s commands to care for the needy. They seem to take more pleasure in the simple, and undemanding, act of stating Jesus is Lord. Go figure.
truer words have never been spoken…did someone say that before?
As I stated in a previous post, I’ve read Sabar’s book, and it is damning (as Bart says). What is enlightening in the book is how much fraud there is in world of biblical academia. I also felt bad for someone like Professor King who had spent years building a academic reputation just to see it all evaporate when she put her trust in a fraudster. I guess, it just shows how much sometimes we want something to be true we passionately believe in that sets ourselves up to taken by a con artist.
Well, this certainly is a remakable story with many twists, but perhaps not so sensational after all, considering what greed and desire for fame and blind faith can do to people.
I could read the article in the Atlantic without paying: it seems that one can read a number articles for free, before one has to pay.
Still, there are some points I don’t understand (and probably nobody understands everything is this long and convoluted story):
So, the Mark fragment didn’t come from a mummy mask, but from the Oxyrhyncus dump. Yet, Craig Evans (who is not mentioned in the article) said in a lecture “and it was from one of these masks that we recovered a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that is dated to the 80s”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kPgACbtRRs
This is untrue: he said “we”, indicating his personal involvement in the recovering that never happened, and he can’t blame journalists for misunderstanding what he said. I suppose that “we” here means the Green Scholars Initiative people, who he cooperated with, as I understand it. But his role is very unclear to me. In any case, he shouldn’t have expressed himself the way he did.
Anyone who wants to read the article but get around the paywall:
1. Go to 12ft.io or type “12 foot ladder paywall” and you’ll find it.
2. Paste in this link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/why-scientists-and-scholars-cant-get-their-facts-straight/404254/
I am not interested in stealing intellectual property even if I could.
I think the answer to the last quandary (Why would Evangelical Christians knowingly engage in unethical, clearly fraudulent behavior to achieve their end?) rests in human nature. The need to be proven right at all costs, to be on the “winning” side of life and its key arguments, rooted as it is in the deeply-rooted scarcity orientation of our species (dating to agricultural revolution?) , jumps out far ahead of true spiritual transformation, which is costly. If one thinks about it (and I have firsthand experience with this mindset in my younger years), the threat that those who don’t agree with your group’s views on God and Jesus will live in eternal torture actually (given how Dr. Ehrman and many others have expertly dealt with the origins of “hell” in Christian theology) comes from the same place in my mind. The need to come out on top at all costs, religiously, politically, and so on.
So…Tribalism.
Bart, have you written any articles comparing truth with ideology?
No, I haven’t gone there before. Of course, every ideology insists it does represent the truth. And like it or not, we all hav ideologies.
It is a meta level issue which doesn’t get enough coverage by academia. Socrates was good at exposing the foundations of the ideology. Plato was the counter to Socrates on this issue. I got a hint of what is involved with this in John Ralston Saul “Unconscious Civilization”.
The answer to your final question is simple. Just as truth is the first casualty of politics, truth is also the first casualty of religion.
My question is about the split kingdoms of Israel and Judah. With Judah comprising of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and the other tribes in the northern kingdom. Were members of tribes allowed or known to dwell in opposite kingdoms or was the segregation strictly adhered to?
Is the Christian belief in heaven and hell based almost entirely on claims that God somehow revealed these truths to human beings, eg, in the Bible? Without that revelation is there any way that humans could know these things, eg, through reason or general human experience-according to the mainstream of Christianity?
So, if a person does not find claims of divine revelation to be credible, claims about heaven and hell should not be credible either? “Natural” knowledge of them is not possible?
I never thought about heaven and hell in quite that way before. It seems like it could greatly reduce anxiety about Hell.
The last I heard, Obbink had managed to avoid criminal charges. Any news about what he’s been up to lately? Does he have any remaining scholarly reputation, or has it been completely shredded?
The Green family have become the 21st century equivalent of the 20th century’s Billy Graham and Abraham Vereide.
I have pondered the same questions for years and have come to the conclusion Protestant Christian Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are Christian heretics, having abandoned the teachings of Jesus Christ in favor of wealth, power, and influence.
Are these two questions really related only to religious people?!!
Many well-known atheists and liberals actively promote and advocate for honesty, fairness, human rights, etc. However, in certain situations, they can be very biased, dishonest, and display significant double standards.
This behavior is not related to religion or religious individuals. It is a human phenomenon, often linked to inflated ego. People with inflated egos tend to lie to justify themselves or the side they are aligned with.
So, if a person’s ego takes precedence over the morality they claim to uphold (regardless whether it is originated from a religion or philosophy), they can easily lie (without regret) to support their aligned side.
This issue is not related to religion or religious people. It is primarily rooted in an inflated ego.
You might as well ask why did monks alter the texts they were transcribing. They would have argued that “it should have been this way” then “it must have been this way” and finally “it was this way, so we’re just putting it back the way it was.” After all, “all things are lawful for me.”