The Bible Museum's Prized Collection of Scrolls are Frauds
The Hobby Lobby family, deep Christians, thought they would convert the world to Christianity by buying ancient Bibles and Deep Sea Scroll fragments from secret sources they had located. After their puffed-up museum opened they were accused of purchasing stolen pieces as well as phony ones. Now scientific analysis has shown their prized exhibit, several fragments of "Deep Sea Scrolls", are all phony.
The Green family who founded Hobby Lobby and are now very wealthy came up with the idea of a Bible Museum for Washington, D.C. I'm sure they thought D.C. would give such a propaganda site more credibility if it was in the same neighborhood and Smithsonian museums. So, they went to work.
They were unaware the worldwide antiquities business is filled with people who have done it for generations. No doubt there are relationships and expertise that make it no place for rank amateurs. Almost from the day it opened there was trouble.
Separating legitimate scraps of authentic from those made to look authentic involves science as well as historical experts. At least with proper diagnosis it is possible to make final decisions. That is not possible for the final product, the Bible. So unending is the list of experts who disagree with what it says and means there is no resolution in sight after 2,000 years. In fact, new and different views are added every year.
My guess is that in a few years there will be a "Museum of the Koran" plus others. If the Green family can gather phony materials and attract visitors why not every other religion? So far as we know, religions have been invented since day one and new ones are coming in the future.
our economy is collapsing around us. and, you, a retired economics prof, has nothing to say other than a story about how some Christians got involved with phony ancient scrolls. good show, Jon.
ReplyDeleteUnknown " has nothing to say other than..good show, Jon."
ReplyDeletePeople sick, economy collapsing, don't you get tired of hearing about that 24/7? I brought you some good news, another crook in the business of religion was caught.
yeah right. just thought that you could give some insights into what is going on and what might happen. economically, that is.
Delete"Deep Sea Scroll"? ? ?
ReplyDeleteI think the Deep Sea Scrolls were written by Jacque Cousteau
ReplyDeleteI followed the link. The Museum of the Bible hired the experts who concluded the 16 fragments were clever forgeries. The Museum was duped. Nothing in the article suggests any of the 16 fragments' content was wrong, just that the fragments were created in the 20th or 21st century.
ReplyDeleteWe should all know that the Dead Sea Scrolls gave incredible new insight into the ancient Hebrew Bible. The Bible Museum stays true to that truth.
The Museum of the Bible is rated as the 3rd most popular museum in the USA. That was in the article as well.
The owners were not the forgers, nor did they pay for the fragments to be forged. They bought some articles on the Black market; a big no-no for those who deal in the antiquities market.
Thanks for providing only one side of the story and embellishing that side of the story to impute guilt to the owners of the Museum. Your m.o. is intact.
Matt "embellishing that side of the story.."
DeleteI'll embellish it some more. In addition to the fragments there is this. In 2017 the Bible museum was ordered to return 3,800 items it had purchased from secret sources to Iraq. The museum paid a fine of $3 million. The items had been stolen and Hobby Lobby bought them. The Bible Museum has been a joke since it opened.
It reminds me of a trip my wife and I took decades ago when we were grad students. We drove to Guatemala. While winding through mountains we would encounter kids holding up knock off stone tools and such we had seen in museums. The kids would shout "autentico, autentico". The Green family's representatives seem to have bought their museum stuff from kids like that.
Tsk, tsk. The emperor has no clothes. He sets himself as perfect while criticizing all around him for their sins and shortcomings. He finds no good in them. One day, the emperor will be upbraided to learn he has no clothes.
DeleteI could easily dismiss and criticize the Museum of the Bible as the work of Protestants, with a Protestant world view. I don't because I acknowledge the blessings my Protestant friends bring to the world.
From Wikipedia: In 2017, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized thousands of clay tablets and bullas from Hobby Lobby. The artifacts in question had likely been stolen from Iraq. Hobby Lobby was found to have used couriers that had willfully used methods to conceal the provenance of the allegedly stolen items. The museum released a statement that these artifacts were never owned by the Museum of the Bible and were never intended to be part of their collection. In 2018, the items were returned to Iraq, and the company paid a $3 million fine.
Scott Thumma, a dean and professor of sociology of religion at Hartford Seminary, defended Hobby Lobby during the smuggling controversy. Thuma stated: "Many of the collections of our great national museums and universities are full of the very objects that Hobby Lobby is being fined for smuggling and are seldom required to return or pay compensation."
"Museum of the Bible said the these 'artifacts' were never owned by the Museum and were never intended to be part of their collection." But, "the company" as you call it had to pay a $3 million dollar fine. The Museum, Lobby Lobby and the Green family are all the same clan of schmucks. I did not see any explanation of what they planned to do with all those stolen "artifacts." Were they going to sell them in Hobby Lobby stores?
DeleteAs to Professor Thuma claiming other museums have the same stuff and aren't fined or forced to return it, I'd like to know if and how he actually knows this to be true.
Anyway, it's a lesson the "Crime Doesn't Pay", even if participants are good right wing Christians.
"... the same clan of schmucks."
Delete"... good right wing Christians."
I've been to Hobby Lobby in Fargo. There is no Dead Sea Scrolls section at the store.
You could have made your point by simply reporting the facts. No, you had to resort to name-calling. You had to resort to pointing out the negative and casting a dark shadow over the entire collection.
Matt "No, you had to resort to name calling."
DeleteThey never explained what they were up to when they paid for stolen goods--why were they buying such stuff. They claimed they did not know they were stolen and not authentic but they didn't dig very deeply to find out. Yes, I'm casting a dark shadow over the entire collection because it is part of a dark world of mythology, advocacy of religion into government and dealing in stolen goods. Maybe a nicer word is "crooks."
Ditto - Facts sometimes frustrate people, causing them to name-call.
DeleteIts not the only thing thats phony.
ReplyDeleteJinx Mar 20, 2020 @ 10:21 PM
DeleteHello Jinx. Glad to see you are still out there and wish you good health during this crisis. I am not very familiar with the Mausoleum of the Bible but I am pretty certain there is a political subtext to its mission.
What I have tried to appreciate after sparring for months with the faithful here is that Biblical history and tradition is in the books of scripture that comprise the Bible. It is kept alive by the faith of committed Christians like those that post here. Artifacts in a museum collected and displayed by a rich arts and crafts merchant can neither justify nor sanctify. In spite of fraudulent scroll fragments, stolen pottery and elaborate multi-media displays this is where what is referred to as the living truth of scripture goes to die. To be clear this the opinion of a non-theist, atheist if you prefer, anti-theist if you must.
DeleteArdy B "It is kept alive by the faith of committed Christians like those that post here."
DeleteBeautiful summary. Another way of saying it is, there is a portion, a large portion, of the humans in the world who need to believe their various gods exist outside their heads. In the case of Christianity, those who who need to believe keep alive the importance of the Bible.
They keep alive the "Ark Encounter" as well. This is spite of the fact its promoter/director did not keep his promise of paying property taxes. And, in spite of the fact it was damaged by a storm. (Figure that one out.)
Ardy B; "like those that post here". I post here, but don't include me /us with those who's faith relies (and falls) on the sensational, like the scrolls, Noah's ark, the ark of the covenant, bones, relics, pilgrimages , and other antiquities.
Deletelittle helper Mar 21, 2020 @ 1:29 PM
Delete“don't include me”
I do not and would not - justificatio sola fide.
Ardy B; Thank you, and for knowing why.
DeletePS. Also sola gratia and sola scriptura.
DeleteThank you Ardy, am still here! AM still an agnostic and haven't run across anything that proves or disproves a god exists!
DeleteYes indeed, welcome back Jinx.
DeleteItaly has the highest death toll in the world for COVID-19. It also has a unique abortion culture. Apparently, women are trying to get around the national 7-day waiting period for an abortion and going right to an Emergency Room - https://www.thelocal.it/20200217/hands-off-women-anger-in-italy-over-salvinis-comments-on-abortion
ReplyDeleteWhat I found most encouraging about the article was a simple paragraph:
But despite its legality, in reality women often find it nearly impossible to get an abortion because many Italian gynaecologists, legally allowed to be "conscientious objectors", refuse to perform the procedure.
Just another case of the government forcing public policy over the objections of the majority. In the USA, we call it Roe v Wade.
Matt "What I found most encouraging ...was a ..paragraph: ..in reality women often find it nearly impossible to get an abortion because many gynecologists ..refuse to perform the procedure."
DeleteWhat BS. Over 70,000 abortions are performed on Italian women per year. Some additional abortions are performed on women born in other countries.
count on Jon to pitch abortion stats in Italy. must be great to fill your mind with abortion trivia. my comment tho' speaks to the Dead Sea scrolls (not the Deep Sea scrolls). as far as I know they are legitimate, artifacts of great value to scholars, BTW, while we are on the subject of fakes how's about Piltdown man and peppered moth study. (among others).
DeleteUnknown "must be great to fill your mind with abortion trivia."
DeleteI looked it up. There are lots of sites, like World Health Organization, that list statistics like this. I forgot to cut and paste so I didn't put the site with my post--too busy just now. Matt's quote from whatever his source (he put his source in the post but I did not look at it) was implied it was hard to find a doctor in mostly Catholic Italy to do abortions. I'm sure there are lots of them that do not. Apparently there are lots of them that do.
Jon has told us conservative men that we have no right to voice our opinion in the abortion debate because we are men. Yet, I know of no other man who voices his opinion as much in the abortion debate as Jon Lindgren. Why is that?
DeleteMatt "no right to voice our opinion in the abortion debate"
DeleteWhat I have said is that abortion is not the man's call, it is a decision between the woman and her doctor. Why is that so hard to understand?
Jon, "Why is that so hard to understand?" I understand you will lie to protect your worldview. I understand exactly the rules you have established for the debate, in your mind.
DeleteMatt the topic is “The Bible Museum's Prized Collection of Scrolls are Frauds”.
DeleteLet’s face it a bridge between advocates of abortion and ant-abortion activists is impossible. The chasm is too deep, too wide. All discussions on the topic are like a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other. I would like to grab the pendulum and stop it cold. No tic, no toc, just a fleeting moment of silence. A brief absence of noisy moral banter. There is no high ground here only the abyss. There. Thanks.
Matt--"I understand you will lie to protect your worldview."
ReplyDeleteMy "worldview" is one fertilized cell is not a human being but instead a part of a woman's body. My world view is that women are equals to men, should not be treated as the property of men and should have the same rights as men have to determine what happens to their bodies.
I understand you will lie to protect your religious view that the one cell is a human being and that women are inferior to men and decisions about their own bodies should be made by men.
When a living, unique human being (DNA different than mom or dad) is present inside a woman's body, it is entitled to the same rights as mom or dad. Women share in the creation of a new person unlike the way a man shares in that creation. The new person creates a bevy of wanted and unwanted changes in a woman's body. She has no more right to kill the growing baby than the man has the right to kill her.
DeleteTo deny these facts is to deny science and law.
Women are equal to men under the law. They are different than men in many ways, however. These two sentences are patently obvious. Women should not be considered the property of men just as men are not the property of women.
I have proof of your lies. You have no lies of mine to put forth.
You clearly grasp at thin air to state the lies you have told about me. They are the same lies one would make about the 1B Catholics on this planet, and the millions or billions more of religious people worldwide who share in all or part of my views of conception, life and rights.
"..is entitled to the same rights as mom or dad."
DeleteStating it in that way is a lie. Laws of the U.S. and in the majority of the countries of the world do no entitle the fetus as having "the same rights as mom and dad." Besides being a lie it is unworkable.
Now, it would not be a lie if you said, "..it is the position my Catholic religion that the fetus is entitled to...." When you yourself lie you should not start accusing others of lying. Like right here, you get caught.
puzzling? I did not post this unknown comment. tho' I agree with it.
Delete