Museum of the Bible and Egypt Exploration Society Coordinate Return of Manuscripts Stolen by Esteemed Papyrologist
“With the help of photographs provided by the MOTB, the EES has so far identified thirteen texts from its collection, twelve on papyrus and one on parchment, all with biblical or related content, which are currently held by the MOTB (see the attached list). These texts were taken without authorisation from the EES.” - EES
(Background: EES statement: Professor Obbink and sales of papyri to Hobby Lobby)
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Two of the stolen papyrus manuscripts were recently assigned Gregory-Aland numbers P129 and P131. It also come out today…
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2019/10/breaking-andrew…
…that Prof Obbink may have also been involved in the splitting up of what is now P129 and P131 into two sets of fragments so that he could sell one set to the Museum of the Bible, and the other pieces to someone else, as though they were different manuscripts. It was announced today that these separate pieces were in fact of the same manuscript stolen from the Egypt Exploration Society.
For those unfamiliar with this field, the Egypt Exploration Society is the group that controls the papyrus findings from the late 19th century by Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. They publish a book about once a year with newly researched and released findings from this collection. Apparently there is still a long way to go before they exhaust all that was found over 100 years ago. Many of of the cataloged fragments of NT papyri came from this collection.
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