By SI Filings
Nov
25
2020
"Sixteen forgeries have been discovered so far in the collections of unsuspecting evangelicals. Experts have suspicions about many more." - CToday
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This is a hard reality
I personally remember my joy when I purchased a couple of 1700s era German Bible portions, and so I can see how prosperous evangelicals would want to have texts that are a couple thousand years closer to the autographs. That said, I was buying something actually fairly common and less valuable, so I needed merely my own view of the item's worth, not a professional appraiser. Looks like a lot of my brothers needed the latter--and that the latter would have said "please don't buy this."
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
More to it
In the case of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, there's quite a bit more to it than the services of a professional appraiser, which I'm sure the folks at Museum of the Bible used.
It apparently took months of analysis including sophisticated miscroscopy and teams of researchersa and fraud experts--to determine that their fragments were fake. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-of-the-bible-d...
It's a fascinating story, though you'll have to give National Geographic an email address to access it.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I'm sure they didn't
Think about it a moment. If you're an appraiser who wants to work in antiquities, shouldn't you know about the things your link mentions? If you don't, you're like an appraiser of used tractors (road or farm) who doesn't insist on tests of the hydraulics and horsepower, or a used car dealer who doesn't consult a mechanic before selling the vehicles.
So no, the buyers did not procure the services of a competent appraiser in the field. The fact that detecting the frauds was that easy attests to that.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Not following
I'm not seeing how a discovery that took months of research by multiple teams proves MOTB didn't use an appraiser.
Maybe there is other evidence of that?
The gaps in provenance were pretty obvious, but I get the impression MOTB knew about those (from their appraiser?) and did it anyway.
Edit. Yeah, this doesn't sound like a "we just went and randomly bought these items without looking at all into their authenticity" scenario.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.