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> “Honestly, I’ve never worked with a museum that was so up-front,” Loll says. It doesn't sound like they were trying to hide anything.

jfengel 7y ago
They clearly did hide things with their previous scandal about smuggled Iraqi artifacts. In this case it was less about hiding things and more about their desire to acquire showy artifacts being more important than authenticity or scholarship.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  There isn't a ton of evidence that they weren't just naive with the Iraqi scandal. Also, they seem to have changed a lot for the better as explained by the last section of the article. They seem to be handling what have clearly been a great number of serious consequences due to previous mistakes, and sure, maybe initial greediness, with great integrity now. I quoted some of the article that points this out lower in the comments as well.
riversflow 7y ago
They’d already been very[1] publicly[2] caught out on housing likely forgeries. That Nova documentary says (I believe verbatim) that some of the fragments they bought were “too good to be true”, one particular example I recall was a few lines that are often quoted together but quite far apart with significant context in between, that somehow ended up on the same fragment. Overall the documentary makes a compelling case that the forgers started small but evolved into targeting groups who were unreasonably gullible. Given the Museum of the Bible’s history of being unscrupulous historians I think they have it coming rather than being victims. [1]2019 November https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/dead-sea-scroll-detectives/?linkId=76304928 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/dead-sea-scroll-detectiv... [2]2018 October https://www.livescience.com/63895-dead-sea-scroll-fakes.html https://www.livescience.com/63895-dead-sea-scroll-fakes.html

jfengel 7y ago

They clearly did hide things with their previous scandal about smuggled Iraqi artifacts. In this case it was less about hiding things and more about their desire to acquire showy artifacts being more important than authenticity or scholarship.

James_Henry 7y ago
There isn't a ton of evidence that they weren't just naive with the Iraqi scandal. Also, they seem to have changed a lot for the better as explained by the last section of the article. They seem to be handling what have clearly been a great number of serious consequences due to previous mistakes, and sure, maybe initial greediness, with great integrity now. I quoted some of the article that points this out lower in the comments as well.

riversflow 7y ago

They’d already been very[1] publicly[2] caught out on housing likely forgeries. That Nova documentary says (I believe verbatim) that some of the fragments they bought were “too good to be true”, one particular example I recall was a few lines that are often quoted together but quite far apart with significant context in between, that somehow ended up on the same fragment. Overall the documentary makes a compelling case that the forgers started small but evolved into targeting groups who were unreasonably gullible. Given the Museum of the Bible’s history of being unscrupulous historians I think they have it coming rather than being victims. [1]2019 November https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/dead-sea-scroll-detectives/?linkId=76304928 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/dead-sea-scroll-detectiv... [2]2018 October https://www.livescience.com/63895-dead-sea-scroll-fakes.html https://www.livescience.com/63895-dead-sea-scroll-fakes.html