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More Papyrus Detective Work

10/9/2021

1 Comment

 

​Thirty words of Coptic on a scrap of papyrus, discussed in the preceding blog post, caused scandal enough for any field of scholarship.  But now there’s more  affecting the study of ancient texts – more , and maybe worse.
The scam about the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” exposed  primarily institutional weaknesses – a prestigious journal, a venerable professorship, and university governance were all swept off their well-heeled feet by a snippet that any alert classicist would find suspicious from the outset. A careful check of its provenance and a radiocarbon  dating of the papyrus itself confirmed such suspicions. The question then becomes why did institutional structures fail to rein in the scam before it wasted such energy and caused such damage.
But there’s a parallel, or rather intersecting story about a no less serious crime against scholarship. In this case the most interesting questions are at the individual, rather than the institutional  level..
This time the story centers on Dirk Obink,, the MacArthur award winning papyrologist suspected of having stolen and sold some Oxyrhynchus papyri to some of the same over-zealous  buyers involved in the “Gospel of Jesus” scam. Again, the story is well-told by Ariel Sabar in the June 2020 issue of The Atlantic. (The electronic version has the title “A Biblical Mystery at Oxford,” – but it’s not just about biblical papyri.  Nefragments of Sappho” are involved as well.)
New developments in the story have now been  reported in the   New York Times article, “He Taught Ancient Texts at Oxford. Now He Is Accused of Stealing Some”..


If Obink is found guilty, the most puzzling and enduring question in the case,  to my way of thinking, will be  how such an intelligent and devoted scholar could fail to recognize that while  he could destroy some  evidence of the theft, another list of these papyri existed – of course it did!  How could he fail to know that? This record was very likely to be checked when the stolen papyri surfaced. 
But there’s more to it than that. The most serious crime against scholarship in this case is not the theft itself, but the misdating - for a while at least -  in an apparent effort to increase the market value of a text.  Again, such misdating would eventually be discovered once the papyrus was properly published. In the meantime, the reputation of the great scholar would mislead anyone interested in its implications.
 When such things happen, the whole foundation of scholarship in the field is shaken.  So the questions multiply:
What could have caused such blindness?
Who can now be trusted?
 
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1 Comment
john mole
10/12/2021 08:49:10 am

If the accusations are proved to be true I think it’s so sad. A person of sound mind must have known he would be found out. Or perhaps, deep down, hoped. A recantation of the life and values he had incarnated in the previous decades. A loss of faith in himself and the people and institutions that made up his world. Or perhaps as he entered his seventh decade he panicked at the prospect of the future. So thought he could change it with a few million bucks. I doubt we shall ever know. I abhor the alleged deed. I feel sorry for the doer.

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