Sunday, June 23, 2019

Invoice for the sale of First-Century Mark (and more)

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I pass along here (with permission) an email I and the other members of the First-Century Mark panel just received from Mike Holmes. Brent Nongbri has already posted this, so be sure to see his website and the comments there, too.

Dear Bart, Roberta, Brent, Jill, and Elijah,

I am sending you this note because (1) we are all members of the SBL panel scheduled to discuss P.Oxy. 5345, otherwise known as “1st c. Mark” (FCM), at the SBL Annual Meeting in November, and (2) earlier this year I acquired some additional information regarding this document—information that I feel obligated to communicate to you, in your capacity as fellow panelists.

You will recall that in the aftermath of the publication of P.Oxy. 5345 in mid-2018, one of the lingering questions centered around the role of the Green Collection (owned by Hobby Lobby Stores) in the matter. Given that the Egyptian Exploration Society (EES) repeatedly (and rightly) affirmed that the fragment has never been for sale, why did representatives of the Green Collection seem to think that the Collection had acquired the fragment?

The answer is relatively straightforward: Prof. Dirk Obbink sold it and three other allegedly early Gospel fragments to the Green Collection, the result of negotiations that began in early 2012 and continued into early 2013, when a purchase agreement was executed.

Accompanying this email is a file containing two items. The first is a redacted copy of the purchase agreement between Prof. Dirk Obbink and Hobby Lobby stores, which documents the sale of four Gospel fragments—one each of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each allegedly dated “Circa 0100 AD.” The second item is a photograph of a list written by Prof. Obbink himself (and in the photograph held down by his fingers) that specifies the contents of these four fragments: Matthew 3.7-10, 11-12; Mark 1.8-9, 16-18; Luke 13.25-7, 28, and John 8.26-8, 33-5. The two items together document the fact of the sale and the identity of the items sold.

In the agreement Obbink clearly asserted (in item 1) that he was the owner of the property described therein. The fragments in question, however, were and remain the property of EES. This is certainly the case in regard to the Mark and Luke fragments, which were published in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 83 (2018) as P.Oxy 5345 and P.Oxy 5346, respectively. It is almost certainly the case in regard to the Matthew and John fragments: an EES representative has confirmed to me that EES also possesses fragments of Matt 3.7-10, 11-12 and John 8.26-28, 33-35.

It is worth noting that the Green Collection, though having received title to the fragments (see point 10 of the purchase agreement), never took physical possession of the fragments. Instead, in accordance with other terms of the agreement (see points 10.1-10.2) the fragments were left in Obbink’s custody for research and publication (the intended venue of initial publication being specified in 10.3).

It seemed advisable to consult with the EES about the FCM matter before sharing the information mentioned above more widely, so earlier this month I met in London with representatives of the EES and discussed with them its significance and implications. I am now sharing it with you. You, in turn, are free to share with others or post in your blog (a) the information contained in this letter, and (b) the accompanying document.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best wishes,

Mike
I’ll try to keep my thoughts as brief as possible.

1. It seems that Obbink was selling items without the knowledge or consent of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES). Admittedly, the EES say that none of the unpublished fragments are first-century, but neither were the Mark and Luke fragments, despite appearing as such on the invoice.

2. Dan Wallace revealed last year that his non-disclosure agreement (NDA) was at the request of the seller, so Obbink appears to have been the one who requested that Wallace sign a NDA.

3. This particular invoice is numbered 017. Does that mean Obbink had made 16 other sales before this? I think it would be wise initially to treat all items sold by Obbink while he had access to the Oxyrhynchus Collection as suspect. It could be that these four fragments were the only things he ever allegedly sold that came from the Oxyrhynchus collection, but there could be more. One thing about which I would be curious is whether Obbink sold papyri to anyone else.

4. I think if I were buying things, and I decided to work with someone of Obbink’s stature with the kinds of genuine credentials he has, and that person was who offered to sell me something, I don’t know that it would have even occurred to me not to trust him or her about whether or not the item(s) had a clean provenance. Yes, hindsight’s 20/20, and yes there is an element of taking responsibility for your actions, but what it looks like to me is that the Greens were indeed trying to do that by going through a well-credentialed and respected Oxford scholar, and their biggest fault in this specific situation was that they may have trusted the wrong person.

5. It looks like the evangelicals were telling the truth here. It seems to me that some of the people who suggested or otherwise accused the Greens, Scott Carroll, Dan Wallace, etc. of lying when compared to statements made by the EES and others might owe some apologies. Such reactions probably stem from the same cause of all this (if I’m right on point 4, above), that it is unthinkable that someone from the EES could be telling anything other that the truth. If anyone does need to apologise, I hope they have the integrity to do so.

Here is the full PDF that Holmes sent.

[Updated for typos and things]


Update: The EES have issued a statement here in which they confirm that Holmes did approach them earlier with this information. Some points of interest (quoted from their statement):

"The four fragments listed in the photograph do fit with catalogued EES texts because the combinations of surviving verses on the front and back of the fragments are distinctive. The Mark and Luke must be the texts published recently as P.Oxy. LXXXIII 5345 and 5346. The Matthew and John fragments are currently being prepared for publication."

and

"We are grateful to Professor Holmes for sharing with us in advance the newly revealed contract and photograph, and we are working with him to clarify whether the four texts in the photographed list, or any other EES papyri, were sold or offered for sale to Hobby Lobby or its agents, and if so, when and by whom. This may take some time, and unless and until new evidence emerges, there is no more we can say."

38 comments

  1. Wow, I didn’t think this whole FCM thing could get stranger! It will be interesting to see if Dirk decides to respond.

    Tim

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  2. Thank you Elijah, and especially thank you Dr. Holmes, for bringing this to light.

    I imagine that over the months to come much more information explaining how this happened and why it was not revealed publicly until now will come to light.

    It should also be said that this at least to some degree vindicates those who touted the existence of a 1st century Mark manuscript and whose reputations were tarnished by the way it played out and were often mocked by other scholars. It's true enough that some were too trusting and quick to repeat this claim with too little basis. But the fact that the dating really did go back to Obbink, whose reputation at that time made him worth a good bit of trust on a matter of paleographic dating, is a mitigating factor. Even after it was revealed that the alleged manuscript was P. Oxy. 5345, and circumstantial evidence seemed to corroborate the claim that those scholars had gotten that dating from Obbink and that he had engaged in something of the sort that this blog post reveals, many scholars came to his defense refusing to believe that he was at all to blame, and continuing to mischaracterize the situation as owing entirely to sensationalizing on the part of biased evangelical apologists.

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    1. One of them tried to bring it into a public debate with Bart Ehrman in a very smug, grandstanding way, so yeah, the evangelicals did try to sensationalize it and moreover, the defense that they weren't lying just stupid is still not flattering. I also still question how any of them could have honestly believed that anything in the Oxyrhynchus collection was for sale.

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    2. They had no way of knowing it was in the Oxyrhynchus collection. Obbink didn't represent it as such. He represented it as his own property.

      Clearly he bears the main responsibility for the falsehood. He's the one who actually engaged in the fraud.

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  3. "This particular invoice is numbered 017." Thanks for these observations, Elijah. This one seems especially important. How many more such invoices are there? It's also a little odd that two of the items in "Exhibit A" are blacked out. What might those be?

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  5. Thanks for sharing. I wonder why the purchaser information is blacked out on "exhibit A" as the Hobby Lobby address is stated in the contract. If Hobby Lobby is not the purchaser, who is? And what is the last number that is not blacked out -- a "7" or a "9"?

    Another question I have has to do with page numbers: why is the first page of the contract numbered 2 out of 4 and what is page number 1 of the 4 page document?

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    1. Rick, on the first page of the redacted PDF, the numbers #1 & #2 under "Recitals" are immediately followed by #10 under "Terms and Conditions", suggesting that this redaction includes the top of one page and the bottom of another.

      The non-blacked out number seems pretty clearly a "9" by comparison with the three "7"s some lines below.

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  6. 4 different MSS whose contents were known of in 2012. Unless I've missed something only 2 have since been published, as P137 and P138 with dates in the order of a century later than stated in 2012.

    Does anybody have any details on the other 2 MSS, are they also in the collection of EES, are they of similar date?

    Matthew Hamilton

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    1. According to Holmes' email, the EES did confirm that they have fragments that match the description of the Matthew and John fragments in the invoice.

      The EES statement from 7 March 2019 (https://www.ees.ac.uk/news/unpublished-ees-biblical-papyri) on unpublished biblical fragments said: "Some twenty New Testament inedita have been identified, none of them apparently earlier than the late 2nd to early 3rd century AD. They have all been assigned to editors, and will be published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series as the editors complete their work over the next few years."

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  7. It is good that this has emerged. Thanks Mike Holmes.

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  8. Four fragments of all four canonical gospels all purportedly dated circa 100 without any offered provenance beyond Egypt should have raised many red flags.
    (And "ranch raised" is odd.)

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    1. Reminds me, a little, of the hitler diaries

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    2. A revised comment: it is interesting that everyone who trusted Obbink has been made to look bad by this: those who trusted his word as an “esteemed” papyrologist, those who trusted his advice as a consultant to the Greek Collection, those who trusted that these manuscripts were legally in his possession, and those who vouched for his personal integrity even when the questions were mounting.

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    3. Apologies to Bart Ehrman who I incorrectly included in my earlier (now deleted) comment.

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  10. Maybe now scholars will return to the habit of skepticism. Especially when unprovenanced trinkets hit the market. And be more interested in facts than fame.

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  11. Ehrman did say "I believe Obbink is completely honest and innocent in the whole affair.": https://ehrmanblog.org/non-disclosure-agreements/comment-page-2/

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  12. The questions I am most interested in now: Was P.Oxy. 5345 cataloged by EES in 2012? If so, what was the intention in presenting the fragment for sale?

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    1. They at least had it cataloged on what they call a "record card." The record card for this manuscript had been made long ago (I forget, but I think in the 80's).

      I would like to know more about these record cards.

      From what I've heard about how easily Obbink was able to take P. Oxy. fragments that he was researching where he wanted and allow access to them to others, I can imagine that he would have thought it easy enough for some to go missing without his getting caught.

      However, given that this Mark fragment that he sold was bound to become famous, would not the existence of that record card at the EES have been a smoking gun, proving that the manuscript MOTB had on display would be the same one that was missing from their collection? And if so, then back to my question of just what is the nature of these record cards? Do they (or did they in 2013) only exist as physical cards, with no electronic records of them? And if so, would it have been feasible for this record card to disappear as well? If so, then that possibility increases the likelihood of Obbink being able to believe at that time that he could have pulled this off.

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    2. not just a record card; the EES states that their catalogue is supported by photographs of each item:

      "EES records include a photograph and brief record card for each papyrus awaiting publication, which were prepared to assist the General Editors in selecting papyri for future volumes. The cards were created without detailed study of the texts and without access to today’s online search tools. The record card for 5345, created by Dr Coles in the early 1980s, is marked ‘I/II’, suggesting a late first- or early second-century date. He did not identify it as Mark."

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    3. The dating of the 4 fragments is interesting. Dr Coles in the early 1980s identified the date of the fragment as "I/II" without his dating being influenced by the identified content of the fragment. This date might be rounded "Circa 0100 AD". The other 3 fragments also have "Circa 0100 AD" in the invoice. Were the other 3 fragments also dated by Dr Coles and were they dated with the contents identified or unidentified?

      Matthew Hamilton

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    4. OK. But the way that's worded could still mean just one photograph, and it could be kept with the record card. I'd like to know more about these. If they only existed in hard copies and not electronically, it seems like somebody who wanted the card and photograph of one or four fragments to disappear could conceivably do that, or at least believe that they could.

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    5. These are all great points and questions about the record cards. Making the record cards for these fragments "disappear" is a possibility. That's also working off of the assumption that no one else connected with Oxford and EES had ever seen these cards and/or the fragments. It would run the risk of a researcher seeing exhibit at MOTB and recognizing it from the Oxyrhynchus collection. Maybe a risk worth taking in the interest of making a profit.

      But the record cards almost seem "made-to-order" also. As Nongbri points out, it's difficult to believe that a fragment (or fragments) from a first-century codex (or codices) would not attract more attention until recent years.

      A forged record card with a date of I/II would potentially fit the narrative of the first-century Mark hype. In other words, if others wondered how P.Oxy 5435 was mistaken as first-century, a fabricated card would potentially explain the initial dating and give the illusion that it had always been cataloged and had never been for sale.

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  13. I've followed this sad tale for some time. The retired lawyer in me is tempted to comment on the host of legal and professional questions raised by the events to the extent they're now publicly available. I assume the relevant parties have already obtained legal advice about rights and liabilities. For myself, I'll only say that the publicly available fact situation would make a wonderful law school exam because of its broad range of disparate legal topics.

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  14. It should surprise no one that The Case of The Missing First Century Mark was solved by Holmes.

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    1. Methinks there is still more to come in this story

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  15. Statement from the Egypt Exploration Society

    https://www.ees.ac.uk/news/ees-statement-professor-obbink-and-sales-of-papyri-to-hobby-lobby

    “We are grateful to Professor Holmes for sharing with us in advance the newly revealed contract and photograph, and we are working with him to clarify whether the four texts in the photographed list, or any other EES papyri, were sold or offered for sale to Hobby Lobby or its agents, and if so, when and by whom. This may take some time, and unless and until new evidence emerges, there is no more we can say.

    We note that Professor Obbink has not been a General Editor of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri since August 2016”.

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  16. Remember the mummy masks too. So, it looks like Obbink may have been selling mummy masks from the Christ Church inventory (?).

    http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-source-of-scott-carrolls-mummy-masks.html

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    1. There were also ethical red flags raised about his forthrightness concerning the provenance of the Sappho fragments he supposedly discovered. It's been awhile since I looked into that. The last time I did it seemed like he had successfully answered the questions that had been raised and it had come down to a need to delay the disclosure of some information, which he eventually did. But now in light of this, it may be worth some new looking into to see if that affair also had some opportunities for dishonesty.

      This happened around the same time that he sold the EES's papyri to Hobby Lobby, and also around the same time that he bought his castle in Texas, which may or may not be a coincidence.

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  17. Personally, I was under the impression that "nobody" took the claims of Dan Wallace seriously on this point (at least not as seriously as Wallace took them). I was always under the impression that the speculative date and importance of the fragment (St.Mark in this case) was conviently overemphasized within the context and aftermath of the Erhman/Wallace debate. With that said, it seems something is missing here. I cannot phantom that Obbink would be so careless in such an audacious act of fraud. He may have been set up. Time to sit and watch what mainstream media does with this. My feeling is that the name Hobby Lobby will all but drown out the name of Obbink in the public forum.

    -RS

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  18. Very important from Jerry Pattengale:
    https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/june-web-only/first-century-mark-pattengale-inside-saga.html

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