The MOTB has now made the following statement, click image to read (HT: Mike Holmes):
A forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.
- Contributors
- Peter M. Head (ed)
- Tommy Wasserman (ed)
- P. J. Williams, and others
That's certainly putting a positive spin on it for MOTB.
ReplyDeleteHaha, my thoughts exactly. I wonder why they didn't even mention Obbink by name other than in the link url?
DeleteDB,
ReplyDeleteApparently, you cannot see anything but the negative in anything associated with MOTB. Maybe you should just admit that at least in this instance the MOTB did the right thing!
Tim
Timothy,
DeleteI openly admit that MOTB is taking some corrective steps now. Certainly returning these manuscripts to EES is the right thing to do. So I do see positive in this action. But that doesn't erase the damage of previous missteps. So I cannot support all of their actions. The lack of transparency from MOTB and the Greens perhaps makes them partially culpable, but seemingly any culpability is whitewashed in this press release--not surprisingly, though, since they are spinning it from a public relations angle. If MOTB/Greens had been more transparent about their holdings, could this scandal have been uncovered earlier and perhaps prevented the illicit sale of other manuscripts? Impossible to know what else may have been lost, even though MOTB/Greens continued to promise that they would publish their holdings but didn't. Thus making MOTB look pure and innocent, such as this press release, does nothing to repair the damage.
"The lack of transparency from MOTB and the Greens perhaps makes them partially culpable" - that statement is loaded with the assumption that organisations and people that deal with papyri are required to be transparent in their dealings.
DeleteBut assuming your views on this are correct why have those running the EES not been forthcoming in all they know about what in the collection is missing and why were they so asleep at the wheel when the items went missing?
Matthew Hamilton
I don't consider it an assumption, but a sound premise. This incident is simply more evidence that there is, at least, an ethical responsibility to be transparent and diligent when dealing in antiquities, which would include eliminating NDA's.
DeleteAnd the second part - what of the ethical responsibility of the EES to be transparent as to who there was asleep at the wheel? Perhaps some of the people there were too busy blogging about the "transparency" and the "ethical responsibility" that applies to other organisations and people to keep watch over their own collections
DeleteMatthew Hamilton
What is this page 30 of?
ReplyDelete-30- is journalistic news speak for the end of a particular story.
DeleteIt's part of Woods' Plan of Telegraphic Instruction, a series of wire codes used when stories were sent by telegraph. Most of the others are long forgotten, but there's a list on p194 of this comprehensive PDF resource:
Deletehttps://web.archive.org/web/20150227075623/http://phonetic.org.au/Codes3.pdf
Curiously, 73 often gets misquoted as meaning "Kind regards", and 88 seems frequently to append itself to this list as "Love and kisses" (which I am unaware of any early source for).
The MOTB statement says that EES was alerted to the possibility that Obbink had sold manuscripts belong to them in June 2019. But the whole world was alerted to it a full year earlier than that when Scott Carroll gave his own firsthand account of Obbink's doing that in comments on this blog, which members of the EES board discussed publicly at that time.
ReplyDeleteI would not have expected communications between MOTB and EES to take place publicly. But I did expect that they had to be taking place, and that officials in MOTB who knew that Dr. Carroll was telling the truth would have informed EES of that very soon after they became aware that the manuscript Obbink had sold them as a first century manuscript of Mark was in fact the same one that was published by EES in the summer of 2018. Is this statement really saying that MOTB did not alert EES of the possibility of Obbink doing what they knew for a fact that he did (not just as a possibility) until a full year later?
The Washington Post report:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/15/oxford-professor-allegedly-stole-ancient-bible-fragments-sold-hobby-lobby/
I loved visiting the MOTB and am thankful to Hobby Lobby for there beautiful presentation of the Bible. Anything that glorifies God is a plus. The evidence appeard to clearly exonerate the MOTB from any wrongdoing. And if by chance they did behave inappropriately, they have made restitution that is satisfactory to the principals involved and therefore need be criticized no further. I commend them for undertaking the mammoth project and look forward to visiting again in future.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I hear the name Dirk Obbink I visualize a Dr. Suess character. Every time.
ReplyDelete