On 14-16 September I will participate in a conference at the University of Agder in Kristiansand (Norway),
Fragments of an Unbelievable Past? Constructions of Provenance, Narratives of Forgery – conference schedule below (not including coffee and meals).
I will present a paper on the famous 19th-century forgerer Constantine Simonides: “Simonides’ New Testament Papyri: Their Production and Purported Provenance.” Since the Friday is devoted to the Gospel of Jesus Wife saga, including the concluding conversation between Prof. Liv Ingeborg Lied (MF, Oslo) and Ariel Sabar about his his recent
Atlantic Magazine investigation, I will also attempt to draw some parallels between Simonides and Walter Fritz – the owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife fragment (for our earlier post on Fritz, see
here). I look forward to the conference very much.
Conference Schedule
Wednesday
Open lecture at Myren Gård:
18:00– Nina Burleigh (Newsweek), “Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land”
Thursday (A7–006)
9:00 – 9:15 Årstein Justnes (University of Agder), “[An Unbelievable] Introduction”
Session I, chair: Årstein Justnes (University of Agder)
9:15 – 10:15 Nina Burleigh (Newsweek), “The Post-Factual Museum: Curating Ancient History to Influence Politics 101”
10:30 – 11:30 Roberta Mazza (University of Manchester), “Papyrology and Ethics: The Problem of Provenance”
11:30 – 12:30 Nils Hallvard Korsvoll (MF Norwegian School of Theology), “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: How Is Authenticity Dealt with When Provenance Is Not an Issue?”
Session II, chair: Tor Vegge (University of Agder)
13:15 – 14:15 Nicola Denzey Lewis (Brown University), “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Library”
14:15 – 15:15 Eva Mroczek (University of California, Davis), “The Secret Lives of Texts: The Discovery Narrative as a Literary and Theological Tradition”
15:45 – 16:30 Torleif Elgvin (NLA University College), to be announced
16:30 – 17:30 Kipp Davis (Trinity Western University), “Gleanings from the Cave of Wonders? Patterns of Correspondence in the Post-2002 DSS Fragments”
Friday (A7-006)
Session III, chair: Torleif Elgvin (NLA University College)
9:00 – 10:00 Liv Ingeborg Lied (MF Norwegian School of Theology), “Media Dynamics and Academic Knowledge Production: Tracing the Role of the Media in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Saga”
10:00 – 11:00 Tommy Wasserman (Örebro School of Theology & Ansgar School of Theology), “Simonides’ New Testament Papyri: Their Production and Purported Provenance”
University Library, 2nd floor
11:30 – 13:00 “The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife”: A conversation between journalist Ariel Sabar and professor Liv Ingeborg Lied about his Atlantic Magazine investigation into the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife
See more about the conference on the blog of the organizers,
The Lying Pen of Scribes.
Ariel Sabar has produced an engaging and informative overview of the tragic story of Dirk Obbink and the stolen Egyptian Exploration Society papyri. Naturally, we must all leave Obbink’s guilt to criminal investigations and proceedings. Sabar’s article, however, introduces those outside the EES and Museum of the Bible contexts to the main characters in this drama and the timeline which framed the events.