New Society and Conference on Bible Craftsmanship

Here’s a new development that looks really great. It’s a new organization called the Society of Bible Craftsmanship (SOBC) for the promotion of quality Bible production. From what I can tell, it’s being started by the Museum of the Bible (MOTB) and is maybe funded by it (it’s not clear). The announcement explains:

The Society of Bible Craftsmanship celebrates beauty, creativity, and innovation in the field of Bible publishing. The society’s mission is to nurture and highlight excellence in the industry and to help the general reader discover and appreciate all that goes into the finest examples of Bible craftsmanship—in all languages, in all media.

A central task of the society will be to periodically gather and exhibit new Bible publications from around the world. The society’s awards program will recognize the finest work in a broad range of categories, with winners exhibited at Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.

The Bible is one of the most important books ever to be published and also one of the most challenging in terms of design and production. Today, the innovation displayed in meeting these challenges is at an all-time high. In partnership with publishers and industry professionals, the society will host events and virtual seminars though Museum of the Bible to explore every aspect of craftsmanship, illuminating the work of translators and editors, designers and typographers, printers and bookbinders, and many other contributors to the production process. The society’s e-newsletter will also showcase the best writing on Bible craftsmanship. 

Museum of the Bible hopes, through the Society of Bible Craftsmanship, to promote the flourishing of contemporary Bible publishing and reading.

One of the people behind this is J. Mark Bertrand who we’ve had occasion to blog about in the past. For a long time he reviewed Bible design at the Bible Design blog (which now redirects to his new site lectio.org). He’s on the steering committee along with Jeff Kloha, chief curatorial officer at MOTB and Klaus Krogh, the CEO of the creative firm 2K/DENMARK that does a lot of Bible design.

J. Mark Bertrand

The Society is hosting a conference on August 27 in D.C. and online to kick off the new society. There is also a new book out from 2K/DENMARK about seven new typefaces they’ve designed just for Bibles.

One of the pleasures of studying the earliest printed English Bibles the last year or so has been appreciating just how many design decisions these early printers had to make. Yes, they had some precedents they could follow from manuscripts as well as Bibles in other languages. But, in other ways, they were inventing the wheel, so to speak, making decisions that would set the course of Bible production for the next 500 years. Everything from the names of books to chapter titles, marginal notes, maps, introductions to the reader, indices, cross-references—you get the idea. And beyond this there are the myriad questions of format: typefaces, layout, columns, spacing, book size, and more. 

I like what the new president of the society says about good design having a “gentle authority.” Whether we know it or not, the design of anything written is always communicating something additional to the words on the page. That design will either serve or hinder the meaning; it’s never neutral. Nowhere is that more important than the Bible.

Manuscripts in D.C. and Dinner in Dollyworld

A few weeks ago, Elijah and I were hosted by the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. to talk about Myths and Mistakes. Elijah and I are alumni of the original Green Scholars Initiative, a formative experience for both of us. So it was especially nice to feel like we could give something back. The Museum staff was beyond hospitable and generous with their time. I was able to tour one of the floors (on the Bible’s history) and really enjoyed it. The medieval and English Bible artifacts were the highlight for me. I saw a number of important Greek New Testaments for the first time with my own eyes. I had no idea how small Stephanus’s 1551 edition is.

We were also able to spend time with four of their earliest New Testament fragments: P39, 0313, 0206, and 0220. All of these were of interest, but we were most interested in 0220. This is the earliest copy of Rom 5.1 and its reading on ἔχομεν/ἔχωμεν is marked “vid” in NA28 and with underdots in THGNT. We were able to look at it twice, once with a Dino microscope camera. Our conclusion? 0220 most likely has the omicron.

A Dino cam image of ε[χο] in 0220

On the way home, I stopped over in East Tennessee, Hixson’s backyard and the sacred home of HRH Dolly Parton. Sadly, we did not see her majesty. But we were able to see another legend, one Maurice Robinson! I can’t be sure, but it may have been the largest gathering of ETC blog members in the last year. He did not have anything quite as old as 0220, but we were able to see the original edition of the Byzantine text-form and the very computer—still working!—that it was made with. We even acquired some rare KJV-only books with Pierpont’s (sometimes extensive) marginal criticisms.

All-in-all, it was a great trip and I am grateful to all my hosts.

2021 Logos: Texts and Manuscripts

Mike Holmes has reminded me that the deadline for the Logos Summer workshop is fast approaching. I participated in earlier iterations of the Logos workshop and it was a great experience. Some of the other students I met there are still good friends. I highly recommend it.

Here’s the description:

Logos is a workshop dedicated to equipping graduate students with the tools and knowledge needed to further Biblical studies, ancient texts and manuscripts research, museum studies, education programmes and other similar disciplines. The 2021 workshop is hosted by Scholarship & Christianity in Oxford (SCIO) and will be held at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, from 31st May to 11th June. For more information, please visit the SCIO website at scio-uk.org/research/logos.

I would also note that Logos is for graduate students, and prior participation in a Scholars Initiative activity is not required.

Sabar on Dirk Obbink

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.

Ariel Sabar, ‘The Case of the Phantom Papyrus.’ The Atlantic (June 2020).

Logos Conference in Washington (June 2020)

Logos in Washington, DC

Apply to Logos 2020! Click here to access the application.

Please note that the deadline to submit an application is 11:59 pm GMT (British time) on Sunday, 16 February 2020.

• What: A summer workshop on museums, biblical texts, vocation, and the Christian mind that is offered by SCIO with funding provided by Steve and Jackie Green
• Where: Held at Museum of the Bible, Washington, DC
• When: Programme dates: 31 May – 13 June 2020
• Enquiries: please email  logos@scio-uk.org

The workshop: It is primarily intended for graduate students (including graduating seniors who will begin advanced studies in Autumn 2020) and Logos alumni who have completed their education. Applicants should be working in Biblical-related studies with a special focus on ancient texts and manuscripts, museum studies and education programmes, history of the Bible, reception history, ancient languages, and related disciplines. Applicants should be considering a vocation in one of these academic fields.

We are delighted that the Museum of the Bible will be hosting the Logos 2020 Workshop. Logos 2020 will make use of the Museum’s holdings, curatorial staff, classroom space, and laboratories. Subsequent Logos Workshops will alternate each year between Washington, DC and Oxford (Logos 2021 to be held in Oxford).

Logos offers an opportunity to be taught by experts in the fields of curation, text preservation, history, theology, textual studies, and museum studies and education programmes more broadly.

The lecture series for Logos in Washington, DC, are as follows:

• Lecture series: Current issues in textual studies
• Lecture series: Oxford, scholarship, and the Christian mind
• Lecture series: The vocation of Christian scholars in the modern university
• Text seminars on studying manuscripts in ancient languages: Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Ethiopic (languages offered are dependent on successful applicants preferences).

For more information, see: http://www.scio-uk.org/logos-workshop/

Longform Guardian Article on the Mark Fragment Saga

This morning, the Guardian published a long story titled “A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel.” Its about Dirk Obbink and the stolen Oxyrhynchus fragments. It’s quite good and worth reading in full. Here I highlight things that stood out as new or noteworthy.

Obbink has been suspended from Oxford.

Since October, he [Obbink] has been suspended from duties following the biggest scandal that has ever hit, and is ever likely to hit, the University of Oxford’s classics department.

We get some sense of how much these items might have been selling for.

The Greens, advised by Carroll, were buying biblical artefacts, such as Torahs and early papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament, at a dizzying pace: $70m was spent on 55,000 objects between 2009 and 2012, Carroll claimed later. The market in a hitherto arcane area of collecting sky-rocketed. “Fortunes were made. At least two vendors who had been making €1-2m a year were suddenly making €100-200m a year,” said one longtime collector. 

The prices of the items [on the MOTB sale contracts] were redacted, but an expert told me he thought they could have been sold for $200,000 each. 

No price is mentioned [in the Christie’s brochure for the Sappho papyrus], but a collector familiar with the field estimates a likely figure of around $800,000.

$200k seems low for a “first-century” NT fragment, but I’m hardly knowledgeable in this area. In any case, it appears that Obbink was not only making enough money to buy his “castle” in Waco, but also to upgrade his home in Oxford.

News Statement: ‘Museum of the Bible Helps EES Recover Antiquities’

The MOTB has now made the following statement, click image to read (HT: Mike Holmes):

The Source of Scott Carroll’s Mummy Masks?

Image source

Brent Nongbri has been writing some very good posts lately on his blog about Scott Carroll and the papyri he has been showing at various events. But today, Brent has followed that with an even more startling post exploring where Scott Carroll got all those infamous mummy masks from.

Readers of this blog will remember that Carroll claimed, in our comments section, that Dirk Obbink tried to sell him a “first-century Mark,” a claim the Egypt Exploration Society has strongly denied ever since. But many of us wondered why Carroll would make such a thing up. Well, now Nongbri has found Scott Carroll also claiming that Christ Church Oxford, where Obbink works, is a source of those mummy masks. Here is Brent’s conclusion:

In any event, the close association between Pattengale, Carroll, and Professor Obbink (as well as the Green Collection and Oxford) has long been known, and Professor Obbink appears to still be on the Museum of the Bible payroll. What was news to me was Carroll’s suggestion that Oxford was a source of the mummy masks that he was purchasing (his usual practice in describing provenance in these more recent videos is to say the material comes from “families” looking to sell things).

Scott Carroll has also suggested that Professor Obbink offered at least one artifact from the Egypt Exploration Society’s collection for sale (the Oxyrhynchus papyrus P.Oxy 83.5345, a fragment of the Gospel According to Mark). Professor Obbink and the Egypt Exploration Society have both denied Carroll’s claims in regard to that papyrus. Now we would seem to be in a similar situation with regard to the Green Collection mummy masks, in that all we really have connecting the Green Collection masks to Oxford is the word of Scott Carroll. And once again, it is the Green Collection and the Museum of the Bible that could shed light on these questions by offering some transparency in their acquisition records for these artifacts.

You can read the full post with what Brent has been able to piece together from videos and online matter. 

Alex Joffe on Why (Some) Academics Don’t Like the Museum of the Bible

Over at Mosaic, Alex Joffe writes this about some of the criticism of the Museum of the Bible:

For academics, [at] issue [is their] loss of public authority over the Bible. The intellectual monopolization of the Bible by academics in the post-World War II era coincided with the gradual collapse of biblical literacy in America, along with many mainline [Protestant] denominations. With this went an important part of the language of American identity, conversation, and consensus. The Bible in the public square was taken over by professors.

Inevitable or not, this was not healthy in social or political terms. Invocations of the Bible, religion, or God in politics today—[whether] earnest, banal, or grotesque—are condemned instantly. And yet this [habitual condemnation] cuts Americans off from not only a vernacular but from history; [for instance], the national, personal, and spiritual agony that Abraham Lincoln expressed in his second inaugural address is explicable only by reference to the Bible. . . .

Academics have hardly been faithful stewards of the Bible any more than of other forms of canonical knowledge; efforts to reclaim the Bible on the part of faith were also inevitable. If these also lead to more earnest engagement with the Bible as literature, tradition, and [a source of] morality on the part of academics and intellectuals, all the better. Unfortunately, I see the opposite occurring; [such] reclamation will be met with further academic criticism, which will only increase the distance between academia and society, heightening mutual suspicion and alienation, and setting up at least one side for a nasty surprise. . . .

The families and church groups visiting the Museum of the Bible are unlikely to be troubled by [issues of provenance] or converted to one denomination or another, but they might have elements of their faith, in the Bible and in America, reaffirmed. They are also likely to come away interested in Biblical history and archaeology. Many will go on to the Air and Space Museum for other sorts of reaffirmations, in technology and the human imagination, or to the National Gallery, filled with silent tributes to religious faith and to beauty itself. None of these is an unalloyed good, but that is the nature of museums. The good that one comes away with depends in part on what one goes in with.

On Twitter, Candida Moss says the reality is otherwise:

OR maybe we were mad because of the antiquities trafficking, appropriation of marginalised groups, colonialization, exploitation of Judaism and misinformation about #religion, #racism, & the #Bible? @JoelBaden @JillHicksKeeton https://t.co/GH96HT87Ai

— Candida Moss (@candidamoss) September 17, 2018

I’m not entirely sure there is an either-or here. Couldn’t the motive be both?

The element Joffe doesn’t mention here is personal animus toward the Greens, their Christian faith, or their win at the U.S. Supreme Court. Donna Yates, for example, wrote back in July 2017 that “I had fantasies during the Hobby Lobby birth control case of taking them [the Greens] down with antiquities and told everyone I knew ‘you know they are terrible antiquities collectors too…’ but that wasn’t the story at the time.” Or, here is Joel Baden saying he thinks historic Christian faith is morally bankrupt.

I think Jeffress is basically right on this. (I might also think that that makes him and his belief system morally bankrupt, but that’s a different matter). https://t.co/5dIpYAbO54

— Joel Baden (@JoelBaden) May 14, 2018

Baden has also said that he tells his students that “all good academic writing comes from a place of anger.”

It’s hard to believe that the MOTB gets a fair hearing from critics who feel this way. That doesn’t mean that all the criticisms themselves are unwarranted, of course. Bad motives can lead to good questions and the museum has had clear problems with provenance. But it’s not silly to wonder if some of the critics are motivated by more than issues of proper provenance.

Museum of the Bible and Dirk Obbink

Somehow I missed this, but back in June, Michael Press wrote an article exploring the latest mandatory tax filing from the Museum of the Bible. Most of the payments are not terribly surprising although Press sees problems with some of the locations of their funded digs. He seems most troubled that the Museum is Evangelical and influential.

Of most interest to me is the end of the article which explains payments to one particular individual associated with the Oxyrhynchus collection. Press suggests that the unnamed “Domestic Individual” is Dirk Obbink, and that certainly makes the most sense. It’s not actually news that he was paid by them (see here), but now I guess we know how much. According to the tax filing, it was $225,311 in 2016/2017. (Who says textual criticism doesn’t pay?)

Press suggests that the payments might be what confused people into thinking the Museum owned P.Oxy. 5345 (previously “First-Century Mark”). That seems unlikely to me since paying for research on a fragment is hardly the same thing as owning it. Also, why would anyone sign an NDA with the people funding the research rather than with the institution that actually owns the object of that research? These questions persist.

Here is what Press has to say about the payment:

Besides funding institutions, the Museum of the Bible also reports grants to individuals — most of which are non-itemized scholarships. One grant, however, is itemized in some detail: in 2016–2017, the museum awarded $225,311 to an unnamed individual as a “research grant for Early Christian Lives, Proteus/Ancient Lives, and Imaging Papyri projects as well as establishing a research center.” All of these projects involve the Oxyrhynchus papyri, the largest group of papyrus documents from the ancient world. They consist of fragments of several hundred thousand texts from an ancient garbage dump at the site of Oxyrhynchus (modern Al Bahnasa) in Egypt. Most of the papyri were found in excavations at the site in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, conducted on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) in the U.K. The Museum of the Bible purchased several Oxyrhynchus papyri that had been gifted to American institutions in the early 20th century and later deaccessioned. However, most of the papyri from the site are still owned by the EES and housed at the University of Oxford.

The unnamed individual who received the grant from the Museum of the Bible is presumably Dirk Obbink, an American-born papyrologist currently at the University of Oxford. Obbink is the principal investigator for all of the projects named on the Form 990. Obbink’s relationship with the museum has been public for years, though the exact nature of it has never been clear. Obbink is listed as Papyrus Series editor for the museum’s publications with the prominent Dutch academic publisher Brill, and has been paid by the museum as a consultant, but in comments to Megan Gannon of Live Science in 2015, Obbink suggested that the Greens had more direct control over his work. Unlike many other collaborations, this arrangement was never made public — there is no press release on the Museum of the Bible website. It was also unusual in that the grant was made to an individual rather than an institution. (In a statement to Hyperallergic, the EES declared that “the EES has not, and has never had, any arrangement of any kind with the Museum of the Bible.”)

This funding arrangement may shed some light on the issue of the rumored “First Century Mark.” Starting in 2012, rumors circulated among biblical scholars of a fragment of the New Testament Gospel of Mark dating to the first century CE. This rumored First Century Mark would be significant as the earliest known version of the text, and one dating shortly after the book would have been written (it is generally dated by scholars sometime in the middle decades of the first century CE). It was thought that the Green family owned or was trying to purchase this fragment, but no firm evidence was ever put forward about this. Last month, the EES posted a note about a recently published Oxyrhynchus papyrus, confirming that this was in fact the rumored First Century Mark — except that it dated to the late second or early third century, and was owned not by the Museum of the Bible but by the EES. The publication of the fragment was edited by Dirk Obbink. The Museum of the Bible’s funding of Obbink’s Oxyrhynchus projects might have some bearing on puzzling aspects of the case, such as why it was believed that the fragment was owned by the Museum of the Bible. (If in fact the Green family is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars funding Oxyrhynchus-related research, then they may have a proprietary attitude toward that research even if they do not own the fragments themselves.)

Museum of the Bible and Repatriation (GA 2120)

Yesterday, the Museum of the Bible (MOTB) posted a Facebook Live video featuring Brian Hyland, Associate Curator of Medieval Manuscripts. Hyland introduces GA 2120, a 12th-century minuscule of the Gospels. The Greens acquired the manuscript in 2010, and it was donated to the MOTB in 2014. Since then, it came to light that the manuscript was “lost” (=stolen) from the University of Athens. Representatives from the University of Athens contacted the MOTB about it, and the manuscript will be repatriated later this year in October.

Hyland gives an overview of the modern history of the manuscript back to Spyridon Lampros, who owned it before his daughter Lina Tsaldari gave it to the University of Athens in the 1960s. He includes some of the more recent history as well, including an estimate of when it was taken from the University of Athens (between 1987 and 1991), when it resurfaced at Sotheby’s (3 December 1998), and evidence of the identity of one of its modern owners.

It’s really great to see the MOTB doing the right thing here. They realised that they have an item that was taken illegally from its former owner, and they are making it right as well as they can in the situation.

Brief review of Bible Nation

Over the weekend I managed to read the new book by Candida Moss and Joel Baden called Bible Nation: the United States of Hobby Lobby.

The book is an attempt to understand the motivations and actions of the Green family in relation to their plans for collecting Bible manuscripts, the Museum of the Bible, the Scholars Initiative, and the school curriculum they have designed. In general I found it readable and interesting, helpful for getting a perspective on some of the story and people involved (although I didn’t learn much that was new except for some details about tax deductions for charitable donations); it is, however, not very well informed on matters relating to manuscripts, papyrology, and evangelical theology (once accusing the Greens of subscribing to the prosperity gospel). It is also badly out of date. The whole discussion of the court case involving Cuneiform tablets announced in early July 2017 (see for example here) is treated on the basis of what was known in 2015 (which, to be fair, the authors had announced in articles published around that time).

They adopt a quasi-journalistic tone, but don’t always pull it off (e.g. Brent Nongbri is described as ‘the eminent New Testament scholar’; Christian Askeland as ‘a well known papyrologist’). They seem to like Mike Holmes (who is basically a genius) but not get on so well with David Trobisch (‘a stocky man, who sports the standard academic uniform of slightly ill-fitting suits and goatee’); they are impressed by all the members of the Green family they meet, but obviously don’t like their theology or their politics. They hear a broad narrative that the Green Collection started and grew so rapidly that some corners seem to have been cut, while much higher standards of professional and curatorial behaviour are currently being followed. But they wonder about whether this is so when the collection does not seem to be very forthcoming on issues of (dodgy) provenance of some items in the collection.

Of course a thing to note is that our blog gets a couple of mentions. So our annual dinner at 2012 SBL in Chicago gets a mention on p. 71 (basically noting the generosity of Jerry Pattengale and the Green Scholars Initiative in paying for our meals). The authors take this as an example of the generosity of the GSI towards some scholars, which contrasts with others: ‘while some who craved access were denied it, others were actively recruited to join the GSI’ (they don’t provide any evidence about the ones who craved access). (Nor do they note any of our other dinners which GSI generously supported!) [In note 33 they take several of our blog discussions about the supposed and so-called First Century Mark as indicative of ‘the type of conversations that were happening around this fragment among papyrologists and scholars.’]

One massive problem is that they haven’t seen the Museum of the Bible, which opens next month, which they describe on the basis of a walk through the building site; and they have apparently not had first hand experience of any of the Scholars Initiative activities.

More on Forged Dead Sea Scrolls, or ‘The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife saga times 70’

The Times of Israel has a lengthy article out yesterday on forged Dead Sea Scrolls in the Museum of the Bible collection, the Schøyen collection, and elsewhere. Here are a few snippets, but the whole article is worth reading. One scholar working on it calls this the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife “times 70” in terms of its importance.

MOTB’s Nehemiah fragment

In his latest article, “Caves of Dispute,” published in the Brill Dead Sea Discoveries series this month, [Kip] Davis found that at least six of the Museum of the Bible’s 13 published fragments are forgeries. (“Published,” in this context, refers to artifacts that have been researched by experts, with their findings presented in academic journals. The Museum of the Bible collection includes three more fragments whose origin and content have not yet been published.)

In conversation with The Times of Israel, Davis said while he is convinced that six of the fragments are forgeries, “that number could be higher. There are people out there that think that all 13 of the fragments are fake. I’m not quite there, but I have colleagues who are fairly sure they are forgeries.”

Far from ignoring the forgery assertions, the Museum of the Bible is sponsoring Davis’s research and that of other scholars.

Årstein Justnes, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Agder, Norway, has built the blogsite The Lying Pen of Scribes to document for free public use the mounting evidence of forgeries in the post-2002 Dead Sea Scroll-like fragments.

...

“The sellers of these fragments have preyed on the well-meaning faith of Evangelical Christians who are compelled by the idea of owning a piece of ‘the Bible that Jesus read,’” said Davis.

“This is more than a simple form of manipulation,” said Davis. Given how seriously Evangelicals “are committed to their notion of sanctity of scripture,” he warned, “there is a danger of inflicting collective psychological harm.”

A couple reflections. It is good to see the Museum and the Schøyen collection investing in the effort to vet their own collections here even if that means they turn out to not be what they thought. It is not so good, however, to see Evangelical schools being duped into buying these. I remember being at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary when they unveiled some of their fragments and it was all quite exciting. It’s obviously not so exciting if they turn out to be forged.

For more from the blog on all this, see our past posts on the MOTB DSS publication, DSS forgeries in Bible software, curious DSS recently bought in the US; and various current projects on forgery.

Book on the Green Collection and Museum of the Bible

Before the recent news about Hobby Lobby broke, Facebook alerted me to the book by Candida Moss and Joel Baden titled Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby (Princeton). Amazon lists it as coming in October and Tommy’s post says there will be an SBL panel on the book which will no doubt be even more important now. Here is the description:

How the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make America a “Bible nation” 

Like many evangelical Christians, the Green family of Oklahoma City believes that America was founded as a Christian nation, based on a “biblical worldview.” But the Greens are far from typical evangelicals in other ways. The billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby, a huge nationwide chain of craft stores, the Greens came to national attention in 2014 after successfully suing the federal government over their religious objections to provisions of the Affordable Care Act. What is less widely known is that the Greens are now America’s biggest financial supporters of Christian causes—and they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an ambitious effort to increase the Bible’s influence on American society. In Bible Nation, Candida Moss and Joel Baden provide the first in-depth investigative account of the Greens’ sweeping Bible projects and the many questions they raise.

Bible Nation tells the story of the Greens’ rapid acquisition of an unparalleled collection of biblical antiquities; their creation of a closely controlled group of scholars to study and promote their collection; their efforts to place a Bible curriculum in public schools; and their construction of a $500 million Museum of the Bible near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Bible Nation reveals how these seemingly disparate initiatives promote a very particular set of beliefs about the Bible—and raise serious ethical questions about the trade in biblical antiquities, the integrity of academic research, and more.

Bible Nation is an important and timely account of how a vast private fortune is being used to promote personal faith in the public sphere—and why it should matter to everyone.

For a taste of the book, see the authors’ Atlantic article from a few years ago where they first broke the news about the Department of Justice investigation.

I do worry about how intent some people are on politicizing the Museum before it even opens. Is this book, for example, really a must read “in our increasingly polarized country” as Reza Aslan blurbs?

This unnecessary politicizing has only worsened since news broke of the settlement. Some people clearly have it in for the Museum because of the connection with the Greens and their victory at the the Supreme Court over the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. (For a case in point, see Donna Yates’s “fantasies.”)

Let me say clearly that there are very serious questions that need answering about the Museum’s artifacts in light of the DOJ settlement. These questions are not helped and the issues are not clarified in the least by animosity toward the Greens because of their religious or political views. I hope the book does not traffic in them, but the marketing for it does not give me hope. Regardless of your political or religious views, let’s deal with the issues as they are. 

United States Department of Justice announces Hobby Lobby Cuneiform Verdict

Earlier today, the United States filed a civil complaint to forfeit thousands of cuneiform tablets and clay bullae. As alleged in the complaint, these ancient clay artifacts originated in the area of modern-day Iraq and were smuggled into the United States through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, contrary to federal law. Packages containing the artifacts were shipped to Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (“Hobby Lobby”), a nationwide arts-and-crafts retailer based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and two of Hobby Lobby’s corporate affiliates. The shipping labels on these packages falsely described cuneiform tablets as tile “samples.”

Read the complete verdict, here.

First Museum of the Bible Volume Released with 13 Previously Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls

Pete Williams sent word yesterday that the first volume of the Publications of Museum of the Bible was published this week. Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments in the Museum Collection is edited by Emanuel Tov, Kipp Davis, and Robert Duke and features 13 previously unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls fragments. A number of introductory essays help explain the Museum’s collection and the program that led to this volume.

That program, known as the Scholars Initiative, is one of the book’s unique features. The program involves dozens of undergraduate and graduate students who are given the opportunity to help with fresh research on the museum’s artifacts. As someone who has been through this program, I can say that the opportunity it affords to young students is unparalleled. It is a fantastic way to mentor and train students interested in Biblical research.

The risks of involving students in this level of research are (hopefully) mitigated by the tiered structure of the program where students are overseen by scholar-mentors who are, in turn, overseen by the editors of the volumes (here Emanuel Tov). A special shout-out to Michael Johnson who was in the first “class” of the Scholars Initiative with me and who became one of the “principal investigators” in the volume (see p. xiii n. 15).

It is exciting to see this work coming to fruition. Hopefully the Greek volume will follow in the next year or two. (The press release says it “will be published soon.”)

MOTB.SCR.003172 Jeremiah. Showing image manipulation used to read the texts. Images by Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman and Marilyn Lundberg, West Semitic Research

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, Text Editions, the Collection of the Museum of the Bible, Textual and Orthographic Character, Relation to Other Fragments from the Judaean Desert Emanuel Tov
2. Paleographical and Physical Features of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Museum of the Bible Collection: A Synopsis Kipp Davis
3. A Methodology for the Digital Reconstruction of Dead Sea Scroll Fragmentary Remains Bruce Zuckerman, Asher Levy and Marilyn Lundberg
4. 4 The Process and Goal of Research Robert Duke
5. 5 Procedure Followed by the MOTB Scholars Teams: Manuscript Research as Pedagogy Lisa M. Wolfe
6. Genesis 31:23–25?, 32:3–6 (Inv. motb.scr.000124) Elaine Bernius et al.
7. Exodus 17:4–7 (Inv. motb.scr.000120) Karl Kutz et al.
8. Leviticus 23:24–28 (Inv. ncf.scr.004742) Karl Kutz et al.
9. A Fragment of Leviticus? (Inv. motb.scr.000122) Marty Alan Michelson et al.
10. Numbers 8:3–5 (Inv. motb.scr.003173) Timothy D. Finlay et al.
11. Jeremiah 23:6–9 (Inv. motb.scr.003172) Karl Kutz et al.
12. Ezekiel 28:22 (Inv. motb.scr.003174) Ishwaran Mudliar
13. Jonah 4:2–5 (Inv. motb.scr.003171) Catherine McDowell and Thomas Hill
14. Micah 1:4–6 (Inv. motb.scr.003183) Peter W. Flint and David R. Herbison
15. Psalm 11:1–4 (Inv. motb.scr.000121) Lisa M. Wolfe et al.
16. Daniel 10:18–20 (Inv. motb.scr.003170) Robert Duke et al.
17. Nehemiah 2:13–16 (Inv. motb.scr.003175) Martin G. Abegg Jr. et al.
18. A Fragment of Instruction (Inv. motb.scr.000123) Michael Brooks Johnson

Museum of the Bible Job Posting

Research Projects Coordinator 

Beginning 01 August 2016, the research projects coordinator of the Scholars Initiative, located in Oklahoma City, OK, will coordinate with the executive and associate director to plan, implement and support collaborative work on innovative research projects, which advance the museum’s commitment to “invite all people to engage with the Bible through … scholarly pursuits.” In particular, the programming of the Scholar’s Initiative fosters research projects in which scholars include outstanding students in rigorous research projects relating to the languages and material culture of the New Testament and Hebrew scriptures.

The Scholars Initiative has previously organized collaborative research projects on Greek papyri from the Roman era, Dead Sea Scroll fragments and Medieval Latin manuscripts. Most recently, projects exploring the nature of the Old Greek tradition of the Psalter and the Greek minuscule tradition of the Pauline Corpus have been developed, with programs on Syriac patristic texts and the Lollard movement currently in active development. Where appropriate, participating scholars will publish their findings within a Brill series dedicated to the artifacts and research interests of the Museum of the Bible.

 Education/Experience 

• Doctoral degree from a research university 
• Facility in Greek and Hebrew 
• Demonstrated commitment to scholarly publication 
• Academic specialization in biblical languages and material culture 

Duties 

• Significant travel to support relevant programs and events 
• Researching, planning, launching and working on collaborative research projects 
• Support program alumni within the Logos Fellows network by planning annual events and coordinating various resources including scholarships, books and networking opportunities 
• Collaborate with various other departments within the museum (esp. Curation and Development) in order to represent the scholarly character of the institution 
• Support the mission and goals of MOTB and the Scholars Initiative in all ways as assigned 

Skills preferred 

• Reading ability in secondary ancient languages (esp. Akkadian, Aramaic, Hittite, Sumerian, North Western Semitic dialects) 
• Research profile in Ancient Near Eastern languages and archeology 
• Affinity for scholarly digital tools 
• Spoken fluency in a modern foreign language 
• Effective strategies for communicating in writing, via video conferencing and face-to-face 
• Experience with event planning and coordination 

Pay and benefits are competitive. Candidates may submit a coverletter and CV by email to Mrs. Molly McCloud, manager of human resources (molly.mccloud@mbible.org) The coverletter should be addressed to Dr. Michael Holmes, executive director of the Scholars Initiative. Please provide contact details for three references. References and further materials will be requested from shortlisted candidates. Review of candidates will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Please direct any questions to Dr. Christian Askeland (christian.askeland@mbible.org).

Museum of the Bible - 90 second fly through video

Museum of the Bible: Interesting interview with David Trobsich

David van Biema has an interesting interview with David Trobisch: “David Trobisch lends Green family’s Bible Museum a scholarly edge”

The interview poses the question of the nature of the theological tensions between Trobisch and Steve Green as, in Trobisch’s words “two parties standing at opposite ends of the Christian spectrum talking to each other and working together”.

Cf. also here.