I am SO FUCKING LAUGHING, as I tweeted, over confirmation that a set of 16 alleged Dead Sea Scrolls fragments at The Museum of the Bible, owned by Hobby Lobby prez Steve Green, are forgeries.
And crude ones at that.
Ancient leather. Yeah, it's ancient, but leather, not parchment.
Modern ink.
Some purchased from William Kando, son of the primary discoverer of the actual scrolls. Others may trace back to him indirectly. The independent researchers hired by the museum in 2017 to investigate believe, but aren't sure, that all the forgeries were created by the same person or persons.
I've mentioned it elsewhere as the "BAR effect."
That's as in Biblical Archaeology Review, which promoted Holy Land-itis among evangelical Christians and has long run a thriving display advertising service for antiquities, as well as running puff pieces on things like the fraudulent James Ossuary.
Evangelicals with big bucks were easy marks, as the Greens have proven on stolen antiquities looted from invaded Iraq, as well. As the National Geographic piece notes, the landscape changed after 2002. The invasion of Iraq was part of that change. And it wasn't just the Greens who bit.
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I will have a more technical piece on this story, including comments by the museum's chief curatorial officer, Jeff Kloha, whom I know personally, at my second blog.
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