He taught Ancient Texts at Oxford. Now Accused of Stealing Some.


He had the perfect credentials. Nobody objects to this.

Dirk Obbink was a respected lecturer at Oxford University. He received a MacArthur Foundation grant in 2001 for his work on papyrus and was in an important role helping to run the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the world’s largest collection of ancient papyrus. Egyptian Exploration Society and Oxford’s Sackler Library.

So roughly ten years ago, when the Hobby Lobby craft store chain started building a collection of Bible-related relics, it made sense to touch the groundwork with Obbink.

Steve Green, president of the Hobby Lobby, was leading efforts to create a national museum focused on the Bible. The chain says it paid Obbink about $7 million between 2010 and 2013 for a set of seven antiquities, including ancient papyri with New Testament writings.

Some of these works would end up in the Bible Museum, which opened in Washington four years ago, according to the Discovery Society.

Now Hobby Lobby is suing Obbink and says that 32 items he bought from him were stolen from the Discovery Society, which they found came from some of these artifacts from his Oxford collection.

Obbink has since parted ways with the university and could not be reached for comment. But he denied taking anything from the Discovery Society’s collection. In 2019, told the Waco Tribune-Herald: “I am aware that there are documents used against me that I believe have been fabricated in a malicious attempt to damage my reputation and career.”

Still, suspicions remain, and the Discovery Society has banned Obbink from accessing the Oxyrhynchus collection.

It would be an understatement to say that the dispute over Obbink and papyrus shook a scientific world in which ancient texts were entrusted to a number of experts whose knowledge and experience had specially distinguished them.

Obbink was considered one of the genus.

“Very early in his career, he was known as a brilliant philologist and a gifted papyrologist with a wide range of interests and a lot of energy,” said Roger Bagnall, a widely respected classical scholar at Columbia University when Obbink joined the faculty. .

Obbink was known for his ability to piece together and decipher fragmentary texts. MacArthur Foundation i called him He added that “he is an expert in the art and craft of rescuing damaged ancient manuscripts from the ravages of nature and time”, adding that his job requires “diligence, knowledge of different dialects of ancient Greek, and the ability to decipher cursive abbreviations scribbled on the edges.”

When Obbink left Columbia to go to Oxford in 1995, Oxyrhynchus A collection of more than 500,000 pieces of literary and documentary texts dating from the 3rd century BC to the 7th century AD, most from excavations carried out by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt between 1896 and 1907.

Although this collection is among the most prestigious collections of its kind, experts say it does not have the same level of documentation and security as other collections.

Most of the collections at universities such as Yale and Princeton have been photographed and scanned, and the images, along with their source information, are in an online database available to the public. The papyri in such collections are generally kept in safe places and are only extracted under strict protocols.

Practices at the Discovery Society, a small organization with limited funds, were different. Images of items from the Oxyrhynchus collection that scientists had published articles about were publicly available, but images of other items were not. Internal records are kept in card files rather than electronic files. And scholars were sometimes allowed to bring papyrus to their Oxford room.

Obbink is said to have enjoyed this privilege around 2012, when it was reported that he displayed a handwritten piece of papyrus from the Gospel of Mark in his rooms and was later accused of selling it to the Hobby Lobby.

The piece was of particular interest to some scholars who believed it might have been created in the first or second century AD, and in time placed it close to the period around 70 AD, when it is thought to have created the Gospel of Mark.

Early examples of New Testament writing fascinated scholars, in part because of the ongoing debate about the reliability of the Bible. Some experts argue that the words attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John accurately depict the years Jesus walked on Earth. Others say the Bibles have been altered over thousands of years by countless scribes who copied the manuscripts by hand, making it virtually unknown what exactly was in the originals.

Decades earlier, the Discovery Society tentatively dated the fragment of the Gospel text attributed to Mark to the late first or early second century. But the fact that the piece existed was not widely known.

More recently, word of the piece has begun to trickle in. In the 2012 video, Daniel Wallace of Dallas Divinity School said in a discussion with another scholar, he said, that a first-century piece of papyrus inscribed from Mark—the “oldest manuscript of the New Testament,” as he called it—was discovered. Wallace added that someone with an “impeccable” reputation and considered by many to be “the best papyrologist on the planet” evaluated the piece, but declined to be named and “takes an oath of secrecy”.

Then, in late 2015, Scott Carroll, an expert who advised the president of Hobby Lobby as his family, started to buy ancient Bibles, Torahs, manuscripts, and other items told a lecturer they had seen a piece of papyrus in Obbink’s office in Oxford with Mark’s writings.

He said Obbink dates it to between 70 and 120 AD, which is an important finding because such an early manuscript could support the argument that modern-day New Testament language can be traced almost to the time of Jesus.

“I saw it at Christ Church College, Oxford University, and it was in the hands of a distinguished, well-known, distinguished classicist,” Carroll said. video posted on YouTube by an audience member. “It has since been bought; By whom, I cannot say.”

According to an article, officials in the Discovery Community soon became aware of the video. It was published last year in the Atlanticand they were so shaken by this that they began to review the unpublished New Testament papyri in their collection.

In 2016, the society refused to reappoint Obbink as general editor of the Oxyrhynchus collection, voicing, among other things, concerns about his “alleged involvement” in the marketing of ancient texts.

However, there was no evidence that the piece containing Mark’s writings had been stolen. He was still at Oxford, and the society later said that Obbink admitted showing it to Carroll, but insisted he didn’t offer it for sale.

(Association in 2018 said it revised the fragment’s earlier tentative dating to possibly date from the first century, and more likely late second or early third century.)

However, the plot thickened when a copy of the 2013 contract between Obbink and Hobby Lobby surfaced in 2019. The contract confirmed that the seller Obbink had four “fragmented Greek manuscripts” written from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, dated circa 100 AD. An accompanying document contained excerpts of verses from these Gospels that corresponded to those written on the Discovery Society texts.

The Bible Museum said, through a spokesperson, that in 2019 it handed over a copy of the contract to the Discovery Society officials because they felt they had to notify the public that they believed the museum officials had uncovered what appeared to be fraudulent activity.

At the same time, Brent Nongbri, professor of the history of religions at a school in Norway, published A copy of the contract he says he got from a biblical museum scholar.

Part of the contract was designed to keep the sale confidential. Obbink was allowed to retain the “temporary custody” of the items and the right to “scientific research” on them. The contract also required the buyer and seller to “protect and keep confidential all information relevant to the subject of scientific research.”

Shortly after the contract was published, the Discovery Society banned Obbink from accessing the Oxyrhynchus collection. He later said the Bible museum acknowledged that the items in his care came from the community’s collection and were sold by Obbink to Hobby Lobby.

Also missing are catalog cards and photographs corresponding to some of the missing works, according to the association. “Fortunately,” the society said, “there were backup records.”

The Discovery Society credits the Bible Museum for helping identify items that were removed from the Society’s collection without permission and “received from a number of third parties by Hobby Lobby and his agents.”

The museum later said in a statement that it “will continue to be as helpful as possible as authorities investigate the source of the unauthorized sales.”

A spokesperson for the museum said all items that were removed from the association’s collection without permission and sold to the Hobby Lobby were returned to the Discovery Society. Spokesperson Charlotte Clay added that “none of the items are on display at the museum.”

Hobby Lobby never received the article that Mark says he purchased from Obbink in 2013, because that item was held by Obbink for “further investigation.” But a few years later, in 2017, Obbink admitted that the piece and others he sold in 2013 belonged to the Discovery Society and had been “accidentally” purchased, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit says Obbink has agreed to refund the $760,000 he received for these parts, but has only reimbursed $10,000 so far.

In the Hobby Lobby case, she argues that all the papyrus pieces she bought from Obbink were tainted not just because they believed they were stolen, but because of her relationships with people known to have been taken without permission.

Obbink has yet to respond to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Brooklyn. The chain’s lawyers said they recently serviced newspapers at a houseboat on Weirs Mill Stream near the River Thames, which is thought to be inhabited.

British authorities are also continuing to investigate the reported theft, where pieces of papyrus were stolen from the Sackler Library. British newspapers last year reported had been obbink arrested in connection with this investigation.

However, Thames Valley Police, which is investigating the possible theft, said they would not disclose the name of a 63-year-old man from Oxford who was arrested on 2 March 2020 on suspicion of theft and fraud. Police recently said the man was “released under investigation”. The police added that no charges have been brought regarding the matter.

Oxford University declined to discuss the matter in detail, but acknowledged that Obbink had resigned from his post at the University in February.

Some of those following the allegations that Obbink has turned from professor to looter are wondering if the Hobby Lobby case can settle not only the question of who stole the papyrus fragments from Oxford, but also why.

Among them is Nongbri, who over the years has published dozens of posts online about Obbink, Hobby Lobby, and the lost Oxyrhynchus papyri.

“I would love to learn about motivation, which is a mystery,” Nongbri said. “For someone who appears to be at the top of the field, in charge of a large manuscript collection, whose position at Oxford seems to be the MacArthur genius, this has been a truly astonishing turn of events.”

Liam Bekirsky contributed to the research.



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