Researchers have spent decades trying to laboriously piece together the 2,000-year-old fragments, most of which were discovered in the 1940s and 1950s in 11 caves near a site called Qumran on the shore of the Dead Sea. With special access to the scrolls, National Geographic goes beyond the enclosed glass case to examine the actual texts up close and explores the caves where they were found. The recent findings have no bearing on the nearly 100,000 Dead Sea Scroll fragments that comprise the Shrine of the Book, on display in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, National Geographic reports. “In the past, when I told the Bedouin that a piece was worthless because it had no writing, I inadvertently suggested how to make it valuable,” he says. Ever since their discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have captured the imagination and interest of scholars and the public. Dead Sea The Dead Sea is a large lake that borders Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank. Bookseller Craig Lampe, who sold Green four fragments in 2009, did not respond to requests for comment sent through his business partner. In the wake of the new report, researchers say they must next focus on the fragments’ convoluted routes through the global antiquities trade. “We’re victims—we’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud.”. Though the report delves into the fragments’ makeup, it does not investigate their provenance, or the proven chain of ownership tracing back to their place of origin. Other such fragments reside at academic institutions around the world, such as California’s Azusa Pacific University and Texas’s Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. It has the lowest land elevation on Earth, sitting 422 meters (1,385 feet) below sea level. “If it is confirmed that all fragments are forged, the volume will be retracted and no longer offered for sale,” Brill said in a statement. “All roads lead to Bethlehem,” said Lawrence Schiffman, a Hebrew scholar at New York University and adviser to the Museum of the Bible, at the Friday conference. Collectors and museums jumped at the chance to own the oldest known biblical texts, including Museum of the Bible founder Steve Green, the president of Hobby Lobby. The scroll is … In 2017, U.S. officials forced Hobby Lobby to return 5,500 illegally imported clay tablets to Iraq and pay a $3-million fine. Sponsored by MagellanTV - a new streaming service with 2,000+ documentaries worth watching. “So the victims—despite the fact that it's embarrassing to admit that you were duped—have to go and explore all criminal and civil remedies with U.S., Israeli, and international authorities.”. How could these be fraudulent?” Noah says. Noah attempted to return the fragments to the Kando family, but the Kandos instead agreed to sell the fragments at a discount to Noah and Sharpe. In a Thursday interview with National Geographic, Sharpe expressed shock and disbelief that the piece he had sold—and that he had bought earlier for his own collection—was inauthentic. Witness as a new clue to the … One fragment’s lettering squeezed into a corner that wouldn’t have existed when the writing surface was new. By shining x-rays on the fragments, the researchers could map different chemical elements across the fragments’ surfaces, which revealed that calcium had soaked deeply into the leather pieces. They were … The authentic Dead Sea Scrolls trace back to 1947, when Bedouin herders found clay jars in Palestine’s Qumran caves that held thousands of parchment scrolls more than 1,800 years old, including some of the oldest surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible. But what of the other 11 fragments? Another appeared to have a Greek letter alpha where a 1930s reference Hebrew Bible used an alpha to flag a footnote. “I had zero idea, none!”. Since its 2017 opening, the Museum of the Bible has funded research into the pieces and sent off five fragments to Germany’s Federal Institute for Materials Research for testing. and the first century A.D., were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near Khirbat Qumran in the West Bank, on the … Christopher Rollston, a specialist on Semitic texts at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., welcomes the effort to set things right. Researchers analyzed tiny samples of scroll fragments—these from the biblical book of Jeremiah. Posted By: MissMolly, 3/14/2020 3:22:31 AM Washington, D.C.On the … “It’s no wonder that the scholars were thinking these were untrained scribes, because they were really struggling to form these characters and keep their pens under control.”. All 16 fragments appeared to be modern forgeries. Using small samples extracted from a pair of scroll fragments, for example, the team determined that two pieces long thought to be part of one manuscript from the biblical book of Jeremiah were in fact unrelated, as one was made from sheep hide, the other from cow hide. “The Dead Sea Scrolls are inarguably the most important biblical discovery of the last century,” Kloha says. Even more detailed chemical analyses led by Buffalo State College conservation scientist Aaron Shugar raised additional red flags. Today, private collectors bid for the scraps grandfathered into current law, mostly fragments that entered the private market in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2019, museum officials announced that 11 papyrus fragments in its collection had been sold to Hobby Lobby by Oxford professor Dirk Obbink, who is accused of stealing the fragments from a papyrus collection he oversaw. National Geographic tried to contact the three Americans who sold Dead Sea Scroll fragments to Green. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient manuscripts dating back to 2000 years ago. Washington, D.C.On the fourth floor of the Museum of … It held some 600 manuscripts, spread among more than … “All the material has documentation proving that the documents were exported previously under relevant antiquities laws,” Schiffman said on Friday. “These fragments were manipulated with the intent to deceive,” Loll says. After the first five tested fragments showed ungodly inconsistencies, the … It is one of the world’s most daunting jigsaw puzzles: 25,000 pieces of ancient parchment comprising the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, © 2015- “The existence of this Qumran scribal practice has been doubted, but this finding would certainly support it,” said Sidnie Crawford, a biblical scholar at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln who was not involved in the study. From 2009 to 2014, Green bought a total of 16 Dead Sea Scroll fragments in four batches, including seven fragments he bought directly from William Kando, the elder Kando’s son. “I feel kind of sick,” he says. Despite being purchased at four different times from four different people, the report finds that all 16 of the Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments were forged the same way—which strongly suggests that the forged fragments share a common source. The National Geographic Channel will be airing two television programs dealing with ancient writings that both relate to today's era. “The material is degraded, it’s so brittle, so inflexible,” says team member Abigail Quandt, the head of book and paper conservation at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum. “It really was—and still is—an interesting kind of detective story,” says Jeffrey Kloha, the Museum of the Bible’s chief curatorial officer. Brill, the book’s publisher, is standing by to learn more. “There are many scrolls fragments that we don’t know how to connect, and if we connect wrong pieces together it can change dramatically the interpretation of any scroll,” said geneticist Oded Rechavi of Tel Aviv University, who led the effort. After millennia of exposure, collagen in the ancient parchment broke down to form gelatin, which hardened to give some parts of authentic fragments a gummy, glue-soaked appearance. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouin shepherds in the 1940s, in caves in Qumran. But now, the Washington, D.C. museum has confirmed a bitter truth about the fragments’ authenticity. “The Museum of the Bible is trying to be as transparent as possible,” says CEO Harry Hargrave. (Here's how researchers realized a museum's collection of Dead Sea Scrolls were forgeries.). 2020 National Geographic Partners, LLC. “We really hope this is helpful to other institutions and researchers, because we think this provides a good foundation for looking at other pieces, even if it raises other questions.”. Loll quickly assembled a team of five conservators and scientists. By decade’s end, the trickle of post-2002 fragments turned into a flood of at least 70 pieces. “That’s really the story. 'Dead Sea Scrolls' at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries . 2020 National Geographic Partners, LLC. After getting her master’s in art history at George Washington University, Loll went on to study international art crime, run forgery investigations, and train federal agents on matters of cultural heritage. “Our job as a museum is to help the public understand, and this is a part of the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls now, for better or for worse.”. The article also described the work Price helped conduct in 2017, when teams made the first major discovery related to the Dead Sea Scrolls in more than 60 years. National Geographic Exclusive ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries. The announcement also draws the spotlight back onto how the Museum of the Bible assembled its collection in the first place. How did all these world experts miss this?”. The team’s best guess is that the leather itself is ancient, recovered from scraps found in the Judean desert or elsewhere. By the time their report was finalized in November 2019, the researchers were unanimous. But after another look at a picture of the fragment, Charlesworth voiced fresh skepticism. “I was hoping to have one real [fragment], because then you could show, Okay, here’s a real one, here’s a fake, can you tell the difference?” Kloha says. Kloha and Hargrave add that the museum is considering a revision of its Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit to focus on how researchers uncovered the forgery. Loll was no stranger to fakes and forgeries. “If there’s any theme that’s present in the Bible, it’s the theme of forgiveness and the possibility of redemption, after someone finally comes clean,” he adds. Archaeologists initially thought the scrolls were the product of scribes living in the Qumran community. In the fallout, Noah acquired two fragments in Ferrini's possession that belonged to the Kandos: a tiny portion of the Book of Jeremiah, and a small fragment of rabbinic commentary about the Book of Genesis. Possibly to correct for the anachronism, the forged fragments also look like they were dusted with clay minerals consistent with sediments from Qumran, where the original Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Years later, Kando directly sold to Sharpe the larger Genesis fragment that made its way to the Museum of the Bible. Leading biblical scholar Emanuel Tov, one of the volume’s main editors, reviewed the new report for National Geographic and provided the following statement: I will not say that there are no unauthentic fragments among the MOB fragments, but in my view, their inauthenticity as a whole has still not been proven beyond doubt. Seen here as a gap high up in the cliffs of Qumran National Park in the West Bank, Cave 4 was the “mother lode” of Dead Sea Scrolls. The new findings don’t cast doubt on the 100,000 real Dead Sea Scroll fragments, most of which lie in the Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. “Talk about making lemonade, right?” Loll says. All but two of the 26 fragments tested were made from sheep hide. Through the 1950s, a Bethlehem-based antiquities dealer named Khalil Iskander Shahin, better known as Kando, acquired many fragments from local Bedouin and sold them to collectors around the world. However, the landscape suddenly shifted around 2002, as antiquities dealers and biblical scholars started to unveil snippets of biblical text that looked like long-lost pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many of the shriveled brown fragments—most no bigger than large coins—reportedly traced back to the Kandos, who were rumored to be selling pieces they had long ago spirited away to a vault in Switzerland. Researchers have spent decades trying to laboriously piece … The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in jars found inside a series of 11 caves near an archaeological site called Qumran on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea in the late … Mar 30,2020 | artfraud | Comments 0. The museum promptly returned the artifact to Greece. One tantalizing possibility is that they come from ancient leather shoes or sandals. “There’s true penitence there.”, 'Dead Sea Scrolls' at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/museum-of-the-bible-dead-sea-scrolls-forgeries.html, the “post-2002” Dead Sea Scroll fragments, and a new Israeli law on the antiquities trade, a book on the Museum of the Bible’s fragments, a 1,700-year-old papyrus piece of the Gospel of John, Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments in the Museum Collection, to return 5,500 illegally imported clay tablets. All rights reserved. It’s possible that the fragments’ sellers were themselves duped when they originally acquired the pieces from other dealers or collectors. Initially, some Dead Sea Scroll experts thought the post-2002 pieces, including Green’s, were the real deal. Records provided by Nat Des Marais, Sharpe’s former business partner, say that Dead Sea Scrolls scholar James Charlesworth, who retired from the Princeton Theological Seminary in 2019, helped validate the Genesis fragment’s authenticity. First, the team concluded that the fragments were seemingly made of the wrong material. The element’s distribution strongly hinted that the leather had been treated with lime to chemically remove its hair. “When you have a deceiver and a believer, it’s an intimate dance,” Loll says. If they are fakes, we have been duped,” he says. “The fact that the scrolls that are most divergent textually are also made of a different animal species is indicative that they originate at a different provenance.”. The Dead Sea Scrolls, written between the third century B.C. In 2017, Kloha joined the museum to oversee its collections, and in November 2019, the museum brought in Hargrave, who helped direct the museum’s construction, to serve as its third CEO in two years. But months before that book’s publication, doubt had started to creep into some scholars’ minds. The conventional wisdom is that a breakaway Jewish sect called … Starting in 2009, Green and Hobby Lobby spent a fortune buying up biblical manuscripts and artifacts to seed what would become the Museum of the Bible’s collection. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered more than 60 years ago in seaside caves near an ancient settlement called Qumran. New technologies help scientists decipher the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls and newly surfaced fragments. Green and museum officials have long maintained that they received poor advice at the time of the purchases and that they assembled their collection in good faith. 'Dead Sea Scrolls' at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries. Nearly all the authentic Dead Sea Scrolls fragments are made of tanned or lightly tanned parchment, but at least 15 of the Museum of the Bible’s fragments were made of leather, which is thicker, bumpier, and more fibrous. The Men Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls: Ancient Manuscripts Found in Judaean Caves Open a New World to Biblical ScholarshipBiblical scholars revel in the 1947 discovery of detailed 2, 000- year- old … But what excites scholars the most is the prospect of using ancient DNA to match the bewildering bits and pieces, some of which contain only a few letters. “I am bothered by the handwriting; it now seems to be suspicious,” he says. From February to October, the team periodically visited the museum and pulled together their findings. © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, © 2015- At press, William Kando, who sold seven pieces to Green, did not respond to an email request for comment. The Kandos' many alleged connections to the forged fragments have not escaped scholars' attention. The Mystery of National Geographic’s “Dead Sea Scrolls Mystery Solved?” An Open Letter to the Geographic It is always refreshing to read new proposals from scholars about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls… Researchers carefully examined the surfaces of all 16 fragments under high magnification—all while … The real Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible, were first rediscovered 1947. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest biblical texts ever found. Loll insisted on independence. Discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in the caves of Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls consist of passages of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, that range from 1,800 to more than 2,000 years old. “But if they are authentic, unprovenanced artifacts, they must have been looted, they must have been smuggled—they were tied to criminal acts in some way.”. Programs dealing with ancient writings that both relate to today 's era material has documentation proving that fragments... 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