on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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StephenGoranson
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on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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A Scholarly Screw-Up of Biblical Proportions
‘Harvard Theological Review’ offers an exemplary guide on how not to do peer review.
by Ariel Sabar
June 29, 2021

https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-sch ... roportions
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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StephenGoranson wrote: Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:57 am A Scholarly Screw-Up of Biblical Proportions
‘Harvard Theological Review’ offers an exemplary guide on how not to do peer review.
by Ariel Sabar
June 29, 2021

https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-sch ... roportions
As I learned while reporting my book, she had suspected from the start that the papyrus was forged, but pressed ahead, ignoring red flags, recruiting conflicted scientists, and withholding important facts, photos, and paperwork. The papyrus, which King promoted as the first ancient text to depict a married Jesus, had served as a kind of missing link in her pioneering scholarship on female figures in early Christianity.

Blinded by ambition...
Grondin apparently thought nothing of the matter that his Thomas translation, which has busied him for almost 4 decades, is so extremely sloppy and inaccurate that one can't even use it as a decent basis for a proper forgery - and proudly presented not only an interview by a Detroit paper, but even turned it into an academia.edu Discussion

https://www.academia.edu/44343733/The_G ... ment_and_I

Sabar is spot on, of course. King?

Despite her about-face in the news media, King, too, saw no need for the journal to disabuse its readers. “I don’t see anything to retract,” she told The Boston Globe. “I have always thought of scholarship as a conversation. So you put out your best thoughts, and then people … bring in new ideas or evidence. You go on.”

Biblical academics... rotten to the core when exposed. And it shows the very nature of the problem which is the centre of its existence, power and control: image and reputation.
Context thus, instead of content

It's not what you publish, it's who publishes - and that is exactly the reason for the phallus-size failure of this forgery (the forgery allegedly was working in the porn industry)

And Brent Nongbri also is spot on, of course:
“Be able to admit when you’ve made a mistake. Accept justified correction with humility and grace, and just move on.”
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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mlinssen wrote: Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:43 am Despite her about-face in the news media, King, too, saw no need for the journal to disabuse its readers. “I don’t see anything to retract,” she told The Boston Globe. “I have always thought of scholarship as a conversation. So you put out your best thoughts, and then people … bring in new ideas or evidence. You go on.”
I vaguely remember that even the critics back then wanted King to publish. Exactly because they wanted the conversation to start "officially" in the written record, instead of being confined to blog entries and informal correspondence. So publishing gives everyone what they needed out of the affair. It also gives future generations a window on what happened, long after links decay and blogs go offline. Publishing itself is hardly shameful. Even the initial publication was already chastened by rounds of criticism that had already taken place. Again, if I'm remembering right (I'm happy to revisit this later when I have more time), the publication wasn't strongly in favor of authenticity & did not neglect to admit that there were issues with the fragment.

I think it's a mistake to try to bully journals and scholars who initially publish on highly controversial artifacts. The outcome of that attitude would be that we lose the record of these artifacts entirely, if people aren't publishing on them, and we lose the ability of later scholars to review the evidence. King's description of the scholarly process in general is spot on. Perhaps the journalist here should be ashamed for implying otherwise.

There weren't really any readers to disabuse. The common understanding by the time of publication was already that it was probably a forgery, and it was against that backdrop that King published about it.

Disclaimer: The article is beyond a paywall, and I haven't read its full contents.
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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I found Mr. Sabar's Twitter where he is promoting his book (titled Veritas):
2012: We won't publish until "we…establish the authenticity of the text," then-editor
@KevinMadigan9 tells the news media.
2012: I won't publish unless my confidence in authenticity is "way, way, way high…50/50 doesn’t count, and 70/30 doesn’t count."
Then he implies that publication in 2014 was a mistake because these standards weren't met. He claims that they "retroactively" changed their mind about "criteria" after publication. This doesn't seem accurate to me; again, the truth here as I remember it is far less of a "scandal" and wouldn't sell many book copies.

What I recall is that the scholarly community as a whole didn't feel that the "criteria" he cites should be a barrier to publication, for exactly the reasons I've mentioned: to start the conversation in print, and to provide a record for future scholarship. So, without yet researching to write a silly book about it, I would guess that it wouldn't be too hard to go back and find those conversations in the long two years before publication.

That's cool if he wants to sell it as a scandal, though. Good luck with the book.
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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Humanity sucks.
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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Harvard has been gracious enough to provide free access to King's 2014 article online:

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/hand ... sequence=1

One purpose of the article is to offer a critical edition, as stated in the first sentence:
This article offers a critical edition of a papyrus fragment in Coptic that contains a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples in which Jesus speaks of “my wife.”
The critical edition begins with a transcription of the Coptic text and English translation, followed by a discussion of the material artifact (papyrology, paleography, form and uses), language, interpretation, and the history of the manuscript. Summary reports of analyses performed on the ink and papyrus completed to date follow.
A critical edition is an essential part of the scholarly study of any text, whether it is known to be a forgery, known to be authentic, or something else.

As the lead researcher with access to the fragment, King had worked with a variety of collaborators who provided essential data:
In addition to those already named, let me acknowledge and thank the following for their enormous generosity of time and expertise: Rose Lincoln and B. D. Colen produced high-resolution digital photographs. Malcolm Choat examined the fragment during a visit to Harvard (November 14-15, 2012). Microscopic imaging was conducted by Douglas Fishkind and Casey Kraft with Henry Lie at the Harvard Center for Biological Imaging (December 17, 2012). Raman testing of the ink was done by James Yardley with Alexis Hagadorn at Columbia University (March 11-12, 2013). Radiocarbon analysis was performed by Greg Hodgins at the University of Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory (June-July, 2013). Funding for the carbon-14 (14C) testing was generously provided by a gift from Tricia Nichols. Multispectral imaging was performed by Michael Toth and select images were processed by William Christians-Barry (August 26, 2013). Timothy Swager, Joseph Azzarelli and John Goods performed Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) testing at MIT (November 5, 2013). Harvard librarians, especially Douglas Gragg, were gracious and patient supporters. Harvard’s communications professionals took the lead in public dissemination. Noreen Tuross gave invaluable advice and conducted a crucial range of testing, including a second radiocarbon determination.
It's obviously appropriate for all this data to be entered into the scholarly record, in the form of a journal article.

There is a substantial discussion in the article about "Dating the Manuscript and the Question of Forgery":
Dating the Manuscript and the Question of Forgery

From the moment the fragment’s existence was announced, discussion of dating focused on the question of whether it was produced in antiquity or was fabricated in modernity with the intent to deceive (“forgery”108). This question deserves serious consideration and requires taking account of all the pertinent factors as a whole. These include: characteristics of the materials (papyrus and ink); application of the ink on the page; handwriting; language; compositional practice; the provenance of discovery; and historical contextualization.109 Let us consider each in turn.

The scientific testing completed thus far consistently provides positive evidence of the antiquity of the papyrus and ink, including radiocarbon, spectroscopic, and oxidation characteristics, with no evidence of modern fabrication. Hypothetically, a clever forger could acquire a piece of ancient papyrus and fabricate ink from ancient papyrus fragments or other vegetable matter—both of which would pass these kinds of inspection. Yardley comments, however, that while correct, “in practice this may not be so simple. The soot created in this way would not be at all the same as the soot normally used for inks unless the person who burned the papyrus was exceedingly careful to follow a procedure similar to or related to the processes used by the ancients.”110 Moreover, the very early (unreliable?) 14C dating is problematic since it requires hypothesizing either that a scribe already in antiquity acquired a centuries-old papyrus to inscribe or that a forger acquired and inscribed it in modernity; both of these hypotheses have difficulties. Further testing that indicates a date for the GJW papyrus within the seventh to eighth centuries resolves these difficulties.

Shadows on the relatively low-resolution photographs that were initially published seemed to indicate ink on the lower layers of the recto fibers and led to speculation that a forger inscribed the ancient papyrus after it was damaged. Microscopic examination disconfirms this suggestion.

Papyrologists agree that the clumsiness of the script indicates an unprofessional, inexperienced hand but differ in their evaluation of whether it is due to the elementary educational level of an ancient writer or a forger’s inexperience writing on papyrus. They also noted the small “tails” on some letters that may indicate an anachronistic use of a brush rather than a pen, but Choat finds this point inconclusive. Bagnall suggests a poor pen may be a factor.

The initial estimation of a fourth-century C.E. date for the extant manuscript of GJW was based on paleography, but this method has significant limitations given the current state of the field.111 A later date is indicated by the age of the papyrus.

The tiny fragment contains two rare grammatical features, which can be accounted for as 1) unusual but not unknown syntactic features, 2) scribal errors, 3) indications of a forger with a poor knowledge of Coptic, or 4) copying from the November, 2002 online, interlinear version of the Gos. Thom. 50:1 by Grondin, which erroneously omits the ⲙ̄¸ before ⲡⲱⲛϩ.112 The fact that, even if these rarities are regarded as grammatical mistakes, they are attested in ancient Coptic manuscripts (i.e., they are the kind of errors that native speakers make) tends to persuade me against option three. 113 This point also makes option four less likely, and indeed this option has an additional difficulty in requiring proof that the statements and documentation provided by the owner are also false or forged.

Moreover, in my opinion, option four lacks any plausibility unless the hypothesis is proved correct that the content of GJW was composed by “cobbling together” extracts from modern editions of the Gospel of Thomas.114 This hypothesis is, however, highly problematic.115 The method used by forgery proponents to establish this compositional practice assumes forgery and then produces similarities between the two works (as they suggest a forger would) by locating parallels dispersed throughout Gos. Thom.Sometimes the parallel is only a single detached word or a grammatical form. The method also requires positing hypothetical editorial changes or grammatical errors by the forger or by emending the text of GJW to account for differences from Gos. Thom.116 It should be noted that while the proposed parallels are largely made up of very common vocabulary, the fragment’s two most distinctive or unusual terms (ⲧⲁϩⲓⲙⲉ and ϣⲁϥⲉ) have no parallels in Gos. Thom. As Peppard and Paananen have pointed out, such a method cannot distinguish between “authentic and fake” passages nor even show direct literary dependence.117

The results, therefore, are not evidence for forgery, but at best might be one way of accounting for the text if forgery were to be established by other methods. More to the point, the GJW fragment can easily be accounted for by the ancient compositional practices used by all early Christian literature (including ancient forgeries). These ancient practices are characterized by a lack of fixity as well as continuity; they include memory and oral composition, performance, and transmission, as well as excerpting and “editing.”118 The relation among the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) is a well-known example combining literary dependence with redactional change to produce theologically distinctive dialogues and narratives, such as forgery proponents suggest for GJW’s relation to Gos. Thom. One does not, however, have to posit modern forgery to account for GJW’s literary dependence upon Gos. Thom. (or other comparands), since that would have been possible in antiquity as well. Moreover, GJW fits well generically among gospel literature composed and circulated in the early centuries of Christianity.

The interpretive contextualizations offered by forgery proponents have variously pointed toward contemporary debates over whether Jesus was married or over ecclesiastical leadership, as well as the portrait of Mary Magdalene in popular media and fiction, and (alleged) modern hoaxes.119 If the fragment concerns the discipleship of wives and mothers, however, these are mostly irrelevant as well as unsubstantiated.

Rather, scholarship on ancient Christianity has established significant and widespread attention by Christians in the first to sixth centuries C.E. to issues of marriage and reproduction, virginity and celibacy, sexual desire and sin, family and discipleship, and Jesus’s marital status. These form a demonstrable ancient historical context for the GJW fragment, even though the claim that Jesus had a human wife is rare, if not unique.

The lack of information regarding the provenance of the discovery is unfortunate since, when known, such information is extremely pertinent. Given that the provenance of the discovery of small Coptic papyrus fragments is frequently unknown, however, the lack is neither unusual nor decisive for the question of dating. While we can wish for strong evidence, such as an inscribed date or provenance established by professional archaeological excavation, arguments from silence based on these deficiencies are not determinative of the question one way or the other.

On the basis of the criteria considered above and the research done to date, where does the weight of evidence fall in considering the date of the GJW fragment? On the side of a date in antiquity, all the evidence can be marshaled: the placement of the ink, its chemical composition, the age of the papyrus, and patterns of aging and damage support ancient fabrication and inscription. The inexperienced handwriting and linguistic features fit a poorly trained scribe (with a poor pen?) who is a native speaker. The genre and literary comparands (including the Gospel of Thomas) are a fit for ancient Christianity, as are the topics of discussion. On the side of a date in modernity, the gravest difficulty for me lies in explaining how a forger incompetent in Coptic language with poor scribal skills (perhaps even anachronistically using a brush) was yet so highly skilled as to secure ancient papyrus, make ink with an ancient technique, leave no ink traces out of place at the microscopic level, achieve patterns of differential aging, fabricate a paper trail of modern supporting documents, and provide a good fit for an ancient historical context—one that no serious scholar considers to be evidence of the historical Jesus’s marital status. In my judgment such a combination of bumbling and sophistication seems extremely unlikely. Further research or the development of new methods may offer determinative evidence, but for now, I would judge the weight of evidence to fall on the side of dating the GJW as a material artifact to antiquity, probably the seventh to eighth centuries C.E.
Was King right or wrong? I think King was wrong. King now thinks King was wrong. At the time, though, there was no definitive proof either way, even though people did claim definitive proof of forgery very early on.

King did have a deficit of knowledge about the nature of the modern forger and their capabilities, which led to an incorrect conclusion about the plausibility of a forger that had access to everything but a world-class command of the ancient Coptic language (something that is rare even among historians and NT scholars). But coming to the wrong conclusion is not a moral failing. The standards of scholarship are to provide a thorough review of all the evidence. King provided that in the article, interacting with all of the most powerful arguments for forgery that had been put forward.

As I said, even at the time of publication, the mood among scholars was very sour on the fragment. Most were already very satisfied with themselves for spotting the fake right away. Publishing a different view took some amount of courage. Developing that view as the discussion unfolded further shows integrity.

Taking pot shots likes this over five years later shows neither courage nor integrity.
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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The Harvard Theological Review made this statment:
Harvard Theological Review has scrupulously and consistently avoided committing itself on the issue of the authenticity of the papyrus fragment. HTR is a peer-reviewed journal. Acceptance of an essay for publication means that it has successfully passed through the review process. It does not mean that the journal agrees with the claims of the paper. In the same issue (HTR 107:2, April 2014) in which HTR published Professor Karen King’s article and the articles on the testing that were represented or misrepresented in some circles as establishing the authenticity of the fragment, it also published a substantial article by Professor Leo Depuydt arguing that it was a crude forgery. Given that HTR has never endorsed a position on the issue, it has no need to issue a response.
I have attached Leo Depuydt's article from the same issue of HTR.
Attachments
HTR2014GospeloftheWifeofJesus.pdf
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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Prior to the publication, the HTR conditioned publishing on an analysis of the physical manuscript (ink, carbon-dating, etc.) being completed:

https://religionnews.com/2012/09/26/har ... -rejected/
There's a rumor circulating the Internets about Harvard Theological Review rejecting Karen King's research paper on the “Gospel of Jesus' Wife.”

Not so, says Harvard Divinity School spokesman Jonathan Beasley.

In an email this morning, Beasley told me:

“Dr. King’s `marriage fragment' paper, which Harvard Theological Review is planning to publish in its January, 2013, edition – if testing of the ink and other aspects of the fragment are completed in time – will include her responses to the vigorous and appropriate academic debate engendered by discovery of the fragment, as well as her report on the ink analysis, and further examination of the fragment.”

Stayed tuned here for accurate news as this story develops.
This is clearly different from conditioning publication on the fragment being "authentic." A debate was already underway and was completely expected to continue, due to the fact that the physical tests could only ever falsify a hypothesis of authenticity... they could never prove it.
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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Here is Larry Hurtado hoping for something from King or HTR to clarify what their findings are so far:

https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013 ... happening/
Last year, from September onward, newspapers and the blogosphere were rippling with references to an putative fragment of an ancient Christian text in Coptic in which there appeared to be a reference to a wife of Jesus. All through last Autumn scholarly queries about it were fast and thick, with a growing chorus expressing either suspicions about its authenticity or outright declaring it to be a fake.

It was to be the focus of an article reported to be forthcoming in the prestigious journal, Harvard Theological Review, but by this time last year this had been put on hold to allow physical tests of the fragment. To date, no such article has appeared, and from a trawl through web sites this afternoon, I find nothing further of any substance.

So, honest question: What happened to the fragment, the article, and the claims involved? Surely, it doesn’t take 11 months to do the testing in question. Were the tests conducted? If so, results? Where do we stand. It’s not acceptable for something like this to go into silence without explanation. Can we hear from Prof. Karen King? Anyone (who actually knows something)?
And here is Larry Hurtado's reaction to the publications:

https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014 ... -fragment/
I’ve just learned that the long-awaited reports on further analysis and scientific testing of the sensationalized “Jesus’ Wife” fragment (Coptic) have been published in the latest issue of Harvard Theological Review. The link is here, which will take you to the Harvard Divinity School site, and from there you’ll see a link to the HTR issue in question.

Included is the feature article by Karen King, a palaeographical analysis by Malcolm Choat, a characterization of the ink of the fragment by James T. Yardley and Alexis Hagadorn, articles on the application of mass-spectrometry to the item, a ringing judgement (by Leo Depuydt) that the fragment is a forgery, followed by a point-by-point response by Karen King defending the authenticity of the item.

Let’s see now where the scholarly discussion goes. At last, we have something of substance to discuss!
Later the same day, he comments further:

https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014 ... -thoughts/
From an initial (and rapid) reading of the articles in the latest issue of Harvard Theological Review about the “Jesus’ Wife” fragment, I’ll offer the following preliminary thoughts. (I had planned to pursue another project today, but an email early this a.m. alerting me to the HTR publications drew my attention to this “breaking” story.)

First, I’ll speak to Malcolm Choat’s preliminary observations about the fragment from a papyrological and palaeographical perspective. (Choat is a recognized figure in these matters, with special expertise in things Coptic.) I note that essentially Choat concludes that he wasn’t able to find “a smoking gun,” i.e., some clear indication of inauthenticity. I was particularly impressed with his note that there didn’t appear to be any ink-traces on the part(s) of the fragment that seem to have suffered damage. So, either the damage happened after the text was written, or else a supposed forger damaged the item after writing the text. I’d guess, personally, that the latter is somewhat less likely, but that’s a guess.

Choat also notes the curious nature of the hand and the way the ink was applied to the item. He judges the hand to be that of a copyist of very limited abilities (noting, e.g., the irregularities in letter-formation), and that the writer seems to have used a brush (anomalous for the putative period in question) or (as Bagnall suggested) a poorly trimmed reed-pen. As King now grants, the nature of the hand (and other factors) make it unlikely that the fragment comes from a codex and unlikely that the text functioned as a “gospel” liturgically. Instead, as she notes, it may be some kind of school exercise or perhaps even some kind of amulet-type item. So, can we all please desist from references to a “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”? There is no reason to suppose that the fragment comes from any such text. We have a “Jesus’ Wife” fragment. Let’s stay with what we have/know.

As for the scientific tests, those on the ink produced results consistent with the item being old, not modern. The two radio-carbon tests, however, are both a bit puzzling and interesting. The proposed dates of the two tests are out from each other by several hundred years. The one report (by Hodgins) notes the curious date-result (405-350 BCE and/or 307-209 BCE), about a thousand years earlier than the date from the other carbon-dating test (659-969 CE), and Hodgins suggests some kind of contamination of the sample. But I’d assume that a contamination would come from something later than the ancient setting, and so skew the date later, not earlier. I’ll need some help with this!

To come to Prof. King’s article (the main piece in the issue), I think she takes a careful line, seeking to defend her view that the item on balance seems authentic, but trying to take account of data that require some modification of her earlier judgements, and granting in the end that complete certainty is not possible. Prominent in the modifications of her earlier view is the intriguing statement in the appended note at the end of the article that the carbon-dating (taking the dating by Tuross) now seems to demand a date sometime in the 8th century CE (not the 4th/5th century CE dating in her earlier paper). As she notes, this takes us well into the Islamic period of Egypt, and so raises the question of whether, in fact, the fragment might reflect in some way the influence of Islamic ideas about Jesus.

Certainly, as Prof. King has rather consistently emphasized all along, whatever the date and provenance of the item, it has absolutely no significance whatsoever for “historical Jesus” studies. Contrary to some of the sensationalized news stories, that is, the fragment has no import for the question of whether Jesus was married.

Instead, she continues to propose that the fragment may reflect tensions and questions about marriage, celibacy, child-bearing, and gender that emerged in early Christianity in the early centuries (indeed, to judge from NT texts such as 1 Tim. 4:1-5; and even 1 Cor 7:1-7, questions of this nature emerged quite early). But, to repeat a point, the revised date for the papyrus (mid-8th century CE) introduces other factors to consider as well.

As to her suggestion that the Coptic text of the fragment might derive from a Greek original and that the latter might go back to the 2nd century, that (to my mind) cannot be taken as more than a possibility, and is certainly not required to account for the text.

Well, so much for now. I’ll be keen to see what other scholars now make of the matter.
Notice a few things about this:

(1) Dr. Hurtado was looking forward to seeing a publication that would lay out the relevant information.
(2) Dr. Hurtado was clearly happy to see the publication happen: "Let’s see now where the scholarly discussion goes. At last, we have something of substance to discuss!" And his framing of the publication is the same as that offered by King and the HTR: starting a scholarly discussion.
(3) Dr. Hurtado doesn't yet know that the item is a modern forgery. That's mostly just because confidence is not the same thing as certain knowledge. Many people were immediately 100% confident of forgery, but that is not the same thing of there truly being 100% certainty of forgery.
(4) Obviously, these publications advanced the discussion. They're cited by others, who needed something substantial to start from, to make their arguments for forgery. Just as King needed to take into account the arguments for forgery, others who would publish later needed to know all the relevant facts and any other arguments that could be made. It's much preferable for these arguments and facts to be entered into journal articles, instead of having a perspective limited to ephemeral, malleable, unofficial non-journal outlets.

Link rot is a serious problem: for example, for articles written in the 1990s, it's not uncommon for 75% of links to be broken. The same thing can easily happen for the whole debate that took place in the blogs over the fragment in the last decade. Of course I've seen this first-hand by running the ECW website for the last twenty years. Publication in traditional venues is one of our best defenses against loss, promoting the preservation of knowledge.
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Re: on Harvard Theological Review's failure to retract

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A 2013 article focused on this artifact to underline the importance of publication for rooting out forgeries, in opposition to a well-intended but flawed policy prohibiting publication:

https://www.asor.org/blog/2013/04/02/th ... -of-power/
For generations, academic journals have been deemed the appropriate venue for the initial publication of ancient inscriptions and artifacts. Nevertheless, last fall, the New York Times became the source of an editio princeps when it announced the discovery of a “faded papyrus fragment” that seemed to be “first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of [his] wife.” The Times reporter had not gained access to the fragment through a dogged effort of investigative journalism or a lucky find on the black market. Rather, Karen L. King, a prolific scholar of early Christianity at the Harvard Divinity School (HDS), had shared the discovery in an interview with the Times, the Boston Globe, andHarvard Magazine. Prof. King provocatively described the fragment as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.”

Popular media immediately presented a panoply of opinions by respected papyrologists, Coptic linguists, Christian theologians, and laypeople. The Vatican weighed in with both an editorial and an article in L’Osservatore Romano, the former declaring the papyrus a fakeand the latter by Coptic scholar, Alberto Camplani, expressing a more guarded opinion based upon the lack of provenance.

Prof. King moved forward. She continued her work with a series of specialists who undertook the examination of the fragment using techniques ranging from linguistics and paleography to chemical analysis. The circumstances of the papyrus’s discovery are unknown and the earliest academic awareness of the fragment dates to 1982. Nevertheless, on the basis of initial analyses, Prof. King preliminarily concluded that the papyrus likely dates to the fourth century and posited its initial composition in the second half of the second century.

Shortly before giving her interview, Prof. King had submitted an article on the fragment to the Harvard Theological Review (HTR) whose own reviewers provided important observations and whose editors accepted her article subject to the conclusion of various chemical analyses. In January 2013, HTR announced that the publication would be delayeduntil those tests were complete. In the interim, Prof. King has published the draft of her article on the HDS website.

The Coptic fragment controversy stands in stark contrast to an established scholarly norm. In 1970, UNESCO adopted a convention designed to discourage illicit import, export, and transfer of ownership of cultural property including illicit or forged antiquities and items of cultural patrimony. The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the International Council of Museums (ICOM) adopted similar resolutions in 1973 and 1974. Some governments and scholarly societies followed. ASOR’s publication policy states: “ASOR members should not participate, directly or indirectly, in the buying and selling of artifacts illegally excavated or exported from the country of origin after 1970.” Further, “ASOR publications and its annual meeting will not be used for presentations of such illicit material.”

These well-intentioned policies seek to discourage looting, forgery, and financial gain from such objects by denying the prestige and concomitant rise in value that scholarly publications bestow. Scholarly societies understandably presume that their most potent deterrent is their refusal to publish inscriptions or artifacts lacking provenience (archaeological location) and provenance (chain of custody after the modern rediscovery). Using the date of UNESCO’s 1970 policy as a terminus, they exclude materials not found in situ after that date. However, a large loophole exists in this policy. The prohibition does not apply once an unprovenanced object has been published elsewhere. Thus, preventative measures can be circumvented simply by first publishing in a journal that does not reject unprovenanced objects.

Picture of Eleazar Sukenik with one of the Dead Sea scrolls, 1951 National Library of Israel, Schwadron collection. Department of Archaeology, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

While the intent of this policy is laudable, such a blanket procedure excludes authentic antiquities that can inform history. The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered by chance in 1947. Seven of them, some complete, came into the hands of antiquities dealers who offered them to scholars. Hebrew University Professor E. L. Sukenik not only recognized their antiquity but succeeded in acquiring three of the scrolls. Subsequently, the Israeli government acquired the other four. In the 1950s under the leadership of the Biblical scholar Father Roland DeVaux, scholars began to excavate the cave where the first scrolls were found as well as the 40 other caves near Qumran. Eleven of these caves yielded scrolls and tens of thousands of fragments were discovered. Even some of these materials were eventually made available through dealers of antiquities and had to be purchased by scholars.

Were the procedures and policies of UNESCO, ICOM, AIA, and ASOR universally in place in all scholarly journals at the time of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, many of them would not have seen the light of academic publication due to the circumstances by which they were acquired from antiquities dealers. Not all journals follow these strictures including Israel Exploration Journal, Journal of Biblical Literature, and Biblica. These journals have carefully conceived standards, but they are not as legalistic as BASOR’s.

Like other archaeological associations, ASOR has striven to address this dilemma. Through committees and standing sessions on cultural heritage, site preservation, and the ethics of research, scholars have discussed and debated these issues. The 2013 ASOR Annual Meeting includes a session on “Ethical Case Studies for Objects of Unknown Origin.” The organizers of this session originally sought to solicit “proposals based on studies in which objects of unknown origin are essential to the success of the research.” However, due to the ASOR Policy on the Preservation and Protection of Archaeological Resources, the organizers agreed to omit a direct call to concentrate on such objects.

Clearly, the issue has reached a tipping point. Denial of publication lacks efficacy. Scholars like Prof. King are bringing potentially important finds into the scholarly arena, undeterred by such protocols. Prof. King is no rebel. As Hollis Professor of Divinity, she is the occupant of the oldest endowed chair in the United States.

The Coptic papyrus she studies illustrates key problems:

The Forgery Conundrum. Though the exhaustive analyses of the fragment suggests that the Coptic papyrus is not a forgery, the meticulous examinations that Prof. King and her colleagues have undertaken acknowledge the sophistication that contemporary forgers have reached and the concomitant need to use all available science to confirm or eliminate the possibility of a counterfeit.
The Unintended Consequences of Publication. Scholarly publication can enhance the value of illicit finds and thus encourage looting and forging.
The Dilemma of Denial. By refusing publication to artifacts lacking provenance, potentially revolutionary finds are denied the rigorous trial that scholarly debate provides. Historians are thus deprived of the opportunity to incorporate such finds, if deemed authentic by scholarly consensus, into the historical record.

Changes in the policy of non-publication of artifacts without provenience or provenance must come, but with conditions. In particular, those who seek publication must register the artifacts in an accessible database. Data on each artifact placed in the database would minimally include:

all available information concerning the provenance of the item including transcriptions of remarks by finders, owners, sellers, and dealers as well as scholars who have previously examined the artifact;
photographs of each artifact or epigraph according to established technical specifications;
a precise description and preliminary dating of the artifact according to established typologies and methods; and
permission to conduct laboratory analyses designed to root out forgery

Such a quid pro quo would facilitate research, encourage scholarly debate, and hopefully begin the process of eliminating the scourge of forged inscriptions that threatens to undermine history itself.

Strengthening the power of scholarly publication is but a first step. A more comprehensive solution to these vexing issues is critical. Without effective action, the world’s heritage will fall prey to cultural poachers and the primary witnesses of the past will continue to disappear with every passing day.
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