'Dead Sea Scrolls' at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries
WASHINGTON, D.C.On the fourth floor of the Museum of the Bible, a sweeping permanent exhibit tells the story of how the ancient scripture became the world’s most popular book. A warmly lit sanctum at the exhibit’s heart reveals some of the museum’s most prized possessions: fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient texts that include the oldest known surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible.
But now, the Washington, D.C. museum has confirmed a bitter truth about the fragments’ authenticity. On Friday, independent researchers funded by the Museum of the Bible announced that all 16 of the museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries that duped outside collectors, the museum’s founder, and some of the world’s leading biblical scholars. Officials unveiled the findings at an academic conference hosted by the museum.
[Following the infamous "First Century Mark" hoax this means that the Green family and their alter ego, the Museum of the Bible, have zero credibility on the subject of the history of the Bible.]
Thank you for your replies !
To be clear: this is the fragments and pieces that entered the antiquities market post 2000. The authenticity was questioned from their emergence. There is no indication that the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls are forgeries.
Still funny.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 1950s by Israelis but finally published and released to the world in 1991. This release apparently caused a huge amount of controversy in the 1990s. See this article from 1992:
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/19/us/open-dead-sea-scrolls-stir-up-new-disputes.html
The article says the scrolls are "potentially upsetting," "raising a furor," "rattling shutters," and quotes academics saying "we're in a new era," and "it's reinventing the wheel," etc.
For a layman in 2018, the Scrolls just seem like an academic footnote that didn't change anything about modern-day religious beliefs. Were these documents really so controversial back then? Why? Or is this a case of the media sensationalizing something that wasn't really a big deal?
So I found this "The spelling pattern of this scroll is much different (and later) than the MT of Daniel. Perhaps this is an argument against a late date (Maccabean era) for the writing of Daniel, since it seems unlikely that spelling patterns would change so much in a short time period." at the end of the 4Q116 Daniel section of this:http://dssenglishbible.com/daniel%209.htm. I can't make heads or tails of it.
When I Googled 4Q116 Daniel I got a quaint archived conversation on the dating of Daniel in this subreddit!
I was so salty
I reached back to listen to old episodes from the Harmontown archives - at the beginning of the 2012-07-04 episodes Dan mentions that they've been rolling for about a year already. What happened to the Dead Sea Scroll eps from late 2011/early 2012? Are they lost to the sands of time?
