An Oxford Professor, a Hobby Lobby Collector, and a Missing Gospel of Mark - The Atlantic

A famous scholar claimed that he had discovered a first century gospel fragment. Now he is facing charges of antiquities theft, cover-up and fraud.

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Since February 1, 2012, the auditorium of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been packed with more than 1,000 people. This event was a showdown between two scholars on an explosive question in the study of the Bible: Is the original text of the New Testament lost? Or does the Bible today contain the true word "autographed" by the earliest chronicler of Jesus?

On the one hand, UNC professor and atheist Bart Ehrman (Bart Ehrman), whose best-selling book argues that the oldest copy of the Christian Bible is so inconsistent and incomplete (in small numbers) that the original words cannot be recovered. The other is Daniel Wallace, a conservative scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary, who believes that careful text analysis can reveal the inspiration for the first draft of the New Testament.

They had debated twice before, but this time Wallace had a secret weapon: at the end of his opening speech,

Papyrus from the first century.

When news entered the field of Bible studies, it was a blockbuster. Papyrus is the only known Christian manuscript in the century when Jesus is said to have lived. Moreover, its scriptures are very consistent with those in the modern bible, which proves the reliability of the New Testament and condemns liberal scholars, who believe that this good book is not given by God, but for generations. It’s a mess of generations, easy to invent and modify. , Pranks and mistakes.

Wallace refused to disclose the name of the papyrus expert that dates back to the first century, "I swear to keep it secret," but assured the audience that his "reputation is immeasurable." Many people think he is the best papyrus on the planet. Wallace added that the clip will appear in a book next year.

Although he did not mention it on stage, Wallace recently joined an organization called the "Green Scholars Initiative." The project is funded by the Green family of evangelical billionaires who own the Hobby Lobby handicraft chain. It allows carefully selected scholars to visit the thousands of artifacts that the family has collected for them.

, A soaring $500 million exhibition hall that will open near the National Mall in Washington, DC in a few years

Wallace's connection with the Green Party makes it easy for observers to connect ideas: The Mark Papyrus must be one of the manuscripts the Green Party bought for their museum. The papyrus who formulated the first century must be the world-famous classicist Dirk Obbink. As we all know, the Green Party hired him as a consultant when buying cultural relics frantically.

His enlistment was a coup. Obbink is a tall Nebraska native. The mop has sandy hair. In 2001, the MacArthur Foundation awarded him in his 40s.

. After the eruption of Vesuvius, he reassembled the technique of carbonized papyrus rolls.

.

. 79 is a feat of three-dimensional puzzle solutions.

Obbink is sought after by universities and cultural institutions all over the world. He taught at Columbia University in 1995 and then left Oxford, where it is the largest collection of ancient manuscripts in the world: half of it is papyrus excavated by a pair of young Oxford scholars. Egypt as early as a century ago. Obbink's position as the editor-in-chief of the series (sometimes officially referred to as "director", although sometimes the official name is not), made him one of the most influential figures in the field. Wallace did not exaggerate his qualifications.

However, with the advent of the Phantom manuscript, there has been no news of this "first century mark" for many years. There were no books in 2013 and no exhibitions when the museum opened in 2017. Wallace's blog is filled with hundreds of comments. Readers complained: "It's been five years." "Hurry up!" One person simply quoted from "Proverbs": "Delayed expectations will make the heart sick."

However, in 2018, when Obbink finally released the clip, it made some people's hearts more disgusting. The Green Party will see their dream of the first century gospel shattered. Oxford University will report this news in a labyrinth case involving antiquities theft, cover-up and fraud. One of the most prominent figures in classical literature, despite protesting his innocence, found himself at the center of transatlantic investigations.

He has been buying diamonds since his childhood in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 2002, the second year he won the MacArthur Award, his mother Dorithy told

A magazine said that when she was a child, her son had haunted thrift stores and the town’s garbage dump, and brought home a “pile of rubbish”. His fascination with other people's trash continued into his years in New York, where he dived with his daughter's trash can.

The herbalism that summoned him may not be surprising. Papyrus is paper of the ancient world, a disposable medium made from reeds harvested along the Nile River. Its 1,000-year heyday as a writing surface coincides with the Greco-Roman era, the decline of pharaohs, the birth of Christianity, and the arrival of Islam. Obbink teaches students how to dig out brown pieces similar to jigsaw puzzles for lost works of Greek literature and philosophy.

No collection can match the work that Obbink supervises at the Sackler Library in Oxford.

Named after the lost Egyptian city, the city was excavated from an ancient garbage dump and contained the forgotten works of Sophocles, Menander and Sappho; love spells and horoscopes; early gospels from the Hebrew Bible And Greek translation. Decrypting the text is very laborious and the supervision is so strict that only one percent of the fragments have been published since the fragment was discovered. A friend of New York University classicist David Sider told me that as a decoder of tattered manuscripts, Obink is an "absolute master."

When he got the students' attention, they found him fascinated. But Obinke is often as difficult to understand as the text he puts under a microscope. Although it looks like a boy-a helmet with bangs in the middle is an open face-Obbink has a woody air and a monotonous voice, which makes some people feel "cold" or like a former student. As said, "the opposite of charm". Another student said that he "never was there."

West Germany learned not to ask personal questions. Said told me: "He starts to become vague, otherwise his eyes will start to look elsewhere." A friend told the story of Obbink when he was a graduate student at Stanford University and his wife at the time Back in their small apartment, they found the grand piano monopolizing the living room. A former colleague recalled: "She said to him,'Oh, I don't know you played it.' "He said,'Well, you never asked. '"

There are also surprises at work. In 2003, after working at Oxford University for eight years, Obingbink was hired by the University of Michigan as a tenured full-time professor, engaged in powdery disease research, with an annual salary of $105,000. Despite his high qualifications, this proposal is largely to keep his newlywed wife (a famous teacher) in school. The couple has a child, and the management sympathizes with the pressure of a long-distance marriage on the family.

A few years later, a Michigan classicist named Ruth Scodel read these courses carefully while studying Greek poetry at Oxford University. Her teacher was a man, and she thought she went downstairs in Ann Arbor. "I went,

Scodel recalled.

Although Michigan has been doing its best to help his family, the revelation that he never stopped teaching at Oxford eroded his decades-long friendship with Richard Janko, Richard Janko ( Richard Janko was the head of the Michigan Classics Department when he hired Obinke. "It shook my confidence in his role," Janko told me. (Obinck’s lawyer said that both Oxford University and Michigan “know and have given clear contractual permission” for Obinck to double-appoint.)

On April 10, 2012, three weeks before he parted ways with the University of Michigan, Obinbink visited the Ann Arbor County clerk. He submitted a paperwork for the new business and listed its main address as Room 2151 at 435 South State Street, which is his office that will soon become the Michigan Classic Department. He wrote that the company's name is Oxford Ancient.

king

The Henry VIII Christ Church in 1546 is the most beautiful college that makes up the University of Oxford. The poet WH Auden, the philosopher John Locke and several British prime ministers were all educated on this castle-like land, part of which was used to commemorate Hogwarts.

the film.

One night in November 2011, two American evangelists walked up a flight of stairs in the four corners of the Gothic bell tower in the center of Christ Church. Since Scott Carroll and Jerry Pattengale were together, they have become friends at another Oxford University (a city in southwest Ohio). Received a doctorate in ancient history. Both have taught at Christian universities and provided advice to wealthy collectors, and Hobby Lobby Chairman Steve Green hired them to lay the knowledge base for the National Bible Museum.

Carroll is in charge of the acquisition. This position has played into his self-image, and is the commander called by God to recruit text from the most remote parts of the world. The ringtone of his phone is

. Promotional photo with caption

, Depicting him wearing shorts and a fedora hat, swinging with a rope in the jungle.

The grumpy Pattengale was appointed as the executive director of education. His job is to establish the Green Scholars Initiative, recruiting world-class scholars to guide the Green Party and invite students to study its rapidly growing collections.

That night, at the top of the stairs, Dirk Obbink opened a black door and let two people into his office, which was a room with a kitchen, a bathroom and a mummy Masks, they stare at the tourists from across the pool table. By then, he had been working on the Hobby Lobby payroll for about a year. For Carroll, he reviewed the manuscripts of dealers all over the world vying to sell to the Green Party. For Pattengale, he will teach acne studies to Green Scholars at the summer seminar.

They spent an hour discussing Obbink's latest work. Then, when Carroll and Pattengale left standing, Obbink called them, as if stopped by a wandering thought. "Well, wait," he said. "I'm here for things that might be of interest to you." He sorted behind the pool table and opened a Manila folder.

Inside is a plastic bag with four ancient works of the New Testament Gospels. Obbink compiled a fragment of Mark, that is, a small axe-shaped papyrus with verses from the first chapter of the Gospel for visitors to read. He explained that the shapes and strokes of certain letters are signs of handwriting in the first century. Obbink described the clip as part of the "family collection" and, according to Carroll, "provided it for consideration" for purchase by Hobby Lobby.

Pattengale felt paralyzed for a while, and Carroll was staggering in the room, unconscious. So far, everything they have done seems suddenly pale.

The next day, when Pattengale flew back to Indiana, "I told my wife Cindy, "If it proves that this is the history of the first century, I might be involved in studying the most important part of the Bible."

When he entered the antiquities market in 2009, he was aggressive. He is an aggressive first-time homebuyer. During the global recession, thousands of people started to burn. Strangers with ancient scrolls, oil lamps, and incunabula approach museum officials without restrictions in restaurants, university lecture halls and even supermarkets.

A possible seller claimed to have a 5,000-year-old Bible that has been completely preserved on the ice on the top of Mount Ararat. Another person took a box of manuscripts to the parking lot of a great steak house near the Hobby Hall headquarters in Oklahoma City. When Carroll rejected him, the dealer put the box on the trunk of Carroll's car and rushed over and shouted: "You will like it. Call me!"

Over the past five years, Green has acquired more than 40,000 artifacts from cuneiform tablets and the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Jewish Torah and the Early American Bible. But he is not indifferent. Green once said: "We are the buyers of story-telling articles." The Christian story he wanted to tell is that the Bible is a "absolutely authoritative and reliable" God-given record.

The Greens don’t want another creation museum or Noah’s Ark theme park. They envisioned a "Christian Smithsonian" as scholars Candida Moss and Joel Baden described it in their book.

-A well-designed and serious-minded organization that records the Bible as a historical manuscript with far-reaching influence.

But secular scholars are skeptical.

Some critics believe that the Bible Museum is nothing more than a costumed version of the Bible.

The Green Party invested their wealth in a ministry, except for the name, all designated the "New Testament" as an unfiltered word for God and the United States as a Protestant country. Its critics believe that the Green Party is too invested in a particular set of religious beliefs, so that it relentlessly presents many texts and traditions of the Bible.

Obink is part of the museum's response to such criticism. He is such a tall scholar that the Green Party can refute allegations of religious prejudice with his participation alone. In Carroll's words, he is "a man without any agenda." When it comes to papyrus (the main text surface at the beginning of Christianity), the Greens might point out that Obingbin is an impartial arbiter. , He can tell honest brokers from experts and find many things in fakes.

According to friends, Obinke did not show obvious religious beliefs. He also doesn't have much patience for those who distort judgment because of their beliefs. "People try to date before [Oxyrhynchus papyri] because they want Christianity to date before reality," Obbink told New Zealand magazines in 2005.

But something happened in front of his new customer. He sniffed the Green Party’s desires and wrote to Scott Carroll in January 2010. He looked forward to "the flourishing of your commendable cause." As his new Like the donor, he closed the e-mail and signed a "blessing". A devout former museum official said that he bowed his head and prayed before the meal in a "dramatic" manner. Even among evangelicals, he was "the most pious person on the table."

A few months after meeting in Christ Church, Obink invited Pattengale to London to show him a batch of papyrus for sale. These people are only a few steps away from Sotheby's (where Pattengale thinks they are going), when Obinck rejected a narrow alley and walked to a chaotic apartment with a Turk in his 30s. The latter took the door with the Yankees jersey.

Pattengale later learned that the businessman named Yakup Eksioglu was suspected by scholars who illegally trafficked papyrus. Eksioglu started using a series of usernames to sell antiquities on eBay in 2008, when social media accounts placed him in Egypt. When Italian papyrus scientist Roberta Mazza roasted Eksioglu's source of debris to pieces in 2017, Eksioglu threatened her. He wrote in a WhatsApp chat later sent to me: “Always look behind you when you walk.” He mentioned an attack in Europe where acid was spilled on the face of the attacker. (Eksioglu said that his antiquities business is completely legal. If the threat to Mazza comes from his phone call, then the threat may be made by some students he knows, called "humor.")

Eksioglu was talking on the cell phone behind the beaded curtain, and Obbink showed Pattengale a fragment that the Coptic purchased from the First Corinthians in the sixth century. Eksioglu wanted to buy it for one million dollars. Pattengale told me that almost as strange as the meeting set-up, Obbink was eager to buy from the Green Party: "Soon, he contacted me to see if we were moving forward and wondering why we didn’t do it, and couldn’t believe we were not. ."

In the fall of 2010, when he received a voice mail, he was in his office at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The caller was a guy named Scott Carroll, and he asked Fish and his students if they wanted to learn papyrus from the Green Collection.

Fish has never heard of Carroll or Greens, let alone any new unresearched manuscripts. If Carroll hadn't named Dirk Obbink, he might be pranking and write down his whole thing.

Fish respects Oxford University professors not only for his scholarship, but also for his role in Fish's own career. Fish found a decline in his doctoral thesis at the University of Texas in the 1990s, when Obbink and him took a summer papyrus course at Oxford University, which brought him to a new topic , And opened the door to the tightly protected Italian papyrus.

It's unbelievable that someone with Obbink's prestige might become a partner with a scholar that Fish has never heard of. Fish wrote to his old mentor to see if it was true.

"If we could work with Scott Carroll, it would be great," Obink replied. "I strongly recommend him to you."

Although Fish doesn't know

Has signed a contract to become the location of the "Green Scholar Initiative". Baylor’s managers knew nothing about Carroll-the Green Collection brought excitement to the students-they provided him with an annual stipend of $100,000 and the title "Research Professor", even though he did not teach any courses, and No research reports have been published.

As one insider said, Carroll has beaten many Baylor professors, making them less knowledgeable than acting masters. He showed up a suitcase full of antiquities and passed them to the surprised professor and students. But nothing is more impressive than the amazing performance he will give in the classic department lounge.

In the time of the Pharaohs, the mummy’s body was fitted with a mask, made of paper pulp, which is a kind of pulp made of stucco, linen and discarded papyrus. Archaeologists in the nineteenth century discovered that it was possible to extract papyrus from the mask by dissolving the plaster and then carefully peeling the tissue paper.

This technique called "disassembly" is clever. But since the ancients were made from waste papyrus (receipts, notes and other temporary objects), there are few major literary discoveries. The probability of discovery by Christians is almost zero: Egyptians stopped using papyrus in mummified masks before the time of Jesus. By the 1960s, due to the lack of moral methods and poor results, the practice of dissipating the death mask of another culture was almost abandoned when there was almost no chance to find the manuscript.

However, Scott Carroll disguised himself as a modern master. Where others found dripping water, he found gold. He once said to the audience at the seminary: "Everything must be done right, including water temperature, drying technology, and the details of "enzyme action." "I dare someone try to do it by themselves, because if they don't know the process, they will waste hundreds of thousands. Dollar. "

On January 16, 2012, Carroll showed Baylor how it was done. He filled the sink in the classic lounge with warm water and Palmolive dish soap, soaked the mummy mask in the soapy water, and then began to wash around. Then he took out a wet fragment and presented it to the awed student.

"He said,'Wow, take a look now and see if you can read it,'"" Medieval Bible scholar David Lyle Jeffrey, a former headmaster of Baylor diocese, recalled that he had helped Manage the relationship between the school and the Green Party. The fragment proved to be a letter from Paul to the Romans. "The children were all signed:'Wow! Wow! "This is the kind of Eureka moment that any professor hopes to inspire college students.

Jeffrey may be the same floor, not because he noticed it when he first met in the classroom.

Before the presentation, Carroll carefully placed a piece of papyrus next to the sink, and Jeffrey glanced at it. When Carroll removed the wet Roman fragment from the mummy mask, Jeffrey realized that this was the piece he saw next to the sink. He realized that Carroll was just pretending to pull it out of the mask.

Two days later, the president of Hobby Lobby

Talking about the fragment of the Romans, he made it the oldest copy of Pauline's letters. Green said: "I discovered this in the past 48 hours." In fact, the sales records will be internally reviewed later, and Hobby Lobby purchased it from Dirk Obbink 18 months ago.

Although it is not yet public, Obink is not just an academic advisor to the Greens: Josephine Dru, the former papyrus curator of the Bible Museum, told me that he is one of their largest papyrus suppliers. . According to a person familiar with the matter, from January 2010 to February 2013, Oubink sold more than 150 pieces of papyrus to the family for a total price of between 4 million and 8 million US dollars. (Jeffrey Kloha, the chief curator of the Bible Museum, has no objection to this figure, but estimates that the total is close to the low end of the range.)

Scott Carroll may claim that Obinke "has no agenda," but in fact Obinke has several. He is a scholar, consultant and seller: the first is loyal to the truth, the second is loyal to the customer, and the third is loyal to himself.

WHO

He taught Greek poetry at Baylor and appeared in a mummy mask to eliminate academic interest in January instead of participating in departmental life. Lecturers like him show their faces well to tenured teachers, and they decide whether to renew their annual teaching contract.

Burris found a spot on a table where Carroll was drying the papyrus he had pulled from the sink, but soon felt his head spinning. Before him was a small fragment of Greek with the quartet in the popular dialect, which is the symbol of Sappho in the sixth century

. A poet from Lesbos, known for his passionate depictions of love. Sappho's work is scarce, so it is admired by classicists. Only one complete poem and fragments of other poems survived, many of which came from Occitus.

Burris soon discovered other fragments that were still soaked, with the same Sapphic markings. He searched for the surviving words through a search engine: they not only overlap with known Sappho poems, but are full of previously unknown words and sentences.

"I was terrified," Burris told me. "I think I have said a word or two-'holy' unless there is no

. He remembered Carol taking a look at him with a grin: "Oh, did you find anything?" The lounge became a standing room. Burris gave an impromptu speech on the poet's work. A professor cried.

Burris is a lecturer and has published relatively few papers. But he is here and deserves international headlines. For various reasons, he wanted to believe this.

But some feelings. The layout of these Sappho works allows even non-Sappho experts like him to find several in just a few minutes. (He will eventually find 20 of them.) He wants to know: Does Carroll somehow know what's in the mask before unwrapping it?

Later that day, Carroll wrote to the students: "I am currently in contact with our public relations company", hoping to make news about this. But there was no news release, and miraculously, Burris's discovery never leaked.

According to Jeffrey, two months later, Carroll told Baylor that if he wants to continue using the "Green Collection", he will need a larger salary. (Carroll said he never asked for a raise, and Jeffrey was really dissatisfied with how much Baylor had already paid him.)

The unpleasant request and his concerns about the mummy mask prompted Jeffrey to study Carol's resume. He discovered that the six books Carroll claimed to have written did not actually exist.

Carroll was expelled from Baylor and the Greens in May 2012, but they no longer needed him at that time. Both have begun to strengthen their ties with Oxford University professors, and the latter seems to be no different.

Obbink is indeed the opposite of Carroll: it is retained among professors at one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

However, in the ten years since Obbink won the genius award, some colleagues believe that he has lived up to his high expectations. Some people think he is too distracted, chasing every short-lived opportunity instead of pursuing the kind of single-minded research

, His works in 1996 made him rise to the highest echelon of classical academics. The MacArthur Foundation has noticed

2 should have been released in 2003. Seventeen years later, it has not yet been published.

He even worked hard to finish the article. In a crowded elevator at a classic conference, when an academic editor jokingly asked how many others were waiting for Obinke's work, half of his hands were raised.

As the years go by, Obink seems to want to monetize his work. This is a common practice in the scientific community, but it is rare in the humanities. In 2011, he co-founded a start-up company with Chinese entrepreneurs and the Oxford Seed Fund to design a desktop manuscript scanner. British business records showed that the company's funds were lost. (Patengale told me that the scanner boxes were stacked along the wall of Obbink's office and were not sold.) In 2012, Oxford Ancient came, and in 2014, a family called

, He co-founded with a Michigan man named Mahmoud Elder.

By 2013, the Museum of the Bible paid Obbink US$6,000 a month, twice the highest cost of other scholars in its scholarship initiative.

At events sponsored by the Green Party, Obinke sometimes wore a white lab coat and soaked wedges of mummified cartilage in soapy water. "He said,'This is what the scholars do,'" recalled Jeremiah Coogan, a student who had studied. "We are quite interested in'this is why you discovered the New Testament papyrus papyrus'"-just like other scholars, Coogan quickly recognized this line.

Obbink once kept hundreds of unsorted mummy masks from Oxford University in his room for university use because the school's storage space was short. But a long-time colleague told me that he had never seen Obinke dismount. "This kind of thing never happened in his university teaching."

It's not that Obinke has not considered it. In an interview with a German newspaper in 2005, he fantasized about the potential rewards of poetry and drama. However, as the newspaper reported, “experts no longer use this method.” Five years later, Obbink seemed to give up any restrictions: “Suitable for disassembly/dissolution,” he wrote in his sales document, which was Hobby Lobby in 2010. Bought a mask from him in

This is one of about 20 masks sold by Obinke green vegetables. A source who had seen these figures told me that in addition to the US$4 million to US$8 million he collected for papyrus, the whole family paid him US$1 million to US$2 million to purchase many other cultural relics. Among them is a medieval Latin manuscript entitled "On Stolen Things".

Headlines appear all over the world: Obink discovered a pair of breathtaking new poems from Sappho, a papyrus rescued from a mummy mask. "For a few months, it was just me and a girl named Sappho, and there was nothing between me and the text," Obink said on BBC Radio. "It's like sinking a ship on a desert island with Marilyn Monroe."

However, Obinke refused to disclose the owner of the papyrus or publish its provenance documents. in

Douglas Boin, a historian at St. Louis University, called Obbink's secret a "disturbing sound deafness" during the "catastrophic" robbery in the Middle East. The following year, Christie’s produced a 26-page booklet in which two "Sappho" poems were sold "through a private treaty". In this transaction, the auction house quietly approached potential buyers. Not a public auction.

Obbink finally tells a puzzling story about an anonymous London businessman who bought the horn onna at a Christie’s auction in 2011, dissolved it, and then brought the extracted papyrus to Obbink, the latter Two Sapphic poems were found. The merchant then puts on the market about 20 small scraps ("not easily identifiable...and considered insignificant") that were also pulled from the can maker. By accident, the broker sold them to the Green Collection, where Obink chose them as more sapphires.

Christian manuscript scholar Brent Nongbri has determined

The origin proposed by Obbink, Carroll or Bettany Hughes-the British Broadcasting Corporation, has featured Obbink in many of its TV and radio programs. None of these accounts include the details witnessed by a large group of people: in 2012, Simon Burris found smaller pieces of Sappho wood in the crowded classic department lounge at Baylor.

A source close to the Green People told me that some sapphire fragments "discovered" by Burris can be seen in the photo on December 7, 2011, more than a month before Carroll removed them from Baylor's soapy water . These images appeared in the papyrus invoice purchased by the Greens on January 7, 2012. The seller is Yakup Eksioglu.

In a WhatsApp chat in February of this year, Eksioglu told me that he was indeed the source of all Sappho clips-20 small clips "discovered" at Baylor, and a blockbuster with two new poems. He said that the claim that they came from Descartes purchased at Christie's auction in 2011 is a "false story." When I asked why some works looked like they were embedded in mayonnaise in the photo, he suggested that they be staged: "This is a very simple method that can be done by wetting." Exio Eksioglu said that the Saffos family has been in his "family collection" for at least a century.

When I asked for corroboration, he said he didn't want to disturb his relatives. In any case, no one knows except him. In many of our contacts, Eksioglu traded with conspiracy theories and issued statements, which he later admitted to be a lie. But even if only the well-documented claim is correct (he sold the smaller green Sappho scraps to the Greens), it exposed Carroll’s Baylor demonstrations as slander and discredit the origins of Binbink. The key part of the story.

When I told Carroll what I found, he admitted that Sappho and Roman fragments were implanted in Baylor's mask that day. He said his purpose is to teach students how to recognize papyrus, not how to remove masks. Unsure of what he would recover from the mask, he decided to mix some exciting works from the Green Collection. "At the time, I didn't think it was twofold."

The representatives of the Green Party had known for a long time that Exoglu was the origin of the new Sappho. However, even with more and more problems, they still remain silent. "Interestingly, almost no sapphire has surfaced in decades, and there are now many," a senior official of the Bible Museum wrote to two other people on July 11, 2012. The official added, "Eksioglu", "You may all know that he is the main channel for surfacing many of the best materials."

One of them replied: "This is a potential problem." "Where does it come from?"

Oxyrhynchus Papyri is owned by the Egyptian Exploration Society, and a London charity funded the excavation work. The public's criticism of Obinck's Sappho deal has seriously plagued the European economic system. The editor-in-chief of the collection has no relationship with the buyer or seller of the antiquities. At a meeting in London in July 2014, EES officials gave Obbink an ultimatum: to establish contact with the Green Party or lose his editorial position.

That night, after Obink returned to Oxford University, he went to the hotel where Jerry Patengnar and Steve Green stayed during the summer meeting of the Green Scholar Initiative. They sat down on the outdoor patio and Obbink told them about the mission of EES.

Pattengale recalled: "He sweats a lot." If EES excludes Obbink from Oxyrhynchus Papyri, then he will lose his reason for existence because of his position in Oxford-and maybe his position.

Pattengale sent the Green Party to provide a chair for Obbink at Oxford University, so that he can stay at the university even if he cannot use the series. Pattengale told me: "This is just to treat someone who was once very helpful." But he was rejected. Cary Summers, then chairman of the Museum of the Bible, believed that Baylor's teaching job at Obbink was a better contingency plan. "It's dishonest," Pattengale told me. "This will be the museum funding Baylor to fund him"-covering up his ties with the Green Party so that even if he spends some time in Texas during the year, he can maintain his collection of Oxyrhynchus Access. (Not responding to multiple interview requests in summer.)

Obinke told EES that he had broken with the Green Party. In fact, a source told me that the Museum of the Bible continued to fund his projects and paid him a monthly allowance of US$6,000. If EES is discovered, Obbink may need to complete a new job quickly.

In September 2014, two months after the EES ultimatum, Obbink

It is only a short drive from the Baylor campus. Baylor classicist Fish was dumbfounded.

The 124-year-old Cattelan Castle built of sandstone, Carrara marble and Honduras mahogany is a completely misplaced structure surrounded by a used car and damaged by water stains and graffiti. When I visited Waco last fall, people told me that teenagers had a Halloween tradition, breaking into vacant buildings and sneaking into the top floors from the darkness.

Does Obinck plan to live in the castle? Does he hope that the flaunting civic credibility (restoring the eyes of the infamous Waco) will improve his prospects for getting a full-time job from Baylor? No one in the university seems to know.

"I think it reminded him of Oxford University," Tom Lupfer, a decorator hired by Obink, told me. Lupfer showed me these plans: an underground garage, an elevator, a spiral staircase leading from the sundeck to the swimming pool, a pool house with changing rooms. Lupfer warned Obbink that this work will take several years and cost up to $1.4 million. Obink did not flinch, but Lupfer wanted to know how a person with an academic salary could afford such a luxury.

Taken on a smartphone on a bench in a church in Charlotte, North Carolina. When addressing conservative Christians at the pulpit, Scott Carroll said that he saw the first century Mark’s Gospel at Oxford University in Christ Church College...has an outstanding, famous, and famous The classicist... Dirk Obbink, he believes that papyrus can be traced back to

. 70 years old-Most scholars believe that the Gospel was written first in the same year.

Daniel Wallace is no longer telling a vague second-hand story during the debate. This is the witness of name, date and place. The video tape disturbed the Egyptian Adventure Association and began to review all unpublished "New Testament" papyrus. It is understood that a researcher from Obinck discovered a small part of Mark in the 2011 collection. The curator had photographed this work as early as the 1980s, but never discovered it.

Was this the discovery Wallace announced at the University of North Carolina, or was it a discovery Carroll confirmed in church videos four years later?

In front of EES, Obbink admitted that he had a fragment of Mark of Oxyrhynchus in his office and showed it to Carroll. But he insisted that he never said he wanted to sell. EES instructed him to "prepare to publish it as soon as practicable, so as not to further guess its date and content."

Obink can undoubtedly foresee the consequences of the publication: When the images of the fragments are made public, Patengaller, Carroll and Wallace will recognize that the papyrus he had allegedly provided to the Green Party as early as ten years ago. Papyrus. They will notice that he has published the book in the official EES Papyrus series and has never been publicly sold. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that they will see Obbink’s new date: In a serious academic book, he assigns what they call the “first century mark” to the end of the second or early third century, making it Far less compelling.

In 2016, EES refused to renew Obbink as the editor-in-chief and took the key to the papyrus house. Unless he is supervised by Daniela Colomo, the curator of the collection, he will no longer be able to work there. The following year, as the deadline for Obbink to edit the prince approached, his editors seemed to think he might never finish. EES did not want to endure any further delays, and instead invited Colomo and Ben Henry, the researcher of the series, to complete the design for him.

At the same time, the new curator of the Bible Museum began to make disturbing discoveries about the Papyrus of the Green Party. David Trobisch, who is in charge of the museum's collection, called it Eksioglu when he opened in Istanbul. The trader picked up Trobisch at his hotel at 2 am, sent him to a high-rise apartment, and gave him a cigar and whiskey. Trobisch asked Eksioglu where he sold his green papyrus. Trobisch told me: "He has no records, nothing, he can't help me."

But Exiolu hopes Trobisch can help

. The dealer put a cardboard box with at least 1,000 pieces of papyrus scraps on his kitchen table, hoping to sell it again. "Where did it come from?" Trobisch asked. Eksioglu was vague about the war and the Syrian issue, and then imitated the locals by stomping their toes on the ground and tripping the antiquities.

"It's over," Trobisch replied. (Eksioglu denied meeting with Trobisch and said that a student replaced him.)

Later that day, when Trobisch met with Green’s Turkish papyrus supplier, “he wanted to know if I would come with the police.”

In December 2017, Trobisch and his upcoming successor, Jeffrey Kloha (Jeffrey Kloha) went to Oxford to ask Obbink about the source of his papyrus. "He said there were no [origin documents] in his office, he would check it later and forward them to me later," Kloha told me. "He never produces anything." Next month, the Greens broke all ties with Obinke.

When the Mark fragment was finally published in the book in April 2018

, Which just ignited the academic fire that anyone could have expected. Brent Nongbri wrote bitterly on his influential blog: "There seems to be more to this story."

Michael Holmes succeeded Pattengale as the head of the Scholars Initiative and flew to London to meet with the leaders of the Egyptian Adventure Society. The leader of the Egyptian Adventure Society still doubts that Obbink might sell Oxyrhynchus papyri, despite his other shortcomings.

While having lunch at a private club, Holmes withdrew from the purchase agreement between Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Dirk Obbink. The document co-signed by Oxford University professors on February 4, 2013 shows that Obinck not only sold Mark papyrus, but also sold fragments of Matthew, Luke and John. In the contract, Oubink described the manuscript as his personal property, vowed to "hand/carry" the manuscript from "Oxford Antiquity", and trace all four dates back to the unprecedented "approximately 100 AD" in history. So that each manuscript is kind of worth millions.

When EES officials saw the contract, Holmes told me: "Their uncertainty soon disappeared." They banned Obbink from adding to the collection.

The Bible Museum began to send EES images of every papyrus purchased by the Green Party from any seller. EES officials compare them with society’s own photographic works

. From the written description provided by Hobby Lobby, it identified another four: Ebbink’s sales contract dates back to the first century of the gospel, although EES says it’s actually not that old.

An insider told me that 15 of Ebbin's fragments were sold to the Greens by Obbink for more than $1.5 million. Among them is Carroll, who was scrapped by the Romans who pretended to be pulled out of Baylor's mummy mask in 2012.

The Greens bought two other EES clips from the family business of Alan Baidun, a Jerusalem businessman who appeared to have served as an intermediary for Obbink. (Baidun did not answer multiple e-mails and phone calls, but had previously refused to pass the speaker’s improper behavior.)

EES soon found the other half of the papyrus in the collection of Andrew Stimer, a wealthy collector in California, who had sold four Dead Sea scrolls to Green, which were later sold by the Bible Museum. Out.

. (Stimer disputes the forgery found in the museum.)

Timer of the International Organization of the Ministry of Hope, which is in charge of evangelical ministry, said that he purchased two fragments from a "sir" in 2015. Mr. Elder, Dearborn, Michigan. When scholars saw images of these fragments from the Romans and 1 Corinthians, they realized that the Bible Museum had adjacent fragments on the same leaf. According to the EES photos, it seemed that someone had cut off the scriptures. These verses are complete in Oxford." Sir. M. Elder" has sold one pair of cut edges to Stimer, and Obbink has sold another pair of cut edges to Green. (Mahmoud Elder declined to comment, citing what he called a "customer confidentiality agreement.")

The list of Stimer collections provided to me by the source shows that the other two papyrus (Exodus and Psalms) have been "withdrawn" or sold by the seminaries in Berkeley, California and Dayton, Ohio. This is a lie: both fragments belong to EES. (Stimer told me that he "deceived", returned the EES footage, and tried to recover the "large amount of money" he had paid. He said that Obbink listed the seminary at Berkeley and Dayton as sources in a later academic report .buy.)

For most of the stolen papyrus, EES corresponding stock cards and photos were also lost. The thief seemed to try to conceal his trace by erasing the evidence of the papyrus. In the collection of about one million pieces, perhaps you will never miss them.

But the thief was wrong: Copies of the list exist in various locations, including University College London.

EES said that using this backup, it has been determined so far

"It seems to be lost, almost all from a limited number of folders." The UK may warn lightly: "There may be more cases."

EES reported the findings to the Thames Valley Police Station on November 12. On March 2, the police detained Obbink on suspicion of theft and fraud. As of press time, no allegations have been made.

For me, it is completely wrong that I have stolen, moved or sold items from the Egyptian Exploration Society of Oxford University. "Obinke said in a statement issued in October last year that EES and the Bible Museum announced the results of the initial joint investigation. "I will never betray the trust of my colleagues, and I have been in the so-called way throughout my career. Strive to protect and maintain the values. He secretly hinted that he might have been framed, but declined to give details.

A few days later, in the second week of the fall semester at Oxford University, Obink was relieved of his teaching duties.

Later that week, I went to Oxford University and knocked on the doorbell in a seemingly comfortable but not very luxurious house with a small swimming pool at the end of a tree-lined alley. When Obbink opened the door, he was wearing black jeans, pull-on shoes and a tan shirt with stylized military epaulettes.

I said I was there because I wanted to hear his story.

He said, "I really want to tell everyone," but Oxford University has almost no prophet's calmness, "but I have a responsibility not to talk about this during the investigation."

In April, I sent a detailed list of questions to Obbink and his lawyers. His lawyer made three small clarifications in his reply, but said Obinke could not comment otherwise because he owed "Oxford University to maintain confidentiality in its ongoing internal procedures."

The Green Party has a fatal flaw, that is, it needs to be kept secret, and the Green Party wants to shout to the world. Carol wrote to Steve Green in an email in June 2011: "In any case, Dirk is the most strategic friend and supporter of everything we do.

In the process of negotiating with Hobby Lobby to sell the four "first century" fragments, Obbink requested a series of highly irregular contract terms: no public announcement of the acquisition; Obbink can never be called a seller. These fragments will stay in his office in Oxford for four years-after which he will have what he calls "a kind of "joint guardianship" with "visiting rights."

Pattengal later allowed the whole arrangement to be "a bit far-fetched." But at the time, all he could think of was how much he wished Hobby Lobby had a gospel book so close to the time of Jesus. He emailed his boss, urging them to meet Obinck's request. They finally did it.

Last fall, when I met Jeff Fish at the Baylor campus, he felt a bit of pain when he talked about the man he was once respected. What pained him the most was that Obink tried to play him as a gangster-assuring him of Carol's sincerity and encouraging him to publish papyrus, which EES later claimed was stolen.

"I'm very used to it," Fish said.

Baylor has brought Obinke to campus for lectures and short-term seminars several times, and Baylor has been on the cusp of the storm. When Fish intervenes, he will provide him with a full-time, life-time job in 2018. Fish warned the classic chairman: "This would be a terrible mistake." Obink never got an offer.

His payment to Lupfer, the renovator of the Texas castle, was soon defaulted. In February 2019, he sold the property to Chip and Joanna Gaines, the Waco couple behind the HGTV series

. According to Lupfer, considering the $200,000 he spent on renovations, Obbink lost approximately $100,000.

He gave 5,000 papyrus to Egypt. It is acceptable that, in fact, every papyrus in his collection has insufficient evidence to show that it has not been stolen, looted or acquired by other improper means. He said that for the same reason, he is repatriating 6,500 clay artifacts to Iraq, of which 3,500 are Iraqi artifacts that Hobby Lobby surrendered to resolve the 2017 federal smuggling case.

Green and his museum tried to portray themselves as being bound by early stumbling blocks, and were determined to make changes-not only to clean up their failures, but also to reform the system. Green said: "I trusted the wrong people to guide me and inadvertently dealt with unethical dealers in the early years."

Scholars praised the latest reforms. But Green’s efforts to blame were empty in some ways.

In 2010, Green participated in a lecture very early in his blitz. The lecture was commissioned by DePaul University professor Patty Gerstenblith, one of the world's most famous experts in cultural property law. Gerstenblith told me: "I warned him, he will keep going no matter what." With hundreds of millions of dollars in spending power, Green has the ability to ask hard questions about the source before handing over the money to the dealer. An investigation was ordered. But he never did.

In the Obbink case, Green and his representatives disguised themselves as the unsuspecting liar of the planner. Green told me that because of his "outstanding reputation and position in academia," he did not see the conflict between Obbink's dual roles as consultant and seller. He added: "I will never deliberately buy anything that is forged or stolen."

Green has returned the stolen fragments of Oxyranchus to Oxford. He told me that in 2018, Hobby Lobby asked Obingbin to return the four "first century" pieces it bought for him. "Gospel fragments of money.

Green told me: "Professor Obinck promised many times that he would repay us and asked for time. We patiently gave him." He said that Obinck reimbursed $10,000 last summer but was suspected of theft last fall. After the spread, the communication ceased.

Until Oxford, EES or the police reveal more information, many questions remain unanswered. But in the eyes of some devout critics, the last chapter of this legend will be written by a superior authority. "Believers who believe in the truth of the Bible cannot act like pirates,"

last year

, Ireland’s largest religious newspaper. "If they want to help establish the truth, they must do it through legal means... ... God's truth deserves it."

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