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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We often throw out the challenge to academics (or just plain Twitterers): "Show us any documentary evidence of what you are saying, dating from the Dark Ages." We are on pretty safe ground because there's so damned little of it, it is unlikely they'll be able to in support of their side of the argument. That will all have to end if there are 'thousands of boxes' of the stuff. Thank the Lord Oxford scholars had more important things on their minds. The Lord however was pulling some strings on behalf of his own oeuvre
| That the biblical evidence survives to emerge into public seems really a miracle. That was the case with ‘P. Oxy. 87.5575’. It sat in a box at Oxford University for a century, to be looked at eventually by an American scholar named Dirk Obbink. |
They come over here, they look in our boxes. But what nature of a man is this personage with the film star name?
| He was widely proclaimed a genius at resurrecting old texts. |
Open the box! Give the man some room! Faculty and students, put your hands together for our transatlantic saviour and take out your notebooks. So, Dirk, tell us what we have had these hundred years?
| But he’d decided that instead of studying manuscripts he would prefer to sell them. |
Oh. Well, if you think that's best, who are we to take issue...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One of the principal red flags for the identification of fakes is when a big new buyer comes onto the market and a big new source comes onto the market 'just in time'. This is called informally the 'Catherine the Great Effect'. It works something like this:
| A new museum was being built in Washington D.C. by the Evangelicals who owned the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, and for the ‘Museum of the Bible’ they wanted to buy artifacts that told the Christian story. |
We have had fun with these looney-tunes before but I don't think Oxford University was involved.
| But Obbink had access to the Oxyrhynchus trash. He acted as the expert dating the fragments he was selling, and said they were from copies of the canonical New Testament gospels, including some from the 1st century. |
This is all fairly standard but I was a bit bemused by this:
| He was vague about where he’d gotten the fragments. For my money, the Evangelicals knew it was all stolen. |
That is not standard. Not even the most enthusiastic and gullible museum directors buy stolen material -- they don't like going to prison any more than the rest of us. 'Looted long ago' is as near as they would go.
| The museum paid out $7 million dollars. |
That's fairly standard.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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With some good gear to see in D.C it was time the Museum of the Bible hit the road to spread the message. That's what being an Evangelical means.
| In 2011, a scholar employed by the museum, named Jerry Pattengale, was giving a speech in Oklahoma City. He reached into his pocket and pulled out P. Oxy. 87.5575, encased in glass, and waved it around. It was, he said, the earliest known fragment of the gospel of Matthew, dated to somewhere around 140 to 160 A.D. It was a Christian miracle. There in Greek letters, Pattengale said, was Matthew 6:25–27. “My friends, this is 200 years earlier than a lot of the texts that are much in the sensational news today,” he said. “This is part of that list that supports the canon.” |
"Hey, guys, Oxy is going down a storm with the punters. Get some more."
| Between 2010 and 2013, Obbink sold the museum 32 fragments from Oxyrhynchus. |
But it wasn't going down so well with rivals. "We're losing out to these new dudes in D.C. For Chrissake get some of this Oxy stuff for our outlets." "Roger that."
| By 2019, an additional 81 biblical fragments were apparently sold to other buyers |
Until the holy moly hit the fans
| In fact, the fragment did not ‘support’ the ‘canonical’ text. The 32 fragments were returned... the Museum of the Bible was out $7 million [and] sued Obbink, but he seems to have disappeared. |
But the good news...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Since 1898, academics have collated and transcribed over 5,000 documents from what were originally hundreds of boxes of papyrus fragments the size of large cornflakes. This is thought to represent only 1 to 2% of what is estimated to be at least half a million papyri still remaining to be conserved, transcribed, deciphered and catalogued. The most recent published volume was Vol. LXXXVII, released on 31 August 2023. |
So if anyone else needs something, just ask.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This was sent to me by Medium a coupla days ago
Frances describes herself thusly
| I’m a cultural historian (Smith, A.B.; Oxford University, Ph.D.) whose most recent book is The Routledge Guidebook to Paine’s Rights of Man (2020). |
so clearly a figure of some clout. The relevant para is this
| Long before The Amityville Horror, Paranormal Activity, the Netflix Haunting series, or any other so-called authentic accounts of the supernatural, priests and historians recorded strange incidents they had heard from others in their manuscripts. There was the 12th-century English monk, John of Worcester, who described a ghost in The Life and Miracles of St. Edmund. |
| Mick wrote: | | Scrub John of Worcester. He's a total fake. |
| Frances wrote: | | Would like to hear more about him! |
That's pretty unusual. I am pondering my options. I could give an URL for here or I could give a potted bio of John of Worcester. Any dirt would be welcome.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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I had a run-in on Facebook about using iffy sources for the origins of Chester Cathedral 'obscured in the mists of time' in which John of Worcester figured
Someone replied quite sensibly that the cathedrals were built by the Normans only to be correctd by Trustram Bruce who posted
actually in this case the Normans destroyed the existing Anglo Saxon church, which had been a cathedral or "minster", although they later replaced it with an abbey church -
The collegiate church, as it was then, was restored in 1057 by Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Lady Godiva. This church was razed to the ground around 1090, with the secular canons evicted, and no known trace of it remains.
Cit. Wikipedia |
The clue here being 'no known trace' so I took the bait
There is no record of a 'Saxon church' at Chester. Archaeologists despite their best efforts have not been able to find any remains of a pre-existing church. Either way, If it had been razed to the ground as you put it, there would certainly have been contemporary records of the event. But there aren't any!
You should check your sources more carefully before posting. There is no record of a monk named John of Worcester being the author of the Chronicon. The work used to be attributed to another monk of Worcester called Florence of Worcester. Historians themselves admit that "A great deal of additional material, particularly relating to English history, was grafted onto it.".
The provenance of the manuscript, according to Corpus Christi Oxford, is early 17th century, donated by the Bishop of Worcester, Henry Parry, in 1618. |
Tristram Bruce defended John of Worcester at length and in no uncertain terms
Congratulations. You have managed to magically move the Chronicon ex chronicis of John of Worcester (an English monk and chronicler who worked at Worcester Priory who died c. 1140 and whose authorship is even attested to by contemporary Norman sources) from the 12th to the 17th century (effectively contradicting your own initial post in which you gave it the usual accepted post-quam-non date of 1140)! It must be lovely to bend and twist and reinvent reality to suit your own erroneous fantasies and cherry-picked sources! Let's just shift the date by 500 years. Hey presto!
You should know that there are several versions of the original manuscript by John of Worcester. In fact the "Chronicon ex chronicis" survives in five manuscripts (and a fragment on a single leaf):
MS 157 (Oxford, Corpus Christi College). The principal manuscript, working copy used by John.
MS 502 (Dublin, Trinity College).
MS 42 (Lambeth Palace Library).
MS Bodley 297 (Oxford, Bodleian Library).
MS 92 (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College).
In addition, there is the chronicula, a minor chronicle based on the Chronicon proper: MS 503 (Dublin, Trinity College), written by John up to 1123.
You should check your sources more carefully before posting or trying to support your unfounded opinions on the basis of a single disputed manuscript. |
It seemed kosher enough as long as the provenance wasn't questioned. I was forced to backtrack a little
It was a mistake on my part to tacitly accept the twelfth century date in the absence of an 'original' manuscript of the Chronicon. The earliest version, now known as MS 157, was given to Corpus Christi in 1618 by Henry Parry, son of the bishop of Worcester of the same name. Authorship has been disputed by scholars, the problem being compounded by the 'several alterations to its content'.
The manuscripts in your list are copies 'representing different stages in its development, notably the ending' as Corpus Christi put it. The provenance of MS 502 Dublin Trinity College is unknown, 'probably Coventry'. The date of MS 42 (Lambeth Palace Library) is unknown. The provenance of MS Bodley 297 is listed by the Bodleian as 'Given to the Bodleian by George Broome, esq. of Holton (p. i), probably in 1608.' The provenance of MS 092 is listed as the Parker collection, i.e. Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury 1559-1575. |
https://www.facebook.com/groups/817715138398710/posts/2156643114505899/?comment_id=2156954884474722&reply_comment_id=2158725144297696
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Frances on Medium wrote: | | Fascinating! I’m not a medievalist: this came from Susan Owens’ The Ghost which I mentioned in the further reading. She’s an art historian with a PhD from UCL. |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I've been wondering that myself. I don't think the Egyptians buried it, did they? So this is good news...
| Archaeologists in Scotland may have finally solved the mystery of how ancient Egyptian artifacts that were unearthed in school grounds between 1952 and 1984 became buried there. |
Theory One:
| Balgonie may have acquired the collection on his travels, as consuls and antique dealers often sold ancient artifacts to foreigners during this period, according to the statement. After Balgonie's death, family members likely moved the objects to an outbuilding, which was later demolished, and forgot about them. |
The building was demolished on top of them, is that it?
| The "fascinating tale" of how Egyptian objects turned up at Melville House contains "mysteries that may never be solved," Goring said. |
Oh, I thought you said... Never mind it leaves space for one or two of our own.
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