Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 10-16-2008, 10:57 AM

Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Nina Burleigh will be released on October 21, 2008 (but already has 40 reviews on Amazon from their Vine program, generally but not overwhelmingly favorable.)

Reviewed in Time Magazine

Quote:

The extraordinary story of how Israeli detectives built a case against Golan and his alleged cohorts is the subject of Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land by Nina Burleigh, a former TIME staffer who now writes for People. In fast, noir-ish prose — imagine Sam Spade in the Holy Land — Burleigh tracks her story through the twilight world of Arab grave robbers and smugglers to the glimmering salon of a billionaire collector in Mayfair whose mission, writes Burleigh, is "proving the Bible true." Past accounts of the James Ossuary are fiercely partisan, written by debunkers or true believers. But Burleigh keeps her balance, and her humor, as she sifts — far more diligently than many archeologists — through the evidence. She also has unprecedented access to all the major players in the James Ossuary debate: dogged police detectives, sharp-witted antiquarians, Bible-besotted collectors and suspected forgers of near-genius.

. . .

Meanwhile, Golan's trial, with its parade of more than 75 scientists and Biblical scholars, is likely to drag on for another year. But Golan maintained, in an interview with TIME, that he is innocent of all charges and that since the trial began experts have come forth, he says, to prove that both the inscriptions on the James ossuary and the Jehoash table are genuine.

Toto · 10-20-2008, 01:31 PM

Reviewed in the WSJ here by Amy Dockser Marcus, the author of "The View From Nebo: How Archaeology Is Rewriting the Bible and Reshaping the Middle East (or via: amazon.co.uk)."

Quote:

What is saddest about the James Ossuary case is that, if the police are correct, Oded Golan took an ancient object, important in itself as a link to a lost past, and vandalized it in the hope of increasing its financial value. Such trickery seeks to exploit a problem at the heart of biblical archaeology: the desire to prove what is essentially unverifiable. That archaeology reveals a fuller picture of the daily lives of ordinary people in the biblical world should be enough. As Ms. Burleigh writes: "A pile of rocks on the ground is just a pile of rocks" until someone tells a compelling story about it.

Toto · 11-05-2008, 02:20 PM

another review

Quote:

...

The key, scientifically, is getting the patina right. Patina is the natural discolouration of an object over time. Natural patina can be faked by soaking old dirt or charcoal into an object, and then heating it, Burleigh says in the book.

Often, genuinely old objects are given new inscriptions, with the fake patina put into the inscriptions to make it seem that the wording also dates to ancient times. Sophisticated forgers, Burleigh says, might even incorporate old scratches into the new inscriptions, since the scratches would already contain old patina.

The next stage is to get experts to authenticate it, a process Burleigh says requires as much skill and art as the patina. Here, the trick is to find experts on whose emotions the forger can play, perhaps a Biblical scholar keen to prove its stories true, or a patriotic Israeli excited to find proof of a fabled Jewish temple.

Toto · 11-18-2008, 07:07 PM

A review along with the book Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World (or via: amazon.co.uk):

Fool's Gold: How stolen ancient artifacts have turned up in famous museums around the world

Toto · 11-30-2008, 03:22 PM

Update: Hoaxes from the Holy Land: The faltering prosecution of an antiquities dealer in the James ossuary case underscores problems in authenticating biblical artifacts.

Quote:

Prosecutors have been hamstrung. A craftsman based in Cairo's Khan al Khalili souk told police he made some objects for the collector, but he wasn't inclined to testify and they cannot compel him to come to Israel. So prosecutors instead called a long list of archaeologists and epigraphers, experts in the minutia of ancient Christian and Jewish artifacts. These men and women, accustomed to working on dusty digs or answering questions from somnambulant students, were no match for nimble, expensive attorneys, among the best in Israel, working for the defense.

One by one, they either contradicted themselves on various scientific technicalities or had their conclusions ripped apart by the defense's expert witnesses. One veteran Israeli archaeologist, Meyer Ben Dov, was so disheartened by what was happening that he told me "archaeology is on trial" -- and it did not appear to be winning.

Burleigh is scheduled to give a talk on the issue in Los Angeles at the Center for Inquiry on Sunday Dec 7.

arnoldo · 11-30-2008, 06:16 PM

The Israeli Museum in Jerusalem claims to have the following archaelogical article including:

Quote:

1. Stone ossuary of "Judas son of Jesus (Yeshua)"Jerusalem, Israel 1st century CE
2. Latin dedicatory inscription of Pontius Pilate Roman theatre, Caesarea, Israel 26–36 CE
3. Ossuary of the High Priest Joseph CaiaphasNorth Talpiot, Jerusalem, Israel 1st century CE
http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collec...20Christianity

Surely not all of these artifacts are frauds. . .

Toto · 11-30-2008, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by arnoldo

The Israeli Museum in Jerusalem claims to have the following archaelogical article including:

Quote:

1. Stone ossuary of "Judas son of Jesus (Yeshua)"Jerusalem, Israel 1st century CE
2. Latin dedicatory inscription of Pontius Pilate Roman theatre, Caesarea, Israel 26–36 CE
3. Ossuary of the High Priest Joseph CaiaphasNorth Talpiot, Jerusalem, Israel 1st century CE
http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collec...20Christianity

Surely not all of these artifacts are frauds. . .

What is your point? Judas and Jesus were both common names, so an ossuary for the deceased Judas son of Jesus does not show us very much. The forger of the James ossuary had many samples of ossuaries to copy from.

Otherwise, there probably a lot of forged artifacts in museums. Probably not all, but it's always a possibility.

Toto · 12-10-2008, 10:30 AM

Shanks responds to Burleigh: Ganging up on Biblical Archeology

avi · 12-10-2008, 11:28 AM

Thanks for the link to the LATIMES article, Toto. I hope there is no relationship between the publication of Shank's review, and the newspaper's parent company declaring bankruptcy the same day.
Here is a quote from one of those commenting on the article at the LATIMES:

Quote:

Since Mr. Shanks sees fit to mention Ms. Burleigh's gainful employ by People Magazine, it is worth noting that his publication, Biblical Archaeology Review, is kept afloat by back-page advertisements for dubiously provenanced "antiquities". That and a penchant for tossing gasoline on smouldering scholarly controversies is Mr. Shanks' stock-in-trade. He is hardly a good faith defender of the discipline.

Toto · 12-10-2008, 12:28 PM

Burleigh is a professional journalist and writer, and an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia. (No slouch, in other words.) She also blogs occasionally on the Huffington Post. You can google her name for her rather interesting personal life.

http://literati.net/Burleigh/

Quote:

Nina Burleigh is the author of four critically acclaimed nonfiction books. Her latest, Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land (Collins 2008), tells the story of the unraveling of a Bible relic forgery scheme in Israel, and the intriguing world of biblical archaeology and relic collectors.

Previous books include Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt (Harper Collins, 2007), chronicles the first large-scale interaction between Western civilians and Islam in the modern era; The Stranger and the Statesman, (Morrow, 2003) about the mysterious life of 18th Century scientist James Smithson and his bequest to the nation; and A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Mary Meyer, (Bantam 1998), the true story of the unsolved murder of an American aristocrat in 1964, set in the bizarre and exclusive world of the wives of the Cold Warriors in Washington, D.C.

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11-18-2008, 07:07 PM	#4
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	A review along with the book Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World (or via: amazon.co.uk): Fool's Gold: How stolen ancient artifacts have turned up in famous museums around the world

12-10-2008, 10:30 AM	#8
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Shanks responds to Burleigh: Ganging up on Biblical Archeology

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