Vorkosigan

Golan Trial....

• "Moussaieff, 82, told the court he bought the temple decanter from Deutsch for $150,000. Police said it was an authentic item but the inscription was faked with the help of Golan, who received half the money. Moussaieff also described buying several inscribed pieces of pottery from Golan and Deutsch for $200,000, and similar pottery from a dealer acting for Rafi Brown for $180,000. Police said those items were also fakes.
  
  Moussaieff told the court he stood by the authenticity of every item in his collection but said if he had been fooled, he only had himself to blame.
  
  ''I'm not stupid, I don't throw money away just because someone has come to sell me something," Moussaieff said in an interview during a break in the trial. ''I'm suspicious of everything and everybody, particularly when there are large amounts of money involved. I still believe these items are genuine. I think the James ossuary is genuine."
  
  Moussaieff said he had spent millions of dollars on his collection of antiquities intending to prove the truth of the Bible."

Poor guy. You can't help feeling sorry for him.

Michael

Diogenes the Cynic

I guess Golan figures there's no sucker like an inerrantist sucker. Their own built-in denial systems do half of the con-work for him.

Diogenes the Cynic

The only thing that surprises me about this is how cheaply Golan is apparently willing to work. If ou're going to take the risk of forging inscriptions on antiquities I would think that you'd want a bigger payoff than a measly 75 grand, especially if those forgeries can be expected to garner some measure of public attention...not to mention the interest of the IAA.

Haran

Why are you labeling the antiquities collector, Moussaieff, an "inerrantist"?

Diogenes the Cynic

Because he says he wants to "prove the truth of the Bible" and he's spent large amounts of money on antiquities in the attempt to do so. Non-literalists don't obsess like that.

Haran

Hmm...I've never heard this of Mousaieff. Do you have the source of this quote? Was it in the recent trial? I thought he was just an interested layman and collector.

Diogenes the Cynic

It's from the Boston Globe article quoted in the OP. It's actually quoted in the OP.

S.C.Carlson

Unfortunately, the Boston Globe present it as an indirect quotation. Those aren't his words, but the reporter's.

Diogenes the Cynic

Do you think the Globe is lying or misrepresenting his words in any significant way?

S.C.Carlson

Reporters botch indirect quotations too many times to be reliable, especially when some important qualification is missed. It is perilous to take such indirect quotations in newspaper at face value. Even supposedly direct quotations are often botched. This has to with the common practice of reporters' not getting an exact transcript of their interviews and relying on inexact notes.

For more background, see these posts in Language Log:

• Quotes from journalistic sources: unsafe at any speed
• "Quotations" with a word error rate of 40-60% and more
• This time it matters
• Approximate" quotations can undermine readers' trust in The Times

Those are for direct quotations, and we're dealing with an indirect quotation here.

In this case, the indirect quotation is problematic because it oversimplifies Moussaeiff's motivations as presented elsewhere. My sense is that this Israeli wants to possess pieces of Biblical history, especially the artifacts that uphold the historical legitimacy of his country. Sure he had need to believe and is willing to pay big bucks for it, but this need is more politically than theologically motivated.

Stephen Carlson