Today we know for certain that in addition to promoting illicit trade in antiquities the publishing of unauthenticated and unprovenanced material also has promoted an entire industry, namely the forgery business. This has become evident in the past year when the IAA has accused various individuals of creating a vast underground of mafia proportions of individuals who specialize in producing high-ticket items such as the James ossuary, the Jehoash inscription, and inscribed bullae with biblical names, just to mention a few items whose authenticity has been questioned. Regardless of where one stands on the authenticity of these items by publishing them and promoting them in the popular media, their commercial value has soared while their provenance still remains unknown and uncertain.Meyers's essay on the The Bible and Interpretation website is a paper he gave at the SBL meeting in San Antonio in 2004. Read it all.
In the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Hershel Shanks cites this presentation and sneers at Meyers, saying that thus far, no other scholars have expressed support for Meyers.
Well, I would like to express my support here and now for Meyers. Is there any way to make this official? Start a petition or something? An open letter? I'm a terrible organizer, but I'd like to see some kind of forum in which scholars could register their agreement with what Meyers is saying, so that Shanks can read it. (He is apparently quite unaware of the blogosphere.) Any ideas out there?
6 comments:
Perhaps the clearest way to make Mr Shanks aware of support for Meyers is for subscribers to send in cancellation notices to BAR with a note that says "I support Eric Meyers' position on unprovenanced artifacts". The only thing that Shanks hears is coinage.
Not to mention the fake ivory pomegranate, sold for $3,000 before its publication by Lemaire in BAR and for $550,000 shortly after.
I think Shanks and BAR might be feeling some economic heat. The latest issue (vol. 31, no. 2) is a half-an-inch shorter than the previous issues. Magazines usually shrink in size to save costs.
Well... BAR is obviously running short of contributors if Shanks needs to fill so many pages with boring matters (for 80% of his potential readers I guess) such as gossips about who said what to whom in the ASOR and/or the SBL+AAR meetings in San Antonio, not to mention the obsessive and redundant coverage of the James ossuary at el – Oded Golan et al saga. In the ANE discussion group there were rumors about the wonderful secrets that would be published in the next volume of BAR. The day it arrived in our library I enthusiastically opened it and to my great disappointment, I found nothing new in it but the old rubbish again.
Perhaps refusing to publish unprovenanced artifacts at all is going a bit too far; wouldn't it be more effective if unprovenanced artifacts automatically became the property of the 'state' in which they were found (I know of few unprovenanced artifacts which don't at least have a 'country' attached to them) and without any compensation to the owner/possessor. Unprovenanced artifacts would essentially be worthless to collectors and forgers alike ...
... but still available for scholarly study. (sorry ... hit the button too soon)
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