Saturday Morning Cartoons: Man convicted of impersonating a scholar

I'm with Joseph Bottum on this one. "How could they tell?"

The son of a prominent professor at the University of Chicago was convicted on Thursday of impersonating a New York University professor and other scholars who disagreed with his father’s theories on the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Jurors took half a day to find the son, Raphael Haim Golb, a 50-year-old real estate lawyer, guilty on 30 of 31 counts, including identity theft, criminal impersonation and aggravated harassment.

Before the trial, prosecutors had offered Mr. Golb a plea deal under which he would not have served time in jail. Now, at sentencing on Nov. 18, he could receive up to four years in prison.

Prosecutors contended that Mr. Golb had established e-mail accounts pretending to be Lawrence H. Schiffman, the N.Y.U. professor, and sent messages to university officials making a fabricated admission of plagiarism.

Mr. Golb testified that the e-mails were merely parodies, but he maintained that he did believe Professor Schiffman had plagiarized from his father, Norman Golb. Professor Schiffman denied those accusations.

After the verdict was read, Mr. Golb and his lawyers blamed Justice Carol Berkman’s instructions to the jury in State Supreme Court in Manhattan for his conviction. They said the judge had not defined what type of benefit Mr. Golb had to receive, and what sort of harm his actions had to cause, for him to be found guilty.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement that identity thieves like Mr. Golb “maliciously intend to damage their victims’ reputations and harass them.”

The prevailing theory on the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls, rebutted by Mr, Golb’s father, is that they were written by a Jewish sect known as the Essenes who lived near the caves where the scrolls were found.

In a statement, Mr. Schiffman expressed regret that “academic debate was replaced by cyber crime and identity theft as a means of advancing a particular scholarly point of view.”

“Let us hope,” he added, “that the field of Dead Sea Scrolls research can get back to its real business — interpreting the ancient scrolls and explaining their significance for the history of Judaism and the background of early Christianity.”

+Wright on the resurrection

H/T to Chip Altman.

Judas Scam Continues to Unravel

Get Religion points us to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education which drives yet another nail into the coffin of the infamous "Gospel of Judas" scam perpetrated by the National Geographic Society two years ago.

What National Geographic had bought access to was more like a puzzle than a book. As one scholar explains it, imagine that you have 10 pieces of paper with writing on both sides. Now take those 10 pages and tear them up into tiny pieces. Then get rid of, say, a third of those pieces. Take what's left, place it in a shoebox, and shake it. Now try to reconstruct the original 10 pages, keeping in mind that the fragile pieces must match on both sides. Much of that tedious work fell to Gregor Wurst, a professor of ecclesiastical history and patristics at the University of Augsburg, in Germany, who, with his large, round glasses and precise manner of speaking, seems like exactly the right person for the task.

Wurst was a member of what the documentary referred to as a "dream team" of biblical scholars. Another member was Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of several best-selling books including, most recently, God's Problem (HarperOne, 2008), which questions how a loving God could permit human suffering. Ehrman is one of those rare scholars who has managed to parlay his expertise into mainstream success. He's good on TV.

Ehrman was among the first to be contacted by National Geographic. It was, as he recalls, an odd conversation. He had to explain that, in order to translate the Coptic, the organization would need to hire a Coptologist, which he is not. That Coptologist would turn out to be Marvin Meyer, who was hired after someone from National Geographic heard him speak at a conference. Also brought on board was Elaine H. Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University and the kind of academic celebrity who gets asked what's in her fridge by The New York Times Magazine.

It all happened in record time. In the cases of other newly discovered ancient texts, the process of translation and interpretation has dragged on for years. But it was only about eight months from the time Marvin Meyer was brought on that the gospel was announced to the public.

Before that big announcement, some members of the team were sent to a one-day media-training seminar in Manhattan to prepare them for the coming onslaught of attention. They would have to explain to reporters, repeatedly, that the Gospel of Judas was probably written in the second century, long after the actual Judas was dead. There is no scholarly debate over whether the conversations in the gospel actually took place. Everyone agrees that it's fiction, but it's fiction that reveals how a certain sect of Christians viewed the meaning of the crucifixion and the role of Jesus' disciples.

In the Gospel of Judas, the character of Judas is more prominent than he is in the New Testament. He and Jesus discuss theological matters, like the meaning of baptism and whether the human spirit dies. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the text is Jesus himself, who is often laughing, playful, and aggressive and who seems to enjoy mocking his disciples. For those familiar with the Jesus taught in Sunday school, that may come as a jolt.

One of the questions the National Geographic team was asked most frequently was "Is it the real thing?" — which, of course, depends on what you mean by "real" and "thing." The manuscript is real in the sense that it's not a fake. And it does appear to be the Gospel of Judas referred to in the writings of one early church father. But it is not a journalistic account of conversations between Jesus and his disciples, nor could it have been written by the historical Judas. That message didn't always come through: Some of the news reports read as if the gospel came straight from Judas' pen.

The announcement was timed so that the documentary, a book containing the translation and critical essays, an accompanying Web site, and an exhibit at National Geographic's headquarters would all be unveiled more or less simultaneously. By keeping the translation under wraps, National Geographic had cornered the market on Judas, and now it intended to take full advantage of its position.

As with all similar "discoveries" which the media have hyped as serious challenges to traditional Christianity, this one has turned out to be nothing more than a cheap, and poorly planned, publicity stunt.

Seeking the Living Among the Dead

Last year, as you may remember, filmmaker James Cameron and journalist Simcha Jacobovici produced a "documentary" on "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," making the extraordinary claim "that archaeologists had found the family tomb of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, challenging most Christians’ belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead." Despite huge publicity from a sycophant secular press, the claims made in the film were rebuffed by reputable scholars and the "Lost Tomb" quickly took its place in the pantheon of pseudo-scholarly challenges to the historical validity of the Christian faith.

But some people simply refuse to allow the facts to stand in the way of a good archaeological hoax. Last week in Jerusalem, a panel of five "scholars" revisited the claims made in the Cameron/Jacobovici film.

In an attempt to lay the controversy to rest, James Charlesworth, professor of New Testament language and literature at Princeton Theological Seminary, had organized the Jan. 13-16 conference, bringing together over 50 archaeologists, statisticians and experts in DNA, ceramics and ancient languages.

Charlesworth sided with two panelists who rejected the idea that Jesus had been buried in the tomb but didn't rule out the possibility.

"I have reservations, but I can't dismiss the possibility that this tomb was related to the Jesus clan," Charlesworth said, according to Time.

He said that the evidence suggests that the tomb belonged to a Jewish family from the time of Jesus and the names on the ossuaries are expressed the correct way as “Jesus, son of Joseph."

But like many scholars who had examined the ossuary, the professor had his doubts.

"The name on Jesus' ossuary was scrawled on, like graffiti. There was no ornamentation. And there should have been. After all, his followers believed he was the Son of God," Charlesworth noted.

Of course, most of us thought the controversy had already been laid to rest. But the panelists seem intent on perpetuating this comical farce.

Despite strong arguments against the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” claims, conference attendees decided that the tomb should be reopened and examined more carefully. The tomb site is currently sealed over with concrete in the garden of a suburban apartment building.

Sealed over with concrete? That's not the way I remember it.

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they [the women] went to the tomb, taking spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24:1-6a)

This is the tragedy of so much contemporary biblical "scholarship." It is a depressing and ultimately pointless quest to seek the living among the dead.

Scholarly Eccentricities

I must confess to being more than a little befuddled by the sheer naivete of some biblical scholars when they venture out into areas beyond their field of expertise. A case in point is Ben Witherington III, as brilliant a New Testament scholar as they come. His work refuting the Jesus Seminar and other exercises in pseudo-scholarship has been indispensible. He is certainly not one to be sold a bill of goods by a bunch of second-stringers voting with their colored beads. So, it is nothing short of mystifying that Dr. Witherington should be extolling the virtues of Michael Moore's propganda film, Sicko. My first impression, upon reading his glowing review, was that he was being tongue-in-cheek. But he wasn't.

Witherington, of course, is not alone among scholars whose unquestioning acceptance of ideologically driven secular propaganda (from both the left and the right) seems out of character for so careful and thoughtful a mind. It is an eccentricity which defies explanation. But show me a brilliant scholar without an eccentricity and I'll show you someone who is neither brilliant nor a scholar.