THE GUARDIAN: A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel

Description

In total, the EES has now discovered that 120 fragments have gone missing from the Oxyrhynchus collection over the past 10 years. Since the appearance, in June 2019, of that fateful purchase agreement and invoice bearing Obbink’s name, the scale of the scandal has taken time to sink in. What kind of a person – what kind of an academic – would steal, sell, and profit from artefacts in their care? Such an act would be “the most staggering betrayal of the values and ethics of our profession”, according to the Manchester University papyrologist Roberta Mazza....

Mazza, whose investigations have sometimes made her feel, she said, as if she were in a Coen brothers’ movie; and the contributors to a blog called Evangelical Textual Criticism. The last, a forum “for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages”, has not, until now, had much call for “breaking news” banners.

Further quotes in article.