National Library of Israel promotional
video for the “Treasures of the Afghan Genizah”
In Live Science on Monday, Owen
Jarus provided an update on recent sales of 28 unpublished, purported Dead
Sea Scroll fragments to American institutions. I say purported because the
fragments are unprovenanced, and therefore it is difficult if not impossible to
say if they are actually authentic. Several scholars have already suggested
that at least some of these fragments are forgeries. But among the several
interesting pieces of information in Jarus’s article is that Ada Yardeni (an
Israeli epigrapher) has proclaimed all of these fragments to be authentic.
Seeing Yardeni’s name, I was
immediately reminded of my recent reading on the so-called Hazon
Gabriel, or “Vision of Gabriel” – a stone inscribed with ink, dated by several
experts to the late first century BCE or early first century CE. It too is
unprovenanced, although the owner has stated that he bought it from a
Jordanian-British antiquities dealer (and that it might possibly have come from
the eastern shore of the Dead Sea). The initial
publication of this unprovenanced stone was by Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elitzur.
Provenance is very important
in scholarship on ancient artifacts. It is most often cited as a way of proving
the authenticity of an artifact, but perhaps even more important are the major
ethical and legal issues involved with unprovenanced material. So it is
noteworthy that, just in the last year, there have been several stories about
unprovenanced inscriptions and other artifacts (purportedly from the greater
Middle East) championed by scholars:
* Besides the unpublished
purported Dead Sea Scroll fragments described by Jarus, others from the Museum
of the Bible collection and the Schøyen collection published
last year.
* Naama Vilozny’s study of demons on Aramaic
magic bowls. (Most Aramaic incantation bowls are unprovenanced; it is unclear
which bowls are the subject of the study.)
* The Israel Antiquities
Authority’s (IAA) unveiling
of a papyrus fragment purportedly from the Iron Age, which if authentic
would be the oldest mention of Jerusalem (the “Jerusalem Papyrus”)
* The National Library of
Israel’s purchase
last year of about 250 manuscripts, part of the so-called “Afghan Geniza”.
(Besides the NLI itself, many Israeli scholars have worked on these, even
authenticating them for dealers: Matthew Morgenstern, Shaul Shaked, and others.)
* The widely-heralded
publication of an
unusual Greek epitaph from Egypt (c. 300 CE) in the collection of the
University of Utah
* Reporting
on the problematic provenance of the notorious Gospel of Jesus’s Wife
fragment
* Palestine Exploration Quarterly’s publication of an
article by Shlomo Guil arguing that the Shapira strips, a notorious 19th
century forgery of a supposedly ancient copy of Deuteronomy, were in fact
authentic.
One observation: despite a series
of recent high-profile fiascos involving unprovenanced inscriptions that were
revealed to be forgeries, there is continued scholarly interest in objects without
provenance. (Just from the list above, the scholarly consensus now is that the
Gospel of Jesus’s Wife is a fake, while serious questions have been raised
about the Jerusalem Papyrus
and many Dead
Sea Scroll fragments.) As Årstein
Justnes puts
it, “the scholarly community continues to receive unprovenanced material
with enthusiasm” (if anything, that enthusiasm is increasing). Christopher
Rollston referred
to the situation (in 2005) as a “crisis.”
Another observation: much of
the championing of these unprovenanced artifacts and their authenticity happens
to come from Israeli scholars. (Consider the case of Shaul Shaked, highly
respected professor emeritus of Iranian Studies at Hebrew University: his cv
includes publications on unprovenanced
Aramaic magic bowls, unprovenanced
Aramaic documents from Bactria, and unprovenanced so-called “Afghan Geniza”
manuscripts.) One reason for this: per capita, there is a relatively high
number of perfectly competent Israeli epigraphers to read these inscriptions
and archaeologists to analyze these artifacts. But why such enthusiasm for
unprovenanced artifacts? And why, at the same time, is so much careful work on
provenance and ethics in archaeology and epigraphy being done by scholars in
the Europe and the United States? (Although there is
enthusiasm for unprovenanced artifacts – at least those with an apparent
biblical connection – among scholars at seminaries and Christian schools in the
U.S.) Thinking about this recently, I’ve wondered about a couple of possible
connections.
One: Israel is the only
Middle Eastern country that has a legal
antiquities market. In all neighboring countries, trade in antiquities is
illegal; all antiquities are officially considered property of the state. In
Israel, too, all antiquities are considered property of the state – if they
have been found since 1978. By law, objects with a known provenance before that
date may be legally owned and sold by private citizens. There are a legal
antiquities trade, though (in theory at least) very restricted, and licensed
antiquities dealers. The decision to have a legal antiquities trade reflects a
certain attitude toward ancient artifacts: perhaps the special connection that Israel
has attempted to forge with the ancient Jewish past? The Zionist concept of yedi‘at ha’aretz (“knowledge of the
land”) in material form? At the same time, the process works both ways: the
existence of this legal trade must affect how people, including scholars, view
antiquities. It is not so surprising that unprovenanced antiquities might be
considered acceptable in such an environment more than in others.
Two: There is a marked lack of critical theory in Israeli
archaeology, and in biblical archaeology outside of Israel. Israeli archaeology
is “pure
science for the purpose of studying the past through its archaeological finds,”
the deputy director of the IAA tells us. There
is a pervasive scholarly narrative that archaeologists and epigraphers are objective
researchers whose scientific work is threatened
by outside influences, misunderstandings, and misuses: by donors,
politicians, clergy, news media, the public. Or that archaeologists used
to be biased but are no longer so. As a result, working to understand bias
in scholarship is largely “trivial”
and a waste of time. This conveniently allows archaeologists to avoid any
consideration of their own role in the production and reception of knowledge.
The result is, ultimately, less concern for issues of ethics and provenance. So
perhaps it is not a coincidence that my biblical archaeologist Ph.D. adviser
spearheaded a
defense of scholarly use of unprovenanced artifacts in 2006, in response to
ASOR and AIA ethics policies. These fields encourage the belief that scholars can
and should focus only on “the data” and that critical theory is therefore unimportant
– in fact, consideration of ethical violations is seen as unprofessional
because it deals with things other
than the data. Unprovenanced artifacts are championed in the name of making all
of “the data” available, in the name of academic freedom.
These attitudes reflect not
merely naivete or credulousness, as Jusntes and Rollston rightly point out;
they reflect more than enthusiasm for such artifacts. They also reflect
arrogance. They reflect the arrogance that of course we scholars can detect a
forgery; and that we scholars are somehow above the law or can be ignorant of
it. “None of the experts who
have spoken publicly on the matter of the Afghan documents appeared to be too
troubled by unanswered questions about their origins, seeming to accept such
things as the cost of doing business in ancient artifacts,” as Ben
Harris of JTA noted for the case of the so-called Afghan Geniza. Shaked
cavalierly
discusses his authentication of documents for dealers: “So in a way I am
guilty of having driven up the prices.” In the UK at least, working
on unprovenanced material could
lead to criminal prosecution. Elsewhere, it is still a matter of working on
(likely) stolen property, and of risking the encouragement of further looting
or forgery. Many scholars appear to feel privileged enough to ignore all of
this.
