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I wonder if it were fraudsters who created them for profit or church hierarchy that created them for profit...You know, to keep the gullible in the pews...On a side note, if I remember correctly, reading the list of those who translated the DSS, I didn’t notice any Judaic Hebrew scholars on that list...
My money's on Fraudsters. There is a known market for archaeological fakes and the crystal skulls fell into that category. Beautifully done, though! The Ica stones are a sort of midway. They took on a Creationist fakery -aspect when some Creationists adopted Dainiken's Ancient alien technology argument and the Ica Stones were perfect in showing dinosaurs and men interacting. In fact I'd guess they were aimed at the Creationist market, like those pottery dinosaur models (1). But Some Creationists - not you authorities so much - argue Dainikenist evidence simply to do this business of overturning science. That is a big feature of amateur creationist apologetics - to show that science is all wrong. We had Eusebius here arguing about saw cuts in Egyptian stonework "couldn't have been done without power tools" I suppose there might have been an aspect of tightening up prehistory into just 1,000 years from Pakicetus to Pharonic Egypt, but Alien astronauts teaching us to build pyramids doesn't seem tohelp the cause of Genesis literalism very much. But anything that knocked the props out from under Science, eh?
There was was Ron Wyatt, the Father of Arkeology and what looks very much like Bible -relic fakery, except that he didn't so much fake anything but claimed he'd found it. The Pilate's seal in Jesus' tomb probably being the one that caused most doubt, The Durupinar Ark (back in favour after the NAMI Ark is pretty much now shown to be a fraud and a scam) and the most famous (and still probably Believed by Bible -literalists) is the exodus trail leading to the Calf Altar, but way of Moses'land bridge with the inscribed columns, one of which has vanished and the other has no inscription . Doesn't take a genius to work out the fakery here. Where it HAD to be Fakery and not just Mistakery was the calf altar -a pile of boulders with some carvings on it, one of a bull being quite good. So Wyatt took a photo of just that and ignored the other carving that showed it was just herdsmans' graffiti.
But while this was probably his most notorious fake, it was the claim to have found the Ark of the covenant that is probably closest to Indiana Jones, and Ron Wyatt, the maverick Archaeologist off finding an alien Saucer - repair shop in Akhenaten's capital could have been the inspiration, though the Film harks back rather to the Nazi search for Christian relics to help them win the war (there's a vid I noted,but never watched - i may post it) , rather as 'The Da Vinci code' harks back to a rather Atheistic alternative history about M. Magdalene being Jesus' wife (2).
But getting past the Moses' camp and NAMi fraud, there seemed to be a Biblefake workshop with I think a Solomon inscription and of course the James sarcophagus, which is still the subject of an intense debate and even in the law -courts. Oddly is is neither here nor there in the religion debate because it makes little difference that was an actual Jesus who has a brother. The Bibleskeptic debate hardly ever claims that no Jesus ever lived. I recall that there was some Greek jesus - related papyrus found that was being argued about and recently the lead codex. There seem to be several of these appearing on the antiques market and I think it has been shown to be a fake. This is almost inevitable, as the potential buyers will pay MILLIONS for a fake of this kind and will often go into denial about it not being genuine. It's like being a ********* whose victim then pays for the defence.
That's why all kudos to the museum that bit to bullet and took these items off the shelves.
(p.s I'm not even going to visit Atlantean sea -empires and the Pi'ri Reis map, let alone the Antikythera mechanism)
(1) I believe that it was Raffs who was with me in the days of of that fissionable posting isotope lifetime member C47 in a long debate about the genuineness of the Ica Stones and the Acambara statuettes.
(2) which, if Jesus' actions in the Gospels are at all true (and i think they are) she had to be.
Faking of antiquities is a profitable business, apparently, and some are good at it. Don't know if any of you read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, but it starts off with a situation in which a Greek statue is being evaluated for authenticity. The researchers believed it to be a fake, but none of them could say exactly why.
The people financing this museum were charged by the DOJ with smuggling ancient artifacts from Iran. Their excuse was the company was inexperienced. No doubt their attorney told them stupidity and ignorance were not excused under the law.
The antiquities were shipped with the box labeled sample tiles.
They had to return them. May I present, Hobby Lobby.
1 -- they have removed the ones in question from display. That's a good things. They're committed to accuracy and transparency.
2 -- This says NOTHING about the canon of Scripture that we have, and it does nothing to suggest that the Bible that is in our hands is false. This merely says that copies of ancient manuscripts were forged by unscrupulous characters in a money-making scheme.
When a Christian learns the languages I’d say it is in a biased way...
Says the guy that really cares more about what his go-to Rabbi said than the actual Scriptures.
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. Doesn't take a genius to work out the fakery here. Where it HAD to be Fakery and not just Mistakery was the calf altar -a pile of boulders with some carvings on it, one of a bull being quite good. So Wyatt took a photo of just that and ignored the other carving that showed it was just herdsmans' graffiti. 
