Thursday, January 24, 2008

Collecting Talpiot Reactions

The editor at Biblical Archaeology Review is collecting on-line reactions to the Talpiot conference HERE. It's a nice site if you want to get a general overview of a number of scholars' reactions. Thanks to BAS for this good idea.

6 comments:

Jim said...

And yet they ignore a number of reactions by participants- pretend (apparently) that the "Duke" Statement was written for BAR (and don't even bother to note that they lifted it whole out of the Duke Blog or Mark Goodacre's) and overlook more than they include. If that's good, I'd hate to see bad.

geoffhudson.blogspot.com said...

You shout too loudly Dr Jim. So they lifted 'it' out of the Duke or Mark Goodacres' Blog, but then Mark Goodacre promoted a number of participants to professor when BAR had already given them their correct titles. Sorry, Dr Jim, it all looks like mutual co-operation, which I think you know about, given your legendry opposition to BAR. The style and nameless participants on the new BAS forum show who is running BAS.

dhyphenf said...

To Jim and Geoff,
The "Duke" statement was sent to BAR; it was not lifted from anywhere.
Steven Feldman
Biblical Archaeology Review

geoffhudson.blogspot.com said...

Dear Steven

The original statement put out by Mark Goodacre of Duke on 21 Jan did not give the correct titles to any of the signatories except for three. It is almost inconceivable
that Mark Goodacre should have posted these errors if they were not in the original ‘Duke’ statement, presumably posted to him by Eric Meyers. The error was pointed-out by a strange ‘Philip’ (with no blogger profile) in a comment on Mark Goodacre’s weblog. Mark Goodacre admits revising the list on 24 January 2008 and the Duke list at the same time http://dukereligion.blogspot.com/2008/01/talpiot-tomb-controversy-revisited.html

If BAS/BAR received the Duke list on 21 Jan, then BAS/BAR corrected these errors themselves. And it looks as though it was BAS/BAR (in the form of the mysterious ‘Philip) who informed Mark Goodacre of Duke’s errors including “a few typos” – just the kind of thing a publisher would do before going public, do you agree?

So Steven I have yet to be convinced of BAS/BAR’s independence. Perhaps you would enlighten me.

Yours truly

Geoff Hudson

dhyphenf said...

Geoff,

The statement we put up was sent to us directly—it didn’t come through Mark Goodacre nor did we send it to him. I don’t know who “Philip” might be, but he had no contact with us nor we with him. Is it really so hard for you to believe that the authors of the “Duke statement” would have sent us their announcement in an effort to give it wide publicity?

geoffhudson.blogspot.com said...

Steven, I am sure your nameless “authors” did seek wide publicity. That would make perfect sense for an organisation committed to belief in Jesus that wanted to rubbish the idea that the Talpiot tomb contained the bones of the prophet.

But I am left with the suspicion that BAS/BAR corrected the original statement supplied by Duke, and that Duke then corrected theirs, indicating mutual co-operation.

I accept that BAR/BAS does present various viewpoints. It would be helpful to see transparency in your organisation. The same goes for Princeton who described the symposium as "privately funded".