Friday, March 6, 2009

Golb Arrest

Last night Wade mentioned the piece in the NYT that there had been an arrest of Golb. Jim Davila has the scoop HERE. In January I think that I too received a series of emails from this person. The emails were very inflammatory about the fact that the Houston Museum of Natural Science has a Dead Sea Scroll on display and that I should be ashamed of myself for promoting the overturned theory that there was a Qumran community responsible for the scrolls. He used some scholars' names as if he were representing them. I knew that these scholars would never support or say such things, so I trashed the e-mails. I would have kept them had I known that an investigation was going on!

This goes to show that we all need to be careful and keep our wits about us. Anyone can write anything, attach our names to it, and publish it on the web or via e-mail. So if it looks harmful, inflammatory, or just doesn't sit right, we probably should contact the scholar directly and give warning that something may be amiss.

2 comments:

Jim said...

your sources are hours and hours late. 'scoop' means something else than that.

sparkwidget said...

Well I'm apparently not alone in being harassed by whackos. I had to involve the FBI to dispel a neo-Gnostic cult member who was making death threats and trying to ruin my career by contacting people I know like my Dean and professors. These are the consequences for seriously evaluating a cult's adherence to "Gnosticism" on the web.