Stealing and selling biblical papyri, but why?

I had heard about the alleged pre-100 CE papyri fragment of Mark (which turned out to not be true on the dating, as even an evangelical admits, and not that close, as Bart Ehrman discusses), soon after the information about it was released. I also wasn't surprised that flunkies for the Green family were behind its touting, and publication.

I guess the fact, or seeming fact, that like the antiquities that Hobby Lobby's Green family got from Iraq, this and other papyri were stolen, shouldn't be a surprise either.

That said, the apparent thief is not some "street Arab," but Dr. Dirk Obbink, an Oxford associate professor and formerly one of three curators of the whole trove of Oxyrhychus papyri owned by the Egypt Exploration Society and housed at Oxford's Sackler Library.

Again, but why?

First, the facts.

Whoever did it was almost certainly an insider, as they stole "provenance information" related to the approximately 200 missing papyri. (They didn't know that much of this was backed up elsewhere, though.)

It would take an insider to know what papyri were of particular value, too.

As for Obbink?

As the story notes, he's an odd duck even within papyrology.

Plus, he is also an incorporated antiquities dealer.

And, as for possible motive? Sounds like he might have real estate debts hanging over his head. Follow the money! That's the saying in journalism.

As for likelihood? The Sappho fragment would seem to indicate him as a suspect. The fact that Oxford didn't renew his curatorial position over concerns over the Sappho fragment further mark him as untrustworthy.

Candida Moss, one of the biblical scholars behind sussing out this issue, wrote about it last year.

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Now, the $64,000 question for antiquities experts? How light would you like the British government (and US government, if it could be involved) to go on Obbink in a plea deal, in exchange for him spilling ALL the beans? That includes spilling the beans not only on where ALL the missing fragments are, but how active the Greens have been on their end in soliciting items like this. (And anybody besides the Greens.)

I also want to know what other items Obbink has lied about on age, provenance, etc.

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The second $64K question? How common is this?

I'll bet it's more common than a Candida Moss would like to admit.

I call it the BAR culture. It's the culture from Biblical Archaeology Review that led the Greens to flout provenance issues AND import regs with the Iraqi antiquities. But, Oxford and the Sackler Library aren't US-occupied Iraq, and Hobby Horse Lobby was already being "looked at," so it proceeded slowly and was lucky not to get burned. But Hershel Shanks' plugging of many items of dubious value, dubious provenance, or dubiousness period, like the James ossuary, has fed this whole background.