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A US museum announced Monday that five artifacts were said to be fragments of the ancient manuscripts known to the Dead Sea Scrolls are in fact fake, and will not longer be displayed.
Washington's Museum of the Bible – which stirred controversy last year for its financial backing from a billionaire Christian evangelical – removed from the pieces of the exhibition after a German research institution concluded that they were not old enough.
"Jeffrey Kloha," Jeffrey Kloha, "The museum's chief curator," Jeffrey Kloha, "The Museum's Chief Curator said in a statement.
"As an educational institution with cultural heritage, the museum upholds and adheres to all museums and ethical guidelines on collection care, research and display."
The Dead Sea Scrolls, which includes the famous English manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, dates from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD.
Numbering around 900, they were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the Qumran caves above the Dead Sea.
The five removed fragments had been exhibited in the sprawling museum since it was opened in November 2017, but were labeled with explanations that were researched under their legitimacy.
Dead Sea Scroll pieces in Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) for testing after previous studies questioned their authenticity.
One researcher, Kipp Davis of Trinity Western University, had published "at least seven fragments in the museum's Dead Sea Scrolls collection are modern forgeries."
The museum has been tested in Germany and has been the focus of further badysis.
The Museum of the Bible raised its eyebrows even before its giants bronze, its principal financier is Steve Green, whose arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby has supported conservative causes in Washington.
Just months before the museum opened the company was forced to pay a $ 3 million settlement and give up 5,500 artifacts – including ancient clay cuneiform tablets from Iraq – which the US Justice Department said were illegally imported.
The Green family's Christian beliefs and the smuggling debacle had skeptics questioning both the museum's ideological aim and the provenance of its antiquities.
At the opening Green, who chairs the museum's board, said the institution aims only to "present the facts."
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