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German specialists have tested the fragments and discovered that five "have characteristics incompatible with the ancient origin and therefore will no longer be exposed to the museum".
Billion Oklahoma, the Greens are best known for their chain of Hobby Lobby craft stores and their fight for religious freedom with the Obama administration about the coverage of contraception in diets. of health care of the company.
"Although we hoped that the tests would produce different results, it is an opportunity to educate the public on the importance of verifying the authenticity of rare biblical artifacts, the process developed testing and our commitment to transparency, "said Jeffrey Kloha, director curatorial officer of the Bible Museum.
"As a cultural heritage educational institution, the museum respects and adheres to all museum and ethical guidelines regarding the maintenance, research and exhibition of collections."
But some scholars have been questioning for years about supposed fragments of the Dead Sea manuscript, claiming that unscrupulous antiquities traffickers were attacking evangelicals like the Greens, thus making millions of dollars.
Steve Green, founder and evangelical chairman of the Bible Museum, would not say how much his family spent on the 16 fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection in his collection. But experts say even small fragments with little text can bring millions to the antiques market.
Through a spokesman, Green declined to comment on information regarding the five fake rolls of his museum. Regarding the 16 fragments: 7 will not be displayed, 9 will be tested. Three of the nine out of nine are currently exposed to the museum with posters addressing issues related to their authenticity, the spokesman said.
On the website, "The Liar of Scribes", researchers have identified more than 70 alleged fragments of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscript that have surfaced on the antiques market since 2002. Ninety percent between they are fakes, said Arstein Justnes, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Agder in Norway, including at the Bible Museum.
Kipp Davis, an expert on Dead Sea Scrolls from Trinity Western University in Canada, is one of many academics who has tried to warn Christians, including the Green family, about counterfeits.
Davis, who studied the fragments for the Bible Museum, said that Monday's news about the fake ones seemed to be a bitter-sweet justification. Delivery: Evangelicals and other people whose faith motivates them to collect artifacts must be very cautious about antique dealers who want to arouse their interest in supposedly ancient fragments of writing.
"Those good intentions that come from a place of faith are subject to really crude manipulations," said Davis, "and that's a big part of what happened here."
The scholar stated that he estimated that 2 to 4 of the 16 fragments of the Greens could be authentic, but that at least 8 were fake.
In April 2017, the Bible Museum sent five fragments to Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und-prüfung (BAM), a German institute for materials analysis, where researchers tested 3D digital microscopy and performed analyzes of ink and sediment materials on papyrus.
Scholars have hypothesized that counterfeiters write on old pieces of papyrus or leather, giving the rolls an authentic appearance until the ink is tested.
Their report, recently announced by the Museum of the Bible, "raises new suspicions about the authenticity of the five fragments".
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls 70 years ago, the earliest and most complete version of the Hebrew Bible was from the 9th century.
But then, the Bedouin shepherds stumbled on the scrolls, hidden for nearly 2,000 years in caves in Qumran, on the west bank of the Dead Sea.
The discovery was so vast, with more than 900 manuscripts and about 50,000 fragments, it took six decades for the excavations to search and publish them.
The Israeli Antiquities Authority holds firm on most of the Dead Sea Scrolls and displays them in the Book Sanctuary in Jerusalem. For decades, it was almost impossible for private collectors to get their hands on the remains of the famous archaeological find.
But in 2002, new fragments began to mysteriously appear on the market. The Greens bought their fragments between 2009 and 2014. At the time, they were deeply involved in the antiques trade, collecting a collection of about 40,000 artifacts.
Some scholars have accused the Greens of having bought too many artifacts too quickly, without knowing exactly where they came from or who had possessed them in the past.
"They made it widely known that they were buying everything," said Joel Baden, a professor at Yale Divinity School and co-author of "Bible Nation," a new book on the Greens.
"All the antique sellers knew that the Greens bought everything and asked no questions about anything."
In an interview before the opening of the Bible Museum last fall, Steve Green told CNN that the identity of whoever sold his family fragments of the Dead Sea manuscript was uncertain.
"There have been different sources, but I do not know exactly where they came from."
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