The Obbink stuff has been on slow boil for a few years now. Part of the problem is that even ancient papyri texts aren't actually worth anything, unless they are really famous, but they are getting caught up by all the export regulations for gold and jewels (sometimes under new interpretations of law).
Obbink has made some poor decisions, but I feel that the rules have changed on his watch. Also, while "Hobby Lobby" is a fun way to denigrate the people involved here, they are actually behind the Bible Museum in D.C., probably the most important Biblical antiquities collection in the world, and were purchased for museum display.
That said, the museum acquisition team has run into export issues before, and their team was caught buying items from Saudi Arabians without a proper chain of custody (and therefore likely looted), and shipping it back to the US under false pretenses.
Not good, but a big part of it is that they have "Bible" in their museum name, and that gets all the bigots out in arms.
(I wish I could read this article, but my usual NYT tricks aren't working.)
The headline is factually correct. The contract was made in 2013 between Dr. Obbink and Hobby Lobby Stores, not between him and the museum, which didn't yet exist. The first sentence of the third paragraph reads:
"Thirteen fragments from the collection were found in the Museum of the Bible, a Washington institution founded by Hobby Lobby’s evangelical Christian owners, the Green family."
So the headline is correct and the article provides additional details. Also, I don't see what the worth of the texts has anything to do with it. Here's the statement from the EES:
"These texts were taken without authorisation from the EES" is theft regardless of the value of those texts.
Edit: if this article has any bias, I don't see it. It is short and filled with facts. I has a dozen links to sources. It implies that the Museum of the Bible could do a better job verifying its acquisitions, but it points out that other museums could too ("Museums in general have faced increased scrutiny over the origins of their prized antiquities"). Unless some facts have been left out, this seems like a good article to me and the type of reporting we should applaud.
Thanks for that link. I'm afraid that events have moved faster than me. The last time I looked into this (6 months ago or so), EES was still standing behind Obbink on the various accusations related to him and Hobby Lobby, which at that point merely involved authenticating papyri sold at auction (the same lot in which the new Sappho was discovered a few years ago).
EDIT:
I see that Obbink claims that the "documents being used against him" are fraudulent. Whether he means the contract or the EES records is hard to say.
That's the bias right there. There is a broader problem here, but that's not indicated in the headline. Hobby Lobby was specifically targeted in the headline to create emotional engagement. Not the end of the world. Not a vast conspiracy - they need to sell clicks and paper. But not totally honest either.
That's a good point, but astute readers aren't likely to be misled by headlines alone.
Unfortunately, headline scanning for confirmation bias of one's current beliefs is rampant. This means (a) biased headlines will get more clicks, and (b) such headlines do constitute a certain lack of honesty in journalism, because of the likelihood that they will mislead many readers.
Factual correctness is not a defense against being misleading. It is quite easy to make factually correct statements that are also misleading.
"$Person has never denied $HorribleAct."
"$Person has never apologized for $HorribleAct."
"$Person has never presented any evidence showing they didn't do $HorribleAct."
You can effectively mad lib these with almost any combinations and it result in a technically true statement. But put a specific case in a news headline, and it would still be considered misleading. Why? Because we know when people read those sentences in a news headline, they will assume that there is an underlying accusation with enough credibility to be denied. Such an accusation doesn't exist. Factually, such a headline never stated such an accusation exists. But we know that is how people will read it, and thus to run such a headline knowing well the way it will be read would, at least to me, qualify as being misleading.
Did that happen in this case? I don't know enough to be sure. I just want to point out that factual correctness is not, by itself, enough to disqualify a charge of a headline being misleading.
I doubt the rules have changed much on his watch. The basic laws regarding theft have stayed more or less the same in England on his watch. These ancient manuscripts did not belong to Obbink, they belonged to the Egypt Exploration Society and Obbink was merely employed to take care of them, and had no right to sell them. The facts seem pretty clear to me.
As another poster said, putting "hobby lobby" in the title was not meant to denigrate anyone, it is in fact the correct description of the facts because the Hobby Lobby company actually purchased the manuscripts.
As far as value goes, I am not sure how much these texts were worth, I doubt they were worth nothing. And obviously, low value is not an excuse for stealing. Unless the Egypt Exploration society completely disclaims ownership of the manuscripts (e.g., they toss them in the trash), these things are their property and cannot be taken, regardless of their supposed market value.
Now one can argue that the Egypt Exploration Society themselves stole the stuff from Egypt. That may be true, a lot of the ancient things in English museum are stolen, but I do not know the details for these particular manuscripts. If the Hobby Lobby founder had his museum in Egypt and put the manuscripts there he might call himself a heroic righter of historic wrongs, but he doesn't so that is not really an issue.
I am not sure exactly why are you complaining about bigotry.
Please edit flamebait out of your posts here. It leads to fire-meets-petrol feedback loops, nowhere more reliably than on religious topics. Your comment is fine otherwise and deserves better.
You'll notice that this is, in fact, exactly what I said.
The context that I was trying to bring up -- perhaps too indirectly -- is that rather partisan people on both sides who have been having a lot of rhetoric back and forth about this on Twitter for a few years now. Obbink's Bible Museum connections have been a serious scandal. One side is outraged by Hobby Lobby's shady practices, and Obbink's cooperation with them, and the other has claimed that Hobby Lobby's practices haven't differed so much from other museums, though they have certainly behaved ignorantly from time to time. The new accusations of theft, of course, are a black eye for anyone who has defended Obbink (which includes the organization now making the accusation) if they prove to be accurate.
I believe it was what you meant, but it wasn't what you said. In that gap lies internet peril. Even what you've said here by way of explanation is the sort of thoughtful and factual content that makes for much better discussion on HN.
As someone else pointed out, Hobby Lobby and the Bible Museum have rather close relations beginning before the Museum existed. Their acquisition techniques have also been quite sketchy since that time. (Yes, Hobby Lobby attempted to smuggle cuneiform tablets into the US as "tile samples". https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/united-states-files-civ...)
Further, ancient artifacts have value beyond that of the cost of their materials, whether or not "gold and jewels" are involved.
If you read the complaint that you linked to, the government alleged that the foreign sellers shipped the items into the U.S. as "tile samples" and nowhere alleges that Hobby Lobby knew anything about or had anything to do with that. That's a fundamentally important distinction.
yet they settled out of court for $3m and had to return the goods... id say its pretty safe to say they are up to some shady stuff, otherwise why not fight in court to clear your name and save the $3m ?
The government was entitled to seize the goods under civil asset forfeiture regardless of whether Hobby Lobby did anything wrong. (All that matters was whether the goods were actually looted, not whether Hobby Lobby knew anything about that.)
As to settling for $3 million, it could easily cost that much money to litigate the case. Critically, the government didn't get Hobby Lobby to admit to anything in the stipulated settlement. The government typically pushes for some admissions as part of a settlement. In the HSBC case, for example, there area a whole raft of admissions: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/legacy/2012/....
you just keep trying to excuse their actions... and i'll just sit here and judge their actions and intentions. They aren't on the up and up and have been caught time and time again, but you are welcome to ignore that if it makes you happy.
The fact that you can't read the article shows. You are totally misrepresenting what is happening now and what happened in the past to push a particular political agenda.
This has nothing to do with export laws. The documents were the property of Oxford in a collection that he oversaw. Now Oxford discovered that he sold the documents.
Also, ancient artifacts are protected regardless of their value. That is what keeps their value in check. If every patch of dirt in Italy could be excavated and whatever is found sold on the international market, there would be a crazy land rush.
So no. The rules never changed. They were not his items, they were Oxford's. And Hobby Lobby is totally accurate. They're a hate-filled group that somehow people still shop from.
You are also significantly and intentionally warping what happened with some of their prior dealings where they smuggled artifacts into the country. They had to pay a 3 million dollar fine, return 3800 stolen items, when they intentionally forged documents. They didn't "not have a proper chain of custody" they faked the import country and contents of shipments to get them past customs after being repeatedly warned about not doing this. This is just a matter of looking up on wikipedia.
When you lie to protect an evil corporation like Hobby Lobby, you don't get to say that somehow other people are bigots. Why is it that the Christian right in the US is ok with lying all the time? Isn't there a commandment in the bible about this?
Your comment crosses into personal attack. That breaks the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do that, regardless of how wrong or annoying another comment is.
You also can't take HN threads into religious flamewar, and we ban accounts that do that as well, so please don't do that either.
Edit: I should add that there's a fine factual comment struggling to get out of what you wrote there; had you edited out the personal and flamey bits, the comment would be a good contribution to the thread. Unfortunately the guidelines violations cause more harm than the factual information adds value.
These criteria are reasonable, but it seems to me that they also need to be applied to the grandfather post. Surely, it's not OK to preemptively fling accusations of anti-Christian "bigotry" against people who would like "Christian" businessmen to take that "shalt not steal" bit more seriously?
Yes, that bit was flamebait. I didn't see it earlier, and have replied now.
Religious flamewar grows exponentially. First step flamebait, second step flame comment, third step entire thread flamewar. What it does to the site, exercise for the reader.
First, "they" did not "intentionally forg[e] documents" or "fak[e] the import country and contents." The government never accused them of that. That conduct is all attributed to Hobby Lobby's dealers, which are addressed under the heading "Additional in rem Defendants" in the complaint. The government never alleges that Hobby Lobby knew about any of that conduct.
Second, Hobby Lobby did not "pay a 3 million fine." That implies that the government proved the allegations in the complaint. It is critical to understand that the government didn't need to prove that Hobby Lobby itself did anything wrong or knew anything. The government seized the incoming shipment under civil asset forfeiture. Under the customs laws, it only needed to establish that it was more likely than not that the items were exported in violation of Iraqi law. Hobby Lobby, as the buyer, had the right to contest that allegation, but it could not prevail simply by showing that it was innocent.
Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit the items and settle for $3 million, but the stipulation of settlement does not admit wrongdoing. The company has consistently maintained that its dealers told it the origin of the items was Israel, and that their failure was not exercising proper precautions in verifying that information.
The law rightly sets a high bar for accusations of intent, but when someone who is knowledgeable about the antiquities market turns up as the recipient of misappropriated property in multiple cases, it raises questions of both intent and ethics.
Your post persuasively refutes some of the claims in the post you are replying to. As you present it, however, neither party seems to have had much reason to raise the issue of intent, and consequently your narrow focus on the legal claims does not go far towards resolving that question.
> The law rightly sets a high bar for accusations of intent
It doesn't. The bar for making an accusation is merely having a good faith belief that you will be able to prove the existence of intent. You don't even need evidence in order to make the allegation. It is therefore critical to note that the government didn't accuse Hobby Lobby of knowingly or intentionally buying looted artifacts. While intent isn't an element of the civil forfeiture claim, if there was a good faith basis for asserting intent or knowledge, it would have been added for "color."
That's quite a claim - by the definition of "hate", you're saying that the individuals who run Hobby Lobby "feel intense or passionate dislike for (someone)".
You may not like certain specifics of their employee healthcare policy, but having such a policy does not imply hate on their part -- such a conclusion doesn't follow logically. Or is there another fact that would imply hatred on their part?
You said you disagree with my statement that "having such a policy does not imply hate on their part" -- which I take to mean you think having such a policy does imply hatred. I just repeated that, but replaced the word "hate" with its definition -- "feeling intense or passionate dislike for (someone)".
> I think they are a hateful group because they so vehemently wanted to deny medical access through their mandated healthcare program.
You're using emotionally loaded terms that assume a particular attitude on their part. My point is that if you don't start by assuming any particular attitude and evaluate their actions alone, those actions don't necessarily imply an intense dislike for anyone (i.e. hatred).
You are trying really hard to obfuscate the issues here. The accusation is that Obbink stole the fragments and sold them.
Using the correct name of the corporation to which he sold the stolen fragments is not "a fun way to denigrate the people involved".
As far as the museum, given their clear willingness to skirt legal and ethical boundaries in the acquisition of these artifacts, it's a major problem that these are the people own such a vast collection of important history.
Of course this is all open to interpretation, but in the way we interpret the site guidelines for moderation purposes, "You are trying really hard to obfuscate the issues here" is crossing into personal attack. Note that phrase "crossing into"—it's meant to imply an errant elbow rather than charging at someone. Both are penalties but the latter is worse.
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and note this bit: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
>they have "Bible" in their museum name, and that gets all the bigots out in arms.
Your post admits they broke the law.
It's not bigoted to insist rich, religious people follow the low.
The opposite in fact: it's the height of entitlement for a group that holds oversized sway on the political process to refuse to obey the few laws that exist to stymie them.
Was the founder just using the company as a front to collect dubiously legal artifacts perhaps? Basically as a way to insulate himself behind his company in case some irate government came looking for them.
Considering the relation between Hobby Lobby (father) and the Museum of the Bible (son), I would be shocked if there was any corporate veil left intact on the Hobby Lobby side. It is a private entity, so not sure the shareholders have much desire to complain about the running of the organization.
Don't they have a status of "closely held"?
As in - they definitely should be liable for criminal actions in the name of the company. Otherwise it's not "closely held"
That’s not quite the correct framing. The RFRA allows a “person” to sue the government where a law impinges on the person’s “exercise of religion.” Hobby Lobby involved two separate issues. One, does “person” for purposes of the RFRA include a corporation? The Court answered yes, that’s the usual meaning absent contrary intent. Two, is a privately held for profit corporation a “person” capable of "exercising religion?" DHHS conceded that non-profit corporations were capable of exercising religion. (The dissent did not dispute that either.) So the Court's decision was a straight-forward application of that concession, based on finding no reason why a for-profit corporation should be treated differently.[1]
The underlying principle therefore wasn’t “blurry." Corporations have separate assets from their owners. But they are controlled and operated by people for various purposes. The government cannot use the fact that the inanimate entity lacks rights in order to indirectly impinge on the rights of the people who legally own and operate the corporation. That basic principle wasn't disputed by either DHHS or the dissent. The only issue was whether for-profit corporations should somehow be treated differently than non-profits.
And that general principle is clearly correct. Thought experiment: can Donald Trump issue an executive order requiring Google to post in its front page a banner encouraging people to vote for him? If not, why not? Whose rights are violated?
[1] I actually disagree with the DHHS's concession. Corporations can't "exercise religion." For this particular case the distinction ends up being academic, because that just means that the owners are the ones who should have brought the RFRA suit, not the corporation. The owners of Hobby Lobby definitely can exercise religion, and regulating a corporation they have the right to control can be an infringement of that right. As Kennedy noted in concurrence, the holding of the case is narrow.
It works similarly: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-.... Corporations can be held criminally liable. For that purpose, the mental state of the humans authorized to take action on behalf of the corporation is imputed onto the corporation.
If Hobby Lobby's owners had intent to defraud customers, and directed the corporation to defraud customers, they could be held liable and so could the corporation. The fact that Hobby Lobby as an inanimate object is incapable of forming intent would be irrelevant.
Mostly Christian, yes. There are some Jewish relics, and a few other items. Much of the collection is very old/rare, seriously museum-level content & quantity.
Content includes: Gutenberg Bible, first-printing King James Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, metal-imprinted Torah, famous misprints ("thou shalt commit adultery"), jewel-encrusted Bible given by Yassar Arafat, bible illustrated by Salvador Dali, and lots of ancillary relics I don't recall at the moment. If you get a chance to view the traveling museum, do so (regardless of your inclinations).
Did Oxford University legitimately acquire the ancient texts in the first place or did they steal them/acquire them from thieves, as well? What's the chain of custody on any of these? Why did Hobby Lobby return the many times stolen texts to Oxford instead of to whoever the actual owner is.
And when will the stolen Elgin Marbles of the Acropolis be returned by the British Museum to Greece?
You know, it wasn’t so long ago that “take the high road” was the common mantra. Turns out, even if you disagree with people or think they’re wrong, you can still behave with decorum. It makes everything more pleasant.
It’s about approach. Most of the time people aren’t actually trying to harm you. Coming into every disagreement with a “you’re the enemy” viewpoint is a sure way to make sure there’s no such thing as civil discourse. Despite popular belief, blanket outrage actually fixes very little.
The only reason I replied and used the word bigot was because of the use in the original comment. Perhaps they should have "taken the high road" by not implying those who oppose Hobby Lobby's owners are bigots.
The parent observed that “Bigots oppose hobby lobby”, not that everyone who opposes hobby lobby is a bigot. You levied the unsubstantiated accusation that the hobby lobby founders are bigots. These things are not the same.
It's not a "fine line": it's unnecessarily offensive. Your overall point is fine, but the wording is not. Even if it's eventually delated, comments like this tear down the community that lots of us care about. Excuses that you are only doing harm because someone else caused harm first don't reduce the damage. Please continue to share your opinion, but start with the less offensive version.
Hey, dang, where are you, man? Gonna ban this guy for "ideological flamewar"?
Nah, this Dan is a founder, a YC alum with 11,000 karma points. He can say whatever he wants. At worst, he'd get a "Well, yeah, you're right, they are religious bigots, but please be more subtle about it." But he won't even get that, because no HN user with >=500 karma's going to flag his comment.
Of course, weberc2's comment is downvoted.
Nah, HN isn't biased to the left at all, dang. After all, people on both sides complain, therefore it must be perfectly balanced, right?
I replied to that comment as soon as I saw it, which was before I saw your comment here. Also, plenty of users flagged it—it plainly breaks the site guidelines.
Does that article (and publication) strike you as trustworthy? Does it appear that the author and publication aspire to present a balanced perspective? Would you be persuaded if I linked to a Fox News (or similar) article on the issue?
You are aware that there are more articles on this topic than that singular one presented, right? This whole issue was discussed almost to literal death on various discussion boards years ago. An objective view of this issue doesn't paint HL in a good light, imho.
> You are aware that there are more articles on this topic than that singular one presented, right?
Yes, I'm sure there are lots of articles, many of which are slanted to support one agenda or another and maybe a few that aspire to present a balanced viewpoint. I'm not sure what your point you're making.
> An objective view of this issue doesn't paint HL in a good light, imho.
Probably not, but it doesn't support the "hateful bigots" accusation. "Greedy capitalists disingenuously hiding behind religious rights" at worst.
It seems extremely prejudicial and even driven by a bigoted and hateful motivation to emphasize the purchaser of the fragment when the story is really about the person who is accused of illegally taking and selling the fragments.
It would be like writing the headline like this "Oxford is Officially and International Illegal Historical Artifacts Dealing Organized Criminal Enterprise." if one were to have a bigoted bias against Oxford.
When one takes a step back the far worse villain then Hobby Lobby, is definitely Oxford, which was apparently complicit in this type of activity by way of insufficient controls to prevent it. But even that would be ridiculous in many ways, but not as ridiculous as blaming the other victim Hobby Lobby, that was defrauded by the Professor who also used Oxford's credentials and authority to make the sale.
You are suggesting here that when purchasing such artifacts for a major museum collection, that the Hobby Lobby/Bible Museum owners have zero responsibility to verify the provenance of the artifacts and the legality of their sale. All they have to do is just not ask any probing questions, and they should be able to claim that "we didn't know they were stolen!" Sorry, but that's outrageous.
Since after repeatedly violating the site guidelines and ignoring our explanations and requests to stop, you keep bringing personal attacks and ideological flamewar into the threads, we've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break the HN guidelines with.
You do realize the legal perspective on this idea is hundreds of years old and influenced by Biblical views of right & wrong, yes?
Someone all warmed up by contemporary political headlines raging about how reality works in a vacuum ignoring society has never really felt beholden to such views.
Pretty good argument for not pretending it ever can be, despite your obvious emotional addiction to thinking it must.
>>The contract was made in 2013 between Dr. Obbink and Hobby Lobby Stores
>extremely prejudicial ... to emphasize the purchaser of the fragment when the story is really about the person who is accused of illegally taking and selling the fragments.
i think laws are pretty consistent everywhere in civilized world - knowingly purchasing stolen staff is a crime, and buying ancient texts from an Oxford professor instead of buying them from Oxford doesn't really pass smell test (or like they say in legalese something like what would a "reasonable man" do)
That anything was stolen is a new accusation. The accusations against Obbink previously have all been impropriety-related, related to dealing with the Hobby Lobby people at all.
It's rather surprising (perhaps "fantastical" ?) that all of the rumors turned up such a smoking gun after all these years. This is a case where the 80%/20% rule didn't apply, and the real answer turned out to be 150%.
It seems to me that your link and its comments give plenty of hints that property is suspected of having been misappropriated, e.g. "The sheer volume of all these new texts was raising concern." or https://brentnongbri.com/2019/07/03/dirk-obbink-and-the-muse...
Given that some of the people involved are deep pocketed and litigious, and British defamation law appears to be fairly plaintiff friendly, the participants in that discussion probably exercised extra caution.
Sure, but people were thinking artifact smugglers and shady dealers and Obbink looking the other way, not theft from collections under his own care. Obbink is famous and well-known. He has published some of the most important papyri of the last decade. This is pretty brazen, if true.
Are you sure that you're not prejudiced on the side of Hobby Lobby? Because you're defending Hobby Lobby over something that they are not even accused of.
It's a matter of fact that they bought it, without due diligence.
The guidelines specifically call out linkbait titles: "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" so in the parent comments argument that the title is clickbait it certainly isn't "according to HN guidelines".
I'd be interested in what the ratio of users that only know portions of the guidelines that are often repeated in comments vs those that have actually read through the guidelines.
> The guidelines specifically call out linkbait titles:
That's true, they do. And the parent comment here claimed linkbait. The suggested guideline is to default to the original title first, and avoid editorializing by default, that's the spirit of the rule, and then if the title is egregious, try to fix the wording to be less misleading.
There are lots of possibilities, one of them is that the submitter doesn't know or doesn't believe the title is linkbait. One of them is that @LegitShady has an opinion that is shared by a minority or nobody.
The problem with suggesting a ban when not editorializing titles is that it assumes linkbait is clear and absolutely recognizable, and that everyone agrees. Banning someone for an offense they might not be able to recognize in advance is a draconian measure that will reduce the quality of open discussion here. We already have mechanisms that help filter bad titles, including article downvotes, a flagging system, and moderators that actively respond to title wording complaints.
> I'd be interested in what the ratio of users that only know portions of the guidelines that are often repeated in comments vs those that have actually read through the guidelines.
I'd likewise be interested in what ratio of users read a comment and use assumptions to jump to a hard conclusion that denies benefit of the doubt without acknowledging the possibility that other causes are possible, including their own misinterpretation.
Having read through the guidelines completely, I know that reading with charitable interpretations and giving benefit of the doubt is in the spirit of the guidelines. With respect to the top comment here, I humbly suggest that banning anyone for using verbatim titles goes directly against the spirit of HN, and the literal wording of the guidelines too.
Speaking of reading a comment and using assumptions to jump to a hard conclusion: The "ratio of users" comment wasn't directed at you personally it was directed at wondering how many are voting your comment up in the discussion assuming "The submitter who used the NYT title verbatim, according to HN guidelines?" is all the guidelines had to say since you made no allusion this was simply your interpretation and not all the guidelines say about titles.
I don't even agree with LegitShady I just find it disingenuous to disagree purely by stating your interpretation of the guidelines as if that's all the guidelines had to say about clickbait. It's tautological that if you disagree your interpretation is that the guidelines disagree and it just masks the minority opinion rather than discussion the opinion.
Personally I my interpretation is a bit stronger on changing linkbait titles (though really you should just try to find a less linkbaity source) but banning is a definitely overkill (even if likely to be simply exaggeration instead of a recommendation). I probably should have included this in my original comment to make my intent clearer.
Because Hobby Lobby didn't do what the headline says?
"An investigation found that Bible fragments in a museum started BY THE OWNERS of the arts-and-crafts chain had been illegally taken from the university."
> The Egypt Exploration Society began an investigation in June after a director of the Bible museum released a redacted copy of a 2013 contract between the professor, Dr. Dirk Obbink, and Hobby Lobby stores for the sale of six items, including four thought to be from the Oxyrhynchus collection.
The contract is with the company. The company gave it to the museum.
http://archive.is/66GpS