Since I am content in my little bit of satire of Simcha's overly-dramatic sweeping declarations, apparently elevating Bob to the status of
Dirty Harry, I will simply link to the pertinent exposition and critical commentary:
UPDATE: Mark Goodacre over on the NT Blog has brought to light that the "Museum Quality Replica" of the so-called "Jonah Ossuary" has been given a facelift in light of criticism and the shifting claims of Simcha Jacobovici and James Tabor. Strangely enough in Replica 2 the inscription that supposedly says "Jonah" is almost
too clear compared to the order of scratches on the first replica (which don't connect certain "letters"), and
more importantly the mess of scratches in the actual photographs of the genuine ossuary.
(This second replica's all-too-clean inscription, by the way, was what Professor Puech was apparently basing his reading off of.)
Curiouser and curiouser. I wonder what Jacobovici has to say about this?
I have to say that I am
disgusted.
It's all fun and games to have a replica made to show off to the press. Seriously. People enjoy that kind of thing. *I* enjoy that kind of thing.
However, it's
another issue entirely to call something a "replica" that's demonstrably not faithful or accurate to the original, revise it
without noting the changes
after criticism has mounted so that it looks more like what you're trying to prove, and then use that
altered representation to apparently deceive someone prominent like Puech.
It's even a
further ethical failure, in my opinion, to then turn around and use that person's opinion (which one can assume has been misinformed due to the altered inscription; think
GIGO) as
propaganda for one's own "crackpot" theories.
I'm with Mark on this one. I believe that Simcha owes not just Prof. Puech, but
everyone involved thus far an overdue apology for these tactics.
