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orion-list Baigent & Leigh (was Angel Scroll)


Leo Abrami:

> You call the  'Baigent story' a conspiracy,  only because you do not know
> or do not wish to believe the facts which are described in the book. They
> are basically authentic!  Whether you like it or not.
> Dozens of articles in the magazine of Biblical Archeology testify to this
> fact.
> 
> If there was a conspiracy,  it was a conspiracy of those who had been
> entrusted with the documents and were refusing to publish them, as all
> good scholars and historians would have done.
> 
I was referring solely to the one point of Baigent & Leigh which has become
most famous: the allegation of a Vatican-orchestrated conspiracy, for which
these authors provided no evidence, which from your second paragraph 
you sound as if you don't believe either.  I agree with your second
paragraph,
provided Vermes's word "scandal" is substituted for "conspiracy".  I also
do not think the contents of the scrolls played any direct role in the
reasons 
for the editors' slowness to publish or allow access to non-editors (with
the 
possible exception of the Copper Scroll saga, which in any event was 
published).  As for indirect role, i.e. in terms of systems theory, Kuhnian 
reactions of academic guilds to new information, sociology of scholarship, 
etc., that may be a matter for future historians to debate--that may be more

of a grey area.  With no demonstrated role of the Vatican or the contents 
of the scrolls as directly causative factors in the scandal that indeed was 
the case, the Baigent & Leigh book fails in its thesis, which is to be 
distinguished from some interesting and true reporting that is included 
along the way.  That's my take on it, anyway.

Greg Doudna
Copenhagen

For private reply, e-mail to Greg Doudna <gd@teol.ku.dk>
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