Wellhausen, Joosten, Hendel and Rezetko (how about Ezra Pound, Lindbergh, Luther, super-sessionalists)

[Steven Avery]

https://www.academia.edu/172472533/Restoring_Academic_Freedom_after_Woke_1

During this era other biblical scholars, past and present, were targets of cancellation, including Julius Wellhausen (for the crime of antisemitism, although his was a theological rather than racist prejudice, unlike some of his peers). Citing Wellhausen became culpable, despite his brilliance and inescapable legacy. Dumbing down and self-censorship– out of fear of reputational damage or cancellation – was the order of the day and remains so. This is to the lasting detriment of the field.

,,,

I urge that the Woke 1 tactics cease – no more policing of academic speech, book- banning, editorially-imposed censorship, and intimidation – so that scholars can cite any research they wish, aren’t cowed by threats to their reputation and livelihood, and can even read dangerous books like How Old is the Hebrew Bible? (which I co-wrote with Joosten) or Prolegomena to the History of Israel (by Wellhausen) without fear.

===============


Jan Joosten, then Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, was charged with possession of child pornography. (He pled guilty, lost his job, and served his time.) In our field he was canceled, his works were prohibited for citation, and the publisher of his most recent book was threatened with cancellation unless they ceased printing the book. Many scholars joined this frenzy, blaming patriarchy, whiteness, and other agents of oppression. Through the channels of social media, the woke elite threatened anyone who might deviate from their righteous persecutions. This is an academic version of Robespierre’s infamous principle, “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.” But terror, even in the name of virtue, is incompatible with academic flourishing.

 

[Steven Avery]

https://www.academia.edu/172657562/2026b_Rezetko_Response_to_Ron_Hendel_on_Jan_Joosten_and_Wokeness

 

[Steven Avery]

https://www.academia.edu/community/activity/mgO8xQ?c=yWo1Jz

Ron Hendel
3d

University of California, Berkeley
I must have made my points about academic freedom poorly, since Robert misconstrues them. I was not arguing that Jan be granted “professional rehabilitation.” My focus was the extreme response that was aimed at others: the policing of academic speech, the banning of citations and books, the threats and cancellations targeted at many. My example of the cancellation of Wellhausen illustrates the same phenomena – scholars have been publicly shunned and shamed for citing him. This – all of this – violates the principle of academic freedom, the sine qua non of our discipline. This is what has been damaged and what we need to restore.

 

[Steven Avery]

Christian Friedrich Matthaei (an 18th-century scholar who stole manuscripts from Moscow libraries and altered texts) and Jan Joosten (a former Oxford Regius Professor of Hebrew terminated in 2020 following a severe moral and criminal conviction)

1. The Fabricators and Manuscripts Thieve-Traders
These individuals targeted the textual world by forging entirely new biblical or apocryphal documents, or by physically stealing and altering real artifacts.

• Constantine Simonides (1820–1890)
  • The Failings: Mass forgery, literary deception, and theft.
  • The Details: Simonides was a brilliant Greek paleographer who chose to use his immense knowledge of ancient scripts to create masterclass forgeries. He successfully sold fake classical and biblical papyri to libraries across Europe. In his most audacious move, he tried to claim that he had personally written the Codex Sinaiticus (one of the oldest and most vital New Testament manuscripts in existence) as a young man, attempting to discredit its discovery by Constantine von Tischendorf. [1]
• Moses Wilhelm Shapira (1830–1884)
  • The Failings: Dealing in forged textual artifacts and suspected fraud.
  • The Details: A Jerusalem antiquities dealer who provided many genuine pieces, Shapira became infamous for trying to sell 15 blackened leather strips to the British Museum for £1 million in 1883. He claimed they were a proto-Deuteronomy found near the Dead Sea. The text was quickly branded a forgery by contemporary scholars, driving Shapira to suicide. In recent years, scholars still debate whether he was an intentional fraudster or a victim of local counterfeiters. [1, 2]
• Walter Fritz (The "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" Scandal)
  • The Failings: Modern manuscript forgery and academic manipulation.
  • The Details: In 2012, a papyrus fragment written in Coptic was presented by a Harvard professor as the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife." It sent shockwaves through the biblical world. An investigative journalist later unmasked the owner, Walter Fritz—a former Egyptology student and internet pornographer—as the master forger who had fabricated the text by copying grammar and ink styles from online PDFs of genuine Coptic texts. [1]

2. Academic Plagiarists in Biblical Commentary
While Matthaei and Joosten engaged in criminal acts or textual tampering, other modern scholars collapsed under the ethical weight of structural academic plagiarism.

Peter T. O'Brien (2016 Scandal)

• The Failings: Systemic academic plagiarism.
• The Details: O’Brien was a highly respected Australian New Testament scholar. In 2016, it was discovered that his prominent, widely used commentaries on Ephesians, Philippians, and Hebrews contained massive amounts of verbatim and near-verbatim plagiarism from other scholars. The publisher, WM. B. Eerdmans, took the extraordinary and costly step of pulling all of his books out of print and pulping existing stock. O’Brien publicly apologized, blaming "faulty work processes." [1]

3. The Lines Blur: Alleged Forgery and Academic Hoaxes

Morton Smith (1915–1991)

• The Failings: Alleged forgery, deception, and breach of academic trust.
• The Details: A brilliant Columbia University professor, Smith claimed to have discovered a previously unknown letter by Clement of Alexandria inside the Mar Saba monastery in 1958. This letter contained fragments of a "Secret Gospel of Mark." While Smith published it as an ancient text, a strong contingency of modern textual critics believe Smith forged the Greek text himself to inject controversial themes into early Christian history. [1]

Summary Comparison of Ethical Failings

Figure	Primary Field	Nature of Ethical/Moral Failing	Modern Legacy
Jan Joosten	Hebrew / Old Testament	Severe criminal child abuse material conviction	Stripped of Oxford chair; ostracized
C.F. Matthaei	Greek NT Manuscripts	Stole library manuscripts; altered text to spite rivals	Viewed as a brilliant but deeply unethical rogue
Constantine Simonides	Paleography	Fabricated fake text fragments; tried to hoaxes Sinaiticus	History's most notorious manuscript forger
Peter T. O'Brien	New Testament	Mass plagiarism across multiple top-tier commentaries	Career collapsed; books pulped by publisher
Walter Fritz	Coptic Studies	Forged the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" papyrus fragment	Exposed by investigative journalism

If you are exploring a specific era of biblical textual manipulation, let me know if you would like to look closer into ancient pseudepigrapha (intentional forgeries within the Bible itself) or more modern archaeological scandals like the James Ossuary trial. [1, 2, 3]

• 
  CNN
  
  'Gospel of Jesus' forgery: New book details how Harvard's Karen King ...
  Sep 13, 2020 — The owner of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is Walter Fritz, who most scholars regard as the forger. Fritz denies that, but there is st...
  
  
  
• 
  The New York Times
  
  Is a Long-Dismissed Forgery Actually the Oldest Known ...
  Mar 10, 2021 — Pentateuchal scholarship, meanwhile, steamed along. Through the 20th century, scholars painstakingly reconstructed four (or, some ...