Sunday, June 03, 2018
Garage sale mummies
Via GetReligion, this is a fascinating peek into a rarefied corner of academia that gets little public attention. It's especially interesting in terms of economics, as in real value vs vintage value.
There's a hot dispute about one little scrap of manuscript from 100 AD. The scrap includes a few lines of the book of Mark. The scholar who currently owns it has been trying to sell it in a garage sale atmosphere. He has a pool table in his Oxford office, displaying several mummy heads and fragments for sale.
Huh? I always thought precious ancient papyri were carefully preserved in temperature-controlled cabinets, and the provenance or chain of ownership was also carefully maintained. Even ordinary modern documents get better treatment than this! I keep my work contracts and backup CDs in a fireproof safe.
But then the history of these fragments shows a consistent low value. The Egyptians recycled old papyri into mummy wrap, equivalent to using newspaper in a birdcage. The discussion in the article includes conflicting quotes from mummy-wrap specialists.
Which leads to Real value vs Vintage value.
A scrap of papyrus never had much real value. Like a sheet of newspaper, it was used for practical purposes, not treated as a text.
These scraps acquire vintage value because mummywrapologists and other scholars gain prestige from having exclusive access to the text written on the scraps. If you can form a new interpretation of scripture based on a slight difference in letters, you can publish the interpretation.
So the garage sale is an odd cross-grained conflict between the two forms. The scrap is being handled according to its real value, but the owner expects a high price based on its vintage value.
¶ 1:33 AM 
These scraps acquire vintage value because mummywrapologists and other scholars gain prestige from having exclusive access to the text written on the scraps. If you can form a new interpretation of scripture based on a slight difference in letters, you can publish the interpretation.
So the garage sale is an odd cross-grained conflict between the two forms. The scrap is being handled according to its real value, but the owner expects a high price based on its vintage value.
¶ 1:33 AM
