Veritas is out and @forgingantiq are formulating some lessons we can learn by comparing the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife case with those many forgeries in the past. One thing we’d like to reflect on is how unsettling academia finds cases which have provoked discussion. https://twitter.com/drdonnayates/status/1293186416726351873

It all comes down to how certain we are about what happened in the past, what artefacts look like. As a historian who has engaged with material across the documentary AND literary spheres, I’ve seen some stuff - out of archaeological contexts - which give me pause

what is and isn’t possible? These cause me to be mindful of just how many genuine outliers exist. Would these things survive the scrutiny applied to GJW?

Authentication is not a process applied evenly to all artefacts but is triggered when something dramatically contravenes what we think is possible.

As interesting as the detection of forgeries is, what we find particularly interesting is when and why these processes of doubt get triggered and what this says about what kind of antiquity scholars are prepared to discover.