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Originally Posted by BloodFetish
Fascinating thread, TC!
Are you concerned about how much you and your colleagues say regarding the forgeries for fear of "training" the forgers? For example, when you talk about a little publishing mark in a modern book appearing in an ancient text, do you think it likely the person responsible for that forgery (if it is one) will now omit similar mistakes when using that modern book as a source?
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This is a legitimate concern, and one that I have heard from my own colleagues. There are a couple of ways to view this: Yes, I suppose it might be useful to simply reject forgeries without explanation, in hopes both that this action will serve to not legitimate the forgery and also will not "tip off" the forger about his errors. In my situation I did not believe this to be an option, largely because there are numerous, highly respected scholars who had already come forward with acceptance of all of the problematic fragments' authenticity. I have won the scholarly consensus, but only on the basis of my published findings reported in a tier-1 peer-reviewed scientific journal. Had I claimed forgery without revealing the evidence, I am quite sure my assertion would have been ignored.
Additionally, I would argue that several of the errors I have observed are impossible to avoid, and many of the most damning issues occur on a microscopic level. For example, one of the most common incontrovertible pieces of evidence for forgery among the fragments I have seen are inks on top of sedimentary deposits. Manuscript fragments from antiquity that have languished in desert cave environments for centuries or millennia will accumulate thick layers of sediment. When forgers attempt to write on ancient media they invariably must navigate these deposits that are very frequently invisible to the naked eye. For example, one fragment I have seen looks fairly normal—albeit badly damaged—at a 1:1 scale, but even at this level of observation one can see creases and tiny crevices that have scarred the surface. At 350 x magnification we can see clearly microscopic particles that have filled these creases, and in two places the ink actually spills over top of these. I would say that is an error which is practically impossible to avoid committing.