6 ms·

400-year-old Bible stolen from US is found in Netherlands

imjasonmiller 7y ago
What surprised me was that according to the director of the American Pilgrim Museum in The Netherlands [1], they asked him to send the Bible by regular mail. He opted to bring it to the American embassy in The Hague instead. 1 https://www.bndestem.nl/binnenland/400-jaar-oude-in-vs-gestolen-bijbel-gevonden-in-leiden-ik-kreeg-opeens-een-brief-van-een-detective~a9bfff17a/ https://www.bndestem.nl/binnenland/400-jaar-oude-in-vs-gesto... (Dutch)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
nneonneo 7y ago
Ah, the book theft involving Caliban Book Shop. I worked in an office opposite that book shop for almost five years - walked right past that book shop every day, and had no idea they were centrally involved in moving millions of dollars of stolen books. Sometimes, crimes really do happen right under your nose.
- EnderViaAnsible 7y ago
  Stories like this remind me that trust is an indispensable aspect of civilization. Ultimately we have to trust our road workers to do good work, our bank tellers to be honest, and apparently our archivists not to steal what has been entrusted to their care. Also, it reminds me that our justice system(s) are mostly about punishment, because we can't actually prevent crimes, just act once they are already committed. We must trust because we cannot verify, except in Phillip K. Dick novels and Tom Cruise movies. (China's dystopian work in this area notwithstanding.)
  - cerealbad 7y ago
    trust has become implicit with mass surveillance. the only thing left to do is to read minds, but that's almost an afterthought for distraction and hysteria. what does it matter what you think or believe when everything you do is closely monitored and reinforced? a reciprocal strategy develops (trust the trusted) even if you have no surveillance,technology or civilization. trust transactions begin with a certain fixed amount and then the balance shifts based around the perception of the participants. intercepting perceptions, can circumvent trust/distrust which scales nicely if you can have sparse networks and centrally distributed information on the cheap. you can even customize interceptor information for specific networks, to create all types of down stream effects. so how has it become implicit? well, you can use technology now to create your own trust/distrust network of information, then you can train this thing to judge new information for you, and most importantly you can expose (or hide) any biases you might have with adversarial networks. this will lead to a new type of trust, a type of meta-mathematical consensus, where machines just make trust decisions far better than humans can, and ideology starts to become replaced by dataology. data dissidents may find ways to circumvent trust networks as impostors or use cloned disposable networks, but crime and problems associated with resistance to existing orders will decline precipitously, you may be against roads but you need to use them all the same. you may even see an emergent class of rebel/terrorist/revolutionary celebrity, since the novelty of not using a valid and accurate trust network geared towards ones preferences will be the same as not using the internet or banking systems for mass communication or commerce. parallel societies can easily exist without conflict, but the mass of humanity always moves together in the direction of simplification, and it's easier to trust machines, so far they have a much better track record than people, given their rapid adoption in almost every critical human sector. the trade off is that machines become difficult to build, repair and understand, but being a human becomes a lot easier, and one serves the other. this may seem naive to people inside technology networks, but i expect a type of generational dependence to grow, and things that work are rather hard to obsolesce once they establish a critical mass of global adoption. people trust machines, computers, the internet, they will grow to entrust them with trust-proofs.
anotherthro313 7y ago
tl;dr: A bible was stolen, then it was returned.
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
> Wearing blue latex gloves, [the FBI agent] displayed the Bible, carefully opening its weathered pages. Don't archivists dealing with old books use their bare hands as they are kinder on the paper?
- contingencies 7y ago
  Hands contain oils, mold spores, bacteria, etc. and are certainly not good for fibrous media. Strategies depend upon what kind of media you have. Disposable cotton gloves are very popular. If you are interested in further research, the Getty is one of the world authorities on antiquities handling, they probably have a page or guide about it someplace. (Source: I have an art collection on antique paper myself, and have made efforts in the past to optimize handling and storage.)
  - matwood 7y ago
    For books, clean, dry, bare hands is recommended by the Library of Congress, the British Library, and Library of Canada. They explicitly recommend against using gloves. https://thediscoverblog.com/2019/04/05/the-gloves-come-off/ https://thediscoverblog.com/2019/04/05/the-gloves-come-off/
    - contingencies 7y ago
      Interesting summary, though the argument is limited to old worn books that are still physically sturdy and they explicitly disclaim the recommendation for art and photographs.
- gpm 7y ago
  I second this. I've handled 1000 year old books and was required to not wear gloves. I was told it was about increased dexterity being worth the oils deposited on the page (and to avoid the parts of the page with content).
OrgNet 7y ago
Did the Church steal it to hide old lies and replace them with new ones?
mongol 7y ago
On the topic of stolen books, an employee at the Royal library in Sweden stole a number of ancient books, some of which turned up in the US. The case ended with him blowing himself up. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/books/swedish-royal-library-recovers-stolen-1597-atlas-in-new-york.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/books/swedish-royal-libra...
- lichtenberger 7y ago
  Wow, crazy :-) thanks for posting
- anbop 7y ago
  An asshole to the very end. His suicide injured 11 other people.
- jl2718 7y ago
  If you read the “Deep Sleep” article, there’s a story about a guy that steals a Gutenberg bible from Harvard and meets a similar fate.
mikorym 7y ago
Once upon a time I unassumingly pondered upon my university library's sale. This type of thing happened every term and every term I would skip a class or so to pore over the treasures. And this time, indeed there was a treasure. The first thing that struck me was the big sticker on the first page that said "DO NOT REMOVE FROM LIBRARY" and "DO NOT THROW OUT". Well, I am not sure exactly what it said, but that was the general drift. As the honest, hardworking, minimum wage person that I am... I promptly alerted the librarian on shift. The librarian (and his team of white walkers) then rather alarmedly started digging through the books in search of similar labels. At the end of the day I wasn't even thanked. Honesty goes a long way to making one a poor student and without booze money. So you want to know what the book was? I'll give you a hint. There were two volumes. And the writer was "more modest than Newton". I estimate that the two volumes are worth about USD 8000 together.
- booleandilemma 7y ago
  At the end of the day I wasn't even thanked. Sounds like the librarian is yet another person trying to cover his own ass. Instead of showing gratitude, he probably wants to pretend the whole incident never happened.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    How much gratitude do you generally expect for simple, ethical actions that take almost no effort on your part?
    - yeahwhatever10 7y ago
      Generally you would expect a simple amount of gratitude that takes almost no effort on their part. Like "Thank You".
      - nitrogen 7y ago
        It seems the amount of gratitude should also be proportional (albeit with a small coefficient) to the loss that was prevented.
AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
Here is another case for anyone interested. Sadly in this instance the court decided to let the thief keep and auction it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest

What surprised me was that according to the director of the American Pilgrim Museum in The Netherlands [1], they asked him to send the Bible by regular mail. He opted to bring it to the American embassy in The Hague instead. 1 https://www.bndestem.nl/binnenland/400-jaar-oude-in-vs-gestolen-bijbel-gevonden-in-leiden-ik-kreeg-opeens-een-brief-van-een-detective~a9bfff17a/ https://www.bndestem.nl/binnenland/400-jaar-oude-in-vs-gesto... (Dutch)

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

nneonneo 7y ago

Ah, the book theft involving Caliban Book Shop. I worked in an office opposite that book shop for almost five years - walked right past that book shop every day, and had no idea they were centrally involved in moving millions of dollars of stolen books. Sometimes, crimes really do happen right under your nose.

EnderViaAnsible 7y ago
Stories like this remind me that trust is an indispensable aspect of civilization. Ultimately we have to trust our road workers to do good work, our bank tellers to be honest, and apparently our archivists not to steal what has been entrusted to their care. Also, it reminds me that our justice system(s) are mostly about punishment, because we can't actually prevent crimes, just act once they are already committed. We must trust because we cannot verify, except in Phillip K. Dick novels and Tom Cruise movies. (China's dystopian work in this area notwithstanding.)
- cerealbad 7y ago
  trust has become implicit with mass surveillance. the only thing left to do is to read minds, but that's almost an afterthought for distraction and hysteria. what does it matter what you think or believe when everything you do is closely monitored and reinforced? a reciprocal strategy develops (trust the trusted) even if you have no surveillance,technology or civilization. trust transactions begin with a certain fixed amount and then the balance shifts based around the perception of the participants. intercepting perceptions, can circumvent trust/distrust which scales nicely if you can have sparse networks and centrally distributed information on the cheap. you can even customize interceptor information for specific networks, to create all types of down stream effects. so how has it become implicit? well, you can use technology now to create your own trust/distrust network of information, then you can train this thing to judge new information for you, and most importantly you can expose (or hide) any biases you might have with adversarial networks. this will lead to a new type of trust, a type of meta-mathematical consensus, where machines just make trust decisions far better than humans can, and ideology starts to become replaced by dataology. data dissidents may find ways to circumvent trust networks as impostors or use cloned disposable networks, but crime and problems associated with resistance to existing orders will decline precipitously, you may be against roads but you need to use them all the same. you may even see an emergent class of rebel/terrorist/revolutionary celebrity, since the novelty of not using a valid and accurate trust network geared towards ones preferences will be the same as not using the internet or banking systems for mass communication or commerce. parallel societies can easily exist without conflict, but the mass of humanity always moves together in the direction of simplification, and it's easier to trust machines, so far they have a much better track record than people, given their rapid adoption in almost every critical human sector. the trade off is that machines become difficult to build, repair and understand, but being a human becomes a lot easier, and one serves the other. this may seem naive to people inside technology networks, but i expect a type of generational dependence to grow, and things that work are rather hard to obsolesce once they establish a critical mass of global adoption. people trust machines, computers, the internet, they will grow to entrust them with trust-proofs.

anotherthro313 7y ago

tl;dr: A bible was stolen, then it was returned.

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago

> Wearing blue latex gloves, [the FBI agent] displayed the Bible, carefully opening its weathered pages. Don't archivists dealing with old books use their bare hands as they are kinder on the paper?

contingencies 7y ago
Hands contain oils, mold spores, bacteria, etc. and are certainly not good for fibrous media. Strategies depend upon what kind of media you have. Disposable cotton gloves are very popular. If you are interested in further research, the Getty is one of the world authorities on antiquities handling, they probably have a page or guide about it someplace. (Source: I have an art collection on antique paper myself, and have made efforts in the past to optimize handling and storage.)
- matwood 7y ago
  For books, clean, dry, bare hands is recommended by the Library of Congress, the British Library, and Library of Canada. They explicitly recommend against using gloves. https://thediscoverblog.com/2019/04/05/the-gloves-come-off/ https://thediscoverblog.com/2019/04/05/the-gloves-come-off/
  - contingencies 7y ago
    Interesting summary, though the argument is limited to old worn books that are still physically sturdy and they explicitly disclaim the recommendation for art and photographs.
gpm 7y ago
I second this. I've handled 1000 year old books and was required to not wear gloves. I was told it was about increased dexterity being worth the oils deposited on the page (and to avoid the parts of the page with content).

OrgNet 7y ago

Did the Church steal it to hide old lies and replace them with new ones?

mongol 7y ago

On the topic of stolen books, an employee at the Royal library in Sweden stole a number of ancient books, some of which turned up in the US. The case ended with him blowing himself up. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/books/swedish-royal-library-recovers-stolen-1597-atlas-in-new-york.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/books/swedish-royal-libra...

lichtenberger 7y ago
Wow, crazy :-) thanks for posting
anbop 7y ago
An asshole to the very end. His suicide injured 11 other people.
jl2718 7y ago
If you read the “Deep Sleep” article, there’s a story about a guy that steals a Gutenberg bible from Harvard and meets a similar fate.

mikorym 7y ago

Once upon a time I unassumingly pondered upon my university library's sale. This type of thing happened every term and every term I would skip a class or so to pore over the treasures. And this time, indeed there was a treasure. The first thing that struck me was the big sticker on the first page that said "DO NOT REMOVE FROM LIBRARY" and "DO NOT THROW OUT". Well, I am not sure exactly what it said, but that was the general drift. As the honest, hardworking, minimum wage person that I am... I promptly alerted the librarian on shift. The librarian (and his team of white walkers) then rather alarmedly started digging through the books in search of similar labels. At the end of the day I wasn't even thanked. Honesty goes a long way to making one a poor student and without booze money. So you want to know what the book was? I'll give you a hint. There were two volumes. And the writer was "more modest than Newton". I estimate that the two volumes are worth about USD 8000 together.

booleandilemma 7y ago
At the end of the day I wasn't even thanked. Sounds like the librarian is yet another person trying to cover his own ass. Instead of showing gratitude, he probably wants to pretend the whole incident never happened.
- tptacek 7y ago
  How much gratitude do you generally expect for simple, ethical actions that take almost no effort on your part?
  - yeahwhatever10 7y ago
    Generally you would expect a simple amount of gratitude that takes almost no effort on their part. Like "Thank You".
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      It seems the amount of gratitude should also be proportional (albeit with a small coefficient) to the loss that was prevented.

AnaniasAnanas 7y ago

Here is another case for anyone interested. Sadly in this instance the court decided to let the thief keep and auction it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest