page_title: People v. Golb
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: People v. Golb / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Dead Sea Scroll - part of Isaiah Scroll (Isa 57:17 - 59:9), 1QIsab
context_page_description: People v. Golb is an extensively litigated New York case in which Raphael Golb was convicted for sock puppetry conduct relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls. His conviction was partially reversed on constitutional grounds, but was substantially affirmed.
context_section_description: Raphael Golb (Golb) is the son of Norman Golb, a professor of Jewish history and civilization at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Professor Golb is a key proponent of the viewpoint that the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran were not the product of the Essenes, as many authorities argue, but rather were written elsewhere and moved to Qumran in anticipation of the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem. Among the scholars who disagreed with Professor Golb, and instead insisted that the scrolls are the work of Essenes of Qumran, are Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University and Lawrence Schiffman of New York University.
  In 2008, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences opened a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, and invited to lecture at the exhibit University of North Carolina professor Bart D. Ehrman, who had suggested that the Essenes were the likely authors of the Scrolls. Raphael Golb then sent an email from frank.cross2@gmail.com, and signed Frank Cross, to four scholars at the University of North Carolina, linking to an anonymous blog post by Golb in which he had said that the museum should not have invited Ehrman to speak because he was not a Scrolls expert. The Frank Cross email commented, "It looks like Bart has gone and put his foot in his mouth again,"
  Later in 2008, the Jewish Museum in New York City held a scrolls exhibition and invited Lawrence Schiffman. Golb wrote an article, using the pseudonym Peter Kaufman, which accused Schiffman of plagiarizing (a "little-known case of apparent academic quackery") some of Professor Norman Golb's ideas. Golb then sent emails from his own larry.schiffman@gmail.com to four of Schiffman's students with this message and a citation to the "Kaufman" article:
   Apparently, someone is intent on exposing a minor failing of mine that dates back almost fifteen years ago. You are not to mention the name of the scholar in question to any of our students, and every effort must be made to prevent this article from coming to their attention. This is my career at stake. I hope you will all understand.
  Golb then sent a similar email message to every member of Schiffman's department at NYU. Next Golb sent emails to the university's Provost and the Dean of Graduate Studies, posing as Schiffman and asking them what he could do to counter the charges of plagiarism that the Kaufman article had raised against him. Golb then sent an email signed Lawrence Schiffman to NYU's student newspaper, imploring its staff "not to publish a word" about any plagiarism accusations against him.
  Schiffman later testified that he felt "very attacked" by Golb's false emails, "and basically for like a month I couldn't do [any]thing but respond to people's inquiries."
  In the fall of 2008, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto held a Scrolls exhibit. Golb sent an email from seidel.jonathan@gmail.com, and signed as Jonathan Seidel, to the museum's Board of Trustees, stating:
  The public has the right to know whether the ROM exhibit will indeed present the two basic theories [regarding the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls] in a scientifically neutral manner ... or if it will rather stick to a "low-keyed assertion of the mainstream view." Furthermore, the public has a right to know if University of Chicago historian Norman Golb, who is widely considered to have debunked the traditional theory of the Dead Sea Scrolls in his book, will be excluded from participating in the museum's lecture series.
  Golb later sent the Board of Trustees two follow-up emails (still posing as Jonathan Seidel), urging them to include Professor Golb's ideas in their lecture series. Golb then used his seidel.jonathan@gmail.com account to ask Risa Levitt Kohn, the curator for the Toronto exhibit, whether she was "planning to answer Golb's critique of [her] catalogue."
  Finally, Golb sent emails from his seidel.jonathan@gmail.com account to dozens of Dead Sea Scroll scholars. These emails, however, disparaged his father's work. (SA 865–66, 884). Among other things, the emails announced that Norman Golb's "Chicago filth must be answered a
caption: A portion of a Dead Sea Scroll – a copy of the Isaiah scroll, 1QIsab.
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