A number of people have notified me in recent days that attorneys for Hobby Lobby have requested a certificate of default in their case against Dirk Obbink, who has apparently not responded the summons served in September. A couple days ago, the court granted that certificate: “the default of defendant Dirk D. Obbink is hereby noted.” Thus, Prof. Obbink now owes Hobby Lobby $7 million USD. The updated docket is visible here (once again, I have not viewed the individual documents behind the paywall).
I think many of us hoped that a trial might bring to light further information on the whereabouts of the roughly 80 Oxyrhynchus papyri that still seem to be missing.
For readers of German, a helpful summary of the whole affair by Susanna Kinzig recently appeared in Die Zeit.
Variant Readings 
He still faces charges in the UK doesn’t he? That’s not a civil case so we could still learn what happened to those papyri.
Yes, as far as I know, the UK investigation is ongoing.
Brent, have you come across this doc before? Interesting RE the Green collection. It’s a 2014 doc with Josh McDowell talking about manuscripts, including references to new manuscripts unearthed with Scott Carroll (the mummy mask saga from 2013). Lots of manuscript pictures. I’ve not noticed it being cited as all this stuff has come out in the wash in recent years – but perhaps I just missed something.
Click to access Bibliographical-Test-Update-08.13.14.pdf
Thanks for the comment. Yes, this was one of the first things highlighted by Brice Jones shortly after those videos appeared online.. It seems like a long time ago now!
Is there really something called “the bibliographical test”. In McDowell’s hands this seems a bit dubious
>> The bibliographical test examines the overall number of extant manuscripts (sometimes abbreviated to MSS or MS for the singular) and the difference between the date of original writing, called the autograph, and the date of the earliest surviving, or extant, manuscript. Since we do not possess the autograph of even one ancient document, this test best determines transmissional accuracy for any ancient document.
Am I missing something? How can you date the autograph (never mind that there’s compelling doubt that we can talk about an autograph) if you don’t have it? Granted scholars assign dates to the Gospels, but how can we determine *the transmissional accuracy” of say the Gospel of Mark (around 70) by examining the earliest surviving manuscript? More than a century passed between that and the “earliest surviving manuscript” which would be, a fragment, formerly first century Mark. Any manuscript useful for such a comparison, imo, would be centuries later
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