Arrest for Identity Theft in Dispute on Dead Sea Scrolls

New York authorities on Thursday charged that the son of a University of Chicago professor engaged in identity theft and harassment of scholars with whom his father has a long-standing disagreement about the Dead Sea Scrolls, The New York Times reported. Raphael Golb is accused of creating e-mail accounts in which he pretended to be his father's scholarly critics, and of using those accounts to advance his father's theories. Golb is the son of Norman Golb, who has argued -- in contrast to the views of most scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls -- that they were not produced by the Essenes. Raphael Golb is accused of using the e-mail accounts to attack the idea of Lawrence H. Schiffman, a leading scholar of the Dead Sea Scross who disagrees with the elder Golb and who teaches at New York University. Norman Golb told the Times Thursday that his son " “is an honorable person,” and “could not have done such a thing.”