Nina Burleigh | Live on Sound Authors

February 27, 2009

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is the author of Unholy Business: A true tale of faith, greed and forgery in the holy land. Author Nina Burleigh has written a few acclaimed books and this is her latest. A gorgeous cover, incredible content, welcome to the show Nina Burleigh.

Nina Burleigh: Thank you, it’s nice to be here!

Dr. Kent: Tell me about this. I’m so intrigued by just like so many people by the true stories coming out of the Middle East and the holy land of treasures, of religious persecution and religious rights and histories. How did you get into this and what’s the background of this book Unholy Business?

Nina Burleigh: Well, I got into it because I was reading the New York Times a couple years ago, procrastinating writing another book actually and read this story about these five men who had been indicted for allegedly forging some very famous archaeological objects with inscriptions on them that purported to be the first material evidence of the existence of Christ and the first material evidence of Solomon’s Temple ever found in archaeological record among other objects. And I read this and I thought boy this is curious. I had not heard about these objects; one of them is very famous, it’s called the Jane Ossuary. It’s a little coffin that came to light in the market in antiquities around 2002.

A movie was made out of it, a book was made out of it, it’s supposed to be the box that held bones of Christ’s brother James. I didn’t know that Christ had a brother either so I read this and thought this is interesting. What kind of people would make proof for the faithful? And who among the faithful want proof? Because in my growing up around the Mennonites in Michigan, I’m not a Mennonite but I knew a lot of faithful people and they didn’t need physical proof. Faith is an ephemeral thing. So I started to look into it and I eventually went over to Israel and got off the plane, I had never been there before, I got off the plane just to see if I could talk to the detectives who had unraveled the case and whether or not I would be able to talk to the dealers of these antiquities.

When I got off the plane it was like being in a movie. Everything that happened was strange, mysterious, these eccentric characters, it was like being in The Maltese Falcon/The Davinci Code. Walking a back alley of Jerusalem to the Jerusalem meeting these men in these shops that are just piled to the rafters with stuff like Peruvian oil lamps or supposedly Peruvian oil lamps and mammoth swords and coins that the money changers may have held in temple and I learned there’s this whole industry in buying and selling of stuff that really dates back to the ancient times or medieval times when European pilgrims started going there to bring relics back.

Now, its just more high tech. basically what these guys are alleged to be doing is taking real old stuff that comes out of one of the 30,000 archaeological sites in Israel and the west bank and inscribing these objects, altering them mostly with inscriptions of ancient Hebrew or Aramaic to make them look like their related to actual biblical characters and events. Therefore validating certain things that made them more famous.

Dr. Kent: The validation is the interesting thing and that’s what you talked about a second ago and I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the old city of Jerusalem. It’s a wonderful place. Every maze comes back to the main road, dark little corners, beautiful place. What is it that drives people to Jerusalem, drives people to holy sites? Makes people see Jesus’ face in a piece of toast as well as with this, I’ve heard of the James Ossuary of course with a lot of the population. Why are people drawn to oh, this could be…?

Nina Burleigh: Well I think people bring their belief system to looking at objects like that and I mean people I did speak with people who were over there digging. Some of these archeological sites, many of them in fact, have people from the seminaries, students from theological schools working in the summer because they need power and these kids will go over there and dig. It just means a lot to them to be in the place that they’ve read about or heard about since they were in Sunday school. Then you have the tourists who go over there in busloads, older people mostly who have the time and money.

There are busloads of westerners going through that country, up and down that country day after day being dropped off at archaeological sites that may or may not contain proof of certain stories in the bible. They lap it up because they grew up believing these stories and now they’re in the country, in the region of the world where the stories were written and the ancient cities are there. So its understandable certainly but what was happening here is these men were alleged because they have not yet been convicted by the way, the trial continues to go on four years later. They played with those belief systems and played on peoples emotions and that’s what really got the Israeli authorities angry enough to investigate this for two years.

The agency that investigated is really under funded, its called the Israel Antiquities Authority and its supposed to oversee and keep from being funded these 30,000 archaeological sites. There’s only 12 men and they cant possibly keep up with it. There’s a huge private trade in very high end stuff. Now tourists wouldn’t be buying it but I learned in the search that the real mark of these men were these very wealthy collectors in the United States, in London, in Switzerland and in Tel Aviv who happened to have a taste for ancient things.

Certainly it’s a bit like collecting baseball cards. These guys collect million dollar ancient ### that had ancient kings name on them or something and the forgers or forger were or was making stuff for them really. Then he got kind of pugilistic, he’d been getting away with it for a very long time, ten years, 20 years, and made these two objects that were really important to religious believers, both Christian and Jewish.

Dr. Kent: So part of this whole thing is deception and I love at the very beginning of your book you’ve got a quote by Amil Zolav, and it says, “We are a civilized people and of what use is civilization if it doesn’t help us to deceive and to be deceived in order to make life more worth the living.” I find it, I’m one of the subscribers to there was a real Christ and he had a real family and et cetera, which makes me fascinated by this whole topic. Then there’s others that say oh no, of course he didn’t and all of that. It feels like all of it’s a little about deception. The founders of the church might’ve been trying to deceive. What’s the role of deception in this whole thing?

Nina Burleigh: Well I don’t know about the founders of the church, I didn’t get into that. This is a book really about modern criminals and a modern crime in the current era. I don’t get into the history of the church and their activities but certainly deception is, when you’re playing with peoples belief system, deception is actually easier and one of the things they were doing was they would target certain scholars to validate these objects and the scholars they picked very cleverly were people who had strong belief systems; either Catholics or orthodox Jewish and they would bring them these things and it was very difficult for the scholars when confronted with something like the bone box that contained James’ bones, the brother of Jesus, for them to be sort of distant about it.

I think there were a lot of emotions tied up so there was a lot of forethought in how they would bring these objects to the public. They had to get them validated by scholars first and really what’s happened is the scholarship of biblical archaeology is what’s on trial in Jerusalem right now with this forger and his cohorts. The alleged forger and his alleged cohorts because they keep bringing these experts in, scholar after scholar and then the defense attorney who are like the best paid lawyers in Israel, they’re like OJ Simpson’s lawyers, they take these scholars and they just shred them. The scholars aren’t used to being questioned like that, they’re used to being treated with enormous respect from students, right?

Reverential other scholars at conferences, they’re not used to being queried about minutia like well was the menorah 2000 years ago eight inches high normally or three inches high? Here’s a book that says they’re three inches high and you’re saying this one is fake because its only three inches high, well here you said this, you’ve contradicted yourself in this speech here and every one of them has been basically impeached or just made to look like a fool. The judge will make the call on this, the judge is no closer after four years to knowing whether this stuff is fake or not let alone whether these guys are committing a fraud.

Dr. Kent: So set the stage a little more. I love of course I know Jerusalem pretty intimately from living there and being in the old city so often but for people who haven’t been there I think it’s a mysterious place but when you’re there its so real, so dirty, and the way you describe that one store front that was piled with these alleged antiquities, the whole city is like that. Like there’s layer upon layer, it’s a big layered big city. Talk about your description. What does that have to do with this story? And I know your other books, Mirage, Napoleon Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt and Unsolved Murder, a very private woman you published in 1998, you’re really intrigued by twisted stories.

Nina Burleigh: Well yes! I guess that’s right you’re picking up on my interest in the dark side and you’re right. I don’t know why. I guess I am one of those people who wants to poke around and see what’s under the, so far it hasn’t been to my detriment to see what’s going on in a dark corner or dark room you’re not supposed to go into but yeah when I was a kid I wanted to be an archaeologist and then I wanted to be a detective, when I was about nine years old, those were my twin desires and of course I became an English major and spend most of my time correcting peoples pronouns now and sitting in a chair and writing.

My life is not that glamorous, but I did get to live that out by going over there and live out; I didn’t realize until later when I started talking about it that I was kind of living out this childhood dream and that’s why everything about the writing of it was so vivid. I was able to bring that place to life I think because it just jazzed me. I got this fascinating writers of history, great mystery, these eccentric characters, people you just cant make up. The billionaire who collects 6,000 objects of archaeology. He’s an enormously wealthy man and that’s what he’s doing with his money in his 80s, that and smoking Marlboro Lights.

His house, his apartment is this Tel Aviv penthouse and his London apartment which he got as a payment of debt from the King of Jordan years ago, they’re just like indoor markets. People just come to him; I sat at his table and he told me his life story. He was a child rabbi in 1920 Jerusalem, which was an Arab city at that point, his family had been there for generations and his dad was very strict and he was dyslexic and the dad threw him out on the streets in Jerusalem and he ended up sleeping in these caves with Arab urchins. That’s how he started finding coins when he was a kid and that’s what his obsession now, in his late life obsession goes back to this childhood obsession with finding God because his dad was a very religious man and he couldn’t read so he abused him.

Its just a fascinating story and then the dealers themselves; these guys who none of them will tell you a straight answer for where they got the stuff but they basically get it from these Palestinians who are on the other side of the line who go to these unguarded sites with metal detectors and dig stuff up, come back, bring it to the edge of the checkpoint, 50 yards in, the dealer will go in, pay the guy or his middle man, and the minute he crosses back over the line the stuff is like 100 times more valuable than what he paid for it. If he can get away with it because the Israel antiquities authority cant keep up with all this, he can get away with it and sell it to some collector in Switzerland or London, well he’s just made a ton of money.

But they’re all ### these guys; they’ll sit there and tell you its like listening to Scheherazade, you’ll see an object and say where did that thing come from and they’ll sit there, they’ll make you coffee and they’ll weave this tale about what it means and the Canaanites, and the philistines and the this and that and you’re sort of discombobulated by the end of it. Of course if you wanted to buy it then they put the price tag on it if you were in the market for it. What the Israel antiquity authority claims is that 90 percent of the stuff in the shops caveat emptor is fake. So if you’re a tourist and planning to go over there, just keep in mind when you’re bringing this coin back to church and you’re thinking this thing was traded in the templar, this was may not be the case. Be happy that you got your souvenir but don’t go paying $1,000 or something unless you’ve got an expert next to you.

Dr. Kent: The folks in the old city of Jerusalem are expert bargainers. I remember going for cookies and bargaining for the price on cookies because I was a foreigner and freshly learned Arabic and sat for 20 minutes with a store owner in the middle of the walkway and bargained the cookies down and he was enjoying it immensely. It was an art, they have the art of bargaining over there.

Nina Burleigh: That’s right.

Dr. Kent: What I find so fascinating about our discussion and about this book, which is out on the Smithsonian label which is really cool, is that its about the personalities and so many of these tales are kind of like the items itself. You read the books and think well do I believe that or not? Where as this one tells the stories of the people.

Nina Burleigh: Yes, I was really interested in the people more than the objects. This is why there are no pictures of objects in the book. The characters made the story, the characters I think I make them come to life in that book and I’m real happy with it because when I look at it I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do, which was to use the crime story as a way to kind of tell a large, talk about a larger world that people know very little about, which is this world of objects being bought and sold in the context of middle eastern politics and the seething kind of conflict between the three religions in Jerusalem, which is where this is all taking place.

Dr. Kent: Well it’s been such an honor chatting with this book and on a side note, I have a good friend Sally Shields who is a fellow instructor at your writer’s conference I believe next week, right?

Nina Burleigh: I know, she just sent me an email; in Mexico yeah.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little about that workshop.

Nina Burleigh: Well I’m going to teach a 2-day workshop called A Million Stories in Naked City kind of just basically for people who want to learn how to write their own non-fiction tale. Whether they be a personal memoir or something they come across that they find interesting and I want to talk about how what genres there are and the good models to follow and just some basic rules about how to sit down in a chair. First how to research and organize your material and then how to keep yourself interested and the reader interested by outlining and structuring the book properly.

Dr. Kent: Then hopefully how to fulfill your childhood fantasies.

Nina Burleigh: That’s right.

Dr. Kent: This is a wonderful book; Unholy Business. I’m only a couple pages in but I’m psyched to read the rest.

Nina Burleigh: Great I hope you enjoy it!

Dr. Kent: Yeah, and its called A true tale of faith, greed and forgery in the holy land. Its been a great fun chatting with you.

Nina Burleigh: Can I add one thing? Go to my website www.ninaburleigh.com and click on the book and I believe its through Amazon you can download pages of it for free so you can see whether you’re going to like it. You cant get the whole book that way but I think once people start reading it they told me they cant put it down, so I invite everyone to have a look at it.

Dr. Kent: So we’ll check you out at ninaburleigh.com and yeah absolutely. People will be psyched to read a couple pages. So unholy business, its available just about everywhere and we’ll talk to you next time. What’s your next project?

Nina Burleigh: I have just made an agreement to write a book about the Amanda Knox case in Italy, which is another extremely dark murder mystery involving a university of Washington exchange student accused of killing her British roommate.

Dr. Kent: Wow.

Nina Burleigh: In a very mysterious circumstance and the prosecutor in the case this Italian prosecutor has a very active imagination and has charged her with participating in an orgy or satanic rite and he believes there’s this satanic cult in Italy that’s existed there for centuries so its about this girl pitted against this prosecutor. The new world mountain climber in gortex and pot smoker basically and that’s how she got herself into trouble; pitted against this old world prosecutor who represents severe, rigid Catholicism Italian tradition, which really respects a great dark secret and this fresh faced American girl looks like Mona Lisa.

Dr. Kent: Wow, as always you’re right on the path of really exciting stories.

Nina Burleigh: Thanks, I hope I can talk to you about that one when it comes out.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. This book is Unholy Business, Nina Burleigh, and we’ll talk to you again soon.

Nina Burleigh: Thank you, take care.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is called Snowblink. We’re going to listen to a track from their album, it’s called the Tired Bees. It’s a beautiful song, incredible duo out of Canada and we’ll talk to them right after we listen to this track.

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