A professor from Oxford has been arrested for allegedly stealing and selling ancient biblical texts.

Professor of papyrology and Greek literature Dirk Obbink has been accused of stealing and selling 120 pieces of ancient papyrus with biblical text.

Obbink, who taught at Christ Church Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was arrested on March 2, 2020. He has been accused of taking the fragments from a collection belonging to the Egypt Exploration Society (EES), Christianity Today reports.

The collection contains about 500,000 artifacts found in the ancient city of Oxyrynchus. Obbink was one of three academics overseeing the care of the collection at Oxford's Sackler Library but was removed from this position in 2016.

Obbink released an official statement denying the allegations. He claims the evidence against him is "fabricated in a malicious attempt to harm my reputation and career."

Jerry Pattengale, a professor at Indiana Wesleyan University and a founding scholar of the Museum of the Bible, says he finds the evidence against Obbink to be compelling.

"It’s sad to think that such a gifted mind might have an abbreviated contribution to the field of Greek papyrology," Pattengale says.

Obbink worked closely with the Oxyrynchus collection. Originally from the United States, Obbink studied at Oxford in the 1990s. He became the director of a project dedicated to the digitalization of ancient papyri.

The Oxyrynchus collection, found in the 1880s, contained several passages from the Bible and allowed scholars to study the reliability of biblical writings.

Obbink's significant responsibilities with the Oxyrynchus collection earned him a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001 for his rescue and interpretation of ancient texts.

One of the fragments Obbink is accused of stealing was a piece of the Gospel of Mark. It was once believed to be the oldest text discovered from the New Testament. The fragment includes part of the text of Mark 1:8, "I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

The piece was considered to be a significant discovery, believed to have been copied within 30 years of the original writing of the Bible. It is now believed the fragment dates back to the second or third century.

The discovery of this piece and its further study took place in 2011 and 2012. Around this time, Obbink allegedly sold 13 bits of papyrus from the Oxyrynchus collection.

Parts of Genesis, Psalms, and Romans were reportedly sold to Hobby Lobby, a faith-based craft store in the US. The store's president, Steve Green, also launched the Museum of the Bible in 2017 and was in the process of acquiring artifacts for the museum to display.

Four more fragments from the Gospels were allegedly sold to Hobby Lobby in 2013. Christianity Today reports the purchase agreement stated that Hobby Lobby would not receive the fragments for four years and would remain with Obbink during that time for further study.

When the Museum of the Bible began to advertise their new ownership of possible first-century biblical fragments, an investigation was launched.

EES reported more than 100 fragments were missing from their collection after beginning the investigation.

In June 2019, Obbink was blocked from accessing the Oxycynchus collection completely. He was suspended from Oxford in October that year.

In November 2019, local police were informed up to 120 artifacts had been stolen from the collection.

The investigation remains ongoing at this time.

It is unknown how much the pieces are worth in monetary terms, but Carl Graves, director of ESS, says they are worth far more than money.

"They are testament to Egypt’s early Christian heritage and are early evidence of biblical Scripture," he shared in an interview. "We don’t value them monetarily but they are priceless and irreplaceable."