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    Judge refuses to toss Armenian church Bible suit

    AP – Fri, Nov 4, 2011

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The J. Paul Getty Museum on Thursday lost its bid for dismissal of the Armenian church lawsuit demanding the return of pages ripped from a sacred handwritten Armenian Bible dating back to 1256.

    Superior Court Judge Abraham Khan denied Getty's motion to dismiss the claim and ordered four months of mediation in an attempt to resolve the dispute between the museum and the Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, which filed suit in June 2010 on behalf its mother church, the Lebanon-based Holy See of Cilicia.

    The suit accuses Getty of harboring stolen illuminated medieval manuscripts, saying they are spiritually and historically sacred church masterpieces.

    The lawsuit claims the church had the Bible authenticated in 1947 or 1948 and it was returned with more than a half-dozen pages missing. The pages of painted parchment once formed the front pages of a larger work called the Zeyt'un Gospels.

    The church wants to send them to an Armenian museum in Yerevan so they can be reunited with the rest of the Bible.

    Getty officials say the more than half-dozen pages were legally acquired in 1994 for $950,000 from an anonymous private collector.

    The Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/vQW5zV ) said museum attorneys argued during Thursday's brief hearing that the lawsuit filing deadline expired decades ago.

    But the judge said he was unclear on the statute of limitations issue. Khan ordered mediation and another hearing on March 2 if the case isn't settled.

    Under California law, lawsuits to recover allegedly stolen artworks from a museum or art dealer must be filed no later than six years after the owner learns of their whereabouts.

    "We are confident that we hold legal title," the Getty Museum said in a statement after the ruling.

    Church attorney Lee Boyd said afterward that the museum failed to investigate the ownership history of the pages when it bought them from Armenian American heirs of a man the church says stole the pages in 1916.

    The Zeyt'un Gospels had briefly fallen into his hands when Turks expelled the Armenian community from Cilicia, then a region of the Ottoman Empire and now part of Turkey, during and after the World War I-era that Armenians term a genocide.

     
    • Cavemanchu Baca
      Cavemanchu Baca  •  Los Angeles, California  •  1 mth 26 days ago
      This issue has more to do with past lies than it does for people from Armenia abiding by our immigration laws.
      First of all; let’s talk about what we have been told about Armenia? Remember all the articles regarding how Armenia was land locked and left out of the oil pipeline deal between turkey and Azerbaijan.
      What Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora purposely left out, was the fact that Armenia and Iran had already agreed to their own pipe line and started construction. The fact is? Armenia and Iran are friends and major trading partners, and have been for many years.
      Now let’s get down to another false claim, this was an article that was critical of Armenia which came from Washington, after Wiki leaks. Do you remember that article?
      The truth is; Armenia was in fact selling weapons to Iranian terrorist to kill American soldiers. It wasn’t until Washington pressed the issue with the president of Armenia, who had to finally admit the truth to President Obama, that Armenia had in fact been selling weapons to Iran since 2003.
      And it wasn’t just one American soldier that was killed with those weapons either, it now stands at aver 2,100 and counting.
    • Yosarrian
      Yosarrian  •  Battle Creek, United States  •  6 mths ago
      The Getty museum and the Young Turks,two of a kind.
    • Nice and Fluffy!
      Nice and Fluffy!  •  6 mths ago
      It was a genocide, the Armenians are not the only ones that term this!
      • Blueboy
        Blueboy 6 mths ago
        What !?!?!? What was genocide? I, like most sensible people, understand the point that Aermenians were massacred in their thousands. But what does that have to do with this ? We're talking about a cultural theft here.
      • Patrick
        Patrick 6 mths ago
        Blueboy... not thousands... try 1.5 million of them... force marched into the desert and killed... again... 1.5 million... 1.5 million simply because they were Christians and they were Armenians... that is genocide no matter what the Turks say about it...
    • Blueboy
      Blueboy  •  6 mths ago
      Make up your minds, oh, holier-than-thou ones. Either there is NO statute of limitations for this kind of theft, or everyone should just shut up about the Elgin Marbles. That event (was it a theft, or the rescue of a cultural treasure Greece was allowing to be destroyed by its environment) happened a looooooong time ago.
    • franklin
      franklin  •  6 mths ago
      all nations should return to their original owners antiquities, monuments etc like the Greek Parthenon carvings unfairly acquired by the British colonials ,now in the British museum, the Egyptian obelisk in Paris , stolen by French emperor Napoleon, etc and W.Bush should be returned to Disneyland where the clowns belong
    • Guy
      Guy  •  Anchorage, United States  •  6 mths ago
      If it's stolen property it couldn't have been "legally acquired".

      Give it back.
    • garron
      garron  •  6 mths ago
      I pray for their victory.

      It's sad that it's even in court.

      Just on a historical note,
      such rare literature should be kept together and not separated.

      It's good to see hope for justice-
      so many types of cases are turning out contrary to basic logic these days.

      Common sense is becoming a contradiction in terms.

      Just sayin'
    • Sam
      Sam  •  Lubbock, United States  •  6 mths ago
      Sounds like it wasn't theirs to sell to begin with. Who in their right mind would rip pages from such a sacred/historical book? They obviously didn't love/appreciate the book to begin with .Give it back to where it really belongs.
    • Jim
      Jim  •  6 mths ago
      Burn that filthy rag, or better yet, give it to me I'm running out of TP.
      Burn all the bibles and torah's, and the mohammadist rags too, none of them are worth a dang. They hold no wisdom, history that can be verified, or redeeming knowledge, just a lot of crazy bad advice.
    • A Yahoo! User  •  6 mths ago
      "AGLA France urges the Armenian government and President:
      to condemn homophobia unconditionally and fiercely,
      to take practical measures against discrimination based on sexual orientation,
      to introduce a law prohibiting discrimination based on race, gender, national origin and sexual orientation.
      LGBT citizens do not demand special privileges but equality of rights."

      -Open letter to the President of Armenia, October 30, 2004

      SEE HOW PERVERTED THE LGBT IS???? THEY DEMAND SPECIAL PRIVILEGES ABOVE THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS NO MATTER HOW YOU LOOK AT IT...THEY WANT TO CONDEMN 'HOMOPHOBIA' IN OTHER WORDS SILENCE ANY OBJECTION TO THEIR PERVERSION. THAT MEANS HOMOSEXUALS CAN PROMOTE THEIR PERVERSION AS NORMAL WHILE HETEROSEXUALS MUST 'ACCEPT' IT .... SIT BY AND WATCH THEIR CHILDREN MOLESTED AND RECRUITED INTO HOMOSEXUALITY. AMERICA IS PROMOTING THIS PERVERSION OF HOMOSEXUALITY. ALL PEOPLE HAVE THE SAME RIGHTS BASED ON RACE, CREED, AND COLOR - THERE IS NO REASONABLE NEED OR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BASE RIGHTS ON WHOM YOU WANT TO HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH...NO REDEEMING VALUE IN HOMOSEXUALITY. ONLY SOMETHING TO BE ASHAMED OF AND GET MEDICAL HELP FOR....
    • Crazy Azz Black Man
      Crazy Azz Black Man  •  St. Louis, United States  •  6 mths ago
      Were they stolen in 1916 or 1948? The Church first says they had the Bible authenticated in 1947 or 48 and it came back without the pages. Then later it says the pages were stolen in 1916. I'm with the museum on this one. And I almost always side with the Church.
      • Big Leo
        Big Leo 6 mths ago
        The original Bible was authenticated in 1948, though the pages that were ripped out had been stolen in 1916. They already knew the pages had been stolen, but they didn't know where they were until recently.
     Post a comment
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