Allan Pantuck

Smith took several sets of photographs, some of which have not been published.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Thank you for this clarification, Allan, and welcome to FRDB!

Have you seen any of these other photos yourself, and is there anything of interest there, that might come out in the future?

Did you take some courses with Smith? Perhaps you could share with us some of your old memories...

The accusers of Smith now seem to be gravitating to the idea that he purchased Voss edition of Ignatius somewhere, did the forgery all by himself (after many years of intense preparation), and then planted the book at Mar Saba. But, of course, this would have been an extremely risky strategy... A kamikaze hell-bent on destroying his own academic career and livelihood? I don't think so... It seems like there are all too many people who are always prepared to believe the worst about a person...

Best wishes,

Yuri.

mountainman

Dear Yuri,

At the conclusion of that (Aug 2006) page you have written ...
I'd just like to ask you one question. Do you think that either the Testimonium Flavianum or the Jesus-Agbar correspondence were actually written 300 years before they were first declared and reported by Eusebius? I ask this question in order to determine how you yourself view authorial integrity in other comparable cases which have attracted much debate. The claim that "Any idiot should be able to see the difference right away" does not say much unless it is placed in context.


Best wishes,


Pete

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, Pete,

Of course, it is possible to make a modern writing look like old writing with some time and effort. A serious forger would have a whole laboratory dedicated to such things.

So what I'm saying refers primarily to the scenario where Smith arrives to the monastery, finds the book there, and writes out the whole manuscript there and then. Sorry, but I find this scenario rather silly.

Those claiming a forgery by Smith should work out a logical scenario of how this could have been done. Did he bring the book there? How would he know the conditions of the library before he arrived? Did he have an accomplice perhaps? How would he know how many books were there, and who was keeping an eye on them?

Just casting about vague assertions and half-baked hints isn't good enough. We're talking about a serious scholar here and I, for one, care about his reputation.

I think his best book is PALESTINIAN PARTIES AND POLITICS (or via: amazon.co.uk). It's a very good analysis of OT from a realistic historical perspective, and I certainly learned a lot from it. This man cared about scholarship. A prank is something you spend a couple of days on, and not many years... You just don't spend 5 years of hard work on planning and preparing a prank, unless you're some kind of a nut.

Regards,

Yuri.

andrewcriddle

Hi Yuri

If Morton Smith composed "Secret Mark", then he almost certainly brought the Voss book to the monastery with the letter already written on the end pages. The book was easily available on the antiquariam book market and is an unexpected type of book to find in the Mar Saba library. (In comparison to the other books there. ) FWIW the Voss book is apparently not mentioned in the (incomplete and inaccurate) library catalogue. Morton Smith had visited the Mar Saba monastery some years before his discovery of "Secret Mark" and was aware of conditions there.

The above is not evidence that Morton Smith did compose "Secret Mark". My point here is merely that the mechanics of his introducing the manuscript to the Mar Saba library would have been quite straightforward.

Andrew Criddle

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Andrew,

But this would have been very risky, of course...

Not so easily. I've checked on the Net recently, and couldn't find the book for sale anywhere!

Besides, the hypothetical vendor of the book, naturally, becomes a very dangerous man... Do you think Smith bumped him off, perhaps?

Debatable...

Which means nothing.

Smith was a guest at the monastery during WW2. I think you're stretching it a bit to say that, after all those years, he was "aware of conditions there"... But then again, he could have been psychic!

It's not even clear if he ever got to visit the library back during WW2.

Doesn't seem all that straightforward to me.

Regards,

Yuri.

mountainman

Dear Yuri,

Thanks for these clarifications. As I have not taken a great deal of time to study this particular case, I cannot make any comments on it other than to ask the one question ..... Is it possible he was set up; that the manuscript was "planted" in front of him by "other parties", and that he actually believed in what he was doing at the time on the basis of a "serendipitous find"? Has this possibility been ruled out by prior analyses?

Best wishes,


Pete

andrewcriddle

FWIW the 2nd (1680) edition seems easily available online
http://www.chapitre.com/CHAPITRE/fr/...t,9929500.aspx

http://www.ilab.org/db/search.php?Au...5&vbffld=&Pg=7

I couldn't (at least in the time I spent) find the 1646 edition which is the one in which the Mar Saba letter was written.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

There was no Internet between 1941 and 1958, which I think would make finding an old Voss edition a bit harder than Stephen and you were able to do, although I suppose it would not matter what book it was as long as it was something that would likely be found in the libraries of Mar Saba. I'll accept that one could find such antique books among those involved in the book trade, and it doesn't appear to have been an especially good copy at that (missing front and end pages, etc).

Smith says that a "good library of old editions of the Church fathers" was in a room over the porch of the new church. Yet the Voss edition with the supposed Clementine letter was in the (larger) library in the tower.

This tower library contained mostly printed volumes, along with a few manuscript copies of "prayer books and hymns and sermons and lives of saints and anthologies from the Church fathers."

"Many of the printed books," he says, "contained extensive handwritten passages" in binder's pages front and back, blank pages between chapters, and margins. He would take three or four of these types of mss (in printed books) to his cell to study, I presume for significance. While "many" had marginalia, only 10, it seems, had material significant enough to be singled out in Smith's Mar Saba catalogue.

If he really did buy an antique book into which to inscribe his diabolical forgery to vex his still future adversaries, why pick a book unlikely to have been in that tower library in the first place? Wouldn't it have been a better match for the library in the room over the porch over the new church, the one with the "good library of old Church fathers" he had noted during his first stay?

As far as I know, he did not catalogue this other library over the porch. (I wonder exactly what was in the resulting catalogue that was published 1960, as Carlson does not give a full index, only the selection that he felt made his case)

Did Smith pull off his hoax in the wrong library? Alas, the salt is loosing its savor. I suppose that kind of ineptitude is to be expected of bald, swindling, homosexual scholars ... you know, the ones capable of researching and pulling off such an extensive hoax.

DCH

andrewcriddle

It has been suggested that the Voss book was chosen for the hoax because of its last page, immediately facing the beginning of the letter, which refers to "impudent fellows" who have interpolated nonsense into ancient texts. The appropriatness of this as a prelude to a parody of Clement overrode the implausibility of finding such a book in the old library at Mar Saba.

In any case, where the "discoverer" of material is actually its producer, the discovery, in order to be plausible, has to be made where the "discoverer" had good reason to be searching. Morton Smith had perfectly geuine reasons for systematically going through the tower llibrary, It would be much less plausible for him to discover in the porch library a previously unknown document written in a book not previously known to be in the library.

BTW can I ask what is your best guess as to the Mar Saba letter ?

I get the impression that you think it unlikely to have been composed by Morton Smith but also unlikely to be by Clement. If so, then I think this seems probably less likely than either of the other two options, but I may be misunderstanding you.

Andrew Criddle