Toto

Thoughts on the Reports by Greek handwriting expert Venetia Anastasopoulou by Scott Brown argues that the handwriting does not indicate forgery.

Response by Peter Jeffery claims that the content only makes sense as a modern forgery.

stephan huller

I thought I was the only idiot to spell Jeffrey's name 'Jeffreys'

You've attached the wrong name to the wrong argument. It's the other way around, doc.

Toto

oops. it's fixed

stephan huller

Why do people let Jeffrey get away with the Salome = seven veils nonsense? It's so fucking stupid. People should protest this kind of gay baiting.

Kekalymmenes here translated as 'veils', is the term used by Clement to refer to the outer-covering of the tabernacle and also to the concealed nature of the books of the Stromateis. Yet it also derives from a fundamental New Testament concept.

Matthew 10:26 Μὴ οὖν φοβηθῆτε αὐτούς· οὐδὲν γάρ ἐστιν κεκαλυμμένον ὃ οὐκ ἀποκαλυφθήσεται καὶ κρυπτὸν ὃ οὐ γνωσθήσεται.
Therefore don't be afraid of them, for there is nothing covered that will not be revealed; and hidden that will not be known.

2 Corinthians 4:3 εἰ δὲ καὶ ἔστιν κεκαλυμμένον τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἡμῶν ἐν τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις ἐστὶν κεκαλυμμένον,
Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those who perish;

I can see that music teachers and patent attorneys might find it a convincing argument that the 'most likely' source for this terminology is from some gay English writer but what excuse do 'real' Biblical scholars have? They should know better. (I have never understood the connection here - all people that like the rock group Queen are gay? every woman watching Ellen fantasizes about getting it on with another chick? even if Morton Smith was gay why does he have to borrow from a specifically 'gay' writer? it's so stupid)

So we have to first establish a scale of probability here where the Letter to Theodore might or might not be authentic. I happen to think it is an authentic discovery but let's leave this question to the side. Then we have to determine what is the likely source of 'the seven kekalymmenes' even if it is a forgery, even if Morton Smith forged it. We have the idea that it has something to do with the inner sanctum of a temple or ritual veiling and then some stupid notion of a 'gay conspiracy' or a 'gay plot' that belongs in a 1950's public service film. I say that even if Morton Smith forged the text it is absolutely certain that he got the idea from Clement or the New Testament not some stupid gay play. But the 'gay' thing gets people's attention.

It is simply shameful and utterly contemptuous abuse of the most basic principles of scholarship. But Jeffrey parades this idea around like he discovered the cure to cancer. Why so? Because the rest of the book is so idiotic.

DCHindley

The principal of intertextuality states that our perception of a particular "text" is influenced by every other "text" we have previously been exposed to. Whoever wrote of a mystery shrouded by seven veils (I paraphrase, so sue me) had heard of something being hidden by a "veil", and Smith was influenced by Oscar Wilde's use of it in the play Salome when he translated the Greek word into English. Why limit ourselved to thinking that the author of Theodore and Smith the interpreter BOTH were thinking of Oscar Wilde's Salome.

I have shown in another thread a while back that veils were used in descriptions of Egyptian mysteries, and it was used to describe the curtains that divided the openings between heavens in dream/vision ascents. Ascents through the heavens are referenced or alluded to in magical and Gnostic texts (mid 2nd century onwards), in merkabeh mysticism (roughly 4th-9th century), and in the kind of Jewish mysticism of the Zohar (10th century through the renaissance) and more or less modern occult/alchemical practice (renaissance onwards). I found the term "seven veils" used in a Theosophical publication from around 1901, well before Oscar created the very heterosexual themed dance of Salome.

These anti-homosexual themed attacks on Smith are nothing more than killing the messenger because one doesn't like the message.

DCH