DCHindley

Andrew,

I have a problem with imputing motive like that. It's a little like making the charge that Walt Disney is a communist because his principal cartoon character wears red pants, and red is commie color, and a mouse is kin to the rat, and commies are rats. And what better way to destroy the flower of American youth than through insidious cartoons. Makes perfect sense.

Now I only have the version of the story directed to the general public (The Secret Gospel), but it only says that "the new Patriarch, His Beatitude Benedict, graciously gave me permission to spend three weeks at Mar Saba, study the manuscripts there, and publish my findings." This would seem to indicate that Smith (if that is his real name) had asked for permission to study the manuscripts there, apparently specifically in the tower. He apparently was aware that some printed books contained handwritten materials that he was interested in. So, if he intends evil, and must make the means fit the circumstances of said "discovery," why would he not have asked for permission to check that "good collection of old editions of Church fathers" for similar manuscripts as long as he was there? The porch library is in fact the more likely place to find that particular Voss edition.

But what do we know of other visitors to Mar Saba? Who were they? What were their interests for visiting? I am not referring to some mythical respected German higher-critical scholar blackmailed by the Nazis of Mystery of Mar Saba, but genuine visitors, ones from environments where a book about Greek patristic pseudepigrapha with a Latin title that identifies it as a product of western religious research would be more common?

Let's turn things around a bit. Carlton's tale of Smith's likely mechanizations are no less imaginative than J. H. Hunter's plot line, meant to appeal to American evangelical audiences suspicious of higher criticism and willing to suspend belief and link it to Nazi plots for the destruction of religion as we all knew it should be. The circumstances of the real story of Smith's reported discovery also has parallels with Irving Wallace's 1972 book The Word. No one, of course, suspects that Smith copied Wallace's book plot. But let's ask ourselves how an author Like Wallace researches a historical novel. Did Wallace have sources, or interview those who had worked with ancient documents, scripts, inks, etc? Of course he did. http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/wa...g-1916-crit_2/ So why not Hunter? For all we know, he had interviewed someone who had visited Mar Saba and seen just such a book with strange inscription, or someone who knew someone who did, and wove the idea of a willful forgery into his plot line.

So, yes, I think the mss is someone's imaginative idea of what a forged Clement might have said about the Carpocratians, made up perhaps by a reform pastor in a fuming rage over perceived Roman Catholic forgeries, which end up jotted in the endpages of his beloved but tattered copy of Voss, who had proposed that the expanded versions of the Ignatian letters were forgeries.

Driven from his home by the evil Roman Catholics, or his own pitiful and tortured mind, he finds refuge in the Orthodox monastery, no friends of the Romans in the 18th or even 19th century, and perhaps to die there, thus leaving behind his belongings, including the edition of Voss, which clearly was foreign to the other books of the tower library. Perhaps he spent a lot of time reading through that good collection of old editions of Church fathers, where he may well have found editions of Clement of Alexandria, soaking in its rich vocabulary. Yes, very imaginative, but I am prone to such things. But if I can conceive it, and it confirms my own prejudices, then it must be so, because it should be so.

Seriously though, I really would like to know what kinds of books were in that good collection of early Church fathers in the porch library, which should include books on Ignatius and Clement. Who has checked the Mar Saba libraries for that 1910 catalogue of "191 titles ... written without comments"? As far as we know, it is still there, ready to tell us if there is an edition of Voss among the titles. Even if we go and find it, and it is there, how would we know which edition (1646 or a later edition, such as 1680) was there? There is no way to know if the catalogue was of all printed books in the library, or of a selection, or even if it is a catalogue of books at the tower library, or the porch library, maybe in some other library, or simply part of someone's independent research. Then again, perhaps Quesnell was correct after all, and the catalogue did not contain that title. Considering above, it would really not prove anything, would it?

We can lament the fact that he did not photograph the 1910 catalogue, or "steal" it by pretense along with the Voss edition like count von Tischendorf did with Sinaiticus, or Solomon Schechter did when he paid a bribe to the "guardians" of the Cairo Synagogue genizah - rather than the fussy elders - to gain possession of the mss inside, to "preserve" them of course, as the end surely justifies the means. But we are back to imputing motives, and getting nowhere. Imputed motive goes both ways.

DCH

Yuri Kuchinsky

Sure does, David! :constern01:

All this business about the two libraries... I'm just wondering, why couldn't there be some 'cross-pollination' among them? The books can migrate between the two libraries, surely...

Since there was a "good collection of old editions of Church fathers" in the porch library, why would it be "unexpected" (quoting Andrew) to find some of these volumes in the other library?

Some of these old criticisms of Smith sure are strange... "He didn't steal the book, so then surely he's crooked!" :devil:

Does this really speak of the zeitgeist in modern academe?

And one just wonders what would have happened if he actually did steal the book. There surely would have been the Dance of Valkyries of all those outraged NT professors, carrying pitch-forks and demanding that he must spend the rest of his days in prison for such a terrible crime! "If he's obviously so immoral, how can we trust him with anything else!?!?"

Methinks Smith (if that is his real name) would have been in for condemnation and outrage whatever his course of action!

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Dear Pete,

I'm sure I've heard about such a version over the years (among quite a few others). Overall, I don't think it's all that likely, though, for a number of reasons...

Nevertheless, continuing along these same lines, one could surmise that Smith may have been somewhat suspicious that something strange was going on in the library, and somebody might be playing a trick of some sort, but his will to believe that this is the real MS got the best of him... So he suspended his disbelief, and went ahead with publicizing his discovery, anyways.

And then, having satisfied themselves that their trick has worked wonderfully in its initial stages, the shadowy Mar Saba Library Gang then proceeds to Stage 2 of their nefarious plan -- how to make sure that the MS... becomes "lost"! It's up to them now to make sure that no outside party ever gets to examine the ink and the paper...

So you see what I did now?

Soon there probably will be another book out debunking Smith, along the lines of a couple we have already. Except that IMHO this one would be somewhat more realistic...

Cheers,

Yuri.

andrewcriddle

That is an interesting scenario.

At one time I suspected something similar. (Your version is more speculative/imaginative than mine but also fits more of the facts.)

What originally made me change my mind (in 2003) was my increasing conviction that there is a significant connection between the Mar Saba letter and the description of the Naassenes in Hippolytus The Refutation of All Heresies book V I prepared a long list of parallels some more significant than others. One IMO striking parallel is (Parallel to the "naked man with naked man" in the Carpocratian mysteries according to the Mar Saba letter.)
See also (Parallel to the "truth hidden by seven veils’ " in the Christian mysteries according to the Mar Saba letter.)
and (Parallel to the general theme of Secret Mark in which resurrection is linked to secret mysteries)

The Refutation of all Heresies was only rediscovered in 1841 and would not have been available to an 18th century imitator of Clement.

Even apart from this, the general advance of patristic scholarship has made imitating Clement much easier in the 20th than in the 18th century.

Andrew Criddle

the_cave

I don't get it--why isn't all of this evidence of the letter's authenticity, rather than its inauthenticity?

DCHindley

Here is the exact meaning of these words. The cartoon character is the Micky, the one being said mouse, he is the Madiotes. For as the mouse wears the pants, the ones being said red, this is the swindler, as red is the color of the Commies, who would swindle the faithful of their religion. And the mouse, which is a small rat (as it is said, "Akbar", for he attacks the righteous), is the bald one, for no self respecting rat will wear a toupe, so as to make a spectacle of his baldness, and to show off the skin of his flesh, so as to entice other men into unholiness.

I figure that if you have nothing to do all day but worship, you don't have a messy library (like mine).

DCH

DCHindley

All said tongue in cheek, of course, but also half seriously.

I'm sorry, but I don't see anything in the secret gospel speaking of erect members, so I am not especially struck by the closeness. I think the closest Smith came to that would be his mention of the alleged sexual practices of the Carpocratians and a throw away that he could only guess what the mysteries entailed. On the other hand, they could just as easily have been some kind of mystical ascent, often accompanied by odd rites in both magical and gnostic rituals.

Well, it was not just Oscar Wilde or Medieval Jewish mystics who spoke of seven veils. There is an old coptic magical spell which mentions seven veils:
http://books.google.com/books?id=h93...sult#PPA131,M1 (Ancient Christian Magic (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Marvin W. Meyer, Richard Smith, Princeton University Press, 1999)
I think this can be safely taken as an indication that the author of the letter to Theodore did not have to be someone who had to obtain this knowledge from medieval Zoharia or the fictional dance of the seven veils in the 1891/1894 play Salomé.

G R S Mead offered a bibliography of early scholarly works on Gnosticism on pages 609ff of Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (University Books, 1960 [reprint of either 1900, 1906 or 1931 edition (it doesn't say)]):

1569 G. P. Marcossius (Colonia)
1659 I. Macarius (Antverpiae)
1664 M. Siricius (Giessae)
1667 Michaelis (Goettingae)
1690 T. Ittig (Lipsiae)
1709 T. Ittig (Lipsiae)
1710 F. Strunz (Wittenburg)
1710 R. Massnet (Paris)
1734 I. de Beausobre (Amsterdam)
1739 J. L. von Mosheim (Hemstadi)
1750? J. L. von Mosheim (Hemstaedt)
1753 J. L. von Mosheim (Hemstadtii)
1756 J. H. Schumacher (Wolfenbuettel)
1773 C. C. Tittmann (Lipsaiae)
1790 F. C. C. H. Muenter (Anspach)
1795 F. W. J. V. Schelling (Tuebingen)
etc...

Of course, this is all western and mainly related to controversies between the Roman Catholic church and the Reformers such as Luther and Zwingli. Still, it seems that interested parties could find out about Gnostic mysteries and speculations about their contents, long before Hippolytus' lost works were discovered in the Mid 19th century, events which indeed did touch off critical works on the subject.

DCH

Yuri Kuchinsky

For my own part, I also don't see here anything that's particularly close to the Mar Saba MS.

Sometimes these parallels can be more in the mind of the interpreter...

Best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hmm...

So was this the part that went missing from Mar Saba MS at the end, after the words, "Now the true explanation and that which accords with the true philosophy... [Here the text abruptly stops in the middle of the page]"???

Could it be that the forger was going to add this part above, but then thought the better of it?

It seems to me that this was a *massive conspiracy* after all, and now it looks like DCHindley is somehow a part of it... :notworthy:

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

What if the evidence wants to swing both ways?

You just want to impose your own puritan set of mores on it, cave, that's all...

Yuri.