andrewcriddle

Hi Roger

If you mean my claim that 37.5% of Clement's vocabulary is used once only then I don't I'm afraid have my original figures.

I would be surprised if it was significantly too high. I did obtain it by sampling both the index for normal vocabulary and the index for proper names. Are you sampling the normal vocabulary only ? IMS this was a little lower than my figure while the proper names were rather higher.

BTW I'm afraid I don't see your signature as showing real similarities to the peculiarities of the Mar Saba letter handwriting.

Andrew Criddle

ETA

Looking through some old notes I think that the raw data for my claim of 3/8 was a sample of 1295 words of which 484 were (according to Stahlin) used once only by Clement. I'm not sure whether this helps.

Roger Viklund

Hi again Andrew!

Perhaps my signature was an irrelevant part of the article. I agree that it is not a strong argument. I will try to get permission to publish examples from MS 22, which is a much better source since it is a similar text from approximately the same time and also from the same monastery and showing tremors and blobs more in line with Theodore (Theodoros).

The 484 words out of 1295 help a bit. Thank you! It is an interesting observation you have made. For those who have not studied your article, it can be said that you have from Otto Stählin’s 1936 work on Clement’s use of words, calculated that of all different words used by Clement, he used 37.5 % (3/8) only once. You claim that this percentage should remain stable even if new works are found, and if let say Clement has used 1000 different words (and then of course many of these many times) he has used 375 only once. You thereby claim that if a previously unknown work by Clement contains 8 words never used by Clement before, he should also (statistically) use 5 words which he previously used only once. Thereby the total number of words increases from 1000 to 1008. The words previously used only once will thereby also increase by 8 but simultaneously decrease by five, since the five new words which he previously used only once, will vanish from the statistic since they now are used twice. This means that the words he used only once increase from 375 to 378. If so, the words he used only once increases by 3 and all of his vocabulary increases by 8. You thereby withhold the 3/8 relation and no matter how many new works of Clement we will find, the relation will always remain stable at 3/8 (37.5 %).

Your claim that the percentage should remain stable is one of the things I would like to examine. There are theoretically a limited number of words which a writer could be familiar with. I do no know how the relation between new words and words previously used only once evolve from the very beginning but as the writer produces more and more text he will likely in the end having fewer and fewer words left which he never has used. Since he then more seldom will be using words he previously never used before, the percentage of words previously used only once will increase even if they are not used more often. I would suspect the relation between these two objects (words = 0; words = 1) would be following a Gaussian curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_function and only at the top of that curve would some sort of status quo remain. This curve could of course be rather flat. I do not know. I would though suspect that the bigger the amount of text the fewer newer words and thereby relatively the more words previously used only once.

Therefore it would be interesting to know how large the known Clement corpus is and how many new words and words previously used only once ought to be expected in a text of 1295 words. The relation is of course interesting, but the actual number of words could also be interesting since we are talking about a very short text. Let's say that we would expect a relation of 5/8 but in actual words 15/24, or perhaps 1/1.6. This would matter on such a short text. Perhaps you have some answers. I suppose I anyway will have to get Stähler’s work and check it out myself.

Kindly, Roger Viklund

Roger Viklund

I would like to add, that my article is not really an argument against forgery. It is an argument against Stephen Carlson’s claim that it is a forgery. That is a big difference. I would not say that a forgery necessary would improve over time. In fact I argue for the opposite, that a forger would likely be more alert at the beginning but would have problem withholding his concentration over time.

Kindly, Roger

the_cave

What I meant was, you asked about Smith's claim, to wit: Salome was a somewhat "shady lady" (Smith's phrase) in early Christian literature.

I don't see it as grossly distorted--her record is mixed. Some (like the gospel authors) seem to have revered her as a disciple. Others (the gnostic authors) suggest that she had dubious associations. Smith accurately points this out.

Does he?

But what do the dates of composition have to do with anything, if not with the origins of SecMk?

Why? She doesn't have a disreputable status in SecMk.

Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong. But note that even Smith allows here for an author besides Mark--he says that it's "by the school" of Mark.

Zeal? All I did is quote the Wikipedia page. I don't have any zeal do underwrite anything.

I just don't understand this--I wasn't ranting about anything. I was calmly trying to clarify your position. Sorry if there was any misunderstanding.

Roger Viklund

There were some errors in the last paragraph of my previous post 112 and now I can’t edit it. What I meant was not a text of 1295 words but instead the slightly fewer than 600 words in the letter, including all words, even those used many times, and excluding the part which quote Secret Mark. I seem to recall that there were a total of 258 uniqe words in the letter.

It should instead have read: Therefore it would be interesting to know how large the known Clement corpus is and how many new words and words previously used only once ought to be expected in a text of less than 600 words.

1295 different words actually sounds like a small number of words meaning that the corpus could not be that large.

Solo

No problem...in case you are interested in doing some reading on the subject, there is a whole chapter on the subject of Secret Mark and M. Smith's treatment of Salome in Richard Bauckham's 'Gospel Women' (or via: amazon.co.uk) .

Jiri

andrewcriddle

Hi Roger

Just to clarify.

The claim that the percentage would remain stable is a standard (though not uncontroversial) claim in the theoretical literature. In my article I suggested that in fact it would, as you propose, fall very slowly as the body of the author's work increased.

In my detailed analysis I argued that clumping (the fact that some of the words used for the first time in a short new work will be used more than once) effectively cancels this out and that one can approximately use the fraction of total vocabulary previously used once only as an estimate of the expected value of:
((number of new words) - (number of words used previously only once))/(number of new words)

IE I attempted, whether successfully or not, to take account of possible complicating factors including the one you mentioned.

Andrew Criddle

Roger Viklund

Thanks for your clarification Andrew. It could of course be that your conclusions are correct. There are after all three subjects to be dealt with.

First of all there is the pure calculation which is not especially advanced. It says that Clement’s letter deviate 3.6 times from what to be expected (5/8 divided by 9/4 = 20/72 = 1/3.6). There are either 3.6 times as few words previously never used (would be 14 or 15 instead of 4) or 3.6 times as many words previously used only once (would be 2 or 3 instead of 9) or a combination of these two elements, i.e. there should perhaps be twice as many words previously never used (i.e. 8) and at the same time barely half as many previously used only once (i.e. 5).

Secondly, there is the input. Are all the figures that are put into the calculation correct? I.e. are we really to expect a relation of 5 – 8? Are Stählin’s figures accurate? Has he been able to isolate all expressions which Clement takes from the Bible or from other sources but does not quote, just incorporate into his expressions? Have you been able to isolate all non-Clement expressions in the letter (apart from the quotations from SM)? How are we to decide if a word actually is a word? You and Smith obviously disagreed and words are not figures. It is impossible for instance to compare how many words there are in different languages. The problem is that words have different forms and often are combined with one another and it is difficult to isolate them in their primary form.

Thirdly, there is the relevance of the result. How can we really adapt these figures on at short letter, even if the figures are correct? As far as I know, we have no letter of Clement (apart from this one – correct me if I’m wrong). All the rest is just material from books. Can a letter be compared to a book? Further, can a short text be seen as representative, and how much deviation could be seen as a normal variation? Everyone should realize that in a text of only 50 words there could be 2 words previously used only once and only one or perhaps no word at all previously never used, without it being any suspicious. But how are we to deal with a short text that still is ten times as long? We cannot say anything about the 4 words previously never used and why no other words previously never used, do not occur. Bur what about the 9 words previously used only once? Could the context require that these words were used again?

I find many difficulties with using this method to evaluate authenticity on this letter.

Kindly, Roger

andrewcriddle

Hi Roger

I agree that there may well be problems with my precise figures. However when you refer to the difference between my figures and those of Morton Smith it may be worth noting that, compared to my figures of 4 new words and 9 words previously used once only, Morton Smith had 7 new words and 15 words previously used once only. This figure of 7 and 15 has a statistically more significant deviation from the expected than my figures of 4 and 9.

In general most of the ways in which my paper departs from straightforwardly applying a very simple model to Morton Smith's data, have the effect of making the discrepancy statistically less significant.
The fact that we have no other letters by Clement, (apart from short fragments of very dubious authenticity), makes the strong stylistic resemblance of the Mar Saba letter to Clements' unquestioned works particularly problematic IMO. (It is not just the vocabulary issue although that is the part of my paper that everyone seems to concentrate on. The letter for example appears to reproduce the prose rhythmns of book III of the Stromateis a work of similar subject matter but entirely different genre. )

It may be of interest to spell out exactly how the IMO unusual vocabulary features serve to make the letter unusually Clementine.

Using Morton Smith's vocabulary figures for Clement Philo and Athanasius and my own comparison to the New Testament there are 5 words found in the letter but not in Clement or (Philo + Athanasius + NT ) 2 words found in the letter and in (Philo + Athanasius + NT) but not Clement and 8 words found in the letter and in Clement but not in (Philo + Athanasius + NT) of these 8 words 5 are according to Stahlin used once and once only by Clement.

This ratio of 8 words in the letter and Clement but not in ANY of
(Philo + Athanasius + NT) to only 2 words in the letter and in at least one of (Philo + Athanasius + NT) but not in Clement is difficult to analyse for statistical significances but it does seem to show a high number of words in the letter that are both Clementine and rare in other writers and very few words that are non-Clementine and found reasonably frequently in other writers.

Andrew Criddle

Roger Viklund

Hi again Andrew!

Yes, I know that also in Smith’s analysis there were far more words previously used only one time, than those never used before. My point was mainly to show how problematic it can be to decide which word to pick.

My Greek is poor and I will not try to beat you on that. I shall however check out the words you refer to in order to see what they mean, why they were used and if there were any alternative options. Among the words previously used only once there is Ίεριχώ (Jericho) but since Clement is introducing SM2 by referring to what Mark 10:46a says about Jesus arriving to Jericho, you rightfully exclude it. You do however include ίεροφαντικην (hierophantic) which of course would be a word seldom used, but perhaps the only possible word when referring to a teaching by a hierophant.

Kindly, Roger