Yuri Kuchinsky

THE NATION is "mainstream media"???

Actually, the editors of this small leftish publication would be shocked to hear that they're "mainstream"...

Cheers,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

For some new members here, on my webpage I have some pretty solid evidence demonstrating that Smith could not have been the author of Secret Mark,

http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku/bbl/secmk.htm

BTW, for some reason, Google seems to have some problems finding this webpage...

Best regards,

Yuri.

DCHindley

Jeffrey,

Could you unpack that a bit? I added some brackets and words to make more sense of it. Have I got you right?

The truth of the matter should not rest on when his present day supporters thought he might have started researching Clement of Alexandria.

If he was doing work on early mss, which include copies of the works of a wide range of church fathers, would it not be expected that he would have been reading on the subject? Here was a man who was fascinated by the concept of Jesus as a libertine (not his original idea to be sure, but it did seem to resonate with his own maverick worldview), and Clement having recounted the liberal sexual views of some gnostics, it was a match made in heaven.

IMHO, even if the Clementine fragment with SM in the back of the bound Voss book was invented, either centuries before or by another visitor preceding Smith (I find it hard to believe he was the first academic, or theologian for that matter, to do so), it would not surprise me that such a thing would attract his attention.

Here at last, in his mind, was the smoking gun supporting HIS own beliefs about Jesus. No wonder the elation, no wonder the excitement. Others to be sure would have completely blown it off without also finding other direct evidence (fragments, inventories, etc) for Clementine letters on the premises.

Of course, in cold hard reality, it wasn't strong evidence at all. Late handwriting in the endpage of a bound book that obviously found its way to Mar Saba by means other than the way the other bound books did, if location of publisher is taken into consideration, is weak evidence by any one's standards. Except for the two initial books, he really made very little of it himself later in his career. It just wasn't a slam dunk, and he knew it. To be honest, I do not know why Koester and others gave it more than passing mention in a footnote.

I'm simply amazed that so many otherwise level headed people go ballistic on this matter, like the way Hillary haters did on national news programs recently when they saw the evil woman testify at her confirmation hearing in Washingtoon. Oh, the things they said and impugned, and the horrifying plots to destroy the nation that they ascribe to her and now president-elect Barak "Osama".

Enough, of both (MS haters and Hillary haters)!

DCH

Yuri Kuchinsky

Here's an interesting item that was completely overlooked on this forum so far... The following article in Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus appeared last spring,

Pantuck, Allan J.; Brown, Scott G.
Morton Smith as M. Madiotes: Stephen Carlson's Attribution of Secret Mark to a Bald Swindler
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008) 106-125

(I don't think a free copy of this is available on the Net.)

Abstract:
"In 1960, Morton Smith announced that he had discovered in the Mar Saba monastery tower library a fragment of a previously unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria containing excerpts from a longer version of the Gospel of Mark that Smith called the 'Secret Gospel of Mark'. Controversial since its publication in 1973, this discovery has recently been criticized in print as both an academic hoax and a malicious forgery. This paper uses newly discovered manuscript photographs and archived documents to refute a claim found in Stephen C. Carlson's The Gospel Hoax, namely that Smith invented a pseudonymous twentieth-century individual named 'M. Madiotes' as an elaborate and deliberate clue that he himself had forged the letter of Clement."

Some commentators believe that this study by Pantuck and Brown has
damaged Carlson's case considerably.

In particular, this whole 'Madiotes' business (as I've argued previously on this forum) turns out to be a complete mirage. Oh, well...

Also, I have a question that some folks here can perhaps clarify... We have 2 separate sets of photos of Mar Saba MS: a black-and-white set that Smith himself took, and a colour set taken by a monastic librarian (both of them are available on the Net). But is there also a _third_ set of photos? I've seen a ref to this third set recently, but I'm not sure if it's correct.

Anyone knows for sure?

All the best,

Yuri.

Toto

Pantuck, Allan J.; Brown, Scott G.
Morton Smith as M. Madiotes: Stephen Carlson's Attribution of Secret Mark to a Bald Swindler
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008) 106-125

can be purchased here.

There's an interesting post here on a panel on Secret Mark at Claremont from Chris Zeichmann.

Clivedurdle

Why does no one forensically analyse the original?

Allegedly the forgery was planted in the 1950's. What were the inks used?

See Archimedes Codex for a summary of technologies available.

People go on about primary sources here!

DCHindley

Clive,

You certainly must know that the original, written on end leaves from a printed edition of a book, was "misplaced" by a Mar Saba librarian after being removed from the bound volume. What is there to examine?

True, some fault Smith for not stealing it like 19th century scholars used to do, but you just can't trust a bald swindler to do the wrong thing ...

DCH

Clivedurdle

I assume this library is the equivalent of a UN Heritage Site? Send in some skilled conservators librarians etc and sort it!

Religious sensibilities? Claptrap!

Jeffrey Gibson

Why would you assume that? And just what is the equivalent of a UN (UNESCO?) World Heritage Site, anyway?

Jeffrey

Yuri Kuchinsky

Well, according to S. Carlson (THE GOSPEL HOAX, Baylor, 2005, p. 2), there are only 2 sets of photos of Mar Saba MS. So it seems 'the third set' was just an Internet rumour...

The colour photos can be seen here,
http://www.westarinstitute.org/Perio.../secretmk.html

All the best,

Yuri.