Yuri Kuchinsky

How so?

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

...then the cluster of coincidences he has identified that appear to disprove it rank fairly close to the famous analogy of atheistic evolution....

He says that the coincidences is close to the analogy (IOW, the roomful of typewriting monkeys), not to evolution itself. If he had meant to say that the chances were comparable to the chances of evolution itself (thus assuming that evolution is false), the reference to the monkeys would be superfluous.

(For all I know Blomberg may be a creationist; I have no idea. But his statement is one that even an atheistic evolutionist could make, since the comparison is to a famous analogy, not to the theory itself.)

Ben.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Of course he's a creationist. I think you're just splitting hairs...

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

Not that I doubt it, but how do you know he is a creationist?

Ben.

Julian

He looks like one!

Honestly, someone who believes in creationism and rejects evolution cannot be taken very seriously.

Julian

Ben C Smith

Cannot be taken very seriously in science, anyway. Many are true experts in one field but incompetent in another.

Thirty years ago one could have easily supposed Blomberg was a creationist just from his evangelical connections. Now, however, the waters are murkier.

Ben.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Seems to me that somebody using the expression "atheistic evolution" is likely to be one.

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

I have (rarely) used the expression atheistic evolution precisely because I am a theistic evolutionist.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

The Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Dr. Blomberg, Ph.D., of the Denver Seminary is an apologist.

The remark about "atheistic evolution," which is completely irrelevant to the discussion of SC's book, is a throw away line to pander to conservative fundamentalists. It betrays Dr. Blomberg's a priori position.

This means he cannot approach the question of the authenticity of Secret Mark without prior bias. Secret Mark challenges the apolgetic position. He agrees with SC, but for the wrong reasons.

Jake Jones

Yuri Kuchinsky

Greetings, all,

I finally wrote a review of Carlson's debunking of Secret Mark, and posted it on my webpage,

http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/secmk.htm

So here's what I wrote there.

______________________


It will soon be about a year since the following book came out,

Stephen Carlson, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2005.

And yet, it is safe to say that, so far, the public reaction to S. Carlson's book hasn't exactly been that of overwhelming acceptance... The reviews in academic journals have been slow in coming.

In any case, in my view, Carlson's book is quite unpersuasive. He really didn't make a very strong case against Dr. Smith. There are a lot of insinuations, but nothing definite.

It is really very serious charges that Carlson is making against Dr. Smith -- the charges that, had they been proven true at the time, would have no doubt destroyed Morton Smith's academic career. And yet, Carlson is making it sound as if these are just innocent, childhood-like fun and games... There's this strange and rather amoral atmosphere that seems to pervade this book through and through.

Smith is a genius, but utterly twisted and even irrational. He did everything he could to make his plot succeed, and yet deliberately left all sorts of clues, to make plain his nefarious machinations. He deceived everyone, and yet he didn't. Deception is of course bad, but sometimes it might be good and even admirable. What he did was a forgery, and yet it was not.

So these are just some of the strange ambiguities -- both logical and ethical -- that seem to pervade Carlson's book.

The motivation of Smith's plot is never really quite clear. To benefit scholarship or to hurt and derail scholarship? To teach his enemies a lesson, or perhaps to prove them right? (Indeed, nothing would have pleased his enemies -- the conservatives, presumably? -- more than his being caught and exposed...)

Did he just want to have some innocent fun and games -- or perhaps to undermine the Christian religion, and thus to maliciously insult millions of people? Was he trying to prove himself smarter than anyone else, or in fact to expose his own rank stupidity (by putting his academic career and livelihood on the line for no apparent reason)?

And so, the Morton Smith that Carlson constructs for us in the pages of his book is really quite a strange and irrational figure. It's nothing more than a cardboard cut-out -- not connected in any real way to the world around him.

All through his book, Carlson alternates between building Smith up, and then tearing him down. Of course, to begin with, Smith needs to be portrayed as a great genius, and a top-notch academic -- an unheralded master of many rather obscure and specialised fields of scholarship... Otherwise, how could he get away with his hoax/forgery -- as multidisciplinary as it was! -- for over 40 years? And yet, quite obviously, the plot that Smith concocted was also extremely dumb and even harebrained -- it was all but guaranteed discovery! The only way that Smith avoided exposure was because, in the end, the monks covered up for him.

So there you have it, folks. A hoaxer/forger who's a genius and yet utterly stupid... But his plot succeeded in spite of everything -- because the monks taking care of Mar Saba library were even more stupid and incompetent!

So how likely is such a scenario in real life? Doesn't seem all that likely to me...

As I see it, the weakest spot in S. Carlson's often convoluted webs of reasoning is his inability to account for this simple fact. There's a very big difference if something was written yesterday, or if it was written 300 years ago. Any idiot should be able to see the difference right away. So how smart could have Smith been if his plans failed to take _this_ into consideration?

Regards,

Yuri.

PS.
In other news, Scott Brown has recently published an article in JBL, defending Smith,

Scott Brown, “The Question of Motive in the Case against Morton Smith,” JBL 125 (2006): 351-383.

Carlson responded to this in a series of posts,

http://www.hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2...in-jbl_24.html

In my view, Brown has unfortunately not chosen the best and the most effective arguments to defend Smith against Carlson's accusations. My own arguments in defence of Smith are more solid, at least IMHO... Consequently, I really don't feel like joining this particular Brown/Carlson fray at this point -- as extended as it already is.