Bede

Have you guys heard about the novel "The Mystery of Mar Saba". Allegedly, it came out the year before Smith claims he found Sec Mark and is about a relic found there that rocks Christianity. It is also supposed to feature a character called Morton...

A friend is looking it up (and alerted me to the connection). I wonder if there is anything in it.

Best wishes

Bede

Haran

Interesting, Bede. I didn't know about this.

"The Mystery of Mar Saba" can be found at Allibris at a cheap price (though it's hard to beat that bargain used deal on Lampe's Lexicon ).

andrewcriddle

on p 12 we have Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

IIUC 'The Mystery of Mar Saba' was first published in 1940.

It and its possible connection to Secret Mark are discussed briefly in 'Hidden Gospels' by Philip Jenkins.

Andrew Criddle

S.C.Carlson

The novel is an evangelical thriller where the main hero (Medhurst, not Morton) gets caught up in a web of pre-WWII international intrigue in which the Nazis are determined to defeat Britain by undermining Christianity with a forgery discovered at Mar Saba. The forgery purports to be the first-hand account of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea stealing the (dead) body of Jesus from the tomb before Mary Magdalene arrived. The Greek text of the forgery is a pastiche from various bits of the N.T., but there is no discernable verbal overlap between the "Shred of Nicodemus" and Secret Mark.

There is a Lord Moreton in the story who helps crack the forgery, but the main protagonist is Medhurst. There's also a babe Medhurst falls in love with, and the obligatory bad guy, a German Higher Critic, no less. Of course, the expectations of the genre are fully realized when the hero accepts Christ and gets saved halfway through the story, after quite a lot of discussions about
Christianity.

Yuri Kuchinsky

In connection with what I said here, I have a question for those who claim that SecMk is a modern forgery.

So let's suppose, with Carlson, that there was a conspiracy on the part of Prof. Smith, together with some unnamed monk, to forge SecMk. But how does this explain, then, these remarkable findings by Talley?

Was it purely a coincidence that Smith forged the manuscript, and then some real researcher actually go out and find some pretty interesting _real_ support for the darn thing -- which was presumably merely a product of Smith's imagination?

So what's going on here, folks? Do you think that Smith might have been somehow *psychically* aware of these testimonies of Abu-'l-Barakat, and of Macarius, before Talley actually discovered them?

Or, dare I say, might there be a more naturalistic explanation for this... involving some foul play? Like... Talley also being a part of this conspiracy?

So what do you think?

Is anyone here willing to claim that Smith and Talley were already in cahoots way before Smith even announced his 'forgery' to the world in 1960? (i.e. that Talley already _knew_ about these Egyptian patristic testimonies before, but only told Smith about them.)

Thereupon, of course, they would have acted upon a previously agreed plan, according to which Talley was going to announce his 'discovery' at some later point -- and thus provide some 'independent support' for Smith?

So how's this for a conspiracy? Any takers?

All the best,

Yuri.

andrewcriddle

IMHO Talley's ingenious linkage of Secret Mark as he interpreted it and some (very) late Coptic liturgical traditions as he interpreted them does not really provide evidence for the authenticity of Secret Mark although it might provide a strong case for how Secret Mark should be interpreted if authentic.

(there is a discussion of Talley's ideas at Thomas Talley in support of SecMk)

Andrew Criddle

Vorkosigan

Yuri, scholarly support for fakes is the norm in such situations. Recall that the James Ossuary -- whose bogusity was a hell of a lot more obvious than SecMark -- garnered widespread support. Backhouse's Chinese forgeries drew widespread support and he was eventually offered a place at Oxford as an instructor. Scholars always fall for this stuff. See Koester, Crossan, and now Scott Brown, who has a whole book out on SecMark. I've read some of his other stuff, and it's fine work.

Vorkosigan

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Andrew,

Sorry, but what you're saying does seem a bit inconsistent.

Indeed, how can Talley's findings "not really provide evidence for the authenticity of Secret Mark", and yet "provide a strong case" for its interpretation if the text is authentic.

If Talley's findings are relevant to the text, as you seem to agree, then surely they can also be seen as at least somewhat relevant to determining its authenticity.

And also, why do you think that Talley's linkage of SecMk to the Coptic liturgical traditions is "ingenious"?

Because the way you use this word seems somewhat dismissive of Talley's scholarship.

IMHO the links between SecMk and the Coptic liturgical traditions are clear and obvious. They are as obvious as can be.

Also, I object to your description of these Coptic testimonies as very late. Why is Macarius in the 10th century very late?

Well IMHO, by the same criteria, just about *everything* we use in NT studies is very late... I keep saying it over and over that, for example, our Nestle/Aland text of the NT is *very late*, since basically it's just a 19th century product by Hort, constructed out of 4th-5th century Egyptian manuscripts.

So do you agree with me that the Nestle/Aland is *very late*? And if not, why then this selective criticism of Macarius as very late?

Well, just about everything in biblical studies is *very late*! The Masoretic text, itself, is *very late*, and even later than Macarius! Just about *all* of our patristic manuscripts are *very late*...

So I think that this objection of yours is really not very constructive, and tends to prejudge some evidence selectively against other evidence.

Because the main question here really is, Where did Macarius and Abu-'l-Barakat get this tradition? (And apparently they got it independently of each other.) Did they just make these things up? Why?

It doesn't seem right just to dismiss such historical testimonies with a wave of hand, without first trying to determine if there's something important behind them.

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

You miss the point, Vork.

I'm not really talking about "scholarly support" in this case, but rather about some apparent support for SecMk that is found in legitimate ancient documents.

So the question that you should really address is, Are these two Coptic witnesses relevant to our analysis of SecMk? I believe that they are.

Well, this just seems like a generic dismissal of contrary evidence. Yes, there's a number of known forgeries out there, but this of course doesn't yet mean that all disputed documents are forgeries.

Yours,

Yuri.