andrewcriddle

Hi Yuri

I'm not sure If I can prove it.

All I can say is that AFAIK and IMO most of the important arguments against authenticity before recent times come from people who are outside the field of NT studies narrowly defined. Clementine scholars classical scholars or early Church scholars. I mentioned Eric Osborn who is a Clement scholar and Annick Martin who is an early church scholar. I should probably have mentioned Charles E Murgia a classical scholar.

I'm not quite sure of the point you are trying to make. If you are claiming that there has been little real opposition to authenticity until recently then I think you are mistaken. If you are arguing that I am unduly minimizing the importance of criticisms of authenticity by NT scholars such as Quesnell then maybe you are right, but IMO Quesnell doubted authenticity more than provided solid reasons for his doubts.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

IMO Clement clearly indicates that the contents of Secret Mark are something special.
I am not quite clear what you mean here. There is obviously a possibility that Clement is wrong as to what happened. But you almost seem to suggest that Clement means theft metaphorically. Did Carpocrates suborn the presbyter metaphorically ?
I don't think I've expressed myself well on this point.
What I was trying to say is that swearing on oath doesn't seem appropriate to Theodore's situation. In the c 400 CE Priscillianist controversy the Priscillianists alllegedly believed that it was appropriate, in response to mainsream criticisms, to continue to discreetly use apocryphal works but deny this on oath when accused. Whether the allegation was true or false, swearing falsely was relevant to their situation. It seems much less relevant to Theodore coping with a Carpocratian heckler.
In Stromateis book 3 Clement deals with various attempts to use canonical and non-canonical texts to argue for what he regards as immoral positions. He does at one point say but both here and throughout book 3 (and throughout his whole body of work) Clement seems as much or more concerned with the right interpretation of texts than with which texts should be regarded as scriptural.
I think there may be a problem with the idea of pericopes in Secret Mark which are not mentioned by Clement. Unless poor Theodore knows all the significant additions he is still vulnerable to the Carpocratians who have the whole thing.
Despite its IMO sometimes questionable contents people are not usually instructed to lie on oath about their use of the Interpreters Bible.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

Andrew,

I never got the feeling that NT scholars accepted it wholesale. In fact, I was rather surprised at the endorsement the gospel fragment got in Koester's Ancient Christian Gospels (1990), in the sense that it was treated as an authentic fragment of a lost gospel. I would think that there was more acceptance of the possibility that the letter to Theodore was authentic than that the fragment of a gospel it contained was what Clement seemed to think it was. In other words, Clement was simply wrong about it's origins.

Nobody asks if Mark or Matthew or Luke or John are "authentic" although we question their authorship, date of composuition, etc, all the time. They are examples of a genre. So, I would think, we should treat this fragment, although we can question its autorship and date. Our options are not just "It MUST be an authentic letter of Clement AND a genuine fragment of an ancient gospel" -or- "It MUST be a forged letter AND a forged gospel fragment."

Couldn't we just have a genuine letter with a misattributed fragment? Or a misattributed letter with a genuine fragment? Or a forged letter with a genuine gospel fragment? The list goes on...

DCH

andrewcriddle

I'm sorry. What I meant by accepting as authentic was accepting the Mar Saba letter as genuinely by Clement (and hence the Secret Gospel as genuinely existing in the second century.)

You are of course right that very many NT scholars have doubted the !st century date of Secret Mark. All I meant is that they have usually done so while accepting that Clement wrote the Mar Saba letter.



Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

But then you betray your original point. It is metaphorical in the epistle (the participle does not have to be, but in this case it is), so veiled does work and, on the level of allusion (not strict translation, as you seem to be driving at), seven times veiled is an acceptable match for seven veils.

Ben.

the_cave

I am agreeing that it works--if this concedes anything on my part, so be it.

Allusion to what? Clement says it's a sevenfold-veiled truth. Smith translates this as "hidden by seven veils" which is inaccurate as a translation, even if you bracket "veils" as he later did. What is there to allude to?

the_cave

What are the general thoughts on the idea that the letter is no modern hoax, but may still be pseudepigraphical? It seems to me that Brown's weakest point is not his support for Smith's honesty, but rather his case for Clementine authenticity (which based on my reading of him he doesn't really make IMO). Or, couldn't the eighteenth-century scribe have simply made a mistake about the authorship? (I don't have Smith on hand at the moment so I can't refer to what he said about it.)

Ben C Smith

Sorry, I thought we were talking about the same thing here. I am referring to the alleged allusion to Oscar Wilde. If that allusion is weak, I do not think it is weak because the participle in question is a poor way to express the idea of a veil.

You specifically asked in one post for the basis for finding veil in the Greek, and I supplied it, doing so from the only point of view that matters for the case at hand, to wit, the point of view of a modern hoaxer working in an allusion to Salome. If Morton Smith wanted (for whatever reason) to work in such an allusion, what we find in the Greek of the alleged Clementine epistle is not a stretch for the concept of seven veils. That is all I am saying.

Ben.

the_cave

Let me try to explain it this way: if there were a story--an allegory, a myth, a parable, what have you--about a truth--a god, a heaven, a text, etc.--literally (in the myth, that is) surrounded by seven veils, then the phrase "sevenfold-veiled truth" would refer to that myth--so it would refer to literal veils, even if allegorical. Those allegorical veils of course would themselves refer to something else, but in order to refer to that, you refer to the veils in the myth. That's how mythological references work.

Absent such a myth, the phrase "sevenfold-veiled truth" is a more abstract way of referring to a truth enshrouded in seven layers of mystery, or concealment (whatever that might mean). You're no longer talking about allegorical veils; you're talking about the act of concealment.

That is to say, an allusion to Wilde would operate according to the first example more easily than the second. Hence a reference to "seven veils" would be a more direct (and plausible) reference to Wilde than "sevenfold-veiled", which is more abstract and therefore less obvious.

I admit this is a little pedantic and we're starting to get distracted, but I think it's a legitimate and possibly helpful distinction.

Yes, and I thank you for the clarification. I see it this way:

1) If Smith were simply recalling Wilde, subconsciously or otherwise, while reading the Greek, then we might well expect him to translate "sevenfold-veiled truth" just the way he does--as a reference to "seven veils". Because, it is in fact an inaccurate (though approximate) translation. So it seems to me that the evidence may favor a Wilde-influenced Smith (as translator), but not a Wilde-influenced Greek text.

2) And yet if Smith were the author of the Greek, we might well ask why he would write (in Greek) "sevenfold-veiled" if what he was thinking was "seven veils", a la Wilde? Suggesting he was not the author of the Greek. Or is there something about the Greek that would necessitate the grammar and vocabulary he chose?

Ben C Smith

It may be a legitimate distinction, but I do not think it makes any difference as to a possible allusion to Wilde.

Well, if he wanted to write of the truth hidden, then hidden by seven veils could be redundant in Greek (veiled by seven veils). But I would say that, if this is indeed an allusion to Wilde, the mental process probably proceeded in the other direction: Granted the desire (for whatever reason) to include the seven veils, the word for veil in Greek would naturally and virtually immediately suggest hiding, since it is so frequently used that way.

Ben.