dog-on

Shoot me a pm with the details, when ready.

stephan huller

I have contacted these people to help determine a match

http://imm.demokritos.gr/publication...anuscripts.pdf

Diogenes the Cynic

I don't think handwriting analysis (especially when you're talking about exemplars which are likely to be highly formalized) is scientifically sound enough to resolve anything. Certainly, a failure to find a "match" certainly isn't going to resolve anything, and a close match would not be accepted as evidence for the authenticity of Secret Mark by those disinclined to such a view already.

stephan huller

Professor Larry Hurtado sent me an email to the same effect. I strongly disagree of course. This is a case where those pushing for forgery have had fifty years to put something substantive together to uphold their case. What do we have? Bupkis. I have been looking at hundreds of seventeenth and eighteenth century Greek monastic manuscripts. If the right match were discovered it would be obvious to everyone save for those who already made a pronouncement on the text's falseness. While certainly of subordinate value to actually finding the MS (something we are working on at the same time) the handwriting is still worth a great deal. Let's face it. Those arguing for forgery have nothing of comparable value.

And rereading your comments a second time, let me assure the readers of this thread that there are more than religious manuscripts available to us in the collections. The Russian archives for instance preserve legal contracts, formal and informal letters, mathematical and scientific treatises. All the people writing these remarkably diverse collection Greek texts were trained with by the same religious system (the Church still had control of education into the twentieth century).