Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Here is one case, all from his 1973 book, The Secret Gospel. On page 6 MS recounted his 1941 visit to Mar Saba. He described the liturgy, which he attended, as "hypnotic." "I knew what was happening, but I relaxed and enjoyed it." (In what other context have heard that phrase?) O...

Again, JarekS, you posit two groups, you/us versus "biblical scholars." And you did not answer any of my questions, above-- who, when, where, single source? I think it is fair to say that, in some sense, many here are, in some broad definition, "biblical scholars." Maybe some her...

This, though, was not a published book.
If you read Smith's reviews, you may get a sense of his humor.
Or if you heard him in person, as I did.
Such as the time he remarked that an article had been misprinted,
because it lacked the word
"Amen."

Morton Smith hand-wrote "Manuscript Material from the Monastery of Mar Saba, discovered, transcribed and translated by Morton Smith," dated 1958. It includes a Preface. On a preliminary page he wrote "Manufactured in the United States." This may bean example of his type of humor....

I suggest that it is a false dichotomy to claim that literature is either "authentic" or "popular and successful." There are other collections of letters--and history books--that are both. If I understand your writing correctly, you posit--in order to "help biblical scholars...

Maybe so, Adam. As the formula goes: he writes English better than I write Greek. At least on the surface, there may be some tensions between portions of his report. But this sentence (no. 19 in Textological observations) is clear: "Once we prove that the handwriting of the letter is alien to t...

That's a lot of unsupported "assume"s.

If I may suggest, the one-source (imposed? modern?) product drop model in early Christianity does not persuasively take into account the long negotiations about the various-located accretions of text toward a canon, more or less, but not entirely, shared by Christians.

I suggest that naked, singular, was more likely intended than nakeds, plural, given the text context.

To be clear, the letter written in Hebrew by Smith is now in the Hebrew University collections.
It was translated into English for publication in the Smith-Scholem Correspondence volume by Yonatan Moss, who has noted elsewhere that Smith's modern Hebrew was not fluent.