are these supposed to be sound arguments?

[StephenGoranson]

Here's the full title of Smith's Harvard Theological Review article
"CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA AND SECRET MARK: THE SCORE AT THE END OF THE FIRST DECADE."
HTR 75:4 (1982) 449-61.
In context, the word "Score" is an unusual, provocative, choice.

As for "Manufactured in the United States" which he wrote in handwriting on his copy of the text,
that is, in context, an unusual choice, because it was not a mechanically printed book. (Though, in a different sense, he did "manufacture" the "Mar Saba" text--in NY, USA.)

One can choose to ignore cumulative arguments--about a previously unknown and anomalous text--if one wishes.

But you may have heard:
if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

[AdamKvanta]

As for "Manufactured in the United States" which he wrote in handwriting on his copy of the text,
that is, in context, an unusual choice, because it was not a mechanically printed book.

What if Morton Smith intended to mechanically print this text later and this was just a draft?

Another thing is, as I understand it, "Manufactured in the United States" is just a synonym for "Made in the U.S.A." and could be used for anything made/produced in the USA. So I think it doesn't have to be something mechanically printed.

And if there is any humor in that hand-written phrase then I think it's the fact that the etymological meaning of the word manufacture is from Medieval Latin manūfactūra (“a making by hand”).

[StephenGoranson]

De gustibus non est disputandum,
though I am not the only one to notice that manufactured (in 1958 context) and Score later
comport with Morton's long-displayed sense of humor.

[StephenGoranson]

Clarification and correction. Above in this thread, Sun Apr 21, 2024 2:17 pm, I wrote:

""MS got early liturgy wrong." Wrong for what fit Clement in Egypt.
This, supported from, iirc, Robin Jenson (a Columbia grad, I think), and Peter Jeffrey, an early liturgy specialist, and a colleague prof of Smith's at Columbia."

A clarification. That's three people, not two. In other words, Jeffrey was at Princeton and now Notre Dame, so not to be confused with a Columbia prof.

A correction. The "Columbia" prof I was thinking of was Cyril C. Richardson, who was at Union Theological Seminary, not [my mistake] Columbia, but nearby in NYC, and a close colleague of Smith's.
Richardson appears significantly in Smith's exceedingly-academic 1973 book,
as does Gershom Scholem.

Speaking of Scholem, remember that Scholem is the first person Smith mentioned to whom Smith showed "Secret Mark." And remember that Carpocrates--which immediately interested Scholem--appeared in the same sentence with "Secret Gospel." Whether one thinks Smith composed the text or found the text, you can't miss it. Smith knew in 1958, when visiting his mentor Scholem in Jerusalem, that the "Letter" suggested an antinomian Jesus, which Smith associated with another person, Shabbatai Zvi, "the Mystical Messiah," as the English Translation of Scholem's great book title has it. Scholem had started publishing on Zvi (or Sabbatai Sevi) long before meeting Smith, so Smith, in the 1940s in Jerusalem became familiar with Zvi.