Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Mar 12, 2021 3:47 pm
Absence of Provenance and Authentication is also a sign (but not proof) of forgery.
What absence? We know where the book was found. We know that the monks wouldn't allow Quesnell to take the manuscript to be examined at the police station. He couldn't just walk out the door with the manuscript. Why? Because they claimed ownership over the book and the manuscript. Sounds to me like provenance. Even now the book is part of the library. I asked Father Aristarchus if I could have the book since it wasn't theirs. He laughed. Hung up the phone.
Here's a photo of the book still in the possession of the Jerusalem Patriarchate in the 21st century.
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp- ... ititon.pdf
Again you want it both ways.
(1) the book doesn't belong in the library (2) the library says 'it's our book.' How do you reconcile (1) and (2)? If Morton Smith had kids this would have been over a long time ago. Just have the heir sue them for ownership of the manuscript. 'Yeah my dad forged it. He left it in the library. Give us back the book.' Then test the ink. But the library would never the book leave their possession. Because they know it's theirs. The last I heard from a Metropolitan that used to work in the library and was there when it is moved from Mar Saba to Jerusalem Archbishop Theophanis of Gerash ALWAYS took an interest in the manuscript. Studied Patristics in the UK. It's with him.
Legally speaking, the book and manuscript can only be provenanced to be in the library's possession when M. Smith claimed to find it there. However, we have no record of any ownership of the book before that moment. You can theorize that the library owned the book before M. Smith came to the library, but there is no record of who originally gave the book to the library or when they donated it. So it is unprovenanced before Smith claimed to find it there in the 1940's/1950's.
It's like if I started as a volunteer at a museum archive in 2020 and said "Wow, I found this ancient Annunaki idol hidden in your unsorted artifact collection!" The Annunaki idol can be tentatively provenanced to the library in 2020 based on my say-so as an employee/volunteer, but there is no provenance for it before the moment that I made my announcement. There is no record of anyone owning that idol before the moment I announced it. Any chain of ownership from before that moment is unauthenticated.
To answer your question in bold:
My guess is that the book originally belonged to M. Smith because he forged the letter in it and because the book wasn't in earlier catalogues of the library's books. But since he openly presented the book as if he found it in the library while he was volunteering for the library, it looks like de facto he gave it to the library until either the library chooses to surrender it or until it can be proven to belong to him and his heirs claim it.
If you forge a letter in the back of an old book and you work for an antique book store and claim that you found the book at their store and the store THEN claims it based it on your assertions, it looks like the book store becomes the owner until you ask for it back AND prove that it belongs to you AND prove that you didn't intend to give the store your book.
Even if M. Smith owned the book before he claimed to find it in the library, then he de facto donated the book to them because his
intention was for the book to have it. He
intended for the public and the library to believe that the book belonged in the library where he claimed to find it and in whose possession he left it.
