Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

No one claimed to see it before 1958.
Questions about authenticity started before QQ.

Smith does not mention showing it in 1958 to any monk.

I was trying to address one point at that time, namely, whether Smith was in the Mar Saba tower library. He was. Perhaps you were thinking of the Jerusalem library, which may be, for most people, closed stacks. On the handwriting, lots of people thought it looked like 18th-century writing, or late 1...

From my copy of the G. Smith and B. Landau book, page 22, (and quoted above by Secret Alias » Mon Apr 15, 2024 4:40 pm....!) "With a monk by his side—chaperones are often required when looking at manuscripts at Greek Orthodox libraries—each morning except Sunday Smith would ascend a series of s...

Peter Kirby wrote above, Mon Apr 15, 2024 4:33 pm, in part:
"And Smith had access to the library, right."

Secret Alias replied, Mon Apr 15, 2024 4:35 pm:
"Not directly. They brought the books out to him."

I, StephenGoranson, ask:
Isn't that false?

To say "the discovery didn't surprise the monks"
is bogus
A) because you don't know that, and
B) because you don't show that they (all?!) even knew of the "discovery," which Smith didn't inform them of, and
C) which wasn't a "discovery" but a plant.

If Seraphim was somewhere at Mar Saba in 1958, that does not solve the question.
Again, nobody claimed to know the Letter before 1958.

The lists of books do not include the Voss book.

As I have repeatedly written, the front cover, the front page, and the spine binding had all gone missing, erasing potential marks of previous, non Mar Saba ownership.

On the analogy of no D-Day until D-Day,
no "Letter" before "Letter."