Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Secret Alias
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

Post by Secret Alias »

"Not exactly. " You make it like I have to prove the document is authentic because your friends with the creative writing assignments have "raised doubts" about authenticity. These creative writing assignments don't establish anything approaching "reasonable doubt." Like Carlson's "forgers tremor" they are just things that scholars did and said to get other scholars justification to denying the document. There is no evidence of forgery so I don't have to anything. If you want to believe there were books in the Mar Saba library or whatever the surviving list counts then it's not even worth having a discussion.
Last edited by Secret Alias on Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Secret Alias
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

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The abbot of Saint Catherine's monastery in Sinai, for one, commissioned manuscripts from the skilled scribes of Mar Saba.3 The library at Mar Saba continued to expand in the eleventh and twelfth centuries until it became the most significant monastic library of the Judean desert.
The monastery's library , now kept in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchal Palace in Jerusalem , is almost unrivalled amongst medieval collections in the esoteric breadth of its interests and the number of languages represented ; it is also evidence medieval collections in the esoteric breadth of its interests and the number of languages represented https://books.google.com/books?id=q7lqn ... ed&f=false
Do you really think - I mean really think - that this library is summed up in its entirety on this 1923 list?

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp- ... ooks-2.pdf

There are twelve books on the first page.
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rakovsky
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

Post by rakovsky »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jun 11, 2021 6:01 am Arguments in favor of authenticity:

1. No substantiated evidence of fraud, deception, immoral conduct associated with Morton Smith
2. The document was available for analysis but never examined until 1983
3. It was examined for an extended period of time by one of its harshest critics with no resultant evidence of forgery emerging
4. It has been kept from public examination since 1983 by the Greek Orthodox authorities presumably owing to its interest by scholars and its association with heresy (so Father Aristarchos)
5. The last scholar to see the document is among the Greek Orthodox authorities Theodosios Hasapakis. The second last is Quentin Quesnell. Two scholars who presumably wanted to prove the document is a forgery. Both men held the document and never wrote a word about the document's impropriety after coming into contact with it.

I'd say there are good circumstantial grounds there alone for assuming at the outset the document was found in the blank pages of an old book in the Mar Saba library exactly as recounted by the Columbia University scholar Morton Smith. None of the nonsense written by all the papers since 1983 pushes back against this circumstantial nod to authenticity.
For #1, you are trying to make a character argument that his character was moral enough that he wouldn't make a forgery. But Smith's attitude on New Age Gospel forgeries as he told R. Price was to imply that they are authentic if they encapsulate someone's faith, which IMHO is a pro-fraud way of looking at documents.

#2 is not a proof one way or the other.

I would agree that #3-5 leans in favor of authenticity, because it implies that since the owners aren't giving it over for ongoing inspection or providing scientific analysis, what they found to disprove its authenticity is equivocal at best.... which of course doesn't prove much either way, since a skilled forger could find ways to mask his/her fraud, like using the same kind of ink and paper from a specific time period in the past.
StephenGoranson
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

Post by StephenGoranson »

S., or may I call you the other S., you wrote:
“….You make it like I have to prove the document is authentic….”
I don’t think you are required to prove it authentic. I do wish you would consider that thinking the Letter to be modern need not necessarily be the result of bad faith. Senior scholars sometimes do strange things. E.g., allegedly, Dirk Obbink.
I’ve looked without success for a (UK) PhD or (MA or DPhil) by Th. Hasapakis—or uni affiliation. Of course they are not all listed online. Might be interesting to know what he wrote, if it included history.
Let’s say for conversation’s sake that there are at least three options for date: a) sometime before Eusebius, b) sometime from Eusebius to the Voss book usage, c) 1950s.
IIUC, G. Smith and B. Landau argue against (a) and (c).
I don’t know what their (b) argument will be.
But, say, hypothetically, if someone said the (pseudepigraphic) Letter dated to a time after Diocletian and after Augustine and Donatus followers disputed about those Christians who turned in Bibles and renounced faith (slightly analogous to Sabbatai Zevi embracing Islam?). When, if ever, is it allowed to lie? Would someone then turn to pseudo-Clement for support? IMO this—hypothetical (and not attributing it to G.Smith/B. Landau)—case would be hard to make persuasively.
But let’s see what case they actually make.
PS. “Three unrecognized Demotic texts” (1990) putatively by “Batson D. Sealing” is a fake, but it may be interesting to know which (US?) 20th-century scholar composed it, apparently it to fool a UK Egyptology editor.
Secret Alias
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

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It used to be online. It was a prominent Patristics program that was recently shut down. I went through my emails (where I store much of my information) and I am pretty sure it was Durham. This is because another Greek was his friend and I think had a hand in bringing him to Durham. Here are the notes from Tue, May 26, 2015, 2:01 PM:
Here are my notes from my conversation today with George Dragas Professor of Patristics formerly of Durham University:

Kallistos (Dourvas) - not an easy person to get along with but an honest man

the reason why the books were all move to the Patriarchate was to prevent monks from selling them ('losing' them as he put it)

the day Q(uesnell) came to ask for the document Dragas was there.

He was standing with Kallistos when an American with a white beard came up and demanded to see the document that Morton Smith claimed to have discovered.

a text was shown to Dragas (Kallistos was his friend)

Kallistos said that there was a rude American who said he just came from the Patriarch and that he (Kallistos) should just give it to him

'I've just come from the Patriarch' sent to librarian

This man (Q) interrupted conversations not patient (this dovetails with the advice Q got from the Catholic representative to just barge in and force his way to see the text qv)

Kallistos didn't take shit from anyone

'You think I am a ===

annoyed with the American

Kallistos complained in Greek about all the people who came to look for the document

"You think we are here to just serve you"

Kallistos knew all about Smith's book and the document

He told Q he had to go back out the door and come back and apologize and start over again

Q mentioned the homosexual business and that it would threaten Christianity; Kallistos said that was nonsense.

Kallistos was a great man; he was so dedicated to the truth. He wouldn't allow for the destruction of the text because it was holy

he is so good that he wouldn't oblige the Patriarch if he thought the request was wrong

Dragas isn't sure what year this occurred in. He thought 1986 but then remembered he had been there many times in that period

His students were the Patriarch Theophilus and the second in command Theophanes (the Archbishop of Gerash)

They were in Jerusalem before 1981 and the Patriarch said George I think you should take care of our brothers ...

One time they interrupted their studies because the Patriarch at the time wanted them to come home

Dragas went to Jerusalem so that they would be allowed to submit their theses

Theophilus said he was not interested in a degree - he was a monk.

Dragas succeeded in convincing the Patriarch to allow them to continue.

They were working to complete their doctorate but they couldn't because of other obligations

It is impossible that the document was destroyed. Must be a religious reason

They kept it.

He will try and contact Kallistos out of the Orthodox Directory and ask him questions

Also he recommended that I write to Theophanes who is a good man. Tell him your sincere wish - that you talked to me (Dragas) - and maybe they will allow tests to be done.

He would try to convince them too as we all have an interest in the truth.
I can send you the email from 2015. It wasn't included in the paper because quite frankly I had assembled TOO MUCH information over the years. Gullotta deemed it unnecessary. Dragas's defense of Dourvas was because I had initiated the discussion with rumors that I heard through my friend Harry Tzalas (via Tselikas) that Dourvas was a questionable character. In part, because I was told that the Greek Church is like a government bureaucracy and that his appointment to Sappes (in the furthest reaches of Greece near the Slavic border tending to a flock of immigrants from Pontus) was intimated to be a banishment. Dourvas died in Sappes and Dragas defends his friend to the end. In other words, there is a conversation within a conversation here. Dragas revealed so much in hindsight because he was defending his friend against the accusation he had something to do with the disappearance of the document. The next time I called he wasn't as interested in clarifying things.
Secret Alias
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

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A further email from May 27 at 2:04 pm. Doesn't clarify much but mentions his willingness to follow up on some of the details:
I thought it was pretty cool. If anyone can solve this it's this guy. He has to read the article [i.e. the one I completed with Gullotta which I sent to him] but I will call him back next week. He told me to his students (the #1 and #2 in Jerusalem) and mention his name and they might help. He will call Dourvas too, Meliton again and go to Jerusalem this summer.
Secret Alias
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

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Here is the Archbishop's CV https://orthodoxia.ch/fr/name/658/show it mentions Durham. Just had to add the first "C" to find it. On Durham being (or used to being) a popular place for Greek Orthodox officials to study https://www.oki-regensburg.de/ortho_xml.pdf where the Archbishop is one of 7 officials to list Durham on their CV. I happened to have saved Harry's summary of the interview that he and Tselikas did with Meliton on this site. Here it is (note 'Memos' is the diminutive of Agamemnon in Greek thus expressing Harry's friendship and familiarity with the scholar:
Let me cite verbatim 'the report' that Memos provided for me translated into English by our mutual friend Harry dated 5/22/15 in my gmail account:
Memos finally reached Meliton Mitropolites Marathon over the telephone while I was at the Centre of Paleography intending to arrange a meeting. I must stress that Meliton has now only a honorific Metropolis and in fact has no office or church of his responsibility. He goes from time to time to the Metropolis church of Akademias Platonos in central Athens. So he was speaking from his home.
Meliton was very kind to Memos, he knew of him and was in a way embarrassed as to where we could all meet. At that point he asked Memos if the reason of the meeting was related to “the lost pages of the Ossiou Sabba” manuscript!!!. So obviously the Bishop is aware of the research Memos has done some years ago in the Jerusalem Patriarchal Library. Memo said yes and also mentioned my interest in finding out about the faith of the lost manuscript.

Very kindly Meliton said “ …of course I will be pleased to meet you both but let me state right away that I have left Jerusalem since 1986 and I have no idea of what happened to the lost pages”. He added: “When I was at the Jerusalem Patriarchate a few years before leaving for Greece, I was asked to accompany some Jewish scholars who were interested in that particular book that contained the manuscript pages. So as instructed I went to Ossios Sabba took the book –checked that the manuscript pages were in it—and returned to the Patriarchal Library in Jerusalem and delivered the book to the Kallistos [Dourvas], the responsible person for the Library. Theophanis, the Head-Secretary (Archigramateas) was also interested in the book, he is now Bishop of Jerash. I know that when I left Jerusalem the pages were no more in the book, but I have no idea of where they may be or who has separated them from the book. Kallistos is now somewhere in Northern Greece. That is all what I know and when and if we meet I will have nothing more to add”.

I was listening at the conversation on a “conference line” and my impression is that Meliton was saying what he knew, there was no hesitation in his voice it was the voice of a person who knew well a story that had been repeated again and again.
The business about Theophanis likely having the book was from follow up discussions with Harry and Harry with Tselikas. It was a 'hunch' on the part of the two Greeks based on the situation.

The evidence clearly suggests that:

1. the original position of the Jerusalem Patriarchate was that the document was authentic.
2. the position only changed as it became aware of the implications of the text (and I would argue the 'culture war' going on in the West (i.e. gay rights and the overturning of traditional values).

That's the same for everyone. No one thinks the document is fake taking into account the text itself. I've sent the scans (without backstory or identification) to dozens of authorities on Byzantine manuscripts. No one has ever said 'it's a fake' by the handwriting alone. They say 'it looks like a 17th or 18th century handwriting. Like 100 or 100 for a hundred, no exceptions. It's the whole 'gay gospel' interpretation that does it and did it apparently for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
StephenGoranson
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

Post by StephenGoranson »

Thank you for all that information.
Secret Alias
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

Post by Secret Alias »

It's weird the way synchronicity seems to pop up now and then. I just got an email this morning about a name I had forget about. Morton Smith's Jewish girlfriend's daughter apparently just passed away of cancer. An ex-boyfriend of her daughter who works at NASA just sent me a relatively long email. I wonder if he is reading this thread. I don't want to publish the email without his permission. But he acknowledges their clandestine relationship and details about her time at Barnard and Smith's at Columbia. In case people aren't familiar with the story I once wrote an unpublished thing I again found in my Gmail account. I haven't read it but it sums up all I knew about their relationship. I had never spoken to the NASA guy before. But he confirms what I knew - they were dating around the time of the Mar Saba discovery.
Many of the student's in the library started to chuckle at the befuddled Dr Smith. Yet Ethne grew upset with the chorus of laughter and told her friends to stop making fun of their absent minded professor. Some of her friends wondered why it was that she was so protective of him; little did they know that Ethne and Professor Smith had a little secret. It all started about a month earlier during Barnard College’s traditional Open House. “The school had long tradition of encouraging mothers to meet with the staff and even attend classes with their young girls,” Ethne remembers.

Her father had just passed away in April and her mother was just getting over the loss. “I introduced my beautiful mother Miriam who looked every bit the spitting image of Lana Turner. “You have to understand this was the 1950s,” she adds. “Young ladies were going off to university and the institution extended an opportunity to their parents to sit in with them at their classes. Barnard had a special relationship with Columbia which meant that I was taking a 9:00 am with a new professor of ancient history named Morton Smith at Columbia. Mother and I shared an interest in ancient history, so we went together to my class.”

After class Ethne and Miriam approached Morton Smith. "I said, 'this is my mother' and he acted like any man who laid eyes on her. His eyebrows raised a little and he took a quick double take before clearing his throat," remembers Ethne. We started talking about the course load for the year and the usual small talk. Yet Professor Smtih seemed especially chatty. He seemed like any other man interested in my mother.”

“My mother had a British background so she was very good at appearing unmoved and disinterested. As mother and I walked away from our lengthy chat I remember telling her something to the effect, 'I think Dr. Smith would like to see you again.' I talked her into coming into class the next week. She needed the distraction."

"They started talking and after a long while she told him that they would meet again without me. I think she said something like "We'll meet beside the statue of Athena at Lowe library and that's exactly where he met her a day or two later," recalls Ethne. "I don't know why I was playing Cupid. I thought I was doing my mother some good. She needed to get out."

Ethne also recalls how Smith and her mother had to go to great lengths to keep their relationship secret. "They saw each other whenever Smith's schedule allowed him to get away. My mother never told me about her private affairs. She never married again after the death of my father. No matter how old I got she never told me anything about what went on with her boyfriends. She was very British that way."

"She and Smith continued to date all the way to the time Smith left for his summer trip. He spoke about it a lot but never mentioned anything about going to the Mar Saba monastery. He was going to Jerusalem to meet friends. I knew that. My mother knew he was brilliant. She found him funny and charming and loved to be in his company."

"Of course I kept their relationship secret. We could all have gotten in a lot of trouble potentially - especially Smith. I remember we all went to dinner after he came back from Mar Saba. He was very excited about his discovery. He went on forever about how he came across this letter of the Church Father Clement. Yet at the same time he couldn't stop complaining about the monastery. He was very sick. He never got any sleep. The monks were singing all the time. It drove him crazy. He swore he would never go back."

"He talked about how bad the food was and we all kept eating. It was quite funny in a way. Mentioning soup with the octopus at the monastery and then we were in New York having a wonderful meal at a wonderful restaurant with great service."

"The bad news for my mother was that once Smith came back with this big discovery that became the focus of his whole life. He was consulting with this professor and that. My mother and he just drifted apart. Maybe it was too soon after my father died. I don't know. I think there was some real compatibility between her and Smith. My father wasn't Jewish. He was Episcopalian so marriage wouldn't have been an issue. If he hadn't have found the manuscript, who knows."

All of this would have remained a private anecdote if it weren’t for a chance reading over a generation later. "I remember picking this book,” again clutching her copy of Bart Ehrman’s book. “When I read what he insinuated about Smith. I hit the ceiling. Morton Smith was one of the most honest, sincere, straight forward man I had ever met. Then I started reading more about the wild accusations that were being thrown around by his associates. Smith was gay? I thought to myself, why are they doing this now after he was dead? If my mother was alive she would have vouched for him too. There was a real attraction."

For Ethne Chesterman the attacks against her mother’s former boyfriend were personal. She said that anyone who met them couldn’t help but notice the attraction between the two. “The whole thing didn’t make sense to me,” she noted. “Why would someone in his position risk everything to be with my mother?” Ethne pauses for a moment and flips through the pages of Lost Christianities before landing on a certain page and quickly glancing over a few words.

“What kind of crazy conspiracy theorist would imply that Smith was gay then?” Ethne shrugs her shoulders in disbelief. “What would they say about my mother? He used her to cover up his homosexual tendencies? But they weren’t supposed to be together. Having a relationship with my mother would get him into more trouble than having being gay at that time.”

It must be noted that Ehrman never so much as directly accuses Smith of forging his discovery. He never explicitly makes reference to the Columbia professor’s sexuality. Ehrman merely weaves together a gripping discussion of so many unusual elements not usually employed in a critical study of ancient text. The reader is left to connect the dots.
Last edited by Secret Alias on Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
Secret Alias
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Re: Having It Both Ways With Secret Mark

Post by Secret Alias »

Here is the announcement of the passing of Morton Smith's girlfriend's daughter c. 1957 https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituar ... n-10202733
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