Greek Monks Who Thought the Letter to Theodore was in the Mar Saba Monastery Before Morton Smith Arrives

[Peter Kirby]

He does not think it is from S. Clement. He remembers someone noting in some [monastic] publication that ...

Can anything more on this point be found?

A receipt from the transfer, signed by Dourvas among others, has recently surfaced. The paleographer Agamemnon Tselikas discovered it in the archives of the Patriarchal Library in Jerusalem. The document describes the letter of Clement as “unpublished and without any doubts about its authenticity.”

IMO, this is consistent with some kind of pre-1976 monastic publication being out there, possibly unread by most Secret Mark experts.

I am merely giving my opinion, Peter, that, given the huge publicity about this, that some reader would have found it, were it extant.
That is apparently different than your opinion.
OK, two opinions, then.
I am not accusing you of dishonesty, and I hope the same applies to me.

Thanks. I appreciate this comment. And, yes, likewise.

The vague claim that someone somewhere published before 1976 a mention of such a document I consider quite doubtful, especially in our times, with the internet, with the easy scanning of periodicals and books, and the fact that no person has announced finding any such a mention in these last 48 or so years.

Can we drop it? I'm also doubtful. I expressed my questions and ideas - which implicitly involve doubt - in public.

So what?

[StephenGoranson]

OK, though elsewhere you have said you prefer to avoid hypotheticals.
That there is a yet-unknown such reference is a hypothetical.
To be fair.

[Peter Kirby]

OK, though elsewhere you have said you prefer to avoid hypotheticals.
That there is a yet-unknown such reference is a hypothetical.
To be fair.

Perhaps you misunderstand me.

I have not offered this 'hypothetical' as something directly relevant to the debate, as-is.

I have indicated it as a possible area for more study.

[Secret Alias]

StephenGoranson = the Elder Cato.

[RandyHelzerman]

It remains fact that putative "Secret Mark" surprised.

If you'd rather equivocate than engage, I'm afraid I'm not going to find anything you say very persuasive.

[Peter Kirby]

I am not persuaded that nobody has been surprised by this book.

*chuckle* come on man. Nobody was surprised by this book qua an uncatalogued book. If it would be so surprising to find uncatalogued books at Mar Saba---why did Morton Smith even want to go there? Why would they even have given him permission to try, if it were presumed to be such a Quixotic quest?

Neither the librarian at Mar Saba, nor the librarian in Jerusalem expressed any surprise that an uncatalogued and heretofore unknown book might be found. AFAICT it wasn't until 1975 that the possibility was even mooted. Why was nobody surprised for almost 2 decades?

And Morton Smith himself found an (of all things uncatalogued!) catalog of the library from 1910, and noted that it didn't refer to the book. If Smith himself planted that book, why would he tell us about a catalog which didn't contain it? Because that's just what he would do if he didn't want us to think he forged it???

If he were such a master forger, why didn't he doctor the catalog to contain a very suggestive reference to the book and the letter? Surely, early 20th century handwriting would be quite a bit easier to fake. No doubt there were yet monks still at Mar Saba who learned to write around the turn of the century--there would be no problems getting exemplars--perhaps even accomplices!!!

I have tried to point out that history of writing is more in a paleographer's domain than in that of a modern era court witness.

Let's say, for sake of argument, that is true. In that case, it should be easy to find an example of some aspect of the handwriting which both Tselikas and the others commented on, and it should be clear that Tselikas argument is superior. Since I don't have access to any of those books, perhaps you could produce one for us?

It remains fact that putative "Secret Mark" surprised.

If you'd rather equivocate than engage, I'm afraid I'm not going to find anything you say very persuasive.

Randy, I appreciate you. I also need to point out a couple things.

SG has been importing some of the discussion that he's been having in other threads ("the best paleographer" etc) into that thread in Academic Discussion. To really understand all the aspects of how SG expresses himself, you might need to have some familiarity with these threads here, e.g.:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11996

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12011

I'm not defending SG in this respect, just pointing out that you might be missing some context.

The other thing: Academic Discussion has higher expectations. I'm afraid that you might be going along the path of forgetting that, so I've moved your post here to give a reminder. A fuller description of the expectations is here

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11453

Please be respectful on the Academic Discussion forum. Thank you.

Please report any posts that you believe are not written respectfully in that forum.

[RandyHelzerman]

Thanks for the correction. It stings, of course, but hey, I surely lack context in all manner of things. And the fact that you took the time is very much appreciated.

[andrewcriddle]

According to Smith and Landau. Morton Smith said that he realized at Mar Saba that he had discovered a previously unknown letter of Clement against the Carpocratians. He took careful photographs which he only properly studied after leaving Palestine and arriving at Athens. This account makes it unlikely that he informed the monks at Mar Saba of his discovery of an alternative version of Mark.

Morton Smith's account apparently has him only becoming aware of the references in the letter to 'Secret Mark' after he had left Palestine.

Andrew Criddle

I've got hold of a copy of Morton Smith's Secret Gospel. Smith and Landau have slightly misread. Morton Smith says that he deciphered the text after leaving Mar Saba and after speaking to Scholem but well before arriving at Athens. Athens was where he first had time to think through the implications.

Andrew Criddle

[andrewcriddle]

There is, so far, no evidence that Smith mentioned "Secret Mark" to any monk in 1958 or 1959.

Morton Smith says on p.18 of Secret Gospel that the idea of him suppressing this controversial discovery was ruled out because he had already spoken to Scholem. This may imply that he had only spoken to Scholem. If he had spoken to others you might expect him to say something like, I'd already told Seraphim and Scholem.

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

This is the strangest debate ever on the subject of to Theodore.

I have a meeting with my son's teacher.

Why do I have to know my son's grades to tell someone "I've got an appointment with my son's teacher."

I don't understand your obsession with Morton Smith knowing all the contents of the manuscript to have "high fived" one of the monks.

Why can't reading the first line be enough or a general gist of the contents have been enough to spark a conversation. It's just a hypothetical. We were just imagining how the monastery knew the document was authentic. Why don't you guys admit this fact was unknown before Smith and Landau or my citation of Smith and Landau?

In fact I'd go one step further. Everything about this discovery is a version of the Tree Falling in the Forest does anyone hear problem. What is reality? Is it likely that the Letter to Theodore was the only letter that Clement wrote. No. So there is that dimension to consider. Hundreds thousands of letters actually written disappeared.

The copying of the original letter unmemorialized and forgotten. The copying of the copying of the autograph. All forgotten. All the people who read the letters. Dozens perhaps. Maybe thousands all gone.

The people in all the places who might have read the letter. All references to these people and these experiences. Disappeared. All the people in the monastery who might have opened up the book or read the manuscript. All forgotten.

Then Morton Smith finding the manuscript. Did he memorialize ANY of the conversations he had with Kyriakos his landlord? I ask this because I am working on a screenplay. No they were not remembered. He speaks of his "old friend Seraphim." None of those encounters were written down. How good was Morton Smith's Greek? Not good if he needed a translator in 1952. So what about any of these conversations which didn't take place in English were worthy of inclusion in an academic paper or publication.

Quesnell went to Jerusalem in 1983. Had a whole series of encounters with officials and scholars about Secret Mark. He never published any of them. Were any of these decisions "logical"? Would anyone before they were discovered by me, have believed that a scholar who took an interest in the Mar Saba document would have lived almost thirty years and not published his photos his experience what he had learned all because the facts didn't fit the narrative he wanted them to be (i.e. he couldn't carry out a confirmation bias)?

When we knew Hedrick received the photos from Olympiou and Olympiou from Kallistos Dourvas. "We called them the Hedrick photos." A few people referred to them as the photos Hedrick received from Olympiou. No one called them the Kallistos Dourvas photos even though they plainly were. Why did we do that? Why do we do that? Because human beings have biases. We're constant and unconsciously editing the reality we experience in terms of "what is important" and "what is superfluous." Conversations scholars had with anyone who wasn't "part of the elite" were unworthy of memorialization.

In the old days there was a thing called "love" which was distinguished from "sex." We only memorialized "love songs." No one sang about the feeling that governed 99% of people's lives. There were no "boy I want to fuck her" "she's got a nice ass" songs on the charts. The baser instincts were deemed "unworthy" of remembrance. Then in the 1990s there were only "I want to fuck her" "she's got a nice ass" songs on the chart and no one memorialized "I love her" songs. Recorded reality is not a snapshot of reality.

As it turns out we didn't know about Quesnell's conversation. There is a tendency to treat non-white people, non-WASPs as non participants. I don't think it would be at all strange if Morton Smith who was to the right of Hitler to have considered any of the conversations he had with non-academics unworthy of consideration, unworthy of memorialization. They were just discountable encounters with nobodies. We all do it. Quesnell did it. We all do it.

It's like the age old question, when you count all the cities you've visited do you include stopovers on flights. What conversations matter? Another example. In the bibliography of recorded things said about Secret Mark, do any of the conversations that go on and have gone on about Secret Mark in this forum and its previously incarnation "count"? No they don't even though they are much more interesting and enlightening. Do the blog posts? No. There is a tendency among snobbish academics to limit memorialization of discussions to consideration of "worthiness." I know Morton Smith discussed his discovery with his girlfriend and her daughter immediately after he landed in New York. This whole discussion epitomizes the bizarre "parallel universe" you guys have created to make Morton Smith look guilty. If you stare long enough under a microscope you start seeing things. You guys make those illusions your reality.