Why I Think Morton Smith is Innocent

[Secret Alias]

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document? ... 4992f4d3a1

Nobody shits into a chocolate cake and then sits at the table eating a slice. How could he participate in the ruin of the study of religion when he was SO involved in its improvement. He cared about more topics related to ancient religion than anyone. No family. No ties. Just research.

[JarekS]

Nobody shits into a chocolate cake.... unless he wanted to become another anonymous evangelist after eighteen centuries. Such a temptation may be stronger than tedious study of the text to create yet another biblical interpretation or reconstruction without evidence.

[Secret Alias]

Read the list of things he was working on a decade before his death. Why bother if he's not interested in the truth? If he made up a fake gospel why keep investigating? Morton Smith' cared. He's not arguing on behalf of dogma. He's testing. Investigating. Probing. If you could just "fake" the answer why investigation after investigations? He put shit in the cake. The whole cake is ruined? You think Charlie Sheen is ejnoying sex now that he has HIV? Put shit in the cake, no one wants the cake. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Entertainmen ... d=44641951

[maryhelena]

Read the list of things he was working on a decade before his death. Why bother if he's not interested in the truth? If he made up a fake gospel why keep investigating? Morton Smith' cared. He's not arguing on behalf of dogma. He's testing. Investigating. Probing. If you could just "fake" the answer why investigation after investigations? He put shit in the cake. The whole cake is ruined? You think Charlie Sheen is ejnoying sex now that he has HIV? Put shit in the cake, no one wants the cake. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Entertainmen ... d=44641951

I'm afraid Google came up with no recipe for putting shit in a chocolate cake - or any other cake. However, I did find a way to make a Filthy, dirty chocolate cake.

https://clothmonkey.wordpress.com/2012/ ... ate-cakes/




A shit-less cake would be far easier on the stomach - I'm sure posters here would suggest that is the way to go....

[Secret Alias]

Unfortunately some people think he corrupted the study of religion.

[RandyHelzerman]

I tend to believe that Morton Smith is right....because the librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem took the extraordinary steps of cutting Clement's letter out of the codex....and "losing" it.

If it were obviously fake that would be the dumbest thing possible to do. Much better to let scholars disprove it, and we would have forgotten all about it decades ago.

He must have thought there was a *very* good chance it was genuine--and if somebody with the title "librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem" thinks it probably is genuine, well, his opinion is not entirely devoid of credibility.

[andrewcriddle]

I tend to believe that Morton Smith is right....because the librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem took the extraordinary steps of cutting Clement's letter out of the codex....and "losing" it.

If it were obviously fake that would be the dumbest thing possible to do. Much better to let scholars disprove it, and we would have forgotten all about it decades ago.

He must have thought there was a *very* good chance it was genuine--and if somebody with the title "librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem" thinks it probably is genuine, well, his opinion is not entirely devoid of credibility.

Assuming FTSOA that the librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem thought the letter was probably genuine it is not obvious why his opinion should be more valued than the opinion of any other learned scholar. (Unless his opinion is based on private information about say the history of the Voss book which is IMO unlikely.)

Andrew Criddle

[Joseph D. L.]

I can accept that the Letter to Theodore is spurious (though I don't think it is, I can accept it is possible), but I cannot accept that Smith forged it and have not been convinced by any of the arguments put forward thus far as they rely on circumstantial evidence (comparing its discovery to the plot of a similarly named novel), and even borderline homophobia. But this strikes at something I've been thinking about for a while, and that is the subject of scholastic integrity and religious expression. For the consensus, or a good portion of them, the Gospels are forgeries in that they were not written by the people they are surnamed after; and for the consensus half of Paul's letters are out and out forgeries. But does any of this matter? To laymen Christians it doesn't as they accept the word as it has been given to them; and you can argue that scholars should hold to a higher standard, but do they have to? How do you enforce such a standard on everyone if everyone is subject to their own broad interpretation of the evidence?

Let me put it another way: why did we stop writing Gospels? Because the canon was set? Sure, but that doesn't stop man's creative impulse for religious expression, genuine or otherwise. And you can see this, not with written scripture but in how people interpret those scriptures. Ask ten people a question about a particular Bible verse and you may receive very different opinions. And religious books are still written today, and I mean actual Holy script, like the Book of Mormon. An actual con job by an actual conman is revered as sacred by millions of men and women. And even something Dianetics, written by an actual criminal and used by an organization that is little more than a mob outfit, and yet hundreds of thousands believe it to be the truth.

I think this stems from a positivist view of our place in history, one very much adopted by the church. We have the truth, and everything that is not it is not the truth. But what even is the truth? as Pilate asked. We don't live outside of history, and in a few thousand years when we're closer to the time of Jesus than future humans will be to us, all of this will appear as the same. It was all written by man, it was all forgeries.

[RandyHelzerman]

Assuming FTSOA that the librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem thought the letter was probably genuine it is not obvious why his opinion should be more valued than the opinion of any other learned scholar.

Well, unlike anybody but Morton Smith and a few others, he actually was able to see and inspect the autograph for himself. I think that would make his actions speak a bit louder than the words of those who haven't seen it, don't you agree?

He knows what ink looks like after it has aged for a few centuries. I'd guess that even you or I could tell the difference between something written a decade ago and something written centuries ago, if we had recourse to the autograph and a magnifying glass. But for all we know, he might actually *have* had some specialized experts look at it.

In any case, if it were *obviously* a forgery, I don't think he'd risk disturbing the integrity of the codex or bother hiding it. Just let scholars examine it and burn the reputation and career of Morton Smith, as a warning to future would-be forgers.

EDIT: Good o'l wikipedia. Dramatis Personae: in the quote below, "Quesnell " is " Quentin Quesnell. "Dourvas" is Father Kallistos Dourvas, the librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem:

A couple of years after Quesnell's death in 2012, scholars were given access to the notes from his trip to Jerusalem. They show that Quesnell at first was confident that he would be able to establish that the document was a forgery. However, when he found something he thought was suspicious, Dourvas (who was confident that it was authentic 18th-century handwriting) would present other 18th-century handwriting with similar characteristics. Quesnell admitted that since "they're not all forgeries" it would not be as easy to prove that the text is a forgery as he had expected. Eventually, he gave up his attempts and wrote that experts had to be consulted.

So apparently, Father Dourvas has some expertise in 18th-century greek handwriting (more than Quesnell), and had concluded--at the very least--that the letter to Theodore was written in the 18th Century.

So...is there anybody who has actually *seen* the original who believes it is a forgery? Or at least a forgery by Smith?

P.S. I should mention our very own Andrew Criddle makes an appearance in the wiki article as well.