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

[Secret Alias]

But then there's no evidence that the book wasn't there.

[Secret Alias]

Morton Smith catalogued 489 books. Even 489 books. I have more than 500 books in my library. I have an idea what's in my library or what was in my library. And I have work, children, wives, TV, Youtube, Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram and countless other distractions. I would surely be surprised by a book I never had. But these dunces bringing books back and forth to Morton Smith hear him shouting "Eureka" or whatever. And they can't figure out they didn't bring him this book. Especially a book without a cover. That's distinctive. You know what Heidegger says about the hammer. We're always aware of the broken hammer.

[Secret Alias]

I think Kallistos also told Quesnell the book was in the library. Can't prove it. But maybe I will share with you the evidence next time.

[Peter Kirby]

But then there's no evidence that the book wasn't there.

The list isn't good evidence of that because there were approximately 5x as many books there, as you are saying.

[Peter Kirby]

I have an idea what's in my library or what was in my library.

Seems a bit different. One acquires their own personal library, so every possession has a personal connection.

It would take a strange mind to make the claim that they knew every book that was there or not, without making a catalog first.

[Peter Kirby]

The comment you screenshot was: "Feels sure it is 18th c. old."

Which means the handwriting was found convincingly old.

[Secret Alias]

Sorry referenced this on Jacob Berman's podcast. About the library. They knew the books in their library. Did they know all of them? But if Morton Smith referenced or drew attention to a book without a cover that they had never seen before would they have fought to keep that coverless book? I don't know. They could read the handwriting like we drink water. They would have know which books had inscriptions. It would have been maybe 10 or less books with extensive handwriting. Hard to believe that could have been planted.

[Secret Alias]

The question is whether they would have remembered a coverless Latin book with 18th century Greek handwriting in the blank back pages. Or better yet could Seraphim have accepted that such a distinctive text which was never there before suddenly appeared there almost 20 years after he arrived at Mar Saba and not noticed.

[Secret Alias]

I was wrong about Seraphim's time at Mar Saba.

On April 21, 1932, he was received as a novice-monk. After his first all-night vigil, he returned to his cell to rest; however his Elder Panteleimon (Tsampiras) followed him and suggested that he ought to be praying not sleeping. In the following years, Stamatios was formed by obedience to God and by spiritual vigilance with unceasing prayer. His exposure to the asceticism of the Sabbaite fathers, together with the austerity of the monastic life and the harshness of life in the Judaean Desert, seasoned his character and confirmed his will to remain a monk.

So he had been there twenty seven years before Morton Smith. Also the year before he came he ran the place:

In 1957 after the death of his spiritual father Igumen Sabbas, Serapheim assumed the spiritual and administrative reins of the monastery, by the decision of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Total years at Mar Saba when he died in 2002.

He was buried in the Lavra of Saint Savvas the Sanctified, which he had served for more than 70 years.

What did he have to administer at Mar Saba beside books.

[Secret Alias]

Smith and Landau add something to the story:

Flusser remembers that they did encounter one bump in the road. When the team of scholars attempted to leave with the book, “Abbot Seraphim,” an old friend of Smith who presided over Mar Saba, “raised hell,” demanding that “they would have to request it, and he would send it.”5 But the abbot’s request stemmed less from a desire to prevent the team from taking the book than from a concern for due process—because in the end, Flusser recalls, they requested the book and he allowed them to take it.6 Stroumsa and the others did discuss the possibility of subjecting the manuscript to scientific analysis—the kinds of tests that can help determine the age of a manuscript (that is, the age of the writing surface and its ink)—but Father Meliton did not want the manuscript to leave the Patriarchal Library and enter into the custody of the Israeli police. Soon after the manuscript arrived in Jerusalem, sometime in 1976, Kallistos Dourvas, librarian at the Patriarchal Library from 1975 to 1990, received the new volume and added it to the collection of manuscripts from Mar Saba. A receipt from the transfer, signed by Dourvas among others, has recently surfaced.7 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.” It remains unclear whether “authenticity” means that they regarded it as a genuine letter of Clement or that they did not believe it to be a modern forgery. (p. 132) https://books.google.com/books?id=G06qE ... 22&f=false

I think that show you why you should read the published literature before you start writing. In the end, I have proved the document was regarded as authentic by the monks. Told yah.