Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 1:10 pm
If you were a monk went to your monastery and claimed to find a copy of the Marquis de Sade's 120 days of Sodom and you had only 100 books in your library and you lived in the middle of the desert with nothing to do, I don't think you'd be fighting over keeping this copy of 120 days of Sodom.
1. there weren't 100 books in the library
2. the discovery didn't surprise the monks.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 11:43 am
More on what Kallistos told Quesnell:
"Says there were heretics and heretical schools often at M[ar] S[aba] and this fragment is part of a Hapousa? to one of their books. He does not think it is from S Clement. He remembers someone noting in some publication that some did report seeing this in the 16th 17th century."
From what you said, Kallistos wasn't surprised because there were "heretics" there.
But on the next point, how many monks were there bringing books back and forth to Morton Smith. When he says "hey I found something." If there were only 100 books in the library, surely if the same monk stuck around to 1976, he'd have some inkling of whether or not Morton Smith really found this book in their library. Surely there was a conversation the next day in 1958. "Hey that American got excited about this discovery." Or when he published the article in New Zion or when they read about it in the New York Times or when he sent the clippings to the Jerusalem Patriarchate. How didn't know once Smith brought attention to his discovery that the book never belonged in the library if, as you claim, there were only a 100 books in the library? Surely they can remember 100 books.
You see I like to brood over things and think about them this way that way. Over and over again. I don't know if you noticed. I always think there is more to things than the first way we arrange information in our heads. Surely the acceptance of Kallistos and Seraphim and the Jerusalem Patriarchate means something. It means a hell of a lot more than Western scholars and their theories. I know where all the holes in the wall are in my house. I know where the carpet is coming up or where repairs are needed. If there are a 100 books in the Mar Saba library they had to fucking know whether or not the book belonged in their library especially when the same asshole was there in 1958 and again in 1976.
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.
Why would Seraphim have cared so much about moving a book out of the library if he felt it didn't belong in the library in the first place and there were only 100 books? He must have thought the book belonged in the library in 1976, and shortly after the discovery in 1958.
1. Do we agree that Smith at least pretended to the monks that he discovered something?
2. We know Smith sent clippings to the Jerusalem Patriarchate and published in the New Zion magazine run by the Greek Orthodox Church.
The point is you're telling me no one at Mar Saba with 100 books in their library figured out this book was a plant.
If you accept that the list of books is limit of books in the library of Mar Saba at the time Morton Smith visited there are only 100 books on that list. So let's take this one step at a time.
The Journal is published by the Greek Orthodox Church. Smith must have sent the article for publication 1958 ish. Seraphim was so fucking stupid that with 100 books on the shelf he couldn't have figured out the book was planted. Really?
