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

[Secret Alias]

Smith mentioned an earlier fire for his scenario.

And? Who fucking cares what Smith postulated. Even by saying such a thing like this you are showing you can't get out of what Smith wrote or imagined versus what could have happened. I don't think Smith is in control of reality. He mistranslated the manuscript. He isn't all knowing. There are possibilities which haven't been investigated which don't involve Smith. Like Seraphim or someone like Seraphim being the author of the manuscript. Again I ask what sort of script would have been appropriate for the memorialization of the fragment in the blank pages of a printed book. My guess is that an "ecclesiastical script" would have been appropriate. It's like the way we use an archaic script to memorialize diplomas. Not sure an English speaker using old fashioned scripts would be distinguishable from a contemporary forger using the same archaic scripts.

[Secret Alias]

What if it turned out that Seraphim's handwriting resembled the Mar Saba author. Would that be enough to prove that Morton Smith was behind the forgery?

[Peter Kirby]

SA, for clarity, Smith's Greek text is a "transcription" and an error there would be transcribed incorrectly.

Which is a somewhat more relevant point than just saying mistranslated.

[Secret Alias]

Let's be honest Stephen. You have exhibited a consistent binary thought pattern which I don't think the evidence supports. For you it's Morton Smith or you don't want to hear it. That's a bad sign in a debate.

There are a lot of possibilities here once you know that the monastery and the Patriarchate accepted the authenticity of the document. Morton Smith could have had a confederate. Morton Smith could have innocently uncovered this supposedly anachronistic text (= Seraphim or someone like Seraphim could have preserved a lost fragment). Tselikas could be wrong about the anachronism. There's a rainbow of possibilities.

[Secret Alias]

SA, for clarity, Smith's Greek text is a "transcription" and an error there would be transcribed incorrectly.

Which is a somewhat more relevant point than just saying mistranslated.

Yes.

[Secret Alias]

But again. The Greek Orthodox Church on some level accepted the text and the book had always been in the monastery (or at least been there before Morton Smith's discovery) when they created that certificate of authenticity. They could be wrong. They could have mistakenly believed the book was there just as Tselikas could be wrong about the things he sees in the manuscript. Not sure these two things don't cancel each other out.

So we're left with an eighteenth century copy of a thing that reads exactly like a letter of Clement citing a Markan gospel.

[Secret Alias]

But again if Seraphim's handwriting matches the handwriting of the letter does that prove that it is a fake?

And let's suppose, if we are going into more speculation, that Tselikas knows that Seraphim's handwriting looks like the letter. Is he likely going to impugn the reputation of someone that is on the fast track for sainthood? Just saying there were like 100 people between 1700 and 1958 who were in that monastery that could have written that. And then there is the reality that the book was brought from outside Mar Saba into the monastery. Not sure you could ever pin Morton Smith as the only one who could have written the handwriting.

[StephenGoranson]

"For you it's Morton Smith or you don't want to hear it."
Absurd deflection again, given that, for example, I have, here, recently--do you read?--
called Smith "an unreliable narrator."

[Secret Alias]

Why can't it be Seraphim?

[Secret Alias]

Why does it have to be Morton Smith? Why do you always attempt to create a false binary choice?