Distinguishing some questions about the "Letter to Theodore"

[Secret Alias]

Another example. The most creative person isn't going to be the person you want doing your taxes.

There are times you'd like to know someone in the mafia.

You don't want to go on vacation with a miser.

Good parents should be attentive but not too attentive.

[JoeWallack]

JW:
Agamemnon Tselikas’ Handwriting Analysis Report:

• 1) It's obvious that English is not his first language (surprise) so that is not helping.
  
  2) He offers no paleographical evidence that the writing is "modern".
  
  3) His conclusion of "modern" is based solely on his conclusion that it was written after Morton Smith visited.
  
  4) He claims that a comparison to Morton Smith's writings is useless because if Smith was the forger he would have altered his handwriting. The implication is that he did analyze Morton Smith's writings and found no evidence that Smith was the author. Nothing else is needed to impeach his (AT) credibility.

Nota Ben - Stephen (G), you think I enjoy agreeing with Secret Agent Man?


Joseph Smith

INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

The New Porphyry

[Secret Alias]

No apparatus. For the translation yes. For forgery arguments no.

[Secret Alias]

Apparently he might like my movie script 2.0. My friend Harry loves it. Maybe he can help me develop some of the stories at Mar Saba and the Patriarchate with better source material like Seraphim's diary. We will see. In the process of translating the whole screenplay into Greek (Tselikas speaks fluent Italian as well). It would be funny as an Italian movie from the 1970s with Ugo Tognazzi as Morton Smith and Sophia Loren as his Jerusalem love interest. Sophia Loren "Cosa fai?" Ugo Tognazzi "Io sto cercando un manoscritto." Sophia Loren "E io? Non mi trovi più interessante di un vecchio libro?" - Ugo Tognazzi "Sì, certo, ma è più facile aprire un manoscritto che te, amore mio." Would change the whole movie if it starred Italians and was about Italians from the 1970s searching for a lost letter of Clement. Much better I think.

[StephenGoranson]

If I may:
I tried to be clear that Agamemnon Tselikas' Handwriting Analysis Report
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dai ... is-report/
included some observations that were within his area of expertise, for instance, those that led him to summarize that the ms handwriting "is an imitation of an older script." That is within his expertise.

Some other observations by A. T. are valid, even though they are not based on paleography: for example, that the "Letter to Theodore" is otherwise unknown as a composition by Clement of Alexandria, nor by any other ancient writer.

Here is an example of speculation outside of his areas of expertise: his supposition of certain photos taken by Morton Smith being the sources, the exemplars, of that imitation. Dr. Allan J. Pantuck (an undergraduate, though not a PhD, student of Smith; Pantuck is a distinguished MD) disputed which photos Smith took. Be that as it may, photos taken by other people were available (plus, of course, such items themselves). In other words, who was the photographer for available samples of such handwriting is not crucially important for deciding the origin of the ms.

[Secret Alias]

included some observations that were within his area of expertise, for instance, those that led him to summarize that the ms handwriting "is an imitation of an older script." That is within his expertise.

Does familiarity with manuscripts necessarily lead to precision with respect to identification of forgeries? Tselikas made a mistake with respect to the manuscripts Smith saw in those Greek monasteries. I ask that because you used to believe in Stephen Carlson's expertise until his theories were shot down. Maybe the problem is the fact that you just "believe" people without evidence. A part of your religious background that frequently haunts your decisions in this debate.

[Secret Alias]

I draw attention to Pantuck's paper about Tselikas's forgery proposition. Not only does Pantuck note that only six similarities between the manuscripts identified by Tselikas are identified in his "study." https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp- ... tuck-2.pdf Tselikas makes a wild presumption that Smith "must have photographed" these manuscripts when he didn't. Pantuck also asks why did Tselikas pick these manuscripts of all the manuscripts Smith could have seen. The answer he comes up with is that Tselikas happened to have already done a study on these manuscripts that had nothing to do with Secret Mark. When you start seeing these sorts of wild swings and misses surely a study that offers no apparatus for how the decision made can be deemed dubious and dismissed despite the author's expertise in another area.

[Secret Alias]

Edgar Hoover might have been a great FBI director but surely he had weaknesses in some of his decision making. There might well be something unusual about the manuscript and Tselikas is picking up on it. I still think it is imperative that any scholar walk us through his reasoning so we can see how he arrives at his decisions. We don't just "take someone's word" in other academic questions. Why this one?

As I said earlier, whether it is Carlson or Tselikas or anyone else you cite their opinion and then say "it's a fact." And then when people ask "well what's the rational basis for this fact" you say "I believe him over you" or something to that effect. The consistency through Carlson to Tselikas to anything else you're not really interested in debating the facts, you just move from person to person, argument to argument to arrive at the desired conclusion. That's plainly on display in this forum.

Your hatred for Morton Smith seems to be based on some encounter that you had with him while he was alive. I am sorry that he hurt you so deeply. No one should leave these sorts of scars in someone else's psyche. I mean that. He must not have been a nice person.

[Secret Alias]

You've just assembled a list of ways of manipulating the evidence support forgery rather than a fair assessment of whether the evidence supports forgery. There's no "fairness" in your assessment. Tselikas claims he knows that Morton Smith took photos of these manuscripts that Tselikas himself happens to have had "at hand' because of a previous study he made. Surely Pantuck is right to use Tselikas's willingness to make "flight of fancy" arguments and the "handiness" of these particular manuscripts as a means of questioning Tselikas's judgement.

I tried to be clear that Agamemnon Tselikas' Handwriting Analysis Report
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dai ... is-report/
included some observations that were within his area of expertise, for instance, those that led him to summarize that the ms handwriting "is an imitation of an older script." That is within his expertise.

Some other observations by A. T. are valid, even though they are not based on paleography: for example, that the "Letter to Theodore" is otherwise unknown as a composition by Clement of Alexandria, nor by any other ancient writer.

Here is an example of speculation outside of his areas of expertise: his supposition of certain photos taken by Morton Smith being the sources, the exemplars, of that imitation. Dr. Allan J. Pantuck (an undergraduate, though not a PhD, student of Smith; Pantuck is a distinguished MD) disputed which photos Smith took. Be that as it may, photos taken by other people were available (plus, of course, such items themselves). In other words, who was the photographer for available samples of such handwriting is not crucially important for deciding the origin of the ms.

You list Pantuck's degrees which is fair but fail to mention he successfully solves CANCER for a living. Surely a genius who can tackle something with a far greater degree of complexity like cancer is at least just as likely to AT LEAST as successful applying his genius to solving this idiotic problem in the humanities as anyone else. That's my point about Tselikas. Yes he's the greatest expert in the field. If you stick to figuring out what Byzantine manuscripts say, he's the one. I am not necessarily sure that problem solving is one of best skills especially when he unnecessarily appeals to arguments like Morton Smith took photos of these manuscripts and these manuscripts happen to be open on his computer or at least "these manuscripts" were manuscripts he recently worked it. Seems to have a habit of taking arguments which are "at hand" or "closest to grab" rather than necessarily the right arguments. As someone with some familiarity of Pantuck, the one thing is he's very methodical. He questions every assumption along the way rather than "just going with it" like Tselikas here. From my experience dealing with both men I don't see any reason to prefer Tselikas over Pantuck in terms of problem solving skills. Tselikas might be "picking up" on anomalies in the text. Maybe. Not sure he's the guy to solve the problem as to what he is seeing and why it/they are there.

[Secret Alias]

Let's compare also Seraphim of Mar Saba and Tselikas.
Tselikas has seen more manuscripts than Seraphim.
Tselikas has academic training.
Tselikas has a better methodology in terms of figuring out what a manuscript says. What the ligatures are. Where they might come from. The dating of manuscripts. All true.
But Tselikas doesn't explain to us how he arrives at why the eighteenth century looking manuscript is not from the eighteenth century.
That's a problem.

Now let's turn to Seraphim of Mar Saba.
He doesn't tell us why he thinks he document is authentic.

Since both men don't tell us what they know we can't really decide on which to believe.
Some of Seraphim's reasons for believing that the text is authentic is surely that "HE BELIEVED" that the manuscript was in the library before Morton Smith got there.
On some level this be true as he couldn't have accepted its authenticity without believing that.
He might have been there when Morton Smith discovered the manuscript and was the one who brought Morton Smith the book or asked the person who brought the person the book.

We can't simply allow one witness the benefit of the doubt when he doesn't explain his reasoning and not the other.
While Tselikas has greater expertise with manuscripts, Seraphim has greater expertise with respect to the question what manuscripts are in the subset authentic manuscripts of the monastic library at Mar Saba.
Surely when the certificate was issued by Kallistos Dourvas in 1976 on behalf of the Patriarchate that the letter was “unpublished and without any doubts about its authenticity.” This was an appeal to the question of what manuscripts were in the monastery before Morton Smith.

Is it likely that Kallistos who was head of the Patriarchate library for less than a year based his certificate of authenticity merely on paleographical evidence or was it based on Seraphim's testimony that the manuscript was authentic because it always been in the library. He doesn't say. We don't know. But just as Tselikas doesn't explain why he arrived at his conclusions, so too Kallistos, Seraphim and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate before 1976.

Who gets the right to make unproven assertions? Just your side?