Distinguishing some questions about the "Letter to Theodore"

[StephenGoranson]

Not a question of "winning a debate" with you.
This may be a lose-lose situation.
One hopes, though, there are better readers out there.

[Peter Kirby]

Except for the fact that a certificate of authenticity was issued in 1976 and brought forward by Tselikas.

Can we have some more information?

[andrewcriddle]

I made an earlier post in a similar thread here

To paraphrase: Tselikas did not strictly speaking establish that the handwriting is later than the 18th century, What Tselikas did claim to establish is that although the handwriting is in one sense an 18th century Greek cursive, the scribe is not writing cursive because this is how they learnt to write rapidly and legibly. Instead the scribe is carefully and deliberately writing in a script that does not come naturally. This sort of conclusion is standard palaeography (analyzing the ductus of the script).

Such a conclusion is strictly speaking entirely compatible with an 18th century writer. However it is IMO more plausibly explained by a later writer imitating 18th century handwriting,

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

Always fair Andrew. Love you to death. To answer Peter's question:

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

[Peter Kirby]

I made an earlier post in a similar thread here

To paraphrase: Tselikas did not strictly speaking establish that the handwriting is later than the 18th century, What Tselikas did claim to establish is that although the handwriting is in one sense an 18th century Greek cursive, the scribe is not writing cursive because this is how they learnt to write rapidly and legibly. Instead the scribe is carefully and deliberately writing in a script that does not come naturally. This sort of conclusion is standard palaeography (analyzing the ductus of the script).

Such a conclusion is strictly speaking entirely compatible with an 18th century writer. However it is IMO more plausibly explained by a later writer imitating 18th century handwriting,

Andrew Criddle

Thanks Andrew.

[StephenGoranson]

Tselikas, based on his comments, did think it more plausible that a later writer tried to imitate c. 18th-century script.
But, as I mentioned, perhaps in the wrong thread:
a) a person (monk) copying an earlier text does not ordinarily ape the earlier script/ductus--quite the opposite!
b) in Smith's suggested scenario (do I need to check out the books again, sigh) a fire caused an earlier copy to be incomplete.
That earlier copy, if so, would not then have been c. 18th-century, so no such style even to imitate, anyway!

[Secret Alias]

Really? A monk living in the 20th century trying to preserve a manuscript from a Church Father would use a modern script to do so? How do we know that. Maybe it's deliberately archaic and thus anachronistic. Like a diploma.

https://www.printmag.com/designer-inter ... s-it-down/

[StephenGoranson]

Yes, a monk would use his own script.

[Secret Alias]

But not his everyday handwriting. They aren't in a time capsule.

[Secret Alias]

It's like diploma writing. The diploma comes from 2024 but is made to look like 17rh century. It's not a fake. It's ceremonial.