are these supposed to be sound arguments?

[Secret Alias]

Have you read Quesnell's proposal to Smith College? I have. I will save you the surprise. He doesn't tell the truth. He doesn't say "I hate that fucking fag Morton Smith and I need $8000 to prove he's a fraud." He made it sound like he was engaged in actual objective research - "studying" a manuscript. I should post this request. It's a joke. You'd think it was anything but what it really was. I swear I'm only here with my lantern like Diogenes, to find one honest soul.

[Secret Alias]

Who would think that the study of religion is filled with self-righteous egomaniacs who can't distinguish between their prejudices and reality? Shocking. Absolutely shocking.

[Peter Kirby]

The Christ that Harnack sees, looking back through nineteen centuries of Catholic darkness, is only the reflection of a Liberal Protestant face, seen at the bottom of a deep well.
(George Tyrrell, Christianity at the Crossroads (London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co, 1909), 44)

Not just Harnack, and not just re: the historical Jesus.

It's easy to see what you want to see.

[andrewcriddle]

"MS got early liturgy wrong." Wrong for what fit Clement in Egypt.
This, supported from, iirc, Robin Jenson (a Columbia grad, I think), and Peter Jeffrey, an early liturgy specialist, and a colleague prof of Smith's at Columbia.

I entirely agree that liturgical explanations of Secret Mark don't work in Clement's Alexandria. But this is more about Morton Smith and others interpreting Secret Mark in an untenable way than directly about it's authenticity.

Scott Brown for example does not interpret Secret Mark liturgically. IMO non-liturgical explanations of Secret Mark don't work in Clement's Alexandria either but that is another matter.

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

Andrew restores my faith in humanity.

[StephenGoranson]

Thanks for your comment, Andrew. Of course leitourgia *is* relevant if Morton Smith composed it, with his misunderstanding of that.

I now have a copy of The Secret Gospel: The Discovery etc. 1973 at hand.
By the way, MS mentioned leitourgia on page 7.

But on another matter Andrew, if I may, having reread the relevant text, it is not certain (in Smith's retelling, anyway, which I say is partly unreliable narrative) when exactly he claimed to read the '"Secret Mark" part of the letter. On page 14 he recounts telling Scholem, who "pounced immediately on the mention of the Carpocratians." Then in the next paragraph, same page 14, without other break--nothing about travel elsewhere--"Then I finished my transcription and translation...." Not, when in Istanbul; not when in Athens; not when in New York.

To say he knew about Carpocratians when he showed Scholem, in Jerusalem, in 1958 but had not a clue about "Secret Mark.--just a few words later!--hard to miss a gospel reference!--utterly strains credulity.

It strains credulity because Smith did already know the full text.

[AdamKvanta]

"Manufactured in the United States" on his copy.

Where can I learn more about this argument?

[StephenGoranson]

Morton Smith hand-wrote "Manuscript Material from the Monastery of Mar Saba, discovered, transcribed and translated by Morton Smith," dated 1958. It includes a Preface. On a preliminary page he wrote
"Manufactured in the United States."

This may bean example of his type of humor. Compare his "The Score" title in HTR, as if it were a sports game.

The original and two copies are now in the Jewish Theological Seminary Archive, NYC, box 13, folder 10.

He may have sent a copy also to a bookstore he knew in Philadelphia for safe-keeping, but I can't confirm that today.

[AdamKvanta]

Morton Smith hand-wrote "Manuscript Material from the Monastery of Mar Saba, discovered, transcribed and translated by Morton Smith," dated 1958. It includes a Preface. On a preliminary page he wrote
"Manufactured in the United States."

This may bean example of his type of humor. Compare his "The Score" title in HTR, as if it were a sports game.

The original and two copies are now in the Jewish Theological Seminary Archive, NYC, box 13, folder 10.

He may have sent a copy also to a bookstore he knew in Philadelphia for safe-keeping, but I can't confirm that today.

Thanks for the information. However, I wonder what should be so humorous about the line "Manufactured in the United States" on a preliminary page. Many books published in that era have this line. For example:

https://archive.org/details/historyofpr ... 9/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/historyofma ... 7/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/historyofdo ... 9/mode/2up

[StephenGoranson]

This, though, was not a published book.
If you read Smith's reviews, you may get a sense of his humor.
Or if you heard him in person, as I did.
Such as the time he remarked that an article had been misprinted,
because it lacked the word
"Amen."