Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:01 pm
rakovsky wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:33 pm
Because a forger "could have had assistance," that means, according to you, that the script itself isn't a strong argument.
I think that paleography is still a significant argument, but it's not as strong as it might seem because of Smith's prior detailed studies and many photographs of 18th. c. Greek manuscripts, along with potential assistance,
as you said.
No, I didn’t say that the claim of “potential assistance” was a reasonable counter-argument. I was
referring to what you said.
Sure, that's what I meant, although I can see that there could be ambiguity. My meaning would have been clearer had I written more clunkily: "along with the potential assistance that you quoted me as mentioning" or something like that.
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:01 pm
One of the things that makes me extremely uncomfortable with the forgery argument is how little time is spent on the most important and salient characteristics of the find
- that it was discovered in situ (by their own account)
by a recognized, accomplished scholar of the field,
that the physical text exists and not only reproductions of it (as proven by the follow up by another scholar who got access to photograph it), and
that the hand belongs to a different era and a different language in a fluid cursive script that was only ever used by a limited number of people and that we would otherwise assume to have gone completely out of use, [if not (of course) for the gratuitous hypothesis of forgery].
I think that the bold are significant arguments.
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:01 pm
One of the things that makes me very uncomfortable is that people are willing to appeal to arguments based on supposed general principles that they neglect to study in their own right, when these general principles are at least as interesting as the text itself.
For example, is there ONE known example of someone in the 1950s who ACTUALLY produced a text in the cursive script of the 18th century Greek as used by the Greek monks, which successfully passes inspection by experts as being such a hand?
Not even asking if it were common. Is there a single example?
Can we find such a person in the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s? Are there any other examples of similarly-successful imitations of the eighteenth century Greek script?
And... why is a software developer like me the one who needs to ask this question? Why is the profession so lazy about the basics?
That's a good question, but my
guess is that the answer is Yes, and that usually if a professional studies a handwriting style enough, they can mimic it well enough to fool handwriting experts. Just as there are handwriting and paleography experts, there are probably those of them who can mimic what they are portraying.
I also remember the skeptics like Carlson claiming that there are signs in the handwriting of the Letter that point to a modern forgery (and IIRC using experts to back him up), and then supporters of the Letter's authenticity having experts say that the handwriting was a perfect match to writing from the time.
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:01 pm
There are a lot of anomalies about this text if it is a forgery, for those who bother to look at cases of forgery in general. If you think it’s weird as authentic, it’s very odd as a modern forgery. The modus operandi has no parallel - a one-off successful construction of an original manuscript
in a different language and a different paleographical hand that is allegedly produced under the supervision of a genuine and credible PhD’d scholar, who doesn’t use it as a teachable moment by revealing the hoax but who also never gives in to the temptation to do it again.
I agree, that it's very odd as a modern forgery. But then, I think it's pretty odd that Smith used the Adi Da cult, headed by Da Free John, who was accused of sexual abuse by his victims, to publish his book on the Letter. The Mar Saba letter and its story has plenty of major oddities regardless of whether one accepts it as authenticity.
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:01 pm
If you could change one fact, maybe this would be more like our known forgery cases. For example, if there were a 20th century individual who was honing a craft and producing better and better forgeries. Or if Smith were duped by another party.
Or if Smith always intended to reveal the hoax to teach the academy a lesson.
Or if they made the text less technically difficult to pull off the first time as a fake by, for example, destroying the original instead of leaving it behind where others could find it and examine it. All of those MOs would fit into a known pattern. (It’s understandable if what I am saying about known patterns for forgers doesn’t sound impressive, but if you study the production of forgeries in a general way, you’ll understand very clearly what I am saying.)
Sure, and perhaps something like one of those circumstances is applicable here. If it's M.Smith's forgery, maybe he did intend the possibility for academia to be able to figure out the forgery eventually, and this explains what some readers find to be clues or signatures like the Mar Saba Mystery or Anglo Saxon Attitudes literary analogies. Likewise, maybe the forger did destroy the original attempts of his work, and it was only after numerous tries that the forger made his final attempt, putting it directly into the Vossius book.