Subject: Re: tc-list clement of alexandria

From: "Julio Anjos" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 11:32:30 +0100

-----Original Message-----
From: Yuri Kuchinsky <[email-masked]>
To: Mr A.J.A. LABOUCHERE <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>
Date: 04 August 1998 16:29
Subject: Re: tc-list clement of alexandria

<...>
>AN IMPOSSIBLE SCENARIO
>
>And now let's look at what Smith would have had to do to put it all
>together. To remind, his discovery was made when he was doing the job of
>cataloguing odd mss in the rather neglected library of the great Greek
>Orthodox desert monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem. Presumably, the
>critics charge, Smith would have planted the book with the text already
>written into it while he was doing that job. This means that he would have
>had to have spent years of his life previously to that getting himself
>totally immersed into Clement and Mk, becoming a "secret world-class
>expert" in these two highly complex areas.
>

More than that, where would he have found the previouslly unknown Sofocle
works in whose back the Clementine was copied? Wouldn't that have to be
forged as well?

<...>
>And it also needs to be noted here that if Smith managed to "plant" this
>particular manuscript in any other library other than Mar Saba, the case
>for authenticiy would have been rather weaker. This is because there's a
>recorded tradition that a collection of Clement's letters _has been
>attested_ in Mar Saba during the Middle Ages. So such a discovery in Mar
>Saba was not totally unpredictable, after all...
>

I did not know that! But it seems to me that some thing need to be analysed
about this:

a)    The letters were beeing copied on the XVIII th century, so it seems
very likelly they are still around ( the full Mar Saba Collection of
Clementines that is).

b)    Morton Smith did not find such a collection!

c)    Were they in purpose not presented to Dr. Smith? Does Mar Saba
Monastery still have them?

d)    Wouldn't it be interesting if a similar hand to the Clementine Letter
was to be found in other manuscripts on the Monastery ( private letters,
etc)

Do not forget that the existence of what became to be known as Codex
Sinaiticus was denied for years by the monks! that we had to wait for this
century for findidng many missing fragments of that codex on the same
monastery it was originally discovered in!

>Smith devoted many well-documented years of his life on an academic study
>of the ms he discovered. Some commentators have actually suggested
>half-jokingly that the amount of effort he put into all this was almost
>inexplicable. After reading his two books, it indeed seems like Smith was
>genuinely obsessed with his discovery.
>
<...>

I think you do not call an important point to the discussion table here.

That point is : the level of akademia and Mr. Smith's own age at the time of
discovery, seem incompatible with him beeing the forgerer if anyone really
forged the Letter! If he was the forgerer he could have made a full Secret
Mark with all bells and whistles, not just an handfull of verses!

Julio Anjos

---

From: Yuri Kuchinsky <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 11:38:53 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Julio Anjos replied to Yuri:

> More than that, where would he have found the previouslly unknown
> Sofocle works in whose back the Clementine was copied? Wouldn't that
> have to be forged as well?

Not quite, Julio.

As Wieland Willker already noted, the letter was inscribed into the copy
of "Epistulae genuinae S. Ignatii Martyris", 1646.
                                                                              
http://alf.zfn.uni-bremen.de/~wie/texte/secmark.html

[Yuri:]

> I did not know that!

Smith provides the particulars in his books.

> But it seems to me that some thing need to be analysed
> about this:
> 
> a)    The letters were beeing copied on the XVIII th century,

We don't know this. We only know that one letter may have been copied.

> so it seems very likelly they are still around ( the full Mar Saba
> Collection of Clementines that is).

I doubt it.

> b)    Morton Smith did not find such a collection!

No.

> was to be found in other manuscripts on the Monastery ( private letters,

We can only wish...

> Sinaiticus was denied for years by the monks! that we had to wait for
> this century for findidng many missing fragments of that codex on the
> same monastery it was originally discovered in!

	...

> That point is : the level of akademia and Mr. Smith's own age at the
> time of discovery, seem incompatible with him beeing the forgerer

I agree with you.

> if anyone really forged the Letter! If he was the forgerer he could
> have made a full Secret Mark with all bells and whistles, not just an
> handfull of verses!

Best wishes,

Yuri. 
                                                         
Yuri Kuchinsky || Toronto
                                
http://www.trends.net/~yuku/bbl/bbl.htm                  
                                                         
The goal proposed by Cynic philosophy is apathy, which is
equivalent to becoming God -=O=- Julian