Discussion:Lettre de Mar Saba

Crédits à ajouter

Cet article provient en partie de la scission de plusieurs articles : Évangile selon Marc et Morton Smith. Les crédits devront être ajoutés. Cdt, Manacore (discuter) 20 janvier 2018 à 22:57 (CET)

Some comments on the article so-far

If I may make some comments, and I once again apologize for not having the skill to write in French.

« Le document lui-même, qui n'a jamais été soumis à une expertise scientifique, a disparu en 1990, du vivant de Morton Smith. » We cannot know exactly when the document disappeared, apart from sometime between 1990 and 1992. The librarian Kallistos Dourvas left his service in 1990 and he later claimed that the letter was still in the library when he left. Hedrick went to the library in 1992, and then the leafs with the letter were gone. (See Hedrick and Olympiou https://www.westarinstitute.org/resources/the-fourth-r/secret-mark/ & Stroumsa, Guy G. (Summer 2003), “Comments on Charles Hedrick’s Article: A Testimony”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11:2: 147–153.)

« Seulement, personne d'autre que Morton Smith n'a pu examiner le manuscrit, dont il n'a produit que des photographies, et qui a disparu depuis lors. » In fact, they were not only studied by Smith, they were also seen by (the later becoming professor) Guy G. Stroumsa and the professors David Flusser and Shlomo Pines in 1976. They were also studied by Quentin Quesnell in the beginning of the 80’s (Collins, Adela Yarbro; Attridge, Harold W. (2007) Mark: a commentary, Hermeneia, 99-0249490-0. MN: Fortress Press, p. 491). In a letter to Peter M. Head, Quesnell confirms he saw the letter in 1983 (http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.se/2008/12/sbl-24-97-secret-mark-after-fifty-years.html ). He wrote: “Several scholars have reported being turned away when they asked to see it, but in the summer of '83 I was allowed to examine it. I was not allowed to have any of the basic scientific texts done on the ink." (http://salainenevankelista.blogspot.se/2009/11/per-beskow-and-elusive-ms-guest-post-by.html) In fact he could examine it for about two hours each visit he made (for a week, I think) (http://salainenevankelista.blogspot.se/2011/06/short-interview-with-quentin-quesnell.html )

« L'hypothèse du canular s'est trouvée renforcée par la suite avec les travaux d'Emanuel Tov (en) et de Craig A. Evans, entre autres. Ces deux auteurs écrivent en 2008 : « Les photographies en couleur récemment publiées, bien nettes, ont fourni aux experts en falsification l'occasion d'analyser l'écriture du document. La conclusion est sans appel : c'est Smith qui a écrit ce texte. » » This has long been proven to be wrong. The only “expert” referred to was Stephen C. Carlson, who had no credentials, formal training, or even prior experience as a document examiner. In fact at that time he was a patent attorney. The so-called “forger’s tremor” he claimed to have found in the writing, he did not find in the color photographs, but in the printed reproduction of the letter in Smith’s book. And it was the line screen distortion of these images, introduced by the halftone reproduction process in the printing process, that made him erroneously spot signs of the handwriting being forged; an error I disclosed (Roger Viklund & Timo S. Paananen, “Distortion of the Scribal Hand in the Images of Clement’s Letter to Theodore,” Vigiliae Christianae 67 (2013), 235–247 http://www.jesusgranskad.se/VC_067_03_235-247.pdf ) When the handwriting was analyzed by a real expert in forensic document examination, Venetia Anastasopoulou, she concluded that the script is “written spontaneously with an excellent rhythm”, while the “movement of the writing indicates a hand used to writing in this manner” (V. Anastasopoulou, “Experts Report Handwriting Examination”, Biblical Archaeology Review 36 (2010) 9, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/secret-mark-analysis.pdf ) When comparing the handwriting of the Letter with that of Smith, she concluded that a person with a Greek hand like Smiths could hardly have produced the complex writing seen in la Lettre de Mar Saba. (Experts Report, pp. 6–7).

« Peut-être que Smith l'a fabriquée [la prétendue lettre]. Peu de gens à part lui avaient, au XXe siècle, la compétence pour cela. » There are of course those who hold the opposite view. Helmut Koester, who met with Smith in 1963 for a week discussing the Letter, realized that Smith both had trouble in understanding the letter and in deciphering the handwritten eighteenth-century text. He wrote: “Obviously, a forger would not have had the problems that Morton was struggling with. Or Morton Smith was an accomplished actor and I a complete fool” (Koester, Helmut (Nov/Dec 2009), ”Was Morton Smith a Great Thespian and I a Complete Fool?”, Biblical Archaeology Review 35:06: 54–58, 88; p. 58). And Roy Kotansky was confident that Smith could not have forged the letter: ”What strikes me most about the issue of forgery with SM, is not that Morton would have done this at all (he wouldn’t have, of course), but rather that he COULD NOT have done it: his Greek, though very good, was not that of a true papyrologist (or philologist); his translations of the big sections of PGM XIII did not always appreciate the subtleties and nuances of the text’s idioms, I believe, and he seemed very appreciative of my corrections, at that time. He certainly could not have produced either the Greek cursive script of the Mar Saba ms., nor its grammatical text, as we have it. There are few up to this sort of task . . . I was with him once at the Getty Museum examining magical gemstones in the collection in the ’80s, and many times I had to gently correct his misreadings of rather obvious readings. Morton was not a paleographer/epigraphist, nor a papyrologist. I don’t think that he read these kinds of Greek texts very well.” (Pantuck, Allan J. (2013). ”A question of ability: what did he know and when did he know it? Further excavations from the Morton Smith archives”, in Tony Burke, Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery? The Secret Gospel of Mark in Debate. Proceedings from the 2011 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium. Eugene, Or.: Cascade Books. pp. 184–211 on p. 196 https://books.google.se/books?id=MEhJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA196&lpg=PA196&dq=%22+am+a+scholar+of+magic,+and+though+I+did+my+Ph.D.+on+magic+at+Chicago%22&source=bl&ots=Omyg_956vt&sig=DSvBCrGeXyTPaMGEpYVfW-sG59Y&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5sOLpqorZAhWkiKYKHbZ2C9YQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=%22%20am%20a%20scholar%20of%20magic%2C%20and%20though%20I%20did%20my%20Ph.D.%20on%20magic%20at%20Chicago%22&f=false ) Roger Viklund (discuter) 3 février 2018 à 19:20 (CET)

I could also add that saying that the document disappeared « du vivant de Morton Smith » is incorrect if it in fact disappeared in 1992. Smith died in 1991. Besides, this insinuates that Smith would have had something to do with the document’s disappearance, which is a quite non-encyclopedic approach. In fact, he had nothing to do with it. If anyone is to blame, it is the Greek Patriarchate. It was they who on several occasions denied scholars access to the document. And the few who were permitted to see it were denied to have the ink tested (Stroumsa and Quesnell). And it was while in their custody, that the letter went missing. Roger Viklund (discuter) 3 février 2018 à 20:03 (CET)