Critiquing Carlson, part 1

Carlson's arguments are presented, essentially, on pp. 23-72 of The Gospel Hoax, though pp. 73-86 present a secondary argument that may be worthwhile taking up. For now, we'll focus primarily on the case presented on pp. 23-72, beginning with Chapter 3, pp. 23-48 in this post.


On the pages just prior to that, there are some introductory arguments that we'll also address. We'll introduce each point Carlson makes by page:





p. 20--Carlson mentions the 1940s thriller The Mystery of Mar Saba, which I have already dealt with. He does add the detail that Hunter's novel includes part of the fictional Greek text of the novel's apocrypha on a fly paper. For Carlson, this draws an obvious and suspicious parallel with Smith's discovery of the Mar Saba manuscript on an endpage of the Voss book. However, an important detail does not align: Carlson mentions, in an endnote, that the fictional apocrypha is included on a fly paper in the front of the novel--not an endpaper as with the Mar Saba manuscript. Furthermore, there is a perfectly good reason why we might find both Hunter's fictional apocrypha and the Mar Saba manuscript on fly papers or endpapers of a book: because that is where the extra blank pages are in a printed book! If you're trying to add material to a printed manuscript, whether you are printing the material or writing it, the easiest way to do it is to slip it in at either the beginning or the end of the bulk of the manuscript. The placement of both Hunter's apocrypha and the Mar Saba manuscript is simply a result of the structure of printing technology. And the placement of each reflects a relevant choice on the part of the respective authors: Hunter places his printed, fake manuscript at the front of his book for dramatic effect, whereas the Mar Saba author places his written, authentic note at the back of his book as an afterthought.


p. 21--Bart Ehrman has noted that the Mar Saba manuscript was included in a book (the Voss edition of Ignatius) that eliminated inauthentic letters from the Ignatian corpus, and faces a page on which Voss denounces interpolators of ancient texts. Carlson suggests this means the author of the Mar Saba manuscript had a "good sense of humor"; Ehrman says it means if the manuscript is authentic, then its author engaged in "brilliant irony". While I agree the placement may be no accident, I dispute that it was motivated by either humor or irony. Instead, I think the reader of the Voss book was thinking about spurious or inauthentic letters of Church fathers (due to the subject of Voss's book), reached the end, and read the sentence about interpolators of ancient literature. He thought to himself: Hm, maybe I have an example. He found a copy of To Theodore that he knew about, and wrote down as much of it as would fit--or, perhaps he simply wrote down the relevant part (about the additional material in the secret gospel, as well as the Carpocratian interpolations). He was trying to say, hey, here's an example of what Voss is talking about! I think the author thought this was a genuine Clementine letter. If it isn't, I guess that is ironic, but not really surprising: a great deal of Christian literature was inauthentic, unbeknownst to the devout. That's why Voss had to write his book! And, that's why Voss made his comment in the first place: he was dealing with spurious interpolations, and knew they were all over the place. Now, spurious interpolations are usually made for theological reasons, as a result of theological debates. Inauthentic letters, too, are written for the same reasons. It's no surprise, then, that a letter dealing with spurious gospel interpolations may come from an inauthentic hand--they tend to be related subjects. So if a reader inspired by Voss goes to a letter dealing with suprious interpolations, there is a good likelihood that the letter will be an inauthentic one. (And I'm not even saying To Theodore wasn't authentically Clementine! If it is authentically Clementine, then there is no irony at all.)


pp. 25-48--The question of the physical manuscript evidence has been amply dealt with, and I don't need to repeat the discussion here. Suffice it to say that Carlson's conclusions have been met with equal arguments to the contrary, both in print by Scott Brown (here, for example, and online by Roger Viklund (see here, for example) as well as by others (see Walter Shandruk, for example), and in fact no conclusion can currently be reached on the physical evidence of the Mar Saba manuscript. Probably no further conclusion could be reached, as April DeConick (and Bart Ehrman) has pointed out, without an examination of the manuscript itself. The Patriarchate of Constantinople has apparently not been cooperative in this endeavor--though I should hasten to add that we are at least indebted to Father Kallistos Dourvas of the patriarchal library for the color photographs of the Mar Saba manuscript. To all this I would only add my own hunches as follows:


the Mar Saba manuscript was not written by a Mar Saba monk, and may not have been written in Mar Saba at all. It was written by an Orthodox scholar probably from a continental location, whether Greece itself or elsewhere. Either this scholar found To Theodore outside of Mar Saba, or he came there to perform research, found the letter, and wrote as much of it as would fit in the Voss book. This Voss book may have been in the scholar's own collection (and was brought one way or another to Mar Saba) or it was already in the Mar Saba library. It is not inconceivable that the library already owned it; there was significant contact between Orthodoxy and Calvinism during the seventeenth century, due to the Confession of Lucaris, and even more contact later, during the early eighteenth century between the eastern patriarchates--mostly of Alexandria, though Jerusalem was involved via correspondence--and the British Non-Jurors. Therefore a Latin book, edited by a Dutch scholar, of the writings of Ignatius may well have been of significant interest to an Orthodox scholar of the late 17th-early 19th century period. (We also know there were Jesuits active in the Levant at the time.) Indeed, it may have been brought there during the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 (in which the Jesuits played an important role--and in fact, the Synod took place in Bethlehem, adjacent to Mar Saba itself). The Voss manuscript was thus either brought there and left by the visiting scholar, or was acquired by Mar Saba on their own, as either a purchase or a gift. Carlson thinks it was indeed brought by a scholar, and that this scholar was none other than Morton Smith. Based on Roger Viklund's analysis, however, I see nothing in the handwriting to suggest that this was the case.