Stephan Huller has been writing a wonderful series of posts over the last week or so, basically establishing a solid 18th century milieu in which the Mar Saba manuscript could have been inscribed into the Voss volume. (Huller even goes so far to propose that Patriarch Callinicus/Kallinikos III (IV) inscribed it, but so far I am not entirely convinced. Huller is basically arguing however that it's becoming increasingly likely it was at least inscribed by someone within Callinicus' circle. As Huller points out, this is of course precisely what Morton Smith himself proposed: "we may suppose with some probability that the writer of the present letter had been trained in the Patriarchal Academy in Constantinople".)
The point is not that Huller is proving an airtight case for Smith's proposal; rather, the point is that Huller is demonstrating that a Enlightenment-era Levantine milieu is a perfectly plausible environment for the manuscript to be produced. (Though I must say Huller is doing a terrific job of making a case that the manuscript is linked specifically to Callinicus and his circle.) Indeed, Huller is showing that it is at least an equally plausible scenario as a forgery by a western scholar dating to the mid-20th century. (Personally I would have to say that Huller's evidence has surpassed that of Smith's critics.)
No comments:
Post a Comment