Roger Viklund has posted a new essay by himself and David Blocker on some additional material found in a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew that is clearly related to the Mar Saba manuscript and the Secret Gospel of Mark. Please read the essay.
My first reactions:
We now know that one or the other of these two scenarios must be true, and the other false:
a) Secret Mark relies directly on Shem Tov's Matthew (likely as a hoax)
b) Shem Tov's Matthew relies, directly or indirectly, on Secret Mark
There are not any other alternatives. It must be one or the other.
The first is still not impossible. Morton Smith obviously knew Hebrew quite well, and was capable of either noticing or tracking down these interesting variants in Evan Bohan (The Touchstone), perhaps by reading Alexander Marx's 1929 article "The Polemical Manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America". It is just conceivable that having:
1) found this material in the Jewish Theological Seminary (most likely after his arrival at Columbia in summer of 1957, though possibly before)
Smith could then have:
2) been inspired by the Markan insertion of the healing of the apparently-dead epileptic boy to turn to the raising of Lazarus in GJn and conflate it with the healing of the epileptic boy to concoct a story of Jesus' raising of a man
3) inserted that story into the additional Bethany material found in the Shem Tov Matthew
4) inspired by Clement's discussions of knowledge and initiation, taken this new pericope and surrounded it with Clement-like material
5) added some invented business about being in Jericho with the female relatives of his fictional NEANISKOS
6) making a connection with Voss' discussion of authenticity vs. inauthenticity in his 17th c. analysis of Ignatius' letters, realized that the endpapers of the 1646 edition of Voss just so happened to provide him with the perfect amount of writing space to work with in the perfectly appropriate location (!)
7) realized that the perfect place to put this volume would be the Mar Saba monastery where he was soon traveling, in the summer of 1958
8) used the photographs he took of manuscripts in Greece to create an imitation Greek script which he then used to fill up the space in the Voss (which he had somehow acquired) with his invented material
9) made sure to bring this volume with him to Israel so he could sneak it into the tower library without anyone noticing, including the monk assigned to assist him with his cataloguing.
While this is not impossible, personally I find this scenario rather fantastic (in the bad way).
Contrast the complexity of this scenario with my own proposal:
1) A (medieval?) copyist of GMt from Greek to Hebrew knew either of original GMk or (more likely IMO) knew about the Mar Saba letter, and wanted to include the material in his translation.
2) Uncomfortable with the Carpocratian business and Jesus' raising of anyone besides Lazarus from the dead, he opted instead to augment Matthew's healing of an epileptic boy (in Mt 17) with Mark's parallel healing of an apparently-dead epileptic boy (in Mk 9).
3) He then took the framing elements of original GMk's raising of the man (the fact that Jesus visited Bethany, and the fact that he taught the mystery of the kingdom by night, all in what we now know as Mk 10) and inserted them into his Hebrew GMt (in Mt 21 when Jesus visits Bethany).
Done. The end.
Which scenario do you find less complex?
I have a letter which Smith wrote to Gershom Sholem in December 9, 1957, in which he apologizes for not having had time to do anything on Gershom’s book because his courses takes every bit of his time. He has never given courses on ancient history and on classical literature before, since they are a bit outside his field and he has to make a lot of preparations. He says that he is expecting of doing nothing for the next twelve month to come but that he will spend all summer in the Near East. This is the period when he is supposed to have prepared for his forgery if he by chance would have found Shem Tob’s Matthew at the JTC when he arrived at Columbia NY.
ReplyDeleteI have published the letter on my blog: http://rogerviklund.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/morton-smith-was-very-busy-and-would-not-have-had-time-to-forge-the-clement-letter/
I find your argument about the composition of Hebrew Matthew as a response to concerns over Greek texts a little elaborate.
ReplyDeleteIt is easier to assume that there were 2nd or 3rd c. Hebrew Matthews based on Clement's Longer ( Secret ) Mark. One text (ShemTob) preserved some Longer Mark features, other Hebrew Matthew texts (Munster and duTillet) were edited or written to conform to shorter or canonical Mark.
However, even by your suggestion above, ShemTob Hebrew Matthew predates the 14th c. when ShemTob wrote his commentary on Matthew. Therefore Clement's letter to Theodore is most likely of genuine antiquity.
Hi Roger--thanks for putting Smith's letter up on your blog (and to Allan for providing it).
ReplyDeleteThinking it over further, I think you are entirely correct to say that Smith could only have visited the JTS library from 1957-58. Smith was born and raised in suburban Philadelphia. He went from there to Harvard, majoring in English. He traveled for a year, then returned to Harvard to earn a theology degree, apparently in training for the Episcopal priesthood. There would be no reason for him to visit the JTS library in New York.
He seems to have traveled from Boston directly to Israel in 1940, not returning until after the war. Upon returning to Harvard and completing his dissertation, he then did a post-grad at Harvard under Nock, Jaeger, and Pfeiffer, resulting in a 1957 thesis, eventually published in 1971 as Palestinian Parties and Politics, which has nothing to do with a Hebrew Matthew. In the meantime he taught at Brown and Drew. I don't see any opportunity or reason to visit the JTS library during that time.
So the letter provided by Pantuck that you've posted is definitely interesting, because it means that those who would still accuse Smith of a hoax must assume that he went out of his way to lie to Gershom Sholem about how busy he was during the 1957-58 academic year. Indeed, Smiths' accusers at this point must assume (without prior evidence) that Smith was a pathological liar, lying even to his closest friends and associates about everything. Despite the fact that such liars do technically exist, surely it is egregious to assume Smith was one of them, without any evidence that this was the case.
So, Smith's accusers must now put together a timeline and scenario in which Smith visited the JTS library during (or just before) the '57-'58 academic year, read the Shem-Tob Matthew, and constructed the Mar Saba manuscript during his first year of teaching at Columbia.
I really feel that nothing short of this will do. If Smith's accusers cannot now plausibly present this scenario, then IMHO their hypothesis deserves to be dismissed, and that's the end of that. I'm perfectly willing to be wrong about everything having to do with Secret Mark, but we need to describe the situation as it currently stands. I just don't see any way that Smith's accusers can ignore the connection between the Shem Tob Matthew and Secret Mark. It seems to me that the ball is now in their court. (Have I said that before? Maybe.)
Also, soon I'll start blogging using my real name, so you and others may be relieved that there will be no need for using my pseudonym anymore :)
Hi Anonymous--you might be right that the author of the original version lying behind the Shem Tob Matthew actually knew the Secret Mark gospel. It's just that I think this gospel contained other additional material (like the missing ending of GMk, for example), so it's a little interesting that the major changes to this Hebrew Matthew happen to have to do with Secret Mark. (There are other textual variants in the Shem Tob Matthew, of course, it's just that these seem to me to be the two biggest ones). So to me, the simplest explanation is that the author of the original Hebrew gospel that lies behind the Shem Tob Matthew actually knew the letter To Theodore. But, perhaps you are right that this is actually the more complex hypothesis. Hard for me to say.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yes, you are right, the Shem Tob Matthew proves that To Theodore is an old text--unless, of course, Smith's accusers can come up with a plausible scenario in which Smith used the Shem Tob Matthew to compose To Theodore...I doubt it, but they can decide for themselves whether they can or not.
It is by the way a nice reconstruction of a possible, although quite unlikely, scenario, you have made. Besides, there are things in your reconstruction that aren’t true, but of which I cannot discuss at present. I also wonder when Smith first knew he could go to Mar Saba? In the letter to Sholem from December 1957, he says that he hope to spend a week in Israel and then visit him and his wife (I suppose). This must be the visit he made to Jerusalem and met Sholem directly after having spent a couple of weeks at Mar Saba. But he gives no hint at this point in time that he shall visit Mar Saba. Stephan Huller writes that he has “been trying to find any evidence that Smith was ever invited to Mar Saba. I can’t find any sign that Smith knew ahead of time that he would have had access to the library.” If you are planning a forgery of this magnitude, you would as Stephan says have planned to plant it at Mar Saba as this is the place where John of Damascus was said to have had access to a collection of letters written by Clement. But before you start making such a forgery, you would need to know that you would be given access to the library at Mar Saba.
ReplyDeleteAnd apart from the JTC, the only other places where he could have found a manuscript with the Even Bohan which also had the reading “and he spent the night there”, was at Leiden and Oxford.