Just look up the definition of 'scientific methodology' in the dictionary and you will see it refers to a "body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge." When Carlson presented his evidence that To Theodore was a forgery who stood up and scrutinized his empirical data?No one? Then it cannot be claimed that this field engages in scientific research.
But don't let me get carried away just yet!
Let me start by saying I never thought I would end up writing anything of importance about Morton Smith or his discovery of To Theodore - and perhaps I never will. Nevertheless I happen to have become utterly fascinated with one of the leading voices behind the idea that Morton Smith didn't just DISCOVER the manuscript at Mar Saba but actually forged it out of his own imagination.
Stephen Carlson is my superior in every measurable way. I cannot deny that he is a respected expert on matters related to textual criticism and I am not. And even when we go outside the limitations of this field it is difficult for me not to stand in awe of his accomplishments.
I can't imagine how proud my mother would have been if I ended up graduating from law school. It is one thing to achieve that kind of success and then to turn around and decide to pursue a career in the field of New Testament scholarship.
What's there not to like about this guy?
Well, to be honest there is this one thing. It's one thing that I happen to find at work in a lot of ambitious people. I wonder whether he was blinded by the very ambition which prompted him to achieve so much in such a relatively short period of time.
I never paid much attention to the whole controversy over To Theodore. I happened to own Morton Smith's 1973 book on his discovery quite by accident. I saw it in a used book store and decided to snap it up. I have to admit that I believed Smith when he said he found the manuscript. Then, as the arguments Carlson developed started filtering into scholarship I assumed there had to be something wrong with the text to have all these 'experts' start to line up against it (even though I never quite found a 'smoking gun' in any of their arguments against its authenticity).
I don't know when the turning point for me came to start taking more of an interest in the controversy but I think it had something to do with coming into contact with Roger Pearse's review of the Gospel Hoax posted at his website.
The way I read the review was that despite wanting to accept Carlson's conclusions hook, line and sinker Pearse still had some reservations. This became plainly evident to me in his conclusion where he writes:
Has Carlson decisively disposed of Secret Mark? The answer must be no [emphasis mine], for more work would need to be done to validate what he has discovered with a larger data sample and tie up some loose ends. But he has made it very difficult for anyone to accept that it is genuine. It is possible that other examples will be found that show that some genuine manuscripts may be written with the "forger's tremor." But what are the chances that Theodore should be one of them? It is possible that texts will be found which answer the other objections, at least occasionally. But how likely is it that Theodore should have so many problems? The defenders of Theodore can only rely on the limited data sample that it was possible for Carlson to use in the time available as a reason to mark his conclusions as provisional; and every day of any further investigation is likely to make that uncertainty smaller and smaller.
The Gospel Hoax opens up new avenues of investigation. Suddenly it is possible to move the investigation forward into new territories. But these territories may never be explored; for it seems entirely possible that this book will dispose of Secret Mark, without further work being done. Few will devote time to what nearly everyone considers a hoax.
The reason I cite the whole of Pearse's conclusion is that I am familiar enough with his methodology that he will likely challenge me for citing only a limited portion of the review. He and Carlson are very chummy now (Pearse having gone recently out of his way to apologize for his original review). Nevertheless I have confidence that if he goes to Roger Viklund's article, Pearse will - in spite of his friendship with Carlson - allow his belief in the truth win out.
And this is my point in writing this post. I have already admitted that I don't possess the technical skills or the depth of Carlson in this narrow field. But I think that like all ambitious people, somewhere along the way he gave up on a completely idealistic notion of truth and truthfulness.
Viklund clearly shows that Carlson based almost his entire case that Morton Smith 'faked' the Letter to Theodore on these inferior set of black and white photographs. What is strange of course is that much better high resolution color photos were available long before Carlson wrote the Gospel Hoax. Carlson knew they existed, he wrote about them before he published his book and drew inferences about To Theodore from his knowledge of those superior color images.
Why then would ANYONE go ahead and develop the arguments for a book like the Gospel Hoax knowing that - as David Trobisch recently noted in a private email - "the 'forgery' accusations only works with the low resolution photos"?
Well before I get into all of that I should say one thing - something so obvious it shouldn't NEED to be demonstrated - but which I nevertheless want to get out of the way anyway.
Carlson certainly knew that the color photos existed. He saw the color photos and used them to draw certain inferences about the manuscript. However when it came time to develop his proof for the text being a forgery - he suddenly reverted back to the inferior black and white photos and used the ambiguities which arose from their low resolution to accuse Smith of forgery.
Again, I don't know how to explain what went through his mind when he made this decision. Nevertheless it is difficult to believe that Carlson wasn't aware of the implications of that decision.
I can however demonstrate that Carlson did indeed come into contact with the color reproductions of Hedrick and Olympiou. He mentions them in a post at the Yahoo Textual Criticism Group:
Tue May 17, 2005 3:16 pm from scarlson@...
There was a second set of photographs, in color, taken in the 1970s of the manuscript and published by Charles W. Hedrick in 2000. The new photographs are independent of the black-and-white photographs Smith took in the 1950s. They confirm that the manuscript that Smith photographed is the same manuscript that was transfered from Mar Saba to the Jerusalem Patriarchate library in 1976.
Again one would expect that Carlson would have seen the color photos. He is a respected scholar and it would be unthinkable that he could have avoided coming into contact with Hedrick's article or that he didn't know that he should have asked Hedrick for the reproduction of those color originals to assist in his research.
Hedrick is universally acknowledged to be an accommodating individual. It seems unimaginable to me that he wouldn't have given them to Carlson if asked.
Indeed when we look at an entry at his blog from December 12, 2003, years before he submitted his book to the publisher he already knew about the color photos then:
The rest of story is in Hedrick's 2000 FOURTH R article. Hedrick, working in conjuction with Nikolaos Olympiou, was able to learn that shortly after the book was deposited into the Patriarchal library, then-librarian Kallistos Dourvas (Olympiou's student) removed the pages from the book and photographed them, both in black and white and in color. (Hedrick was eventually able to get some of the photographs via Olympiou, which were published in the FOURTH R article.) Accordingly to Kallistos, who remained the librarian until 1999, the pages of the Clement letter were supposed to have been kept along with the book, but when Olympiou visited the library in 2000, the Clement pages were missing. The last report in the Hedrick article is that Kallistos was to go to the Patriarchal library in Sept. 2000, yet Hedrick's 2003 JECS article did not say whether this had actually happened or what was the result.
Stephen C. Carlson, Friday, December 12, 2003
I will delay attempting to explain why Carlson might have ignored his better judgement and employed inferior images as the basis to his case for forgery and concentrate instead on a much easier question - why didn't any of his peers notice the methodological problems with his work?
I literally went through EVERY email at the aforementioned Textual Criticism site which I have to stress has many of the top names in the field participating in its discussions and while a number of participants acknowledging having read his Gospel Hoax NOT A SINGLE 'EXPERT' BRINGS UP what Viklund 'the amateur scholar' discovers in his article - i.e. that it was Carlson's decision to use inferior images which serves as the basis to his case that To Theodore was forgery.
Without the bad photos the argument completely falls apart.
The explanation for why scholars failed to investigate Carlson's claims is quite easy to explain - I don't think any of them believed for a moment that Carlson could have committed such a serious methodological error. Many were likely intimidated by Carlson's expertise.
Indeed going through these emails I am quite surprised by the respectful tone of the 'debate' given the explosive nature of Carlson's charges - i.e. accusing another recently deceased scholar of going out and forging a newly discovered text. Yes there were two prominent dissenters - the moderator Wieland Willker and Jack Kilmon - yet there is an unmistakable deference paid to Carlson each time they raise questions about his claims.
The bottom line is that no one checked his methodology because they assumed it was impeccable.
By contrast let me say that when I used to participate in discussions I was treated like the retarded cousin in the group. Willker frequently disallowed my posts.
I am not saying that they were wrong in treating me with disrespect. That's what happens when you are an 'amateur scholar.' Nor do I begrudge them for showing a preference for Carlson's expertise. What I am upset with scholars in general is in not recognizing that sometimes the one yelling fire is the one who set the blaze.
Let me explain what I mean.
I found a great deal of irony reading many of Carlson's posts in the Textual Criticism group. He accuses Morton Smith of trying to pull a 'fast one' over scholarship. This is the whole point of the Gospel Hoax - that scholars can be duped by an ambitious academic with an agenda.
Why is then that this accusation didn't ring alarm bells about ALL academic works including Carlsons? Why didn't it prompt scholars to investigate his methodology? Indeed had they heeded Carlson's own warnings someone might have noticed the difficulties inherent in basing his most important argument on an inferior reproduction of the original image of the Mar Saba MS.
Indeed I see something inherently paradoxical about Carlson's accusations. The man who spends so many pages complaining that Smith must have had a hand in the disappearance of the Mar Saba manuscript ultimately went out of his way to employ the reproduction of that MS that was furthest removed from the original. Does any of this make sense? The only thing worse than basing his argument on the image which appeared in Smith 1973 book would be to have developed a case around those black and white hand drawings that used to appear in old academic books ...
Of course it is impossible to know what goes on in someone's head. Nevertheless I do think that it is possible to eliminate certain possible explanations for Carlson's choice of the inferior images based on the available evidence.
For instance I think it is difficult to believe the decision to ignore the color photos was 'an amateur's mistake.' Carlson is too smart to have overlooked the implications brought up in Viklund's article.
The argument that Carlson used against Morton Smith can ultimately be turned around against Carlson himself.
Indeed, having read Carlson's book I can't help but get the sense that its lesson - i.e. the dangers inherent in allowing the work of an ambitious academic to go unchecked - might well have applied to Carlson himself.
I mean I have never met a scholar who actually believes all of the fantastic claims that Carlson assembles in his Gospel Hoax. Instead as a skilled lawyer he attacks the case for authenticity with enough little arguments that we end up accepting his proposition for forgery.
Yet if we cut out all of the tricks and sleight of hand the Gospel Hoax emerges as a kind of academic Da Vinci Code. It's a distraction from the serious issue of making sense of the manuscript.
The real difference between the Gospel Hoax and the Da Vinci Code is that Carlson's claims are just too unbelievable to develop into a movie. A good movie has to develop a plausible motive for its villain. It also has to be able to convince its audience that the villain could have pulled off the crime portrayed on the screen.
When you cut through all the sleight of hand in Carlson's book it is simply incredible to believe that one man could have pulled of this one elaborate hoax - i.e. 'designing' a false Gospel of Mark fragment, then planting inside of a forged letter of Clement, then forging the handwriting of eighteen century monks, planting the book back in the monastery, risking his reputation for no discernible pay off.
That's why I like to turn around Carlson's argument on himself. It is far easier to believe that Carlson the disillusioned attorney desperately wanting to get out of the 'real world' to the relative safety and security of academia would have used his skills as an attorney to defame a dead man who happened to be gay.
The idea that Morton Smith MIGHT have forged the letter had of course been floating around in academic circles for some time. All it needed was a good spokesperson - an advocate - who could marshal many of the things that were being whispered around the lunch rooms in universities into a coherent presentation.
Let's not forget that in 2005 the Da Vinci Code was all the rage too. I remember having a discussion with Professor Robert Eisenman a year earlier telling me that if he could do it all over again he would have written such an academic Da Vinci Code (he would eventually publish 'the New Testament Code' a year later).
The bottom line being that it is difficult not to see that at some point this intelligent, successful young attorney who desperately wanted a career change must have gotten the idea to argue on behalf of the idea that To Theodore was a forgery. He dreamed up a silly narrative involving Smith deliberately planting evidence in the manuscript to assist in his apprehension (because this is what villains do in pulp fiction and comic books).
He likely developed many of his ideas while reading that 1973 copy of Morton Smith's book on the Mar Saba manuscript - and in particular - its blurry photographic reproductions of that MS. He likely got the idea that a tremor was present in the manuscript from those blurry images. However there must have been a moment when he finally got a hold of those superior color photographs from Hedrick's article and groaned realizing that he might be wrong.
We all have that 'oh shit!' moment at some point in our lives. Tiger Woods had one recently. However it would be foolish to assume that he didn't have warnings that he chose to ignore much earlier which might have ultimately saved his reputation.
I can't help shake the suspicion that when Stephen Carlson first saw those color images he must have experienced one of those 'oh shit!' moments. I think he must have realized - as anyone with functioning optic nerves immediately recognizes - that the alleged 'signs of tremors' are not really there. To this end, his decision to ignore this new evidence has ended up compromised not only his own reputation but the reputation of all of his peers who accepted his claims without examining his methodology.
