And You'd Think BAR Would Thank Me For All The Free Publicity for Their Upcoming 'Secret Mark' Article ..

I have to leave work for the day but it makes me chuckle to think that BAR is getting all this free publicity from me.  The Tselikas article is certainly going to be the biggest issue in some time (now of course that it is clear that the inherited presuppositions of most Biblical scholars is confirmed by Tselikas's report).  And yet I am not going to get a thank you.  And I knew right from the start I wasn't get a thank you. 

So why am I doing this?  Well, someone had to move scholarship forward.  A lot of people had a vested interest in keeping this a Scott Brown vs. Stephen Carlson debate when in reality neither of them has got anywhere close to solving the 'Mystery of Mar Saba.'  I don't know what the answer is and neither do any of the people reading this blog. 

There are some things which are just about impossible for a human being to figure out.

Yet there is a man who can figure things out.  I don't think that Tselikas's report is going to solve the question.  But the real end game as my friend Wieland Willker always notes is finding the damn document.  The strategy of having all these xenoi come knock on the door of the monastery asking where the letter is has never worked.  But I figured out very quickly the real problem - they couldn't less about this stupid document.  They don't where it is and they don't care. 

I have spent six months badgering Tselikas through an intermediary to get him interested in this strange text.  Tselikas is like the guy who knows people at the club.  If you want action, you have to go through Memos (unless you have some crazy Greek uncle who decided to devote himself to God in Israel).   The article is really secondary.  Memos still doesn't seem to be aware that it was the Patriarchate who removed the document from the book.  In any event, he is on the case and in a matter of days, months and maybe years, he'll find this thing (probably lining a bird cage or something).

Some people just happen to be at the right place at the right time ...