Vanity and the Forgery Proposition

I am on vacation supposedly but I find myself with a few minutes to talk about Allan J Pantuck's article for BAR ... well sort of. 

I have really been avoiding writing about this for a number of reasons - mostly on account of the fact that I happen to totally agree with him with regards to the authenticity of the manuscript.  Yet there is something else - something which goes to the core of my personality and which helps account for why I never became a 'professional' scholar. 

It is getting to the point that I don't even know why anyone should take the other side's claims seriously.  Yes, to be sure there are a number of notable names who think the discovery was a fake.  I know more of these names than most as a result of commissioning a clandestine poll of sorts for a documentary I was working on last year. 

Bart Ehrman, Birger Pearson, Wayne Meeks, Larry Hurtado, Francis Watson, Robert Price and of course Stephen Carlson, Peter Jeffrey, J Harold Ellens and the rest of the familiar cast of characters.

I could of course produce an equally impressive array of names who believe the text is probably authentic but that isn't the point. With all of these familiar names proclaiming that the text is a fake, you'd expect that they would be able to point to something substantive to help demonstrate what exactly is 'wrong' with the document.  But that's exactly the problem. 

You can cross out the prominent athiests on the aforementioned list because - well - 'haters' don't care much about discovering the truth about Christianity.  They want to 'expose the lies' at the heart of the religion.  As such it serves their purpose better to attack the letter as a forgery.  You see, once again, everything about Christianity is proven to be a lie. 

With regards to the rest of the people on the list, there are certainly some who care about the truth - Birger Pearson, Wayne Meeks and others.  So what is their difficulty?  It is always difficult to pinpoint what motives people.  It is even harder to put forward one motivation which led to a lot of intelligent people coming to the same conclusion about something.  Nevertheless I think in this particular case I think it was vanity which played a roll in their decision making process.

You see, I have read almost everything that has ever been written on the subject of Alexandrian Christianity and have yet to find anyone who can explain Clement of Alexandria.  To be sure there are experts on Clement who can tell you what some of the things he liked to write about were.  They can tell you how many times he used a certain word and so forth.  Yet no one can explain what the Alexandrian Church looked like in the time Clement was writing, who Clement was writing for and what motivated him to write the Instructor, the Stromateis and various other works. 

Clement is a mystery to us and so too his Alexandrian Church. 

Then Morton Smith comes along and finds a document which effectively dispels all the darkness about the origins of the tradition.  It is all too good to be true and so - these men reason - it must be false, it must be a lie.  Morton Smith must have forged this document because by virtue of its discovery, Morton Smith is elevated to a higher rank than these same scholars will ever attain . As such they all unconsciously - selfishly - decided to pull the rug out of from underneath Morton Smith. 

Let me give Wayne Meeks as an example.  His First Urban Christians is cited in scholarly articles and books over 620 times.  However next to the discovery of the Mar Saba document all his works amount to little more than toilet paper. 

Birger Pearson is one of my favorite scholars anywhere.  We share the same interests but we disagree fundamentally about the authenticity of the document.  Why should anyone believe me over this distinguished expert?  Because - as even he admitted to me in any email - he took Stephen Carlson's word that there was a "forger's tremor" in the manuscript. 

He saw the images that Carlson reproduced from the lowest resolution images possible and just assumed that Carlson would have used the best possible resolution photos.  Carlson didn't and this fact is a game changer in the debate.  Pearson was certainly convinced by Carlson's argument.  It prompted him to conclude that the document was a fake.  If it wasn't for pride, Pearson would admit that there is nothing substantive to the any of the arguments for forgery.  But then again, there is little more than vanity at the heart of the case for forgery. 

"Utterly senseless" says Qohelet, "Utterly senseless, everything is senseless."  Why should scholarship be any different?

To this end, I apologize to my friend Allan J Pantuck for not being able to say anything of substance about his wonderful article in BAR.  I agree whole-heartedly with his point of view.  I found his arguments and insights quite compelling.  But when it comes down to it, why bother layer another attack against the vain propagandists who cannot find a single substantive argument for their monstrous claims about a former colleague.  It would serve little purpose to continue attacking the absurdity of the other side.  It is just time to let them be.