A Note to Self While Carrying Out My Research Today

Have been on the phone for most of the afternoon doing phone interviews for the new book on the Mar Saba controversy.  One thing that is becoming increasingly clear.  In order to write an interesting book you have to write a compelling narrative.  Yet to write a compelling narrative you have to be able to explain the motivation of the central characters and therein lies a serious difficulty.

For it is far more difficult to make sense of Morton Smith than cracking the context of the Letter to Theodore as a second century Alexandrian text. I think that's why all the 'hoaxers' focus so much attention on Smith. He is an enigma. But not all enigmas are bad. Indeed enigmatic things, things which lie hidden and protected from the outside world through a hard outer shell once boiled and 'cracked' are very tender and soft on the inside. Case in point - most varieties of crab.