From Stalemate to Deadlock: Clement’s Letter to Theodore in Recent Scholarship

Abstract

This article reviews the literature pertaining to the recent debate over the question of authenticity of Clement's Letter to Theodore (including the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark) and argues that the academy has tied itself into a secure deadlock. The current 'trench warfare' situation is due to various scholarly malpractices, which include the practice of non-engagement with other scholars, abusive language towards them and mischaracterization of their position. In order to remedy the situation and move the discussion forwards a number of correcting acts are suggested.

WWFD or What Would a Forger Do: A Critical Inquiry of Poorly Argued Contemporary Cases for Forgery

“…Previously cited examples, such as the notion that Codex Tchacos is a modern forgery, are maintained on equal grounds-that specifically the Gospel of Judas is too little of a genre match with other ancient exemplars, too much of a topical match with contemporary points of discussion, too little of a substantial match with other ancient variants of the Gnostic myth, too much of a literary match with the Secret Book of John, and containing some (but apparently too many) grammatical anomalies (Arthur, 2008). Even more excessively, as documented by Paananen (2012), the manuscript of Clement's Letter to Theodore was likewise deemed a modern forgery in 2005 with a breathtaking amount of individual details, ranging from its physical characteristics to palaeographic anomalies and beyond, in a manner that constructed a 'suspicious effect' that pushed a number of prominent scholars to preemptively call the case closed. The assessment of the depth of the 'suspicious effect', whether it is warranted or not, required in the latter case a laborious process to consider each of the details framed as suspicious according to some sort of sensible, constrained criteria, including considerations of statistical nature regarding the various absolute numbers presented as suspicious (Solow and Smith, 2009).…”