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This volume offers further evidence that Morton Smith composed the manuscript claimed to be a Letter of Clement of Alexandria that quoted a Secret Gospel of Mark. Jeffery examines the history of liturgy and finds that Smith's imagined initiation ceremony did not fit the practice in Alexandria at the time. Jeffery shows that Smith pursued fairly desultory work in cataloging the Mar Saba library, if that had been his main purpose. For example, why didn't Smith examine the folder of old manuscript fragments, if his interest had been to find old texts? Smith didn't bother to check in the Jerusalem library (where most Mar Saba manuscripts had been moved) for texts by the same hand as his claimed find. And, as I noted previously, why didn't Smith--who published the admonition for scholars to check old books for marginal annotations--write anything about the 1646 Voss book margins?
Jeffery engages previous critiques of Smith's claims mostly merely quite briefly, and goes his own way. So the work of integrating his insights with previous scholarship remains for reviewers to evaluate. The book is not free of errors; on page 2 Jeffery says Smith got his "second doctorate" at Hebrew University, but that 1945 degree was before his 1957 Harvard Th.D. Page 13 does not clearly distinguish Smith's sending of photos for paleography analysis from his sending of copies of his text commentary for review. Perhaps others will comment on Jeffery's Roman Catholic perspective on the Anglican Church and on homosexuality. In any case, this is a learned and lively book that, in my view, shows even more than before that Smith wrote the Letter with Secret Mark.
Jeffery wrote (p.263 n.65) that Smith's 1958 private publication Manuscript Material from the Monastery of Mar Saba, Discovered, Transcribed and Translated by Morton Smith "no doubt" included photographs. Perhaps so, but he has not seen it (nor have I). It was an exceedingly limited publication. The Smith papers (minus letters destroyed; except for the Scholem correspondence, originals of both sides, preserved in Jerusalem) are being cataloged at Jewish Theological Seminary. Those papers may provide more insight. The first individual Smith mentioned that he showed his text was not a Greek Orthodox at the Mar Saba but Gershom Scholem in Jerusalem. Smith previously studied with that great scholar of Jewish mysticism and author of Shabbatai Sevi, The Mystical Messiah, a seventeenth-century figure. In a 1976 letter to Scholem Smith wrote: "I think I've learned more about Jesus from you and Shabbatai Zvi (I'm sometimes not sure which is which) than I have from any other source except the magical papyri..." I suggest that Smith may indeed have mixed the two, and projected the antinomian, anti-Torah behavior of Sevi onto his invented, pseudo-ancient story about Jesus.
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I am not finished reading--it's hard to know what finished would be--but I am sure this work deserves the full five stars. I started reading it straight through, but kept getting delightfully sidetracked, remembering another quotation, like an old acquaintance. The editors have done a tremendous amount of research, especially in tracking down many early attestations, especially for modern American texts. This is such a solid reference book that it can't hurt to note that there is no Platonic ideal collection. Though what's included is massive and well-selected, part of the fun is to see what is absent too. Sure, I recall Jimmy Durante saying 'I got a million of 'em' (included), but I did not find his 'Everybody wants to get into the act' under his name. It turns out that it is included, but listed under Radio Catchphrases. I could have found the saying that I heard on TV in the keyword index, but a cross-reference at Durante would have been helpful. Though the front matter clearly delineates the format, one could question omitting known political speech writers credit in political quotations, for example, in Agnew's unhappy phrase 'nattering nabobs of negativism.' William Safire will be not amused. The evidence for attributing 'damned lies, and statistics' to Disraeli, rather than Courtney or another, seems to me rather questionable. For example, YBQ cites a 1895 statement of a letter writer who thought Disraeli said it, but in a 1894 book Price Collier attributed the saying to Walter Bagehot. Other quotations will, no doubt, be antedated, and some attributions reassigned, and presumably included in a revised edition. Absent: 'the whole nine yards.' This appeared in Vietnam GI slang in 1966. By then 'Montagnards' were slangily called ''yards.' In 1966 Navy Chaplain and anthropologist R. L. Mole published a book on Nine Tribes of Montagnards in I Corps area (the north of South Vietnam). To get all of them as allies, I suggest, gave rise to the phrase for the full compliment, the whole nine yards. But there is admittedly no consensus on this yet. As Saul Lieberman reportedly said in introducing G. Scholem's lectures on Kabbalah, 'Nonsense is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is scholarship.' (Though other tradents report that he said 'history,' not 'study.') In any case, this is a fine reference work.
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The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery by Peter Jeffery
stephen goranson, January 16, 2007
This volume offers further evidence that Morton Smith composed the manuscript claimed to be a Letter of Clement of Alexandria that quoted a Secret Gospel of Mark. Jeffery examines the history of liturgy and finds that Smith's imagined initiation ceremony did not fit the practice in Alexandria at the time. Jeffery shows that Smith pursued fairly desultory work in cataloging the Mar Saba library, if that had been his main purpose. For example, why didn't Smith examine the folder of old manuscript fragments, if his interest had been to find old texts? Smith didn't bother to check in the Jerusalem library (where most Mar Saba manuscripts had been moved) for texts by the same hand as his claimed find. And, as I noted previously, why didn't Smith--who published the admonition for scholars to check old books for marginal annotations--write anything about the 1646 Voss book margins?Jeffery engages previous critiques of Smith's claims mostly merely quite briefly, and goes his own way. So the work of integrating his insights with previous scholarship remains for reviewers to evaluate. The book is not free of errors; on page 2 Jeffery says Smith got his "second doctorate" at Hebrew University, but that 1945 degree was before his 1957 Harvard Th.D. Page 13 does not clearly distinguish Smith's sending of photos for paleography analysis from his sending of copies of his text commentary for review. Perhaps others will comment on Jeffery's Roman Catholic perspective on the Anglican Church and on homosexuality. In any case, this is a learned and lively book that, in my view, shows even more than before that Smith wrote the Letter with Secret Mark.
Jeffery wrote (p.263 n.65) that Smith's 1958 private publication Manuscript Material from the Monastery of Mar Saba, Discovered, Transcribed and Translated by Morton Smith "no doubt" included photographs. Perhaps so, but he has not seen it (nor have I). It was an exceedingly limited publication. The Smith papers (minus letters destroyed; except for the Scholem correspondence, originals of both sides, preserved in Jerusalem) are being cataloged at Jewish Theological Seminary. Those papers may provide more insight. The first individual Smith mentioned that he showed his text was not a Greek Orthodox at the Mar Saba but Gershom Scholem in Jerusalem. Smith previously studied with that great scholar of Jewish mysticism and author of Shabbatai Sevi, The Mystical Messiah, a seventeenth-century figure. In a 1976 letter to Scholem Smith wrote: "I think I've learned more about Jesus from you and Shabbatai Zvi (I'm sometimes not sure which is which) than I have from any other source except the magical papyri..." I suggest that Smith may indeed have mixed the two, and projected the antinomian, anti-Torah behavior of Sevi onto his invented, pseudo-ancient story about Jesus.
(0 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro
stephen goranson, November 20, 2006
I am not finished reading--it's hard to know what finished would be--but I am sure this work deserves the full five stars. I started reading it straight through, but kept getting delightfully sidetracked, remembering another quotation, like an old acquaintance. The editors have done a tremendous amount of research, especially in tracking down many early attestations, especially for modern American texts. This is such a solid reference book that it can't hurt to note that there is no Platonic ideal collection. Though what's included is massive and well-selected, part of the fun is to see what is absent too. Sure, I recall Jimmy Durante saying 'I got a million of 'em' (included), but I did not find his 'Everybody wants to get into the act' under his name. It turns out that it is included, but listed under Radio Catchphrases. I could have found the saying that I heard on TV in the keyword index, but a cross-reference at Durante would have been helpful. Though the front matter clearly delineates the format, one could question omitting known political speech writers credit in political quotations, for example, in Agnew's unhappy phrase 'nattering nabobs of negativism.' William Safire will be not amused. The evidence for attributing 'damned lies, and statistics' to Disraeli, rather than Courtney or another, seems to me rather questionable. For example, YBQ cites a 1895 statement of a letter writer who thought Disraeli said it, but in a 1894 book Price Collier attributed the saying to Walter Bagehot. Other quotations will, no doubt, be antedated, and some attributions reassigned, and presumably included in a revised edition. Absent: 'the whole nine yards.' This appeared in Vietnam GI slang in 1966. By then 'Montagnards' were slangily called ''yards.' In 1966 Navy Chaplain and anthropologist R. L. Mole published a book on Nine Tribes of Montagnards in I Corps area (the north of South Vietnam). To get all of them as allies, I suggest, gave rise to the phrase for the full compliment, the whole nine yards. But there is admittedly no consensus on this yet. As Saul Lieberman reportedly said in introducing G. Scholem's lectures on Kabbalah, 'Nonsense is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is scholarship.' (Though other tradents report that he said 'history,' not 'study.') In any case, this is a fine reference work.(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)