Another “Fake” Or Just a Problem of Method: What Francis Watson’s Analysis Does to Papyrus Köln 255? (original) (raw)
Related papers
"The Gospel of Jesus' Wife: Textual Evidence of Modern Forgery" (New Testament Studies)
New Testament Studies, 2015
The present essay summarises textual evidence indicating that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife is essentially a ‘patchwork’ of words and short phrases culled from the lone extant Coptic manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi Codex II), prepared by a forger using Michael W. Grondin’s 2002 PDF edition of this manuscript. The text contains at least five tell-tale signs of its modern origin, including the apparent replication of a typographical (and grammatical) error from Grondin’s edition. A direct link between it and Grondin’s work also seems to be confirmed by the earliest known English translation of the fragment.
2019
A standard approach in historically minded disciplines to documents and other artefacts that have become suspect is to concentrate on their dissimilarities with known genuine artefacts. While such an approach works reasonably well with relatively poor forgeries, more skilfully done counterfeits have tended to divide expert opinions, demanding protracted scholarly attention. As there has not been a widespread scholarly consensus on a constrained set of criteria for detecting forgeries, a pragmatic maximum for such dissimilarities—as there are potentially an infinite numbers of differences that can be enumerated between any two artefacts—has been impossible to set. Thus, rather than relying on a philosophically robust critical framework, scholars have been accustomed to approaching the matter on a largely case-by-case basis, with a handful of loosely formulated rules for guidance. In response to these shortcomings, this dissertation argues that a key characteristic of inquiry in historically minded disciplines should be the ability to distinguish between knowledge-claims that are epistemically warranted—i.e., that can be asserted post hoc from the material reality they have become embedded in with reference to some sort of rigorous methodological framework—and knowledge-claims that are not. An ancient letter by Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 CE) to Theodore, in which two passages from the Longer Gospel of Mark (also known as the Secret Gospel of Mark) are quoted, has long been suspected of having been forged by Morton Smith (1915–1991), its putative discoverer. The bulk of this dissertation consists of four different articles that each use different methodological approaches. The first, a discourse analysis on scholarly debate over the letter’s authenticity, illuminates the reasons behind its odd character and troubled history. Second, archival research unearths how data points have become corrupted through unintended additions in digital-image processing (a phenomenon labelled line screen distortion here). Third, a quantitative study of the handwriting in Clement’s Letter to Theodore shows the inadequacy of unwittingly applying palaeographic standards in cases of suspected deceptions compared to the standards adhered to in forensic studies. Additionally, Smith’s conduct as an academic manuscript hunter is found to have been consistent with the standard practices of that profession. Finally, a study of the conceptual distinctions and framing of historical explanations in contemporary forgery discourse reveals the power of the methodologic approach of WWFD (What Would a Forger Do?), which has recently been used in three varieties (unconcealed, concealed, and hyperactive) to construe suspected documents as potential forgeries—despite its disregard of justificatory grounding in favour of coming up with free-form, first-person narratives in which the conceivable functions as its own justification. Together, the four articles illustrate the pitfalls of scholarly discourse on forgeries, especially that surrounding Clement’s Letter to Theodore. The solution to the poor argumentation that has characterized the scholarly study of forgeries is suggested to be an exercise in demarcation: to decide (in the abstract) which features should be acceptable as evidence either for or against the ascription of the status of forgery to an historical artefact. Implied within this suggestion is the notion of constraint, i.e., such that a constrained criterion would be one that cannot be employed to back up both an argument and its counter-argument. A topical case study—a first step on the road to creating a rigorous standard for constrained criteria in determining counterfeits—is the alternative narrative of an imagined creation of Clement’s Letter to Theodore by Smith around the time of its reported discovery (1958). Concealed indicators of authority, or the deliberate concealment of authorial details within the forged artefact by the forger, is established as a staple of the literary strategy of mystification, and their post hoc construction as acceptable evidence of authorship is argued to follow according to criteria: 1) that the beginning of the act of decipherment of a concealed indicator of authority has to have been preceded by a literary primer that is unambiguous to a high degree, 2) that, following the prompting of the literary primer, the act of deciphering a concealed indicator of authority has to have adhered to a technique or method that is unambiguous to a high degree, and 3) that, following the prompting of the literary primer and the act of decipherment, both of which must have been practiced in an unambiguous manner to a high degree, the plain-text solution to the concealed indicator of authority must likewise be unambiguous to a high degree.
‘A fake Coptic John and its implications for the 'Gospel of Jesus's Wife'’
Tyndale Bulletin, 2014
The recent revelation of a Coptic Gospel of John fragment from the same source as the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” has decisively altered the discussion concerning the authenticity of the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” fragment. The Coptic John fragment is a crude copy from Herbert Thompson’s 1924 edition of the “Qau codex” and is a product of the same modern writing event as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” fragment. Both texts are modern forgeries written on genuinely ancient fragments of papyrus.
http://www.barkhuis.nl/product\_info.php?products\_id=211, 2016
Scholars for centuries have regarded fakes and forgeries chiefly as an opportunity for exposing and denouncing deceit, rather than appreciating the creative activity necessary for such textual imposture. But shouldn’t we be more curious about what’s spurious? Many of these long-neglected texts merit serious reappraisal, when considered as artifacts with a value beyond mere authenticity. We do not have to be fooled by a forgery to find it fascinating, when even the intention to deceive can remind us how easy it is form beliefs about texts. The greater difficulty is that once beliefs have been formed by one text, it is impossible to approach the next without preconceptions potentially disastrous for scholarship. The exposure of fraud and the pursuit of truth may still be valid scholarly goals, but they implicitly demand that we confront the status of any text as a focal point for matters of belief and conviction. Recent approaches to forgery have begun to ask new questions, some intended purely for the sake of debate: Ought we to consider any author to have some inherent authenticity that precludes the possibility of a forger's successful parody? If every fake text has a real context, what can be learned about the cultural circumstances which give rise to forgeries? If every real text can potentially engender a parallel history of fakes, what can this alternative narrative teach us? What epistemological prejudices can lead us to swear a fake is genuine, or dismiss the real thing as inauthentic? Many new and fruitful avenues of investigation open up when scholars consider forgery as a creative act rather than a crime. We invited authors to contribute work without imposing any restrictions beyond a willingness to consider new approaches to the subject of ancient fakes and forgeries,. The result is this volume, in which our aim is to display some of the many possibilities available to scholarship when the forger is regarded as “splendide mendax”— splendidly untruthful.
The Gospel of Jesus ’ Wife : How a fake Gospel-Fragment was composed INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY
A gospel or gospel-fragment might be regarded as " fake " whether its author belongs to the ancient or the modern world. In both cases, the aim would be to persuade as many readers as possible to take the new text seriously – as a window onto unknown aspects of Jesus' life, or how it was perceived by his later followers. In her thorough and helpful analysis of the text that is coming to be known as the Gospel of Jesus' Wife (GJW), Karen King rightly points out that new items of information about the historical Jesus are not to be expected from it. 2 It can though provide valuable insights into early Christian debates about sexuality and gender. At least, it can do so if it is " genuine " , genuinely old. King admits to initial scepticism, but is now convinced that this papyrus fragment derives from a fourth century copy of a second century text. I shall argue here that scepticism is exactly the right attitude. The text has been constructed out of small pi...