The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition, edited by John L. Sharpe III and Kimberly Van Kampen (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
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.
Forgery in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2009
I wish to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for its generous support of my research for this project. I also thank Saint Mary's Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research for its provision of a grant in aid of research, and I extend my gratitude to the archivists at the Bank of England Archives for their gracious assistance. It has been my extreme good fortune to have received the help and encouragement of so many inspiring scholars during my work on this project. Chief among them is Jill L. Matus, to whom I am greatly indebted for this book's completion and for so much more. Her guidance and support has been instrumental to my intellectual growth from the earliest days of my work, and she continues to provide me with an admirable model of scholarly excellence and collegiality. Jim Adams's generosity knows no bounds, and I am grateful to have had the benefit of his exemplary counsel during a critical point in this book's development. I owe a great deal to Alan Bewell, Garry Leonard, and John Reibetanz, each of whom has been exceptionally giving of his time, knowledge, and enthusiasm. Christopher Keep has had a greater inf luence on my work than he perhaps knows, and I thank him for it. I also wish to thank the following individuals for their attention to various parts of this book during its development:
Forgery, Pseudepigrapha, and Other Typologies of Continuation in Latin Literature
Forgery beyond deceit: fabrication, value and the desire for ancient Rome, 2023
Since the late seventeenth century, the English term "forgery" has been used ubiquitously with reference to ancient texts that are suspected to have been written at a different time from when they were composed or by someone other than the transmitted author. Indeed, the unmasking of texts construed as "forgeries" is in many ways the foundational gesture of classical philology. Richard Bentley famously railed against the author of a letter purporting to be written by the tyrant Phalaris; he claimed that through his philological demonstration "our Sophist stands fully convicted, upon this Indictment, of forgery and imposture. "1 It is now well recognized that the word "forgery, " which implies a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader, originated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the spread of the printed book and the development of intellectual property and copyright.2 Scholars have largely acknowledged that the term is a misnomer when it comes to much of the surviving record from antiquity, including the Epistle of Phalaris:3 given the importance of imitation of canonical authors in ancient education, texts that would have been considered forgeries until recently are increasingly studied through the lens of comparable practices of role-play in declamatory exercises, historical fiction, authorial collaboration, and continuation.4 This heterogeneous corpus thus includes works for which authorship and purported date of composition are a fiction designed to entertain rather than a ruse with the
https://www.barkhuis.nl/product\_info.php?products\_id=240, 2018
any 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, forgeries and questions of authenticity. The result is this volume, in which our aim is to display some of the many possibilities available to 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? Following Splendide Mendax, this is the latest installment of an ongoing inquiry, conducted by scholars in numerous countries, into how the ancient world-its literature and culture, its history and art-appears when viewed through the lens of fakes and forgeries, sincerities and authenticities, genuine signatures and pseudepigrapha. How does scholarship tell the truth if evidence doesn't? As the Cyclops is munching on the comrades of Odysseus, is he lulled into thinking that any creatures so easily deceived must be too stupid to accomplish meaningful deception themselves? Sentimental tradition reads the Odyssey and identifies the blind bard Demodokos, singing his tales at the court of Alkinoos, to be Homer's own self-portrait. But what if we thought about the blind Cyclops in the same way? How does scholarship evaluate the truth con