Guest guest Posted October 19, 2003 Report Share Posted October 19, 2003 > The cornerstone of the rise of both Christianity and Islam is that > the believers braved life and limb in order to stand steadfast to > the Truth... > > Fast forward to 2003. The world is far safer than what the devotees > of Jesus or Prophet Muhammad had to endure... > > But what do we have? SYs living in collective caves fearful of even > venturing out to proclaim the Truth... > > Then there are a few who decide to boldly take Shri Mataji's > message to the masses... > > Instead of appreciating the tremendous work... and the utter lack > of resistance... diligently to undermine... " Now I have revisited this old controversy. In the course of my recent research re: the compositional history of the Secret Gospel of Mark... Speculation has been rife in recent years that Smith was the forger of this intriguing document, or else was in charge of a criminal conspiracy to produce this forgery. Such speculation has been broadcast of late especially by the famous scholar Prof. Jack Neusner... Neusner is of course a very influential man in the biblical field, and his views cannot be disregarded. Some other scholars also tended to lend support to such accusations. It is my purpose to show in this article that these accusations are entirely without merit, and that, if anything, they may only raise doubts about the professional competence of those making them. It seems like most serious opponents of SecMk in the last few years have been focusing their criticism on the fact that the manuscript has been seen by so few... I've suggested before that perhaps the main reason the manuscript has been seen by so few was that so few were really so interested in seeing it. Certainly it is a lot easier to spread groundless rumours behind people's backs than to go out and actually do such field research, which, needless to say, may involve such complications as having to pack your suitcase and do a bit of travel for a change... It is to the credit of Charles Hedrick that he did... To summarize. To accomplish _the three_ such highly complex forgeries, and not to have been caught, would have been beyond the power of one man. To have even _attempted_ such a hopeless task, a task both so hopeless and so time- consuming, would have been quite silly, and Smith was generally not thought of as silly. And finally, when Smith's discovery is looked at dispassionately, there's really not much there on the surface. What kind of an earth-shaking reaction did he accomplish? Not much really beyond some obscure disputes among professional text crunchers. It's not like the ms just comes out and says, " Jesus was a homosexual, and the whole of Christian religion is a hoax " ... Not at all. All it really says is that the Carpocratian heretics were perverts and twisted the Scriptures. But this was already well known before. So, in other words, the pay-off from such a monumental forgery would have been not all that much in any case. " http://www1.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Secret/secret_tc-list.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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