Kata Markon

["Professor L.W. Hurtado" <hurtadol AT div.ed.ac.uk>]

Wieland Willker writes:
> Dear Larry,
> your points are all well and good and I can accept them except the first.
> By complaining that the manuscript has never been independently analysed
> you are accusing yourself. This is your job. Or the job of the
> theological/papyrological science. You (I mean you all) haven't done
> anything in the last 30 years. I can't understand that. M. Smith maybe was
> a weird person and one can reject his strange theories, but he has
> discovered something interesting. This manuscript must be analysed to
> prove its genuineness. Nobody has done this in 30 years, so I think
> something is wrong. Let's hope C. Hedrick comes up with something.

Well, yes, in a way.  There have been several attempts to verify the 
existence of the alleged ms, and none of them have been 
successful.  *My* complaint is not that this hasn't been attempted, 
nor even that it hasn't been successful.  My complaint and 
*caution* has to do with historical method:  We can't really 
entertain seriously various assertions about Secret Mark (even by 
illustrious scholars) which are ventured *without* any 
acknowlegement that they are not scientifically serious *to the 
degree that they ignore the state of our evidential basis*.  

L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  L.Hurtado AT ed.ac.uk