Trump shares poll showing voters associate potential second term with ‘revenge’

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump posted a poll on Truth Social on Tuesday, highlighting that the word voters most associate with a potential second term under his command is “revenge.” — 

Wednesday, 27 Dec 2023 

WASHINGTON, Dec 27 — Republican presidential contender Donald Trump posted a poll on Truth Social on Tuesday, highlighting that the word voters most associate with a potential second term under his command is “revenge.”

With campaigning ramping up ahead of the first Republican nomination contest, the post followed a separate Truth Social message on Christmas Day, in which the former president called on his political opponents to “rot in hell.

The fact Trump re-posted the poll, presented in the form of a word cloud with “revenge” placed centrally in bright red capital letters, suggests his self-described “retribution” agenda is very much on his mind as the United States heads into an election year.

The poll was conducted by British pollster J.L. Partners.

Trump and many of his allies have been pledging to investigate, incarcerate and otherwise take revenge on his political opponents if he wins the 2024 presidential election in a likely re-match against Democratic President Joe Biden.

Facing dozens of federal charges, many related to his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss, Trump claims he is himself the victim of a revenge campaign orchestrated by Biden and his Justice Department.

Trump, 77, the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, denies any wrongdoing.

Earlier in December, former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Kash Patel, both of whom are still close to the former president, said on a podcast that Trump was “dead serious” about exacting revenge against perceived enemies.

Trump himself has repeatedly promised retribution against his political opponents during a potential second term, suggesting he would direct federal law enforcement agencies to investigate foes.

In an interview with conservative media personality Sean Hannity earlier in December, Trump pledged not to abuse his power or become a dictator “except on day one.”

Taken together, Trump’s comments portend a rough-and-tumble election season. The Iowa caucus, which kicks off the Republican presidential nominating contest, is set for Jan. 15, and Trump and his allies will be hosting a slew of campaign events in the state starting Jan. 3.

Trump’s main rivals for the Republican nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, will also be campaigning hard in Iowa and the second nominating state of New Hampshire in coming days.

In the Tuesday social media post, Trump shared the results of a poll commissioned by DailyMail.com, in which voters were asked to provide a word they most associate with Trump’s plans for a second term.

The results, presented in the form of a word cloud, indicated that “revenge” was the most popular choice. “Power,” “dictatorship,” “economy” and “America” rounded off the top five.

In the Dec. 25 Truth Social post, Trump directed his attacks toward those who disagreed with him politically, whom he called “thugs”.

“MAY THEY ROT IN HELL,” Trump wrote. “AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

A representative for the Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a Dec. 21 memo, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez portrayed Trump’s candidacy as a threat to democracy.

“He is running a campaign on revenge and retribution — and at the expense of Americans’ freedoms,” she wrote. 

— Reuters

 

Israel And Hamas Grapple With Egyptian Gaza Roadmap – Analysis

 

The secretary-general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, Ziyad al-Nakhalah. Photo: Iranian Presidency Office

 December 27, 2023  

By James M. Dorsey

Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the leader of Palestine Islamic Jihad, the second most significant militant Gazan group, arrived in Cairo this week for carefully timed talks with Egyptian intelligence chief General Abbas Kamel.

A Palestinian source said Mr. Al-Nakhalah was discussing an end to the Gaza war that would involve an exchange of prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and reconstruction of the devastated territory.

On the table was a three-stage Egyptian proposal that falls short of mutually exclusive Israeli and Palestinian demands.

Hamas used the plan to increase pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to prioritise the release of the remaining 107 living hostages kidnapped by the group during its October 7 attack on Israel and 22 bodies of killed captives rather than prosecution of the war.

Even so, finding common ground between Israel, bent on destroying Hamas at any cost and refusing to contemplate an end to the Gaza war, and Hamas’ refusal to negotiate further prisoner exchanges without Israel agreeing to a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal from Gaza amounts to a Herculean, if not impossible task.

More than 20,000 people, mostly innocent civilians, have been killed in Israel’s ten-week-old air and ground assault on Gaza. 

The Egyptian proposal seeks to maneuver the minefields by proposing the exchange of all remaining Hamas hostages for all Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, estimated at more than 7,000, in three phases over a period of up to two months during which both parties would hold their fire.

The proposal would allow Hamas to drop its demand for a permanent ceasefire as a pre-condition for prisoner exchanges.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Beirut-based Hamas political bureau member Osama Hamdan said the Egyptian plan was “still ideas” rather than a formal proposal. 

“We are not yet talking about a solid proposal,” Mr. Hamdan said.

Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz told hostage families that “there are Egyptian proposals and there are other proposals flying around from all kinds of directions. I don’t even know which of them are even relevant.”

The Egyptian proposal envisions Israeli withdrawals from Gaza during the period of exchanges that would force Israel, should hostilities revive, to adopt less devasting, more limited and targeted military operations in line with American demands. 

On the assumption that Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas is unrealistic, the plan further envisions Egyptian and Qatar-mediated reconciliation talks between Hamas and its archival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s West Bank-based Al-Fatah movement.

An inter-Palestinian agreement would open the door for Hamas to be part of the Palestinian administration of Gaza and the West Bank and join the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), a Palestinian umbrella group.

Seemingly responding to efforts to reconcile Hamas and Al-Fatah, Mr. Netanyahu, writing in The Wall Street Journal added deradicalization of Palestinian society to his war aims.

“Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized. These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza… Palestinian civil society needs to be transformed so that its people support fighting terrorism rather than funding it,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

The Egyptian plan envisions the creation of a technocratic Palestinian government that would take office in stage three. The government would prepare the ground for long-overdue presidential and parliamentary elections in which Hamas would compete.

“Who will decide the temporary leadership? Who will nominate these people? We have always said the Palestinian people must elect their own leadership,” said Mr. Hamdan, the Beirut Hamas spokesman.

That’s where the importance kicks in of the Cairo visit of Mr. Al-Nakhalah, whose Islamic Jihad group focuses on armed struggle against Israel, and not on the day after the war or contours of a future Palestinian polity or Palestinian state. 

The visit buys time for exiled Hamas officials to try to bridge differences with the group’s Gaza leadership.

Some of the exiled officials favour a reconciliation with Al-Fatah that would entail some form of implicit or explicit recognition of Israel while the Gaza leadership rejects concessions.

“What needs to happen is to expand the PLO in order to include in its ranks all Palestinian factions…especially Hamas (and) Islamic Jihad,… The Palestinian position is best presented to the world by a united Palestinian polity…. There is no other solution to the current impasse,” said former Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad.

If the exile officials prove successful, and that is if with a capital I, they could spark a paradigm shift in the dynamics of the Gaza war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict much like the PLO’s recognition of Israel and disavowal of violence did in the 1980s.

Hamas has so far rejected the PLO template. It argues that the template failed to produce an independent Palestinian state and contributed to a weakening of the Palestinians since the 1993 signing of the Oslo accords.

The shift in Hamas’ position advocated by the exiles would complicate life for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for whom acceptance of a role for Hamas in post-war Palestine would likely put the last nail in his political coffin. 

It would also put on the spot the Biden administration that supports Mr. Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas at any cost. 

In contrast to Israel, the United States wants to see a capable and effective Palestine Authority govern both the West Bank and Gaza.

As a result, Palestinian reconciliation could force the United States to exert the kind of pressure on Israel it has so far refrained from applying.

So far, US coaxing has not only failed to persuade Israel to change its military tactics to reduce innocent Palestinian casualties. 

Israel has also stymied the Biden administration’s efforts to make the discredited and cash-starved Palestine Authority viable and more fit for purpose by refusing to release US$140 million in Palestinian tax money frozen since October 7 so that the Authority can pay salaries.

A second proposal to end the Gaza war, reportedly drafted by Abdelaziz al-Sagher, head of the Saudi-backed Gulf Research Council, and Anne Grillo, head of the French foreign ministry’s North Africa and Middle East Department, called for the creation of a “joint transition council” to govern the territory for four years. 

The council, operating under the auspices of a United Nations-mandated Arab peacekeeping force, would include Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Paradoxally, the plan, which was likely to be even less palatable to Israel, threw Mr. Netanyahu a bone by suggesting that Hamas political and military leaders, whether in exile or Gaza, be shipped off to Algeria.

The Egyptian plan calls for a first phase during which Hamas and Israel, much like in November, would exchange 40 hostages – women, children, and the elderly — for 120 Palestinians during a seven-to-10-day truce that would also allow for the less fettered entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Last month, Israel released 240 Palestinians for more than 100 hostages, mainly women and children, during a one-week truce. 

In the second seven-day phase Hamas would release captive Israeli women soldiers and the bodies of Israelis killed since October 7.

That’s where the problems start given that the established ratio for the exchange of Israeli military personnel is far higher than the 1 Israeli for 3 Palestinians applied to civilian women and children.

In 2011, Hamas freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Palestinians. In 1984 Israel exchanged 4,500 Palestinians for six Israelis held in Lebanon by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and two years later 1,150 for three Israelis captured by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

The third month-long phase of Egypt’s plan would see the release of the remaining hostages, primarily Israeli military personnel, in exchange for all Palestinians still in Israeli prisons, including those convicted to long prison or life sentences for killing Israelis.

Their release could spark the breakup of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition government whose ultra-nationalist, ultra-conservative elements reject major concessions.

Blamed by a majority of Israelis for Israeli intelligence and operational failures that enabled Hamas’ October 7 attack in which more than 1,000 in majority civilians were killed, Mr. Netanyahu can ill-afford a political crisis.

“Potentially, Egypt’s proposal, if adopted, would constitute a victory for Hamas. If Hamas plays its card well, it could corner Netanyahu,” said an Arab diplomat.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, a Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore's Middle East Institute and Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and blog.

Winter isn't coming: 'Chaos' for animals as climate change messes with seasons

Shorter winters mean dormice wake early from hibernation and red deer are born closer to winter

Britain's National Trust says a dormouse waking early is a worrying 

indicator of climate change. PA

Tim Stickings

Dec 26, 2023

Animal behaviour is in chaos because climate change is interfering with the natural rhythm of the seasons, conservationists have said.

Dormice are waking early from hibernation in a sign of a shorter winter, meaning they have to use more energy than normal, according to Britain's National Trust.

The warmth is pushing back calving season for red deer, meaning babies are born closer to winter and have less time to grow and put on fat for the cold season.

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Shorter winters also mean fewer cold snaps to kill off tree pests such as the oak processionary moth, which is spreading north from its traditional Mediterranean home.

These were described as “extremely worrying” signs by Ben McCarthy, the National Trust's head of nature and restoration ecology, who called the changes something “we should be taking more notice of”.

“The shifting weather patterns we’re seeing in the UK, particularly with the warmer temperatures we’re experiencing, is continuing to upset the natural, regular rhythm of the seasons, causing stress to wildlife and making it more susceptible to pests and disease,” he said.

“This loss of predictability causes chaos for the annual behaviours of animals in particular, but can also impact trees and plants.”

Conservationists say red deer being born later in the year means they have less time to prepare for winter. PA

The trust said in an annual review that rangers and gardeners are mowing grass deeper into the year due to warmer conditions.

Shrubs have been budding early, exposing them to cold snaps while depriving insects of nectar during the summer.

There were also algal blooms – which can be harmful – and low water levels as early as January in the Lake District, as well as in Port Stewart, Northern Ireland, over the summer.

The Dubai climate deal agreed to by almost 200 countries this month stressed the importance of “conserving, protecting and restoring nature and ecosystems” in the fight against climate change.

But the impact of global warming is already becoming clear today, with wildlife such as salmon and coral reefs under threat as the world breaks temperature records.

If the world overshoots the key benchmark of 1.5°C of global warming, animals could go extinct with no hope of return even if temperatures eventually fall back down.

A Flourish map

At 2°C of warming, what would previously have been a once-in-50-year heatwave would happen every three to four years, according to scientific estimates. At 3°C, it would happen most years.

In Britain, all 10 of the warmest years in history have come since 2003, with forecasters yet to reveal whether 2023 has been another new high.

The UK recorded its hottest June ever this year, with the River Derwent in the Lake District, traditionally one of England’s wettest areas, drying out for the third consecutive summer.

“In the near future, we are likely to experience a combination of drought and high temperatures as well as high rainfall and flood – and we need to get ready for this new norm,” said Keith Jones, national climate change consultant at the National Trust.

“Water is going to be key – not having enough and also not too much.”

Updated: December 26, 2023, 5:01 PM

The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Controversial Scholar, a Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, and the Fierce Debate over Its Authenticity

Geoffrey S. Smith and Brent C. Landau
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2023; xi + 227 pp., hardcover, $35.

One of the greatest twentieth-century puzzles in New Testament scholarship is a letter discovered at the Mar Saba monastery in present-day Israel by the biblical scholar Morton Smith in 1958.

It is a fragment of a letter from the second-century church father Clement of Alexandria to one Theodore, and it discusses a secret version of the Gospel of Mark. According to this letter, Theodore (whose own letter has not survived) has an alleged copy of this text, but believes it has been corrupted by insertions of the Carpocratians, a libertine sect of the era.

Clement claims that this secret, longer version of Mark—“a more spiritual gospel for the benefit of those being made perfect”—was still preserved in the church of Alexandria in his time, though it was “very well guarded, being read only by those being initiated into the great mysteries.”

Clement also writes that he has a copy of this Gospel and compares his version with passages sent to him by Theodore. Clement quotes a passage from this secret Gospel. It describes the resurrection of a “young man” like the Lazarus of the Gospel of John. One evening six days later, says this Gospel, “the young man comes to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, because Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God.”

Some people see sexual antics here, and so apparently did the Carpocratians, because their version of this Gospel adds the expression “naked man to naked man,” but this and other passages mentioned by Theodore “are not found” in the authentic Secret Gospel, writes Clement.

Smith introduced this text to the learned world at a biblical conference in 1960, arousing a tumult that has not settled to this day. Smith’s own view of this letter was straightforward: he considered it to be a genuine document by Clement and that it described an initiation involving “the mystery of the kingdom of God.”

Many other scholars scoffed at this suggestion with cruel vehemence. Smith himself, some claimed, had forged the letter as an elaborate practical joke, leaving hidden “clues” to his identity in his handiwork. To give one especially ridiculous example, at one point Clement writes, “true things mixed with fictions are effaced, so that, as it is said, even salt loses its saltiness.” Guess what? This supposedly points to Morton Smith as the forger, because—Morton Salt! Get it?

Many other such pieces of “evidence” range from the ludicrous to the insane, but over decades of scrutiny, certain facts were sifted out. To judge from the handwriting, the text, found written in the inside of a seventeenth-century Latin volume, probably dates from the eighteenth century, so it was not from the author’s own hand (but that is true of practically all texts from antiquity). Its literary style is completely like Clement’s—too much so, some contend, that very fact marking it as a forgery.

This new book on the Secret Gospel controversy takes the discussion further. It goes through the previous claims of forgery by Smith and refutes them in a way that would be difficult to counter. Nevertheless, say the authors, the letter is a forgery—only not by Smith, who published it in good faith. They contend that it was written between the fifth and seventh centuries by an unknown monk supposedly legitimating “same-sex pairings through the special relationship he had with one younger, ‘beloved’ male disciple.” As these authors indicate, the Greek Orthodox church did in that period have a rite of adelphopoiesis (“making brothers”), which joined two men in a quasi-sacramental bond of chaste friendship that some have likened to gay marriage. The authors contend that Secret Gospel was written to vindicate this kind of same-sex relationship, chaste or not. Indeed the Secret Gospel says that after his resurrection, “the young man, looking at him [Jesus], loved him, and he began to beg him to be with him.”

This book’s discussion of the Secret Gospel debate from 1960 to the present is clear-headed and enlightening. But Smith and Landau’s arguments for their own hypothesis are almost as absurd as the ones they refute, and in fact they put their idea forward only in the briefest and sketchiest terms at the end of the book. In the first place, they make no reference to any polemic about same-sex relationships among monks, either in the period they mention or at any other point, so we have no reason to believe that this was an issue to begin with.

Furthermore, anyone wanting to concoct Scriptural evidence for same-sex relationships would not have written this text: it is too oblique for that purpose. It does not even mention same-sex relationships, except in the reference to “naked man to naked man”—but the letter itself says that this detail is not authentic to the Secret Gospel. Moreover, someone engaging in this supposed polemic could just as well have used quotes about the beloved disciple from the Gospel of John, which was universally accepted as canonical.

As for the fact that the young man “loved” Jesus, the Greek word here is egapesen—from the familiar Greek word agape—which does not connote any erotic or amorous themes; indeed it is the word the ancient Greeks used when those elements were absent.

It makes sense that Smith and Landau would see this text in the light of same-sex relationships, since present times are preoccupied with them and find homoerotic connotations wherever they exist and in many places where they do not. But the absurdity of their own theory merely vindicates Smith, who at least did not resort to hilariously speculative overcomplications.

Why have so many scholars refused to take this letter of Clement at face value and contrive so many ridiculous theories to explain it away? Because it points to something much more disturbing to contemporary New Testament scholars than mere homosexuality, which in any event they understand. It is evidence of an early initiatic Christianity that has been almost completely lost to memory, and which scholars do not understand.

Indeed the fact that the young man comes “wearing a linen cloth over his naked body” is evidence for this initiatic element, because that was the garment worn for initiation into the mysteries, as we see, for example, in Apuleius’s Golden Ass. Linen, being a vegetable rather than an animal product, was believed to be purer than wool.

The possibility of an authentic secret Gospel disturbs contemporary scholarship, because it would mean that everything they know of early Christianity is preliminary material only, “milk, and not . . . strong meat” (Hebrews 5:12). All memory of this initiatic Christianity would have been lost or more likely suppressed, although a few vague hints were permitted to survive in the New Testament, such as “we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7).

But “the mystery of the kingdom of God” did not survive in any apparent way, as will be obvious to anyone who reads the clownish attempts of New Testament scholars to explain what the “kingdom of God” actually is. This hidden wisdom was probably not identical with Gnosticism as known in the second century, although arguably it was close enough that it was swept away when the proto-catholic church in the second and third centuries purged itself of Gnostic elements.

Clement, then, living around the turn of the third century, would be a transitional figure: more than almost anyone else (even the Gnostics themselves), in his authenticated works he speaks of the “Gnostic” (gnostikos) and claims that the true Christian is also a true Gnostic. But as the Letter to Theodore indicates, he was committed to keeping this wisdom hidden: “One must never . . . concede that the Secret Gospel is from Mark, but even deny it with an oath. For not all true things are said to all people.”

We can speculate about this hidden wisdom, which Clement in this letter says “is veiled seven times.” But in the absence of better evidence, these will remain as speculations only. At any rate, Smith’s scholarly instincts—superior to those of his critics—were receptive to the possibility of this frustratingly lost Christianity.

This book will not shake your religious faith, if that is a concern to you. But it will do a rough job on your trust in New Testament scholarship.

Richard Smoley

https://www.theosophical.org/publications/quest-magazine

Did Morton Smith Forge the Secret Gospel of Mark?

• 
  

May 30, 2023

Last month (April 2023) I published a thread of blog posts on the intriguing and controversial Secret Gospel of Mark, allegedly discovered by Columbia University scholar Morton Smith in the library of the Greek orthodox monastery Mar Saba twelve miles southeast of Jerusalem.  He did not actually discover the Gospel itself, but (allegedly) discovered a letter that described and quoted it, allegedly written by the church father Clement of Alexandria (200 CE or so), allegedly copied by a scribe of the eighteenth century in the back blank pages of a seventeenth-century book otherwise (actually) containing the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (110 CE or so), in which Clement allegedly discusses a potentially scandalous edition of Mark’s Gospel allegedly used by a nefarious Gnostic group called the Carpocratians.  Confused yet?  Read the posts, starting with this one from April 12:

https://ehrmanblog.org/do-scholars-ever-forge-gospels

In my posts I did not give any evidence to show that this “alleged” discovery might not have been a discovery but a forgery, possibly by Smith himself, even though from the outset some (many?) scholars suspected it.  I myself suspect it.  Yet other scholars are quite vehement that it is absolutely authentic and that those of us who wonder/suspect otherwise are barking up the wrong tree.  It is a hot debate.

A new book has just come out on the matter, by two scholars of early Christianity at University of Texas, Brent Landau (whom I’ve known for years) and Geoffrey Smith (whom I know just a bit) The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Controversial Scholar, a Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, and the Fierce Debate over Its Authenticity.  They argue a new view, that the Secret Gospel is not authentic and is not a forgery by Smith, but a forgery by monk living at the monastery in late antiquity.

I’m completely open to this idea, but I don’t find their book convincing.  I have to admit I was a bit surprised by parts of it.  Landau and Smith maintain that my publications on Secret Mark were influential in re-kindling the debate on it and they take a good bit of time discussing and dismissing my arguments.  I was mainly surprised because I actually don’t think my publications played much of a role at all in the debates (like most authors, I always thought they *should* have made an impact, but I never noticed that they did  ).  More than that, I was a bit disappointed in their discussion of my arguments because they didn’t seem to understand them, or if they did understand them they didn’t quite explain them correctly (making it a bit easier to dismiss them).

In any event, I’ve only published on the matter twice, in my book Lost Christianities (a chapter on the matter, see my earlier posts) and in a more scholarly article that came out about the same time:

“Hedrick’s Consensus on the Secret Gospel of Mark,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003) pp. 155-64.

Since blog folk have asked, I’ve decided to lay out some of the reasons that I suspect Smith may have forged the work.  I’m not definite about the matter, and never have been.  But I do have my suspicions.  Here is how I lay out the the matter in the second half of my article mentioned above.  This will take two posts.

******************************

Let me state as clearly as I can: I am not saying that

I think Smith forged the letter.  I think the jury is still out.  But instead of rendering a judgment before the case is fully considered, I think we would do better to deal with the evidence and to see if any (genuine) new evidence can be found.

Let me summarize what strike me as the issues, under three rubrics: one matter that is hard to understand; several matters that are hard to explain; and a couple of matters that are hard not to find amusing.

(1) What is hard to understand involves the circumstance that Smith knew a lot about Greek manuscripts and ancient forgeries,[1] and must have known full well that in order to detect a forger at work, one needs to examine carefully the physical evidence itself, the manuscript, in hand, under microscope if possible, looking for characteristics of the pen, stray marks, ink bleeding into lines, hard to detect smudging.  In a famous interchange, Q. Quesnell objected to Smith’s claim that the letter was authentic without a scientific evaluation of the physical piece itself.  Smith rightly claimed that he didn’t have the physical specimen, just the photographs he took, but that if anyone wanted to see what it looked like, s/he could go to the monastery of Mar Saba and find the book and see for him or herself.  Fair enough.  But given everything Smith knew or came to know about manuscripts and their forgeries — why did he himself show no interest in going back to examine the manuscript?  He admits that at the time of the discovery he was rushed, and so he took his pictures and put the book back on the shelf.  But why would he spend fifteen years of his life reading and analyzing the words in the photographs knowing full well that the clues to forgery could not be found in the photographs but only in the physical specimen?

In any event, if the manuscript is ever “re”discovered, someone will simply need to test the ink; to argue that Smith fabricated eighteenth-century ink would be a bit of a stretch.  (It is not hard, by the way, to think that he fabricated an eighteenth-century hand; with some knowledge of palaeography, a few dated specimens, any skill at all, and a  little practice, it could be done easily enough.  There are certainly plenty of modern instances.)[2] 

At the end of the day, I don’t think we can say whether or not Smith forged the letter.  We won’t know until, if ever, the manuscript is found and subjected to a rigorous investigation, including the testing of the ink.  Until that happens, some will continue treating the piece as authentic, others will have their doubts.  But to urge that we declare the problem solved on the basis of no new evidence (Hedrick) or to label the question itself “absurd and slanderous”(Stroumsa) seems to me wrong-headed and ahistorical.  The discussions should deal with the issues, rather than pretend they do not exist or wish them away.

******************************

[1]He himself indicates that during his second PhD at Harvard he was influenced by Prof. Werner Jaeger, and “became interested in Greek manuscripts and manuscript hunting” (Secret Gospel, p. 8).  Of course he became yet more expert after he discovered the Clementine letter at Mar Saba.

[2]Examples of the phenomenon abound, ancient, late ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern – as the abundant literature on forgery attests.  Anyone who suspects that such a thing never could or never would be done, should simply read the massive documentation.  The classic study remains J. A. Farrer, Literary Forgeries (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907); for the ancient materials, no one has surpassed Wolfgang Speyer’s magisterial Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum: ein Versuch ihrer Deutung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1971).  For some amusing modern instances — including one perpetrated by two seminary students in the 1930s who managed to fool for a time one of the great experts on ancient Greek uncial manuscripts — see Bruce M. Metzger, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian (Peabody, Mass: Hedirckson, 1997), chap. 11.