Home›Open Questions›Where are the Mar Saba leaves, and would ink and paper analysis settle whether the letter is a modern forgery?Open QuestionsWhere are the Mar Saba leaves, and would ink and paper analysis settle whether the letter is a modern forgery?Citation FormatsGeneral ReferenceGeneral Reference Citation TextDivinity Atlas. "Where are the Mar Saba leaves, and would ink and paper analysis settle whether the letter is a modern forgery?." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/open-questions-index/where-are-the-mar-saba-leaves-and-would-ink-and-paper-analysis-settle-whether-the-letter-is-a-modern-forgery.Copy General ReferenceAPA StyleAPA Style Citation TextDivinity Atlas. (n.d.). Where are the Mar Saba leaves, and would ink and paper analysis settle whether the letter is a modern forgery?. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/open-questions-index/where-are-the-mar-saba-leaves-and-would-ink-and-paper-analysis-settle-whether-the-letter-is-a-modern-forgeryCopy APA StyleBibTeXBibTeX Citation Text@misc{divinityatlas-where-are-the-mar-saba-leaves-and-would, author = {Divinity Atlas}, title = {Where are the Mar Saba leaves, and would ink and paper analysis settle whether the letter is a modern forgery?}, year = {2026}, url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/open-questions-index/where-are-the-mar-saba-leaves-and-would-ink-and-paper-analysis-settle-whether-the-letter-is-a-modern-forgery}, note = {Accessed August 30, 2026} }Copy BibTeXOpen QuestionCross-Tradition ConnectionsSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)Open QuestionThe leaves were removed from their printed volume at the library of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem after the examination of 1983 and have not been publicly produced since. Nobody has stated where they are. Every argument about the document, on both sides of a fifty-year dispute, therefore rests on two sets of photographs, one black and white from 1958 and one colour from 1983. No ink analysis, no paper analysis and no examination of the writing under magnification by a document examiner with the original in front of them has ever been carried out. This is not a case of scholars disagreeing about evidence; it is a case of the evidence being unavailable.What would resolve this Locating the leaves within the Patriarchate library and permitting a standard document examination: ink composition, comparison of the ink against other eighteenth-century writing in the same collection, paper and pen analysis, and assessment of the hand by a forensic document examiner. Any of those would bear directly on whether the writing is of the eighteenth century or the twentieth, which is the question the whole dispute turns on.OpenManuscript studies and Greek palaeography; forensic document examination and ink chemistry; and the cooperation of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.Scott G. Brown, Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial DiscoveryCross-Tradition ConnectionsQuestion OnMar Saba Letter, Textual Witnesses Well-attested Source Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial DiscoveryScott G. Browntier 1SourcesMark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discoverytier 1Scott G. Brown, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005Comments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.View At A Past YearThe atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.Show This Year