Agamemnon Tselikas’ Handwriting Analysis Report Did Morton Smith Forge "Secret Mark"?

[Peter Kirby]

As to Martijn, he asserted his that view was supported by Coptic dictionaries, yet those same dictionaries were written by Coptic scholars who would not ever accept this dating of Coptic Gospel of Thomas to a time before Coptic language even existed.

Well, that's not what I'm talking about. I was talking about the discussion being rather unpleasant if it were critical.

[StephenGoranson]

Because you wrote "... Martijn unintentionally discourages candid discussion of his work by his toxicity."
that's why I thought it relevant.

[Peter Kirby]

I understand. I was echoing Ken's statement here:

But the reason I avoid interacting with you on this forum in general is not your inconsistency. A lot of forum members are inconsistent. Everyone is at times. It's your toxicity.

[billd89]

Agamemnon Tselikas’ Handwriting Analysis Report
Did Morton Smith Forge "Secret Mark"?

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dai ... is-report/

In his extensive multi-part report, Tselikas explains that the handwriting of the Clement letter doesn’t match that of any other scribe at Mar Saba monastery, where the manuscript was discovered by Morton Smith, and in fact indicates forgery or imitation of 18th-century Greek script. Monastery records show that the book was not in its collection as of 1923, and due to strict supervision in the library, the letter could not have been copied into the book after 1923, so it must have been copied elsewhere and brought to the Mar Saba library later. Tselikas concludes that Smith’s opportunity and motive make him the most likely suspect and that Smith probably forged the letter or had someone else do it for him before bringing the book to Mar Saba.

Agamemnon Tselikas’ Summary:
Based on extensive report I sent you on the letter of St. Clement I expose here a summary of my remarks.

I noticed several grammatical errors in the text which we can divide into two categories: Those which are due to the “author” and those which are due to the copyist. The first category concerns syntactic and meaning errors, which St. Clement would not be possible to make. The second category concerns the wrong dictation of some words. This phenomenon is frequent in the Byzantine and post Byzantine manuscripts and we can not give particular importance. However, if the scribe generally appears as an experienced and very careful, some of these mistakes show that he had not sufficient knowledge of the language.

The main palaeographical observation is 1) that a big number of lines of the letters and links are not continuous, fact which means that the hand of the scribe was not moving spontaneously, but carefully and tentatively to maintain the correct shape of the letter. 2) That there are some completely foreign or strange and irregular forms that do not belong to the generally traditional way and rule of Greek writing.

Most convincing is that the edition of Ignatius with the letter already written by Morton Smith or by someone else was placed in the library by Morton Smith himself.

Once we prove that the handwriting of the letter is alien to the genuine and traditional Greek, we can accept that it is an imitation of an older script.

A comparison of the handwriting of the Greek letters of Morton Smith with the handwriting of Clement’s letter can not give significant evidence that Morton Smith is the scribe, and this because as imitation, certainly the scribe of the letter would not use his own personal style. Nevertheless, some factors point to Morton Smith. My conclusion is that the letter is product of a forgery and all the evidences suggest that the forger can not be other person than Morton Smith or some other person under his orders. Morton Smith was able to do it. He had the model (the described manuscripts), the appropriate and famous place for the discovery (St. Sabba Monastery), the reason (to become known and significant).

I reckon Smith met a Greek forger (crossed paths w/ a few dodgy types in Jaffa, etc.), got to thinking, drafted the text himself, paid the copyist 20 quid or so, and visited the seminary to plant the evidence himself sometime afterwards. The ploy isn't so complicated, really.

Or smthg along these lines, basically.

Apropos put-ons, THIS Creepy Cherman Murderer was my neighbor, btw. His ruse was vastly more confounding to simpletons -- but Crock Rockaphony was further out there, too. (I heard his Cherman accent; why couldn't other people??!) From all that nuttery -- in my nabe and the stories from Cali and NYC -- I concluded that most people just WANT to be fooled, really.

[Peter Kirby]

I reckon Smith met a Greek forger (crossed paths w/ a few dodgy types in Jaffa, etc.)

I am asking about this because it piques my curiosity, not as a rhetorical question.

Do we have some known examples of Greek forgers with competency in reproducing a 17th to 19th century hand?

[Secret Alias]

Tselikas would know. One of the few who would.

[Secret Alias]

Forgery seems to come up a lot in C K Chesterton's Father Brown. Quesnell seems to have modeled himself as a real life Father Brown. https://books.google.com/books?id=pK3RD ... 22&f=false

I see at least four references to Father Brown solving mysteries by detecting forgeries. https://books.google.com/books?id=Mz3mE ... 22&f=false

I wonder if Carlson and Quesnell spoke. This detective story angle is curious. I think Quesnell thought he was Father Brown in Jerusalem. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:C ... wn.djvu/81

[Peter Kirby]

Thanks gdoudna for that additional information.

I can confirm that this is from Dr. Gregory Doudna.

[Secret Alias]

Another point. When I was young I was so weird that people inevitably assumed I was only child. Because I was taken to what they started to call a "gifted program" I didn't go to the same school as my brother. We didn't spend a lot of time together from grade 4 onward because we went to separate schools and everyone hated me (I blamed going to the gifted program which was selected based on IQ and I assumed it was resentment, the participants at this forum know better, it was me). Anyway, when I reached puberty EVERYONE simply assumed I was only child. I mean they had no idea I had a brother. "I assumed you were an only child" was something I heard like every month. My point is if you go back to Scarboro (back then "Scarborough") Ontario and meet the peers from the gifted program and Woburn Collegiate they will tell you "Huller, you mean the only child." Assumptions become facts. My wife FWIW went to the Catholic school system and was so good at giving speeches she ended up competing against teenagers. One of the people she defeated was Jim Carrey. Her "Braces" speech defeated "I am going to grow up to be a comedian" speech. True story.

[Secret Alias]

And look at the Duke conspiracy theory repeating past errors. viewtopic.php?p=168778#p168778

Why is Ken again appealing to the lowest possible images to make his case? This is what Carlson did in his book with regards to the "forger's tremor" and even David Trobisch who is hardly an advocate for authenticity noted how ridiculous this methodology is.

Ken is now deciding on what the text says from dot matrix level printed images in Smith's 1973 book scanned in the last century by WW? This is so shameful. Anyone who has been made aware of Carlson's methodology (cf. 6 Roger VIKLUND and Timo S. PAANANEN, “Distortion of the Scribal Hand in the Images of Clement’s Letter to Theodore,” VC 67 (2013): 235–247) has been scandalized. And now Ken is doing it again. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Again I ask, why is this so important that otherwise intelligent people would resort to ... what's the word for it? Cheating is too strong. "Making mistakes" is too weak. How don't they see that decisions based on poor image quality can't be good decisions. That's why the ban drug and drunk driving. Why would Ken say "ignore the expert Tselikas who either worked from the actual MS or at least from the high level color photographs." Trust my results from low quality dot matrix-level printed images from 1972 scanned by lower level scanners from the 1990 - 2000. It's utterly baffling. But there it is. The whatever you call it - cheating or mistake - is plainly visible.