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.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).
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.
Statistics: Posted by billd89 — Wed Mar 20, 2024 2:26 pm