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

[StephenGoranson]

Thanks gdoudna for that additional information. Though I think M. Smith was gay (or, bi), that is not at all the main issue for scholarship.
People of whatever sexual orientation can contribute to learning.
M. Smith surely did.
The issue for historians is whether the Letter to Theodore is genuine Clement of Alexandria text.
It is not.
And whether that Letter genuinely attests an ancient "Secret Mark."
It does not.
Why M. Smith changed from a devout Christian to a Christianity hater may or may not have been adequately explained.
But he did.

[Secret Alias]

I never noticed this in the BAR letters to the editor page:

https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org ... ments-203/

The thing about Flusser saying that Morton Smith had a Jewish girlfriend. This isn't made up! In the Smith archives Flusser has this stupid exchange with Quesnell that I didn't fully understand at the time. I kept asking myself why is Flusser going on about Smith getting rejected by a Jewish girlfriend as a motivation to forging Secret Mark. Quesnell jots down this insane paragraph or so about Flusser's theory and now it all makes sense. He's not talking hypothetically about Morton Smith having a Jewish girlfriend. Quesnell brings up this gay theory already in 1983 and then Flusser goes off on this long tangent BASED ON HIM KNOWING SMITH HAD A JEWISH GIRL BREAK UP WITH HIM. That's what it must be.

It's not letting me copy and paste the Professor who references Flusser's story. You can see it yourself. But I am telling you I am not very smart. I never understood what Flusser was saying to Quesnell in 1983. Now I get it. Flusser was saying I KNOW SMITH HAD A JEWISH GIRL THAT BROKE UP WITH HIM. It's not clear that Quesnell really knew what Flusser was on about. He's just copying down what he said that day and probably didn't get the whole gist of it. Maybe Flusser's not completely crazy. Maybe if Smith was the forger he went through a series of relationships with Jewish women and blamed Christianity. I don't know. The gay thing won't work though.

[Secret Alias]

This is starting to make more sense. Here's one of my attempts to transcribe Quesnell's notes from the trip:

Second [written above the word 'First' which is crossed out] Day: Thursday June 2

A.M saw sec'y of [two scribbles] Chief Secretary
who sends to librarian: says it is up to him
Librarian (Charistos [in Greek letters]) says come back Monday from 8:30 to 11:30 am
see the ms. Sophia found it &
brought it from Mar Saba 10 years ago (c.)
Feels sure that it is 18th c. old
Says there were heretics, heretical schools
often at M.S. and this is fragment [sic] in part in part of a Hapousi (?)
to one of their books. He does not think it is from S. Clement. He remembers someone noting in some [monastic] publication that some did report seeing this in the 16th ? 17th ? century
He does not want others to come with me to work on the ms. He is not worried that the ms. is used for anti-Xtn [anti-Christian] propaganda.

[Marginal note] >> I must find find Flusser and Meliton <<

asked if there are other books with 18th c. notes written in. He says no, not here; perhaps at Mar Saba. I could go and look.

P.M. Called David Flusser. His name was in the book. Exciting conversation with this extraordinarily learned man. By "intuition" he perceived at once that the Clementine thing was a hoax or forgery (in the sense of my own later unpublished paper). So was it a hoax by Clement? Improbable.
So was it a Carpocratian forgery? But then it promoted homosexuality which is unknown - their doctrine called for salvation through union of the sexes. Was it 17th c forgery? (Texts from the Decameron have a monk teaching a woman the Pater Noster the whole night through! And homosexual Jesus is taught by Marlowe, among others. Perhaps.
So is it modern by Smith? Could be. Flusser i[s] as impressed, as I had been, by Smith laboring to [illegible] prominent names in approval of his own opinions. How strange - and unlike him usually.
Also with Smith's thesis that NT scholars don't know how to read a simple text.
Then he concluded - what if Smith is himself a homosexual? And he knows a woman who almost married Smith, but whom Smith finally refused to marry on the grounds that he - then a Protestant - could not marry a Catholic. Was this a cover-up? (All thru Flusser played Fr Brown looking for deeper psychological motivations).
He said that Strussner (?) had missed this issue too.
When he asked me directly if I knew anything, I admitted having been told - after I did the article - that it was common knowledge in the Columbia Seminar that Smith was.
We will meet again Saturday. Flusser asks what I will do. Suggests calling Yadin for help, even police help, in getting the ms. and having the ink analyzed. Says there are other books at Mar Saba with writing in them which could serve for comparison.
Knows Meliton Charistos. Both scholars but Meliton much more effective. Ousted by new Patriarch. (But how come Xaristos didn't seem to know Flusser?)
Of both were in on the recovery of the ms. from Mar Saba?)
Oh yes, Flusser was one of those who went out. The library was a mess. They did not find the book. And then they did - in the middle of a pile of books carelessly thrown on the floor, all covered with dust. What kind of a scholar, he asks about Smith, could have permitted this? Walked off, leaving his great discovery to such a fate?
They were about to bring it back when Abbott Seraphim raised hell, said they had to request it, & he would sent it. They did & he did. So Flusser was surprised it was still in Jerusalem - thought surely Seraphim would have demanded it back by now.
I confessed to Flusser my admiration for much of Smith's earlier work & my sincere expectation that he would confess his hoax when I exposed it - confess that he had set a trap for NT scholars & laugh that so many had fallen into it & rejoice that at least one hadn't. But instead he didn't and carried his indignation up & down the country.
Third Day: Friday June 3rd.

Ecole Biblique - all day. Checked all indexes etc. for any recent references to this problem. Found a couple & copied the Dutch NTh & ThLZ pages summing up present state of problem (including my part in it). Have okay to work in the EB library afternoons and weekends (except Sunday).
Fourth Day: Saturday June 4th - EB in the a.m. Tried to call Flusser to change 8:30 pm appt, but not possible. Walked over there in evening. Talked till 12. Had to sleep at the YMCA ($24.50 w/o bath!)
During pm. at EB found many volumes from Holland mid-17th c. with writing in them. Studied its condition. Made exact notes.
Evening: Flusser says he'll ask Magen Besky [Q consistently misspells ‘Magen Broshi’ curator of the Shrine of the Book museum throughout] for help - Director of the Scrolls Museum. And Yadin
But aware that Orthodox probably won't want Jews in on this.
Fifth Day. Sunday. Continued my private magnifying study of Smith’s photos, picking out suspicious spots. Talk to Magen Becky he says Israel has no non-destructive technique for what I want. Explains something of how to have blown ups done.
Sixth Day. Monday. 6/6. Saw ms. Delighted to find p. 11 of volume with its “practice” letters. And to find the suspicious [illegible word], breaks & irregularities in great number typical of forgeries. PM in Ecole Biblique checking all on Greek paleography. Also found Papalopoulos-Kerameus [who in 1883 was responsible for creating an inventory of Greek manuscripts belonging to churches and monasteries and specifically Hierosolymitike Bibliotheke, a catalogue of the Jerusalem patriarchal libraries vol.1, St. Petersburg, 1891] and picked out mss from Mar Saba I wanted for comparison.

Seventh Day Tues. 6/7: Worked over several volumes of [Greek letters] mathemataria homework of theological students and monks. Also others some quite close to Smith 76. Make a list of peculiarities I can’t find yet. PM – National Library to see Director (rec’ by Bescky & a specialist in Greek paleography. He’s not there sadly (?) but I searched catalogue and found tons of stuff.

Letter 1
June 2, 1983
Dear Jean,
Still can hardly believe that you are not in the next room or just around the corner, ready to turn up if only I yell loudly enough. I hope you found all in reasonably good order at home, including of course the loved one. (Has he begun talking to you again, or still punishing you for your long absence? And for apparently having done away with your husband en route.)
I got into the Patriarchate this morning, talked to the officials and to the librarian. I’ve been promised the ms. for Monday morning. But they are not very keen on testing that would require the involvement of other persons. Well this is still the first day. I’m asking Bill Dalton of the Biblical Institute [= Vatican] to write them some encouragement meanwhile. The librarian himself is quite convinced that the writing is old and was done in the late 18th c. Thinks perhaps I’ll be convinced too when I see it. Maybe. That’s what this is all about.
Meanwhile, Jerusalem continues deathly hot. I stay out of the sun, sip water all day from our electric cooled corridor taps, take frequent cool showers, change often, move slowly, and gradually become acclimated. This house is on the Old Damascus road, just north of the old city, just outside the Damascus gate. The buses to east Jerusalem and the whole “west bank” have their terminus just outside our gate, so the area is teeming with Arabs. And of course once you pass through the wall into the old city, almost everything is Arab. The Greek Patriarchate however is within the walls, as are the great Christian shrines of the Via Dolorosa, the Holy Sepulchre etc.
I couldn’t get anything but busy signals from People’s Express my last day in London, so I finally called Capitol and booked for return to NY on June 23rd following the pattern you worked out of taking an over night train and ferry to Brussels. But I haven’t cancelled the BTWA you made for the 22nd either. Going Brussels means saving $50, but putting in the extra day of travel plus the added distance to NY. I’ll let you know final plans later.
Meanwhile I have some contacts to make at the Ecole Biblique (next door to us) and the Hebrew University telephone (sic!) this afternoon. Staying as quiet as possible to avoid heat prostration is gradually proving very restful. Hope you are finding something to rest you up a bit too.
[new pen] 4 hours later (9:00 pm). The weather has changed with a refreshing cool breeze making it even a bit chilly as I ran home tonight trying to avoid being locked out. Curfew is 9:00 pm. But the really good news was a long conversation with Prof. David Flusser of Hebrew U. – an enormously learned old man – Catholic [with later addition ‘NO’ circled in bold later added with a line as correction] colleague of Werblowsky (the guy in my group at the Moonie conference) and he Flusser is also absolutely convinced that Smith engineered the whole thing. His grounds are his remarkable intuition – of which he provided other examples. That is, he saw at once on reading the supposed Clement text that it was a joke, it ended up convincing the reader of the opposite of what it seemed to say. It was written not to exempt [now written sideways on the left side of the page] Jesus of Carpocratian slander but to convict him of them. (This is true but I saw it only after writing my article. I wrote this up in another article which I have never published). Anyway starting from that, he simply carefully analyzed who might have done this & ended up with Smith as the most probable. I am meeting him again Saturday night. He was enthusiastic when he heard who I was. His own work & writing have never left him a chance to investigate the text as I want to do. [now written sideways on the right side of the page] He is one of those however who went to Mar Saba to find the ms. it was lying with [illegible words] a heap covered with dust on [cut off] Love, love, love Q

June 6, 1983
Dearest Jean,
Well, this has been a rather sensational day. I did get to see the manuscript at 8:30 and worked on it till 11:30 (their daily limit at the Patriarchate). The librarian was very nice. I got my honorary cup of coffee (Greek) of course. The manuscript itself is two free sheets that they have removed from the printed volume they were a part of. The two sheets are kept in a plastic binder which you are asked not to open.
The first thing I did was check the volume itself – which they handed me separately – to see if it contained any notes. The librarian said that it didn’t. But it does. On page 11, there was about twenty squiggles across the top & down the right margin. They turn out to be Greek letters. The last five are clearly identifiable. They are the 18th c. way of writing [Greek letter pi] namely [ligature] repeated about 5 times. On the top there are a couple of different B ‘s and a couple of others, each one repeated with variations. Of course you know how I take it. It’s like Rosie practicing Philly’s signature. The book itself contains mostly Greek texts & the Greek text style is in many ways like the 18th century hand of the ms. It’s as if a modern – M.S. for instance, were reading the book, tried to see if he could imitate the type, so different from the Greek we’re used to, and … But though the ink of those efforts looks much like the ink of the ms. I don’t think the same person wrote both. His efforts on p. 11 are too amateurish. Still, if he went off & practiced for a long time – perhaps. But more probably he would have hired a Greek.
Anyway, what do I find in the ms, magnified by two glasses? 1. No penetration of the page (Neither had the p. 11 writing penetrated). Not even where the ink of the ms is laid on heavily, as it is in a couple of places is there any notable penetration. 2. No spreading out of the letters from ink soaking in, as in all my other examples. 3. A sharply black colored ink, which I have not found in any 18th c stuff – but I only have about 8 samples. 4. Now, speaking as no expert, but just trying to remember what I read about forgeries in detective stories – I think I see all through the text, under magnification, the usual signs of someone trying to write in a style other than his own: breaks where there should be smooth loops linking the letters; wobbles at unusual & tricky places; and dots indicating the pen is resting while the writer is thinks where to move it next – dots at the beginning & end of words, syllables, letters. [ligature] has for instance. And finally changes in the way letters are made as the text goes on, as if he’s learning on the job. And also evidence that some letters are made with different motions of the hand in different places. That is, under magnification, you can tell which direction the pen was moving when it wrote, whether an a was made [a with accent] or [a with another accent] etc. The differences indicate that the writer is thinking about what the result will look like and not about what he is writing.
This afternoon I hunted up all I could on Greek paleography in the Ecole Biblique & read it. Very exciting. Wish you were here.
There are nice cool breezes mornings & evenings. Jerusalem is 800 or so feet above sea level. Wailed prayers from the mosques and Oriental music from the bazaars continue to fill the air. But I’m fine.
See you soon. Pray they let me get some good photographs first.
Love
Quinton

Wednesday June 8

Dear Jean
Well, it wasn’t quite as easy as I thought the other day. I’ve been examining loads of other writings from Mar Saba itself from the 18th century and many of them too have breaks and squiggles and perhaps hesitations. They’re not all forgeries. I do think they have many fewer than our friends; but that’s not as easy to prove as if they just had none at all. And some of them don’t seem to have soaked into the pages very much either. So experts are going to have to be consulted. But the librarian shudders every time I suggest more people coming. Anyway, we’re getting to be pretty good friends. He has agreed to go with me out to the Mar Saba monastery. He is convinced there is another secret door there which will lead to a cache of manuscripts like the door & mss they found in 1887. Not that we can hunt for that this time. One would have to live there, as he did for a month one time.

The Patriarchate is funny. I enter a tiny dark office next to a tiny dark study-room. He occupies the office, I the study-room; we are the only two. But just outside is a small courtyard, about 20 feet in each direction. And out there just a few feet from us, Greek Orthodox monks and workmen (and women occasionally) shout at each other at the top of their lungs. And when the phone rings in the porter’s lodge just below, you wonder why he just didn’t answer from his window, he shouts so loudly to the person on the other end. It’s our Gk restaurant scene all over again.
I found lots of stuff on Greek paleography at the University, where the Director happens to have that for his own specialty. It’s all really fascinating. Here at table people in singles, couples and large groups, of all languages come and go. Food is simple and abundant. House very clean, modern and nice. Weather quite good – from terribly hot at mid-day down to the very pleasant temperature it is right this minute in my room.
More on Israel – one further difference from my last visit is, I think, that they don’t much use bilingual signs anymore either. This seems strange, considering their American tourist influx, but it’s largely true. Just Hebrew. Street names are also in Latin letters usually, but many quite important traffic & parking & directional notices are not. You would be happy to see the strong proud look of the young women. They stand so straight & tall. I suppose it’s not really beautiful or [illegible]; rather the result of a couple of years service in the army. But at least they know they’re equal (I’m not counting the women of the Hasidim under their veils nor the Arab women who are obviously strong but not very enviably lugging those huge baskets around on their heads.

Wish you were here for a few selfish reasons as well as the fun you might have seeing all this. But you aren’t so I will have to hurry home to you. How are the lectures coming? I pray you’re moving along as rapidly as you hoped and not getting caught up in too many other things. And above all that you are well. I pray that the doctor wasn’t too dismay (?) at what you brought home from your six month neglect (?). And I hope you are warm. And dry. As I am. It’s still nice for a change.
Love Quinton

[Secret Alias]

This must be the reference: "

And he knows a woman who almost married Smith, but whom Smith finally refused to marry on the grounds that he - then a Protestant - could not marry a Catholic. Was this a cover-up? (All thru Flusser played Fr Brown looking for deeper psychological motivations).

Quesnell being Catholic wrote it down as a Catholic and a Protestant pairing. But Flusser must have said it was about Smith and the Jewish woman. Life is a game of broken telephone. Why would Flusser know about Smith having a relationship with a Catholic girl while he was in Israel? It must have been Smith having a relationship in Israel with a Jewish girl as was told the Israeli professor and that relationship broke off. It would make sense then that in 1957 - 1958 Smith had an American Jewish girlfriend in America. He liked Jewesses. I am Jewish. But my mother was enough for me. But Smith had an early pattern of attraction to Jewish women which maybe - in theory of course - led him to hate Christianity if Goranson can be believed. But why did he keep renewing his association with the priesthood and kept that fucking card to the day he died? I don't he's a complex cat.

[Secret Alias]

Morton Smith had more Jewish girlfriends than I did. The only Jewish girl I ever dated was Michele who I picked up at the Copacabana in Toronto in Yorkville. She was a dental assistant and I swear gave me my only cavity filling on purpose.

[Secret Alias]

For those following along at home:

Delighted to find p. 11 of volume with its “practice” letters. And to find the suspicious [illegible word], breaks & irregularities in great number typical of forgeries.

This is also photographed by Tselikas:

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp- ... ititon.pdf

Why don't we just test the ink on these letters to see the C14 date?

[Secret Alias]

When Goranson was asking me to explain my claim in another thread that the monks at Mar Saba thought the book belonged to them and took it as their property. This partially explained from the quote in the Smith Landau book. But it is also from Quesnell's "diary":

Oh yes, Flusser was one of those who went out. The library was a mess. They did not find the book. And then they did - in the middle of a pile of books carelessly thrown on the floor, all covered with dust. What kind of a scholar, he asks about Smith, could have permitted this? Walked off, leaving his great discovery to such a fate?
They were about to bring it back when Abbott Seraphim raised hell, said they had to request it, & he would sent it. They did & he did. So Flusser was surprised it was still in Jerusalem - thought surely Seraphim would have demanded it back by now.

The monks at Mar Saba thought the book was their property. They did not think it was a foreign thing. It was the property of the monastic library. This is beyond question.

And Quesnell's criticism of Smith's behavior (which extends back to his published papers) becomes highly ironic when not only did Quesnell not run out of the Patriarchate library with the book but actually took photos, received photos and never told anyone about them. Hedrick's photos were Quesnell's. They were developed from the same negatives by Dourvas. Dourvas didn't think the manuscript was a forgery. The monks at Mar Saba thought the book belonged in the monastery. These are facts.

[Secret Alias]

The most interesting notes come from the last day:

He has agreed to go with me out to the Mar Saba monastery. He is convinced there is another secret door there which will lead to a cache of manuscripts like the door & mss they found in 1887. Not that we can hunt for that this time. One would have to live there, as he did for a month one time.

If I had known what was in the diary I would certainly have asked QQ all about it in our 40 phone conversations. There is so much here that is left unanswered.

[StephenGoranson]

If David Flusser, who was quite smart, said Smith excused himself by saying he could not marry a Catholic, maybe that is true. Hypothesizing he meant Jewish when he reportedly said Catholic is not yet persuasive.
Of course Smith had relationships with women. So what.
Wild, unreliable, guess: "Strussner (?)"- mistranscription for Neusner?
That a book taken from Mar Saba was asked to be returned does not establish when that foreign book actually came to Mar Saba.

[Secret Alias]

But this statement from BAR was the underlying context (which I linked to above):

As for his homosexuality, I think he was just spoofing the trend that had begun back in the 1960s and 1970s to find gays in all the great Biblical literature. As for himself, I suspect that he was just an Anglican clergyman who had had an unsuccessful love affair and afterward condemned himself to bachelorhood. (Professor) David Flusser told me that, in 1941, Morton had a Jewish girlfriend in Jerusalem, probably a student at the Hebrew University. Flusser is dead so we can't get more details.

Anson F. Rainley
Emeritus Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and Semitic Linguistics
Tel Aviv University, Israel

I see the comment to QQ as being based on this fact. Compare QQ's retelling of something Flusser said to him that day:

And he knows a woman who almost married Smith, but whom Smith finally refused to marry on the grounds that he - then a Protestant - could not marry a Catholic. Was this a cover-up? (All thru Flusser played Fr Brown looking for deeper psychological motivations).

It comes down to (a) how many women did Flusser know Smith to have been with? Clearly it was one. And then (b) Flusser knew Smith to have had a girlfriend in Israel. Flusser didn't know Smith anywhere else. Rainley's report is quite specific. 1941. Jewish girl. Jerusalem. Flusser is unlikely to have known Smith to have had a Catholic girlfriend in Israel. So QQ is saying that Smith was a homosexual. Flusser is undoubtedly referencing some interfaith relationship he would have known Smith to have had. In my estimation, based on the pattern in Chesterman and Gaster, it is more likely that Rainley's reporting is more accurate. Why would Flusser develop a whole scenario where Smith having a girlfriend which was broken up by interfaith difficulties unless he knew something about this happening in 1941?