Anastasopoulou Says It Best "[Morton Smith's] Greek Language Handwriting Characteristics is Like that of Young School Children who Have Not Started to Use Writing in a Practical Way Expressing Thoughts and Ideas." [p. 37]

From the recent report commissioned by BAR.  In the absence of having anything from Tselikas to read yet I actually spent an hour reading the other report from Venetia Anastasopoulou a little more carefully. I saw all the examples that she brings up with (a) Morton Smith writing in Greek side by side with (b) the handwriting from Mar Saba. A couple of things struck me. The first was Anastasopoulou pointing to basic mistakes made by Smith when writing Greek. "Morton Smith could only copy the Greek words and phrases, not write them expressing his thoughts." [p. 31] Indeed Anastasopoulou's difficulty in expressing ideas in English in a natural way drove this point home in a way.

I started thinking again about how difficult it would be to not only to 'invent' a false letter of Clement which referenced a wholly invented 'lost passage' from the Alexandrian Gospel of Mark but specifically pulling off 'faking' writing out that text "in Greek letters containing several paleographic peculiarities (abbreviations and ligatures) which were used in the 18th century" [p. 4] Then when you look at Anastasopoulou pointing to clear UNCONSCIOUS signs that Smith didn't 'think naturally' in Greek it becomes increasingly clear that her conclusions are indeed well founded.

I was particularly struck by the consistent point that Anastasopoulou brings up that for Smith "abbreviations are used only in English writing and not in Greek." [p. 15] This is particularly significant when she later notes about Smith's writing of the word kai. Anastasopoulou notes that if Smith thought naturally in Greek you would expect to see 'simplification' in the writing out of the common word kai. As she notes "the conjunction “και” (and) is used frequently and lots of Greek writers use abbreviations and write the word in one graphic movement. This is a rather clumsy writing of a very common word." [p. 29]

The image of Smith's kai was particularly striking to me as was Anastasopoulou's point earlier that:

In Morton Smith’s writings we can see that he is trying to follow the grammatical rules, as his accent marks are always carefully placed, specially the oxia and varia with their right or left slant. Generally, he does not deviate from the rules as an active writer would do (an active writer out of speed, when writing, would place the accent marks quickly and a bit vertical, without causing any consequences to the text.).[p. 17]

And again:

when the writer has a personal inclination in artistic abilities this is apparent in his writing as soon as he starts writing automatically, expressing his thoughts on paper. He creates his own personal style of writing. On the contrary, the Greek letters in [Smith's] known [Greek] writing has been written with limited flexibility.  As soon as a writer feels “comfortable” with a language, then he starts adding or
subtracting his own strokes, slant and generally his personal characteristics. This is not the case with the writer of the known material. His Greek writing is as learned in school, copybook, letter-letter, unconnected, carefully drawn.

The opposite happens with the same writer writing in English language. His writing is fluent, connected and small, with high movement and high rhythm. The writer writes automatically, without noticing the format of the letters. On the contrary, the same writer, when writing in another language than his mother tongue, takes care of the format of the letters, so to be understandable, as his interest in the text as long as the meaning takes place in his mother tongue.

We can say that his writing in English is mature; hence the opposite appears in his Greek writing.[p. 20]

This isn't mumbo jumbo or 'quasi-scientific nonsense' as some might have it. You just need to look at Anastasopoolou's analysis of Smith's Greek handwriting and it is difficult to imagine that he went from writing out the natural style of the 'forged' Mar Saba document in 1958 and then went back to the inflexible style of writing out each letter in each Greek word he 'thought out' in the margins of books and his notes.

You can understand why she feels that Smith couldn't have been responsible for the handwriting of the Mar Saba document. Of course, if we are going to play Devil's advocate we could argue that Smith hired someone else - perhaps a native Greek speaker with some knowledge of the older handwriting style - to pull off the job. But after reading Anastasopoulou's report I don't think it is possible that Smith was responsible for its handwriting. Her arguments are very solid.  I am looking forward to see what Tselikas finds to prove the contrary.