Critiquing Carlson, part 2: A New Hypothesis

In Part 1, I cast doubt on Carlson’s handwriting analysis, pointing to Roger Viklund’s subsequent analysis and criticism of Carlson’s work, using color photographs that Carlson did not use.

While I do think Viklund’s work weakens Carlson’s conclusions, I don’t go so far as to say they refute them. Based on my own inexpert examination of the photographs, both in black-and-white and in color, and following Carlson’s and Viklund’s criteria, I admit there is some room for questions about the hand that wrote the Mar Saba manuscript. Was it really the hand of someone well-versed in writing Greek? Are there really no signs of hesitation or tremor present in the script? Despite Viklund’s excellent attempt at answering these questions, I can’t quite say they’ve been resolved.

Carlson concludes from his analysis that the author was a forger, and that forger was Morton Smith. But even if we admit Carlson’s analysis, this is not a necessary conclusion. There are alternative scenarios to consider.



And so I propose as an alternative that the writer/inscriber of the Mar Saba manuscript was a Jesuit, performing research at Mar Saba during a stay there, probably during the late seventeenth century, writing with a critical eye towards authenticity. Wouldn't that make a perfect suspect? He brought the Voss with him and read it...he did the research in the Mar Saba archives that are now lost to us by fire...he wrote the copy of the pseudo-Clementine letter in a western Greek script, as a specimen of interest to him...it would all make absolutely perfect sense.

Indeed, this would also make sense of Carlson’s handwriting analysis. While I am still skeptical of Carlson’s results, as evidenced by Viklund’s analysis, if there is any merit to Carlson’s study of the Mar Saba manuscript’s handwriting, it could easily be accounted for by my hypothetical Jesuit scholar. The Jesuit is not familiar with Greek script, although he of course knows it and has used it in the past. He is reading from an ancient Greek manuscript, and trying to transcribe it, using the Western, Enlightenment-era script he is practiced in. He proceeds slowly and haltingly as a result. All the phenomena Carlson purports to have discovered can be explained by my Jesuit scribe: “forger’s tremor” (really just the tremor of a hand unfamiliar with writing in Greek), pen lifts, blunt ends, pauses and hesitations, changes in speed, growing confidence as the writer progresses, missed ligatures, and retouching.

It gets even better—the Jesuit could also explain the anomalous lambda, the unusual nomina sacra abbreviations; the use of the sign of the cross; and the use of a different pen. We may turn out to have Carlson to thank for his expert forensic handwriting analysis after all, despite the fact that he follows it to the wrong conclusion! Instead, it is simply evidence that the Mar Saba manuscript was not written by an Orthodox resident of Mar Saba. We agree with Carlson that it was written by a Western scholar; where we part ways is in concluding that it was therefore written by Morton Smith. Instead, I propose the alternative hypothesis that it was written by a Jesuit visitor, sometime during the late seventeenth or perhaps the early eighteenth century.