A Study in Authenticity Admissible Concealed Indicators of Authority and Other Features of Forgeries—A Case Study on Clement of Alexandria, Letter to Theodore, and the Longer Gospel of Mark Timo S. Paananen DOCTORAL DISSERTATION to be presented for public discussion with the permission of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Helsinki, in Auditorium XIV, University Main Building, on the 29th of May, 2019 at 12 o’clock. Helsinki 2019 - -* * 4' ( ) *5 4' ( ) *5 .* 46 * ' (5 -* 7 4 * ' (5 .* 46 * ' (5 .$ 978-951-51-5250-3 4%% *5 .$ 978-951-51-5251-0 4 5 ' ) * /120 Abstract A standard approach in historically minded disciplines to documents and other artefacts that have become suspect is to concentrate on their dissimilarities with known genuine artefacts. While such an approach works reasonably well with relatively poor forgeries, more skilfully done counterfeits have tended to divide expert opinions, demanding protracted scholarly attention. As there has not been a widespread scholarly consensus on a constrained set of criteria for detecting forgeries, a pragmatic maximum for such dissimilarities—as there are potentially an infinite numbers of differences that can be enumerated between any two artefacts—has been impossible to set. Thus, rather than relying on a philosophically robust critical framework, scholars have been accustomed to approaching the matter on a largely case-by-case basis, with a handful of loosely formulated rules for guidance. In response to these shortcomings, this dissertation argues that a key characteristic of inquiry in historically minded disciplines should be the ability to distinguish between knowledge-claims that are epistemically warranted—i.e., that can be asserted post hoc from the material reality they have become embedded in with reference to some sort of rigorous methodological framework—and knowledge-claims that are not. An ancient letter by Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 CE) to Theodore, in which two passages from the Longer Gospel of Mark (also known as the Secret Gospel of Mark) are quoted, has long been suspected of having been forged by Morton Smith (1915–1991), its putative discoverer. The bulk of this dissertation consists of four different articles that each use different methodological approaches. The first, a discourse analysis on scholarly debate over the letter’s authenticity, illuminates the reasons behind its odd character and troubled history. Second, archival research unearths how data points have become corrupted through unintended additions in digital-image processing (a phenomenon labelled line screen distortion here). Third, a quantitative study of the handwriting in Clement’s Letter to Theodore shows the inadequacy of unwittingly applying palaeographic standards in cases of suspected deceptions compared to the standards adhered to in forensic studies. Additionally, Smith’s conduct as an academic manuscript hunter is found to have been consistent with the standard practices of that profession. Finally, a study of the conceptual distinctions and framing of historical explanations in contemporary forgery discourse reveals the power of the methodologic approach of WWFD (What Would a Forger Do?), which has recently been used in three varieties (unconcealed, concealed, and hyperactive) to construe suspected documents as potential forgeries—despite its disregard of justificatory grounding in favour of coming up with free-form, first-person narratives in which the conceivable functions as its own justification. Together, the four articles illustrate the pitfalls of scholarly discourse on forgeries, especially that surrounding Clement’s Letter to Theodore. The solution to the poor argumentation that has characterized the scholarly study of forgeries is suggested to be an exercise in demarcation: to decide (in the abstract) which features should be acceptable as evidence either for or against the ascription of the status of forgery to an historical artefact. Implied within this suggestion is the notion of constraint, i.e., such that a constrained criterion would be one that cannot be employed to back up both an argument and its counter-argument. A topical case study—a first step on the road to creating a rigorous standard for constrained criteria in determining counterfeits—is the alternative narrative of an imagined creation of Clement’s Letter to Theodore by Smith around the time of its reported discovery (1958). Concealed indicators of authority, or the deliberate concealment of authorial details within the forged artefact by the forger, is established as a staple of the literary strategy of mystification, and their post hoc construction as acceptable evidence of authorship is argued to follow according to criteria: 1) that the beginning of the act of decipherment of a concealed indicator of authority has to have been preceded by a literary primer that is unambiguous to a high degree, 2) that, following the prompting of the literary primer, the act of deciphering a concealed indicator of authority has to have adhered to a technique or method that is unambiguous to a high degree, and 3) that, following the prompting of the literary primer and the act of decipherment, both of which must have been practiced in an unambiguous manner to a high degree, the plain-text solution to the concealed indicator of authority must likewise be unambiguous to a high degree. Acknowledgements Much of the research of this dissertation was made possible by the three years of full- time funding provided by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and, in part, by the University of Helsinki. I wish to acknowledge the contributions of my supervisors, Docent Matti Myllykoski and Professor Ismo Dunderberg. I am especially grateful to Roger Viklund, with whom I co- authored two of the four research articles in this dissertation. Dr. Scott G. Brown and Professor Allan J. Pantuck also played key roles, freely offering their comments and criticisms along the journey. I am also indebted to the external reviewers of this dissertation, Professors Tony Burke and Mark Goodacre. Various other scholars have also left their mark on this doctoral work: Professors Michel Desjardins, James F. McGrath, Pierluigi Piovanelli, Bart D. Ehrman, as well as the members of the University of Waterloo/Wilfrid Laurier University Biblical Colloquium. I wish furthermore to acknowledge the gracious peer feedback given by my graduate student colleagues in our research seminar (New Testament Studies) at the University of Helsinki. The idiosyncrasies of the English of this dissertation were professionally corrected by Kenneth W. Lai. All remaining mistakes and quirky syntactic structures are due to my own linguistic preferences and consciously made contrary to his better judgment. Finally, I acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Maiju Paananen—my wife, my lover, and my friend. Table of Contents 1 Introduction.................................................................................................................................9 1.1 The Manuscript of Clement’s Letter to Theodore...............................................................18 1.2 The Alternative Narrative: The Manuscript of Clement’s Letter to Theodore as a Fake21 1.3 Some Preliminary (and Pre-emptive) Considerations..................................................29 2 Methods and Materials.............................................................................................................32 2.1 “Stalemate to Deadlock”: A Discourse Analysis by Any Other Name..........................32 2.2. “Distortion of the Scribal Hand”: A Rankean Trip to the Archive..............................33 2.3. “Control of the Scribal Hand”: Palaeography and Forensic Studies in the Qualitative and Quantitative Abstract..................................................................................34 2.4 “WWFD”: An Analytic Study of Method..........................................................................35 2.5 Methods for Studying the Alternative Narrative...........................................................35 2.5.1 Classifying the Arguments within the Alternative Narrative..............................36 2.5.1.1 The Literary, Derivative Relationship (hoax).................................................37 2.5.1.2 Concealed Indicators of Authority and Jokes.................................................42 2.5.2 Studying the Arguments within the Alternative Narrative..................................47 2.5.3 Contrasting the Arguments within the Alternative Narrative.............................60 2.5.3.1 Contrasting Literary, Derivative Relationships (Hoax).................................60 2.5.3.2 Contrasting Concealed Authorial Indicators and Jokes................................65 2.5.3.3 Summary and Further Discussion....................................................................80 3 Results and Discussion..............................................................................................................84 3.1 Suggested Criteria for the Control of Concealed Indicators of Authority and Deliberate Actions of the Author...........................................................................................90 3.1.1 Concealment of indicators of authority..................................................................94 3.1.1.1 Primer Solutions (1): Inattentional Blindness................................................95 3.1.1.2 Primer Solutions (2): Cryptanalytic Hyperactivity........................................96