The Secret Gospel of Mark
Y. Kuchinsky against forgery 1998
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 13:47:33 -0400
From:y.kuchinskX@utoronto.ca
Yuri Kuchinsky - Toronto, Canada says; "[This is a well written post arguing for authenticity. I agree with most of it. It has been written before Yuri went at odds with everybody.]"
Why it is impossible that Morton Smith could have forged Clement's letter & the SecMk fragment.
Now I have revisited this old controversy. In the course of my recent research re: the compositional history of the Gospel of Mark, I have reread Morton Smith's two books on the subject, after many years. I was interested primarily by what SecMk can tell us about the history of early Christianity.
I certainly don't agree with Smith in everything he says. In fact, I see quite a few areas where Smith seems rather off base in his interpretations of early Christian history. In particular, I'm much more skeptical than he in attributing the events SecMk narrates directly to the events in life of the Historical Jesus. SecMk seems to me more like a later gnostic-oriented expansion, while still produced within the Markan community. Nevertheless, Smith had done a huge amount of background research in this area, and his book reveals many unexpected surprises on my later rereading.
Speculation has been rife in recent years that Smith was the forger of this intriguing document, or else was in charge of a criminal conspiracy to produce this forgery. Such speculation has been broadcast of late especially by the famous scholar Prof. Jack Neusner, the former student of Smith turned his enemy (this happened for reasons entirely unconnected with the ms). Neusner is of course a very influential man in the biblical field, and his views cannot be disregarded. Some other scholars also tended to lend support to such accusations.
It is my purpose to show in this article that these accusations are entirely without merit, and that, if anything, they may only raise doubts about the professional competence of those making them.
It needs to be noted, of course, that there are many responsible scholars who are skeptical about this SecMk fragment, and who suspect it is a forgery. But generally these skeptics consider that this was an old forgery of some sort. Some maintain it is a forgery produced in the 18th century; others say it was produced any time in between the 2nd and the 18th centuries.
Prima facie, that this is an old forgery is not impossible, of course. And academic discussions of such scenarios have been going on for great many years, ever since the discovery of the fragment was announced by Smith, first privately to some scholars in 1958, and then publicly in 1960. This is a very complex debate, and I will not be able to deal with it now. The purpose of this article is merely to defend Smith from what I see as entirely unjustified accusations of wrongdoing. He was an honest scholar who happened to come across a mysterious manuscript, and who devoted many years of his life to trying to understand its meaning. He did not deserve these sordid accusations.
While, as I show further, it would have been impossible for Smith to have accomplished such a forgery, the same arguments should apply to a lesser extent to other theories of forgery not involving Smith. Myself, I have looked at length into these debates and into various versions offered by different scholars, and my view is that the balance of the evidence points to Clement's letter fragment as being genuine, i.e. authored by Clement himself. I think the whole ms is exactly what it claims to be, i.e. it is a letter of Clement containing what Clement thinks is part of a secret version of Mk's gospel, as used in the Church of Alexandria. (By the way, it also seems likely to me that Clement's version of the textual development of Mk as given in the letter is not entirely accurate, for whatever reasons.)
MANUSCRIPT ITSELF
It seems like most serious opponents of SecMk in the last few years have been focusing their criticism on the fact that the manuscript has been seen by so few. There was some mystery about this manuscript. Where is it? How come basic tests on paper, ink, or other such tests have not been conducted? The piece of information Mahlon Smith have supplied recently on Crosstalk list about the manuscript having been seen recently after all by a credible witness is very important in this respect, to help put some of these doubts to rest.
I've suggested before that perhaps the main reason the manuscript has been seen by so few was that so few were really so interested in seeing it. Certainly it is a lot easier to spread groundless rumours behind people's backs than to go out and actually do such field research, which, needless to say, may involve such complications as having to pack your suitcase and do a bit of travel for a change... It is to the credit of Charles Hedrick that he did go out and take his time to look up the ms, instead of just talking endlessly about how few have seen it, and what all this may signify...
THREE FORGERIES IN ONE
Now, to begin my case for authenticity, I would like to stress that we are actually talking about _three_ separate hypothetical forgeries here. Let's keep this in mind. In other words, in order for Smith to have accomplished such a highly complex forgery, he would have had to have done the following.
He would have needed to forge not one but two documents:
1. The letter of Clement itself.
2. The two SecMk gospel fragments.
And also, the third item that he would have needed to have pulled off.
3. To have found a scribe, really a genius of a scribe, who would have been able to forge some very unique and specialized 18th century Greek scribal handwriting, and to forge it flawlessly, with all its highly unique abbreviations and complexities. Nobody in their right mind would try to suggest that Smith was an expert scribe himself. Not quite. He would have certainly needed an accomplice for this.
Since these two texts, the letter itself, and the gospel fragments as given by Clement, are composed in completely different styles, and using very different vocabularies, in order to forge them Smith would have had to be an expert on both Clement and Mk. He was neither, certainly not before 1958.
So, now, let's consider these 3 items in order.
1. The excerpt from the letter of Clement, itself, is much longer than the gospel fragments, and it would have been a lot harder to forge credibly. As Thomas Talley, one serious investigator of this problem, indicated, at this time only a small handful of scholars still dispute that the letter represents an authentic tradition from Clement of Alexandria. Every word and sentence of the Clementine portion of this ms has been put under the microscope and compared in minutest detail to the extant undisputed Clementine texts, of which we have quite a lot. And every comparison has basically held up. These detailed studies are many and freely available for perusal by interested parties.
Out of the fourteen leading Clementine scholars Smith consulted originally, only two had some reservations, and Smith had dealt with their quite minor technical objections in detail, and showed them insufficient to cause doubt as to authenticity.
It is important for our case that the letter has been included in the standard edition of the Alexandrian father's writings since 1980. [Talley, Thomas. "Liturgical Time in the Ancient Church: The State of Research." Studia Liturgica 14 (1982), p. 45] And this should speak better than anything else about where the consensus of the Clementine scholars is now in regard to this matter.
This first item alone should make it appear highly unlikely that Smith could have pulled it off, i.e. could have fooled the whole world of scholarship to such an extent.
2. Now, the SecMk fragment, in itself, presents us with a very special set of highly complicated problems of its own. On purely linguistic basis, scholars have been arguing whether or not the fragment could have been put together merely from scraps of the canonical material. (Since almost every serious opponent of SecMk thinks this would have been an ancient forgery, the debate has been conducted primarily in this context.) The balance of evidence seems to point to the fragment being based on an original tradition, separate from and prior to the canonical traditions. But a definitive judgment here on purely stylistic grounds is quite a tough call, since the fragment is rather short. In any case, Smith not being known as a Mk scholar prior to his discovery, very few indeed suggested that he, himself, could have created the fragment ex nihilo.
Now, the next and a separate question about this SecMk fragment should be, Supposing it's genuine, how does it fit together with the canonical gospels? I.e. what about the contents of this fragment, rather than just the style of writing? Because, it is important to note, the parallels must be considered not only with the rest of Mk, but also with Jn, since the SecMk fragment narrates the raising of a young man that is very close to the raising of Lazarus in the Fourth Gospel.
And not only that, there's yet another complicated matter to consider here. Smith has also suggested in his two books that there are also other and more significant structural parallels between Mk and Jn, the parallels going far beyond the fragment.
According to Smith, his thinking in this area was stimulated by the research associated with the fragment. Once he saw the parallels between the SecMk fragment and Jn, he also began to see much greater parallels between large parts of Mk (beginning at 6:32; cf. p. 56 in SECRET GOSPEL) and large parts of Jn (beginning at 6:1). He bases his theories in this area in part on the work of some scholars who were working early in this century, and who suggested compatible theories re: the redactional history of Jn, and Jn's possible use of Mk -- among them Bultmann, N. Huffmann, and especially Charles Dodd. (CLEMENT, p. 146ff.)
It is not possible to deal here now with all these complex relationships. Their full consideration should involve, the proto Mk theories of Helmut Koester, and of Alfred Loisy, other controversial wider theories about how Jn, Lk, and Mt relate to Mk (was Jn really influenced by Mk's structure?), Smith's own views on the matter that were clearly evolving and changing over time, as his published work indicates, the question of how many other commentators, such as Crossan, evaluated this evidence, possible Aramaic proto-sources (Smith favored this idea, but received little support from other scholars on this), and much more besides.
All that needs to be said at this point is that for Smith to have managed to accomplish this second forgery, and to accomplish it in such a way that scholars are still debating the matter hotly after 40 years, would be nothing short of miraculous. And, generally, I don't believe in such unlikely miracles.
EPIGRAPHY LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR DOUBT
3. And, finally, the handwriting. As Smith details in his book, the near consensus of all the top paleographic experts he consulted both in Greece and the US was that the manuscript dates to the 18th century (on pp. 22-23 of his SECRET GOSPEL, Smith gives the long list of the names of these experts).
Certainly the opinion of these competent scholars should not be taken lightly. We are talking here about some highly specialized criteria that they take into consideration, such as the use of special scribal ligatures, of subscripts, of very complex abbreviations, both medial and terminal, the use of the coronis, and other such matters comprehensible for the most part only to experts.
And also Smith reports in his CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA that a rare manuscript was found that is remarkably close in appearance to our ms. Smith writes that a Greek scholar, Professor Scouvaras, has discovered
"...an eighteenth-century ecclesiastical document in a native Greek hand strikingly similar to that of our manuscript. [It is reproduced on Plate IV in Smith's book] ... [It is] an autograph codex of the Oecumenical Patriarch Callinicus III and was written about 1760 in the Phanariot hand which had been formed in Constantinople shortly before that time." (p. 2)
So here we are, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Three forgeries in one, Smith's critics would like to charge him with. Two unique ancient texts, so different in style and content, _plus_ finding an epigraphic genius forger to put them down on paper. Does this stray far beyond the realm of reality? I sure think so.
AN IMPOSSIBLE SCENARIO
And now let's look at what Smith would have had to do to put it all together. To remind, his discovery was made when he was doing the job of cataloguing odd mss in the rather neglected library of the great Greek Orthodox desert monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem. Presumably, the critics charge, Smith would have planted the book with the text already written into it while he was doing that job. This means that he would have had to have spent years of his life previously to that getting himself totally immersed into Clement and Mk, becoming a "secret world-class expert" in these two highly complex areas.
And when he finally accomplished that task, and composed the two texts, next he would have had to find the "Genius Scribe", his presumed accomplice. (Or did he find this accomplice even before he embarked on his nefarious course?) So they pulled it off, and produced the flawless forgery. Then he goes to Mar Saba and plants the mss. From then on, the story unfolds as previously known.
An obvious question needs to be asked here. Is there any evidence that Smith knew far in advance that he would be doing this two-week job at Mar Saba in 1958? Actually, according to his CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, p. ix, Smith was given permission by Benedict, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to catalogue the library when he was already in Jerusalem in 1958.
In my opinion, it is this premeditation part of this supposed plot to forge these documents that makes it really quite fantastic. He had this idea, "I will produce this forgery and will plant this book in this library." And then he devotes years of his life to this, working in the highest secrecy... Does this sound like a light-hearted prank that some suggested as his motivation?
And it also needs to be noted here that if Smith managed to "plant" this particular manuscript in any other library other than Mar Saba, the case for authenticity would have been rather weaker. This is because there's a recorded tradition that a collection of Clement's letters _has been attested_ in Mar Saba during the Middle Ages. So such a discovery in Mar Saba was not totally unpredictable, after all...
Smith devoted many well-documented years of his life on an academic study of the ms he discovered. Some commentators have actually suggested half-jokingly that the amount of effort he put into all this was almost inexplicable. After reading his two books, it indeed seems like Smith was genuinely obsessed with his discovery.
So Neusner and Co. would presumably claim that Smith did all this background research _before_ he "discovered" the ms? And then he "pretended" to do all this work later? But he repeatedly consulted dozens of noted scholars later and not before! Many of these scholars are still around to tell their side of the story...
To summarize. To accomplish _the three_ such highly complex forgeries, and not to have been caught, would have been beyond the power of one man. To have even _attempted_ such a hopeless task, a task both so hopeless and so time-consuming, would have been quite silly, and Smith was generally not thought of as silly.
And finally, when Smith's discovery is looked at dispassionately, there's really not much there on the surface. What kind of an earth-shaking reaction did he accomplish? Not much really beyond some obscure disputes among professional text crunchers. It's not like the ms just comes out and says, "Jesus was a homosexual, and the whole of Christian religion is a hoax"... Not at all. All it really says is that the Carpocratian heretics were perverts and twisted the Scriptures. But this was already well known before. So, in other words, the pay-off from such a monumental forgery would have been not all that much in any case.
To conclude, the mss is genuine.
And for any who still have doubts, by all means, lobby for the tests on the ink of the mss. Such tests should surely remove all doubt as to the authenticity of this, on the whole, certainly very intriguing, and probably highly revealing document.
Regards, Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky || Toronto
Y. Kuchinsky against forgery 1998
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 13:47:33 -0400
From:y.kuchinskX@utoronto.ca
To: crosstalk [crosstalX@info.harpercollins.com]
Subject: SecMk is authentic Yuri Kuchinsky - Toronto, Canada says; "[This is a well written post arguing for authenticity. I agree with most of it. It has been written before Yuri went at odds with everybody.]"
Why it is impossible that Morton Smith could have forged Clement's letter & the SecMk fragment.
Now I have revisited this old controversy. In the course of my recent research re: the compositional history of the Gospel of Mark, I have reread Morton Smith's two books on the subject, after many years. I was interested primarily by what SecMk can tell us about the history of early Christianity.
I certainly don't agree with Smith in everything he says. In fact, I see quite a few areas where Smith seems rather off base in his interpretations of early Christian history. In particular, I'm much more skeptical than he in attributing the events SecMk narrates directly to the events in life of the Historical Jesus. SecMk seems to me more like a later gnostic-oriented expansion, while still produced within the Markan community. Nevertheless, Smith had done a huge amount of background research in this area, and his book reveals many unexpected surprises on my later rereading.
Speculation has been rife in recent years that Smith was the forger of this intriguing document, or else was in charge of a criminal conspiracy to produce this forgery. Such speculation has been broadcast of late especially by the famous scholar Prof. Jack Neusner, the former student of Smith turned his enemy (this happened for reasons entirely unconnected with the ms). Neusner is of course a very influential man in the biblical field, and his views cannot be disregarded. Some other scholars also tended to lend support to such accusations.
It is my purpose to show in this article that these accusations are entirely without merit, and that, if anything, they may only raise doubts about the professional competence of those making them.
It needs to be noted, of course, that there are many responsible scholars who are skeptical about this SecMk fragment, and who suspect it is a forgery. But generally these skeptics consider that this was an old forgery of some sort. Some maintain it is a forgery produced in the 18th century; others say it was produced any time in between the 2nd and the 18th centuries.
Prima facie, that this is an old forgery is not impossible, of course. And academic discussions of such scenarios have been going on for great many years, ever since the discovery of the fragment was announced by Smith, first privately to some scholars in 1958, and then publicly in 1960. This is a very complex debate, and I will not be able to deal with it now. The purpose of this article is merely to defend Smith from what I see as entirely unjustified accusations of wrongdoing. He was an honest scholar who happened to come across a mysterious manuscript, and who devoted many years of his life to trying to understand its meaning. He did not deserve these sordid accusations.
While, as I show further, it would have been impossible for Smith to have accomplished such a forgery, the same arguments should apply to a lesser extent to other theories of forgery not involving Smith. Myself, I have looked at length into these debates and into various versions offered by different scholars, and my view is that the balance of the evidence points to Clement's letter fragment as being genuine, i.e. authored by Clement himself. I think the whole ms is exactly what it claims to be, i.e. it is a letter of Clement containing what Clement thinks is part of a secret version of Mk's gospel, as used in the Church of Alexandria. (By the way, it also seems likely to me that Clement's version of the textual development of Mk as given in the letter is not entirely accurate, for whatever reasons.)
MANUSCRIPT ITSELF
It seems like most serious opponents of SecMk in the last few years have been focusing their criticism on the fact that the manuscript has been seen by so few. There was some mystery about this manuscript. Where is it? How come basic tests on paper, ink, or other such tests have not been conducted? The piece of information Mahlon Smith have supplied recently on Crosstalk list about the manuscript having been seen recently after all by a credible witness is very important in this respect, to help put some of these doubts to rest.
I've suggested before that perhaps the main reason the manuscript has been seen by so few was that so few were really so interested in seeing it. Certainly it is a lot easier to spread groundless rumours behind people's backs than to go out and actually do such field research, which, needless to say, may involve such complications as having to pack your suitcase and do a bit of travel for a change... It is to the credit of Charles Hedrick that he did go out and take his time to look up the ms, instead of just talking endlessly about how few have seen it, and what all this may signify...
THREE FORGERIES IN ONE
Now, to begin my case for authenticity, I would like to stress that we are actually talking about _three_ separate hypothetical forgeries here. Let's keep this in mind. In other words, in order for Smith to have accomplished such a highly complex forgery, he would have had to have done the following.
He would have needed to forge not one but two documents:
1. The letter of Clement itself.
2. The two SecMk gospel fragments.
And also, the third item that he would have needed to have pulled off.
3. To have found a scribe, really a genius of a scribe, who would have been able to forge some very unique and specialized 18th century Greek scribal handwriting, and to forge it flawlessly, with all its highly unique abbreviations and complexities. Nobody in their right mind would try to suggest that Smith was an expert scribe himself. Not quite. He would have certainly needed an accomplice for this.
Since these two texts, the letter itself, and the gospel fragments as given by Clement, are composed in completely different styles, and using very different vocabularies, in order to forge them Smith would have had to be an expert on both Clement and Mk. He was neither, certainly not before 1958.
So, now, let's consider these 3 items in order.
1. The excerpt from the letter of Clement, itself, is much longer than the gospel fragments, and it would have been a lot harder to forge credibly. As Thomas Talley, one serious investigator of this problem, indicated, at this time only a small handful of scholars still dispute that the letter represents an authentic tradition from Clement of Alexandria. Every word and sentence of the Clementine portion of this ms has been put under the microscope and compared in minutest detail to the extant undisputed Clementine texts, of which we have quite a lot. And every comparison has basically held up. These detailed studies are many and freely available for perusal by interested parties.
Out of the fourteen leading Clementine scholars Smith consulted originally, only two had some reservations, and Smith had dealt with their quite minor technical objections in detail, and showed them insufficient to cause doubt as to authenticity.
It is important for our case that the letter has been included in the standard edition of the Alexandrian father's writings since 1980. [Talley, Thomas. "Liturgical Time in the Ancient Church: The State of Research." Studia Liturgica 14 (1982), p. 45] And this should speak better than anything else about where the consensus of the Clementine scholars is now in regard to this matter.
This first item alone should make it appear highly unlikely that Smith could have pulled it off, i.e. could have fooled the whole world of scholarship to such an extent.
2. Now, the SecMk fragment, in itself, presents us with a very special set of highly complicated problems of its own. On purely linguistic basis, scholars have been arguing whether or not the fragment could have been put together merely from scraps of the canonical material. (Since almost every serious opponent of SecMk thinks this would have been an ancient forgery, the debate has been conducted primarily in this context.) The balance of evidence seems to point to the fragment being based on an original tradition, separate from and prior to the canonical traditions. But a definitive judgment here on purely stylistic grounds is quite a tough call, since the fragment is rather short. In any case, Smith not being known as a Mk scholar prior to his discovery, very few indeed suggested that he, himself, could have created the fragment ex nihilo.
Now, the next and a separate question about this SecMk fragment should be, Supposing it's genuine, how does it fit together with the canonical gospels? I.e. what about the contents of this fragment, rather than just the style of writing? Because, it is important to note, the parallels must be considered not only with the rest of Mk, but also with Jn, since the SecMk fragment narrates the raising of a young man that is very close to the raising of Lazarus in the Fourth Gospel.
And not only that, there's yet another complicated matter to consider here. Smith has also suggested in his two books that there are also other and more significant structural parallels between Mk and Jn, the parallels going far beyond the fragment.
According to Smith, his thinking in this area was stimulated by the research associated with the fragment. Once he saw the parallels between the SecMk fragment and Jn, he also began to see much greater parallels between large parts of Mk (beginning at 6:32; cf. p. 56 in SECRET GOSPEL) and large parts of Jn (beginning at 6:1). He bases his theories in this area in part on the work of some scholars who were working early in this century, and who suggested compatible theories re: the redactional history of Jn, and Jn's possible use of Mk -- among them Bultmann, N. Huffmann, and especially Charles Dodd. (CLEMENT, p. 146ff.)
It is not possible to deal here now with all these complex relationships. Their full consideration should involve, the proto Mk theories of Helmut Koester, and of Alfred Loisy, other controversial wider theories about how Jn, Lk, and Mt relate to Mk (was Jn really influenced by Mk's structure?), Smith's own views on the matter that were clearly evolving and changing over time, as his published work indicates, the question of how many other commentators, such as Crossan, evaluated this evidence, possible Aramaic proto-sources (Smith favored this idea, but received little support from other scholars on this), and much more besides.
All that needs to be said at this point is that for Smith to have managed to accomplish this second forgery, and to accomplish it in such a way that scholars are still debating the matter hotly after 40 years, would be nothing short of miraculous. And, generally, I don't believe in such unlikely miracles.
EPIGRAPHY LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR DOUBT
3. And, finally, the handwriting. As Smith details in his book, the near consensus of all the top paleographic experts he consulted both in Greece and the US was that the manuscript dates to the 18th century (on pp. 22-23 of his SECRET GOSPEL, Smith gives the long list of the names of these experts).
Certainly the opinion of these competent scholars should not be taken lightly. We are talking here about some highly specialized criteria that they take into consideration, such as the use of special scribal ligatures, of subscripts, of very complex abbreviations, both medial and terminal, the use of the coronis, and other such matters comprehensible for the most part only to experts.
And also Smith reports in his CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA that a rare manuscript was found that is remarkably close in appearance to our ms. Smith writes that a Greek scholar, Professor Scouvaras, has discovered
"...an eighteenth-century ecclesiastical document in a native Greek hand strikingly similar to that of our manuscript. [It is reproduced on Plate IV in Smith's book] ... [It is] an autograph codex of the Oecumenical Patriarch Callinicus III and was written about 1760 in the Phanariot hand which had been formed in Constantinople shortly before that time." (p. 2)
So here we are, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Three forgeries in one, Smith's critics would like to charge him with. Two unique ancient texts, so different in style and content, _plus_ finding an epigraphic genius forger to put them down on paper. Does this stray far beyond the realm of reality? I sure think so.
AN IMPOSSIBLE SCENARIO
And now let's look at what Smith would have had to do to put it all together. To remind, his discovery was made when he was doing the job of cataloguing odd mss in the rather neglected library of the great Greek Orthodox desert monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem. Presumably, the critics charge, Smith would have planted the book with the text already written into it while he was doing that job. This means that he would have had to have spent years of his life previously to that getting himself totally immersed into Clement and Mk, becoming a "secret world-class expert" in these two highly complex areas.
And when he finally accomplished that task, and composed the two texts, next he would have had to find the "Genius Scribe", his presumed accomplice. (Or did he find this accomplice even before he embarked on his nefarious course?) So they pulled it off, and produced the flawless forgery. Then he goes to Mar Saba and plants the mss. From then on, the story unfolds as previously known.
An obvious question needs to be asked here. Is there any evidence that Smith knew far in advance that he would be doing this two-week job at Mar Saba in 1958? Actually, according to his CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, p. ix, Smith was given permission by Benedict, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to catalogue the library when he was already in Jerusalem in 1958.
In my opinion, it is this premeditation part of this supposed plot to forge these documents that makes it really quite fantastic. He had this idea, "I will produce this forgery and will plant this book in this library." And then he devotes years of his life to this, working in the highest secrecy... Does this sound like a light-hearted prank that some suggested as his motivation?
And it also needs to be noted here that if Smith managed to "plant" this particular manuscript in any other library other than Mar Saba, the case for authenticity would have been rather weaker. This is because there's a recorded tradition that a collection of Clement's letters _has been attested_ in Mar Saba during the Middle Ages. So such a discovery in Mar Saba was not totally unpredictable, after all...
Smith devoted many well-documented years of his life on an academic study of the ms he discovered. Some commentators have actually suggested half-jokingly that the amount of effort he put into all this was almost inexplicable. After reading his two books, it indeed seems like Smith was genuinely obsessed with his discovery.
So Neusner and Co. would presumably claim that Smith did all this background research _before_ he "discovered" the ms? And then he "pretended" to do all this work later? But he repeatedly consulted dozens of noted scholars later and not before! Many of these scholars are still around to tell their side of the story...
To summarize. To accomplish _the three_ such highly complex forgeries, and not to have been caught, would have been beyond the power of one man. To have even _attempted_ such a hopeless task, a task both so hopeless and so time-consuming, would have been quite silly, and Smith was generally not thought of as silly.
And finally, when Smith's discovery is looked at dispassionately, there's really not much there on the surface. What kind of an earth-shaking reaction did he accomplish? Not much really beyond some obscure disputes among professional text crunchers. It's not like the ms just comes out and says, "Jesus was a homosexual, and the whole of Christian religion is a hoax"... Not at all. All it really says is that the Carpocratian heretics were perverts and twisted the Scriptures. But this was already well known before. So, in other words, the pay-off from such a monumental forgery would have been not all that much in any case.
To conclude, the mss is genuine.
And for any who still have doubts, by all means, lobby for the tests on the ink of the mss. Such tests should surely remove all doubt as to the authenticity of this, on the whole, certainly very intriguing, and probably highly revealing document.
Regards, Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky || Toronto
Addendum - Hobbs Critique And More
Discussion on Crosstalk 1996
Addendum on Secret Mark
By Bart Ehrman @email.unc.edu
Thursday
April 25, 1996 11:13 PM PST
An addendum to my posting on a sixth=century ms of Mark. I also asked Charlesworth if he had ever thought about trying to track down the 18th century copy of the letter of Clement of Alexandria found in an edition of the letters of Ignatius in the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem which allegedly preserves Clement's discussion of the Secret Gospel of Mark (Morton Smith published his own photographs of the letter, but no one else has actually seen the thing itself). Charlesworth told me that he has in fact made some inquiries, but that the book in which the letter is found has been moved to Jerusalem, and no one, evidently, knows exactly where.
Does anyone else have additional information on this?
-- Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By GLENN WOODEN @acadiau.ca
Friday
April 26, 1996 12:54 PM PST
Bart and others interested in Smith and the letter of Clement of Alex:
Last year at this time there was an extended discussion about this very topic on B-Greek. At that time Professor Edward Hobbs posted a lengthy article in which he relates various discussions and events surrounding Smith's claims about the said document. With Hobbs' permission (I have sent a request to him) I will forward that post to this list, hopefully soon. The long and short of it is: scholars concluded that it was a forgery; and Smith was not amused!
Glenn Wooden
Acadia Divinity College
Wolfville N.S.
Canada
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By Bart Ehrman @email.unc.edu
Friday
April 26, 1996 02:49 PM PST
Glenn,
Yes, I was on B-Greek at the time and recall the interchange. What I'm wondering about is the actual *place* of the text in question. (I should point out in fairness to both Smith and the discussion, that the forgery question was raised but it has not been answered to the satisfaction of all; before everyone jumps on that bandwagon, they should reread Smith's longer treatment of the question in his _Clement of Alexandria..._; I was inspired to do so by the discussion, and despite my propensity to think he forged it, have to say that his analysis is *extremely* compelling -- the sort of thing that loses almost everything in translation. If he did forge this thing, it's one the most amazing feats of scholarship in the 20th century; and he would have done so at a remarkably young age.)
In any event, does anyone else know where the ms itself is?
-- Bart D. Ehrman
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By Maurice Robinson @mercury.interpath.com
Saturday
April 27, 1996 03:06 PM PST
On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, Bart Ehrman wrote:
Despite my propensity to think he forged it, have to say that his analysis is *extremely* compelling -- the sort of thing that loses almost everything in translation. If he did forge this thing, it's one the most amazing feats of scholarship in the 20th century; and he would have done so at a remarkably young age.
This sounds much like the matter of the Brazilian Paraiba inscription which Cyrus Gordon pronounced authentic (it recounts some Phoenecians blown off course while attempting to circumnavigate Africa, ending up in what is now Brazil). Gordon's point there was that there were certain grammatical peculiarities in the inscription (found in 1898) which were not known within northwest Semitic until the Ugaritic materials had been discovered. Nevertheless, most scholars still considered the Paraiba inscription to be a forgery, which seems peculiar.
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D. Assoc. Prof./Greek and New Testament Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Wake Forest, North Carolina
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By William L. Petersen @psu.edu
Friday
April 26, 1996 02:20 PM PST
Just a quick bibliographic note: P.W. van der Horst, of Utrecht, published an article in Dutch in 1979 in _Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift_ 33, pp. 27-51, titled "Het 'geheime Markusevangelie'. Over een nieuwe vondst" ("The 'Secret Gospel of Mark.' Concerning a new find"). It is a survey of the first 5 years' scholarly reaction to Smith's publication of the text(which appeared in 1973), and deserves study. He has, with typical thoroughness, examined every position; therefore, even if you don't read Dutch, the bibliography in the notes is valuable.
The article is reprinted in v.d. Horst's collected essays, _De onbekende god_, Utrechtse Theologische Reeks 2 (Utrecht 1988), pp. 37-64.
Petersen--Penn State University
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By shemichaeX@aol.com
Friday
April 26, 1996 10:06 PM PST
In a message dated 96-04-26 11:55:38 EDT, you write:
The long and short of it is: scholars concluded that it was a forgery; and Smith was not amused!
It was a 16th century text incorporating the Secret Mark text, wasn't it? Was it supposed to have been a 16th century forgery? If so, it was a hidden one, used as the back of another text as I remember, or was it? Who was trying to fool whom? Smith had so many questions, himself, that I thought he rather ran through most of the possibilities of fraud.
Hobbs et al. on Smith & Secret Mark, I
By GLENN WOODEN@acadiau.ca
Monday
April 29, 1996 11:36 AM PST
Edward Hobbs forwarded his archived material on Smith and the controversy surrounding the letter of Clement of Alex, with permission to forward it to this list for those interested. It has some up-to-date bibliography (1995) on the matter. Because it was so long I am sending it in two sections.
Glenn Wooden
Forwarded material, #1: a long collection.
From: "pmoseX@cpua.it.luc.edu" "Paul Moser" 5-MAY-1995 15:31:26.14
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Secret Mark, Neusner, Smith, etc.
I wonder if any listmember knows of a careful review of Jacob Neusner, *Are There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels?* (Scholars Press, 1993). The book is a vigorous criticism of Morton Smith's *Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels*. In addition, Neusner announces that Smith's proposed evidence for the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark "must now be declared the forgery of the century" (p. 28). Neusner suggests that Smith himself forged the Clement of Alexandria fragment that allegedly surfaced in a library in Sinai in 1958, giving evidence of the Secret Gospel. As one might have expected, Helmut Koester and J.D. Crossan regard canonical Mark as postdating Secret Mark. For overwhelming evidence against the latter view, see Robert Gundry, *Mark* (Eerdmans, 1993); cf. F.F. Bruce, *The Canon of Scripture*, and J.H. Charlesworth & C.A. Evans, in *Studying the Historical Jesus* (Brill, 1994), pp. 526-32. Neusner, in any case, clearly has higher standards for authenticity than Koester or Crossan. Neusner suggests that Smith presented only photographs, not the actual MS, of the Clement fragment.-- Paul Moser, Loyola University of Chicago.
From: "gdoudnX@ednet1.osl.or.gov" 5-MAY-1995 23:05:04.04
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Secret Mark, Neusner, Smith, etc.
I had not heard of Neusner's claim or this particular work of Neusner's (_Are There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels?_) but I have studied this issue of Secret Mark and had become convinced that Morton Smith perpetrated a fraud, also. Not a single reference to or reaction against this alleged Clement letter is known in history; and the book in which Morton Smith found the letter at the Mar Saba monastery was not listed in any previous catalogue of that monastery. Morton Smith made no effort whatever toward conservation of the manuscript, nor has the document apparently been seen or brought to light for testing and analysis by anyone else. (I do not doubt that a genuine 17th century book with a letter in the back exists; but there is no evidence beyond M Smith's word that he found it in the monastery.) The shocking contents of the letter sound suspiciously like theories Morton Smith was working on; and there is much more. I am unfamiliar with Neusner's analysis, but in my own reading of Smith's account of the discovery I have noted strange ways Smith puts things. For example, he dedicated his book on the Secret Gospel, cryptically, "To the one who knows"; and never disclosed who this person was or what this person knew.
For articulation of suspicions of forgery before now Quentin Quesnell in _Catholic Biblical Quarterly_ 37 (1975): 48-67 is a classic, and see also M. Smith's reply and Quesnell's reply to Smith's reply in the next issue, CBQ 38. There is a good discussion of the forgery question in _Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation, or Old Tradition?- ed. R. Fuller (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 1976). This list's very own Edward Hobbs was at the Colloquium reported in this last citation, where Smith was also present at the discussion of whether his discovery was a forgery; perhaps Dr. Hobbs can offer some illuminating firsthand anecdotal information of that occasion! Greg Doudna West Linn, Oregonx
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 14-MAY-1995 18:46:02.72
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Lengthy account of Secret Mark
Dear Friends of the B-Greek List:
Thanks to several of you who have asked me to comment on the "Secret Mark" issue, and the 18th Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, called "Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation, or Old Tradition?". I'll post in two parts: this one, and a follow-up which will be the first part of the text of my Critique, not including the Synopsis (in Greek) which I produced to show the obvious Gospel source of every phrase in Smith's supposed Secret Mark.
BACKGROUND (Skip to SECRET MARK if you wish.)
The Center (founded in 1969 by me and Dieter Georgi, in a [vain] effort to keep Dieter in Berkeley rather than leaving for Harvard) brought together faculty from U.C.Berkeley, GTU, Stanford, Un. of S.F., Un. of Santa Clara, U.C.Santa Cruz, occasionally others. Nine departments of U.C. Berkeley were participants! At the Colloquies, we solicited a Position Paper (from scholars everywhere: besides the Bay Area, Harvard (many times), Columbia (Morton Smith himself!), Chicago, Bryn Mawr, Claremont, SUNY, as well as Oxford, St. Andrews, Constanz, Cologne, Zurich, Paris (Sorbonne), and on and on. The Position Paper was printed and distributed to a select group of Critics (local and elsewhere), who wrote Critiques. The Position Paper and the Critiques were then printed together and sent to the participants a couple of weeks before the Colloquy met. At the Colloquy, we first had 45 minutes of fine wines (from my cellar) and nibbles, with pleasant conversation. Then we met in a giant circle (if possible -- when 40 or more showed up we had to use concentric circles), the Paper author had 15 minutes to respond orally to the Critics, followed by general discussion, following a series of questions which I usually presented as we began. All this was tape-recorded (by my son Kevin--now a mathematician, one of the "Hubble-fixers" who designed the new lenses for the Hubble space telescope). The tape-recording was then transcribed (by one of my graduate students), and copies of everyone's remarks (now severely edited down, usually by me or a trusted graduate student) were typed up and sent to every speaker who was being summarized. Each speaker was allowed to expunge idiocies unless they provoked further discussion, to edit down further, and to improve their English. (Imagine doing all this without computers!) After taking all these things into account, the results were published in a series of Protocols (also handled physically by me, dealing with various local printers and binders), and sent out to subscribers by another of my graduate students (Sharon Boucher, who was never paid for years of this). My colleague at PSR, Wilhelm Wuellner, dearly loved the limelight, and so we usually called him Chairman, often Editor, etc., though in fact all the labors were done by unsung others. We met thus three to seven times a year.
SECRET MARK
Reginald Fuller (of Virginia Theological Seminary at that time) was planning to visit Berkeley for a few weeks, and wrote to say that he had a paper in the works on Morton Smith's "Secret Mark", wondering whether we wanted to us it as a Position Paper. We agreed, and the Colloquy was initiated (actual meeting on 7 December 1975). Smith himself wrote a Critique, as well as Helmut Koester (always a fan of Smith, to my eternal puzzlement), Hans Dieter Betz, Birger Pearson (UC-SB), Bud (Paul) Achtemeier (Union-Virginia), and locals (including me, and my then-student Daryl Schmidt). Charles Murgia, then Chairman of the Dept. of Classics at Berkeley, wrote a devastating proof of forgery. In the discussion, he said that he didn't think Smith himself did the forging, because Smith's knowledge of Greek was inferior to that of the author/forger, and because the forger had an excellent sense of humor, which Smith lacked. (My reaction was to say that I'd rather be accused of forgery than of lacking a sense of humor and being deficient in Greek!) My own effort in advance was to prepare a Greek Synopsis, with three columns: "Clement's" Text, Parallels in Mark, and Parallels in John. I thought it evidenced that the work was a "pastiche" created from canonical Gospel materials. (I also said that since I wasn't a Clement-scholar, I couldn't judge whether the forgery was pre- or post-Clement, hence I would simply assume Robert Grant's opinion that the letter sounded like Clement. I didn't believe it, but I didn't want to take on THAT issue as well. Smith later cited me, in Harvard Theological Review, as one who accepted the authenticity of the work!) After publication, the hate-mail from Smith began. He quickly learned that I was the center of this vortex, and letter after letter of vitriol, spite, irrational attacks, and the like were showered upon me. This was despite the fact that I had refrained from voicing my personal opinion, that the "letter" and the "secret Mark text" never existed, but were invented by Smith. He produced no MS., only some "photographs" he claimed to have made at Mar Saba monastery in 1958. He kept the matter secret for 14 years, then published two books, a "scholarly" one and a "popular" one. No other person has ever been able to locate the book in which this stuff was supposedly written (mainly on the flyleaf and the binding paper). The entire affair reeks of fraud, which Quentin Quesnell had the courage to publish aloud (I DID have the courage to call attention to his work during the Colloquy!)
A SECOND ATTEMPT (to debunk Jesus)
Three years later, I was Visiting Professor at Claremont, and working with the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. Hans Dieter Betz (this was before he went to Chicago) was Chairman, and he asked me to be the critic for an all-day session planned to discuss Smith's new MS. which he had sent ahead, "Jesus the Magician".(Having failed to convince everyone that Jesus was executed for running a gay-liberation group, caught in the act in Gethsemane, he now turned to prove that he was executed for being a magician.) I tried to beg off, but Betz was insistent; he assured me that Smith would be quite open to any valid criticism. The typed MS. was about three inches thick, and ruined a week for me. When the day arrived, he walked in, took one look at me, and paled noticeably. He was furious that I had been chosen, but had to sit quietly for 45 minutes while I took his MS. apart (the published version withdrew EVERYTHING I leveled my fire at, fortunately for him). I even pointed out that his major evidence for claiming that Jesus was the bastard child of a German soldier, was in Alfred Rosenberg's Nazi pseudo- philosophical work, _The Myth of the 20th Century_; Smith quoted the German title, and thought readers would assume this was from some renowned German historian! He raged at me for about half an hour, but then (thankfully) Jim Robinson picked up on the attack, and we had a heavy day of argument, about it and about. That evening, it turned out that Smith and I were the guests of honor at a dinner put on by Betz! And we were seated together! So we discussed magical amulets, about which he knew a great deal and I knew nothing, thus escaping ulcers for the evening. The hate-mail began pouring in about a week later; but I noticed that the published book eliminated all the stupidities and errors I had nastily pointed out. Thereafter, when we met at the annual Harvard receptions for faculty (including me) and alumni (including him) at the AAR/SBL national meetings, we avoided each other conspicuously.
TWO LOYAL COLLEAGUES
Chopped into mincemeat at the 1979 SBL meeting in NYC, a special event was held for Pierson Parker (of General Seminary most of his life), focusing on his early-fifties book _The Gospel before Mark_ [positing a kind of Ur-Markus called K, on which Matthew was based, with canonical Matthew being thus earlier than canonical Mark]. Four speakers were lined up, one of whom had been a student of Parker (Rhys was his name), and another of whom was Morton Smith. Smith was chosen at Parker's request, for Parker had always championed Smith and his work, even though most others in the guild despised (and feared) him. Rhys gave a pleasant little talk, followed by Smith, who worked himself up into a rage over Rhys's words. He said that this speech should be printed as an example of every stupidity possible in the scholarly world. He then went on to attack Parker, saying that Parker's view that Matthew was prior to Mark was simply the old Roman Catholic view, and that Parker, being an Episcopal priest, was sucking up to Rome, as Episcopal priests always do. It was a horrifying performance! When the brief time for discussion arrived, the Chair wanted to close things off quickly. But I leaped to my feat and asked just how it was that Episcopal priest Parker was driven into bias by that fact, whereas somehow Episcopal priest Smith had miraculously escaped, and was enabled to be objective and full of truth? I pressed the issue of ad hominem attacks, questioning whether anyone--EVEN MORTON SMITH--had a right to behave in that fashion at a scholarly meeting. He sputtered for a moment, then stalked out. About ten years ago (I think it was in Chicago, but all these hotels are so similar I'm not sure), Smith took the platform to denounce the translation by Jacob Neusner of an ancient rabbinic document. Neusner claimed this was the first time it had appeared in English, and that he had done the translation. Smith revealed that it in fact was lifted from a translation made centuries ago. Neusner was publicly humiliated, and found it hard to show up for things for a few years. (My vagueness about the exact titles, etc., is because I was in an adjacent room, and did not directly hear this attack; I was told of it many times over during the hours and days which followed.) Now, the interesting thing about this is not that such a thing could happen; plagiarism is shameful, maybe on a par with forgery (?). It is that Jacob Neusner was one of Smith's few ardent champions (Parker and Koester being two of the other three or four). Smith had turned on one of the few friends he had left! Finally: I gather Neusner is now having his revenge!
Edward C. Hobbs
Hobbs et al. on Smith & Secret Mark, II
By GLENN WOODEN @acadiau.ca
Monday
April 29, 1996 11:36 AM PST
Forwarded material, #2: a long collection.
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 14-MAY-1995 18:47:00.73
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Portion of My Critique on "Secret Mark" [Colloquy 18] [This material is Copyright 1975.]
The issue before us in this Colloquy (as it properly is in each of our Colloquies) should be the fundamental methodological one: How is it that we solve problems about the interpretation of a text? This is a special form of the more general issue of how we make historical judgments. Since we deal with the unrepeatable, and thus are deprived of the experimental method in any strict sense, and since we further are not engaged with logical deduction from postulates in the fashion of mathematics, we are faced with the criterion of probability. Thus much is, however, granted by everyone (or, almost everyone!). The problem remains, what constitutes probability?
I wish to suggest that one crucial dimension of any theory of probability, whether in the natural sciences or in the humanistic disciplines including history, is the well-proven Law of Parsimony, or Ockham's Razor: Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem. Ockham himself, as is well-known, did not invent the principle; but he used it effectively and constantly (though not in this exact formulation which goes by his name; he preferred two other wordings), and he has handed on to us a tool for cutting away flights of fancy and distinguishing the probable from the merely possible. The modern form of it in the sciences usually demands the postulation of the fewest unobservable commensurate with or necessary to explain the evidence. Morton Smith acknowledges the criterion of probability quite explicitly (e.g., The Secret Gospel, p. 148--the last paragraph of the book; and Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, pp. 289-290--a passage parallel to the previous one); but he also undercuts the criterion by saying, "But the truth is that improbable things sometimes happen. Therefore truth is necessarily stranger than history." (The Secret Gospel, p. 148) Unless this sentence has a hidden meaning (and Smith seems to love them), he seems to be saying that our notions of probability are not fitted to the actual course of happenings in the world, and thus that "truth" (what really happened?) is stranger than "history" (what non-Smith historians write down?). This is a curious notion of probability, indeed! At the level of small detail, Smith's work is indeed "erudite," as it is usually called; his Clement volume is filled with a wealth of homework preparatory to historical explanation.
At the next stage of work, however, he moves suddenly into a rarified realm from which he is able to dismiss all scholars and all scholarly methods in general use with whom and which he differs; scholars' work at odds with his (or even potentially at odds, in the future: see, e.g., Clement, p. 287, "To prevent foreseeable stupidities...") regularly is labeled "worthless," "ludicrous," "hostile," "muddled," "stupidity," in some cases "malicious and deliberately deceitful" (he says there are several of these apparently, while singling out one as "most" so), "extravagance of exegetic fantasy, " and the like. Tools basic to the discipline seem either to be non-existent (e.g. redaction criticism) or to be so badly used by everyone else that "alternatives" need to be used (e.g. form criticism). Important redaction-critical work is ignored or else dismissed as "fantasy" (so with Marxsen's important work), and recent form-critical study, even of this precise passage of Mark, is nowhere mentioned (e.g. H.-W. Kuhn's work). In view of this treatment of differing scholars and methods, our deliberations are unlikely to meet any different fate at the hands of Smith; those who are sympathetic to his work will be praised, and those who differ will be damned (will we, hopefully, be allowed to choose whether we are to be labeled "stupid," "ludicrous," or merely engaging in "fantasy"?).
It seems to me that Ockham's Razor demands that we utilize the least new hypotheses to account for this text. Smith calls his explanation an "account" or a "history"; it is, in fact, an elaborate web of many hypotheses, each one constructed to fit the facts of the text to the previously constructed hypothesis. It is ingenious, and is just the method adopted by the author of historical fiction--one constructs an account which will touch on the known facts at as many points as possible, so as to create the effect "Yes, it might well have happened like this, indeed!" Like many scholars and others, I enjoy historical fiction; I become uneasy only when the word "fiction" is omitted from the sub-title or jacket description. And note that "fiction" does not here mean untrue; it is possible that it happened in such fashion. But the historian does not call his elaborate construction that touches all points while going far beyond them, a "history"; he reserves that term for the work to which he has applied Ockham's Razor, removing all absolutely unessential or unnecessary unobservables.
The simplest explanation is one which accords with other phenomena already known to us from early Christian history. (In what follows, I am assuming that the Letter is indeed from Clement. I am uncertain of this; but Robert Grant, who is far more capable than I to judge the question, considers that Smith has proved this point, and I accept his judgment.) It is roughly as follows:
(1) Following Paul's lead (Romans 6:1-11), some Christians in Alexandria (Carpocratians, apparently, and others) interpreted baptism as resurrection. Someone among them felt the need of an account in the Gospels to illustrate this, and set out to fill the need.
(2) Our author, working after the collection of our four Gospels, is acquainted with the texts of all of them; but he best knows Mark (long associated with Alexandria), just as most people have a favorite Gospel. The Lazarus story (John 11) is the one lengthy resurrection account, but it cannot be simply duplicated. Luke has a resurrection story concerning a male (all of the Synoptics have the story of Jairus' daughter), also; he is called *neaniskos*, a term also occurring in Mark's story of the empty tomb.
(3) Our author has his clues, and begins to piece together his paradigmatic pericope. The to-be-resurrected *neaniskos* has (a mother--Luke? two sisters--John?) a sister, who intercedes for him. The details of the pericope are easily assembled from other healing accounts in Mark, plus the obvious Lazarus-parallel. Especially attractive are some accounts which involve "resurrection" (*egeiro*,1:31; 5:41; 10:49; 16:6) or a "tomb" (*mnemeion*, 5:2,3,5; 15:46;16:2,3,5,8).
(4) The *neaniskos* produces by easy connections his clothing (Mark 14:51) which is like that of the pre-resurrected Jesus (Mark 15:46) and the statement that "looking on him, he loved him" (Mark 10:21, with its Matthaean parallel for *neaniskos*), as well as his wealth (Mark 10:22; cf. Luke 18:23 for exact wording).
(5) The locale is given by the Lazarus story--perhaps also by Mark 8:22, text of Codex Beza. As noted by Smith, the pericope's text often accords with the "Western" text; but the simpler explanation is that our author actually read such a text (coming into being about 150 by the usual dating), rather than that the Western text derived from "Longer Mark," a theory that explains nothing about the Western text in the rest of the Gospels and Acts. Even the dating is given by the Lazarus story, conflated (or maybe not, though the wording is identical) with the opening of Mark's Transfiguration story (in which Jesus is clothed in white, as is the *neaniskos* in the empty tomb).
(6) Our author at the end has to get Jesus back to where the account in Mark continues. The entire process is a simple one: A Mark-sounding story is produced by utilizing related stories in Mark and their phrasing, combined with the obvious resurrection story in John, and some inevitable wording derived from memory of the Matthew and Luke parallels (cf. our own "rich young ruler," a description which is a conflation of the synoptic accounts). To account for the similarities to Mark by having a translator (working from an Aramaic Vorlage) deliberately imitate Mark's style is "multiplying entities," indeed. Finally, could such an "invention" (a "pastiche" might be the best term) be interpolated into Mark's text, even though the Gospel was already accepted as in some sense "canonical"? Of course it could!--all we have to recall is the way in which the pericope on the adulterous woman was inserted into various places, without fire falling from heaven (after Luke 21:38; after John 7:36; after John 7:52; after John 21:24), or the way in which various endings were attached to Mark, endings pieced together in much the fashion we have observed here. If Stendhal's statement (quoted on p. 85, Clement) means that the text cannot have originated in the late second century or after, then it is demonstrably wrong, on the evidence of the pericopes just cited and their textual history; perhaps, however, Stendhal's comment refers to a time after the fixing of the text, i.e., after the supremacy of the Byzantine text.
(by: Edward C. Hobbs -- From the Protocol of the 18th Colloquy)
From: "lisatiX@aol.com" 15-MAY-1995 03:43:41.88
To: "ehobbX@wellesley.edu" CC: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: RE: Lengthy account of Secret...
Dear Professor Hobbs and friends, Thanks to the professor for recalling Morton's visit to Berkeley in 1975. The topic seems now to be more important and exciting than it was at the time, which is a surprise to me. I just want to add a few things in order to balance out the report of E. Hobbs. No one that I knew took Professor Smith seriously at that time. I never cease to be amazed when I hear people twenty years later talking about his invention. Prof. Hobbs is right when he consigns this gospel to the genre of historical novel. We all knew our visitor was mad, but now people don't know this. I didn't know that Prof. Hobbs openly contradicted our visitor. I don't remember anyone wanting to offend the mad one. We thought it our duty to humor him and give him an open forum at the Hermeneutic Center. At the time he was travelling all over California attracting big crowds and newspaper coverage. I was sent to the airport to pick him up and found a place for him to stay in Benton Hall. I think I heard him speak but was more interested in Professor Hobbs's selections of California reds at the time. Professor Smith's apologia in the Harvard Theological Review came as a real shock to me, him marshalling and counting all these famous names who believed in his historical romance. I really do not understand how anyone, student or professor, can take seriously his fantasy. On the other hand, I am concerned that apparently people are doing just that. That's the reason I am saying that at that time no one who knew him took this seriously but people tried to be courteous and not offend someone who was obviously deranged.
Richard Arthur, Merrimack NHlisatiX@aol.com
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 15-MAY-1995 13:08:17.51
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Smith's visit to Berkeley: correction
Richard Arthur's supplement to my account was a pleasant reminder that other people still live who were there. But I'm afraid he is remembering the wrong Colloquy. Smith visited Berkeley only once, to my knowledge; it was for Colloquy 6, held on 12 April 1973. The subject of his position paper was "The Aretalogy Used by Mark". It was on that occasion that Richard Arthur picked up Smith and took him to his room at PSR. Colloquy 18 is the one we have been discussing. Smith was not present; neither was Richard Arthur (who may have graduated by then?). The date for this Colloquy was close to three years later, on 7 December 1975. The Position Paper was by Reginald Fuller. Secret Mark had not even been published when Smith was present in early 1973, so of course I did not challenge him on it (never having heard of it). I stand by my statement sent yesterday. How I wish everyone had thought Smith deranged! But I did take him on, not only then (in his absence), but on several later occasions, two of which I reported to all of you yesterday. There was never an agreement to be nice to him, at least not one I signed. I wasn't even nice to Ernest Badian (Harvard) when he was with us in 1976 (what an arrogant fellow he was). Incidentally, I received a message asking if I knew Morton Smith was dead. Yes, I knew, almost immediately. So does Neusner know. Edward Hobbs
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 17-MAY-1995 15:46:38.71
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Secret Mark, Smith, Ad Hominem, & Koester
First, may I thank most warmly those of you who have responded to unwarranted innuendoes about my report on the Secret Mark controversy. I did not write that material of my own choice; I was asked by more than a half-dozen of you to do so. Nothing in it was fabricated, and nothing in it suggested that because Smith behaved outrageously when crossed, his scholarship was to be disregarded. A student from Canada has exhorted us to avoid ad hominem attacks, implying that I had engaged in them. It was precisely for that reason I had reported Smith's repeated use of the ad hominem attack; but I did not use it myself. May I point out that;
(1) I personally spent most of two months of 1975 in organizing, conducting, and editing/publishing a careful analysis of Smith's "Secret Mark" work. I also pointed out that I had carefully refrained from expressing my private belief that the supposed MS. was a recent forgery (i.e., within the last 1800 years). Surely this counts as "judging his views on the basis of his written legacy."
(2) "Jesus the Magician" was the recipient of more than 40 hours of my time, in 1976, resulting in more than 50 pages of criticism delivered to Smith by me, along with a 45-minute oral summary at the beginning of a day-long discussion of his MS. The published volume altered almost every one of the passages I criticized; had I not devoted that extended time to working through his original MS., the published volume would have been far more roundly criticized by its reviewers. This was not an ad hominem attack. That I reported to you some of what was asked for -- namely, the living-person relationship I had with Smith -- was offered not to attack his views, but to report what almost everyone knew about him who disagreed with him. Bob Kraft has rightly -- and generously -- pointed out the supportive, humorous, and congenial way Smith (at times) treated his friends. He also acknowledged his cantankerous, intimidating, confrontational ways on other occasions. I happen to admire Bob Kraft for his loyalty toward his friends, even when dead; I count this a great quality in a person. As I pointed out, sometimes Smith did not share this quality (re: Parker and Neusner, for example). And I want to state emphatically that Helmut Koester also possesses this quality, even at great cost to himself (as in the Bob Funk affair). Hence Helmut has loyally defended Smith through the years, and gave him a forum at Harvard when he otherwise would have been dismissed out of hand. Helmut is an honest scholar, and a great scholar. He and I disagree about many matters of N.T. scholarship, but he has never dismissed me or my work as a consequence. He was my department chairman at the time of my second major broadside against the Q-hypothesis (at SBL in Chicago, six years after my first), and even then he only declined to speak to me for two days! Then all was well again. I cannot want for a better friend and colleague. May I suggest that when we evaluate the written legacy of a scholar, we also take the trouble to read the written legacy of those who have faulted that scholar's legacy. Apparently Smith has supporters of his views who have not bothered to read the reviews and follow-up work. (And among these I do NOT count either Bob Kraft or Helmut Koester.)
Edward Hobbs
From: "emkrentX@mcs.com" "Edgar M. Krentz" 15-JUN-1995 11:22:23.14
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Secret Gospel of Mark
There was a recent lengthy string about the _Secret Gospel of Mark_ published by Morton Smith. Those interested may want to read a reent article: A. H. Criddle, "On the Mar Saba Letter Attributed to Clement of Alexandria," _Journal of Early Christian Studies_ 2,3 (Summer 1995) 215-220. Criddle argues that the Clement letter is spurious and that _Secret Mark_ is therefore of dubious authenticity. His argument is based on a model of vocabulary statistics that he and an analysis of uaantitative rhythms.
Edgar Krentz [emkrentX@mcs.com]
Discussion on Crosstalk 1996
Addendum on Secret Mark
By Bart Ehrman @email.unc.edu
Thursday
April 25, 1996 11:13 PM PST
An addendum to my posting on a sixth=century ms of Mark. I also asked Charlesworth if he had ever thought about trying to track down the 18th century copy of the letter of Clement of Alexandria found in an edition of the letters of Ignatius in the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem which allegedly preserves Clement's discussion of the Secret Gospel of Mark (Morton Smith published his own photographs of the letter, but no one else has actually seen the thing itself). Charlesworth told me that he has in fact made some inquiries, but that the book in which the letter is found has been moved to Jerusalem, and no one, evidently, knows exactly where.
Does anyone else have additional information on this?
-- Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By GLENN WOODEN @acadiau.ca
Friday
April 26, 1996 12:54 PM PST
Bart and others interested in Smith and the letter of Clement of Alex:
Last year at this time there was an extended discussion about this very topic on B-Greek. At that time Professor Edward Hobbs posted a lengthy article in which he relates various discussions and events surrounding Smith's claims about the said document. With Hobbs' permission (I have sent a request to him) I will forward that post to this list, hopefully soon. The long and short of it is: scholars concluded that it was a forgery; and Smith was not amused!
Glenn Wooden
Acadia Divinity College
Wolfville N.S.
Canada
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By Bart Ehrman @email.unc.edu
Friday
April 26, 1996 02:49 PM PST
Glenn,
Yes, I was on B-Greek at the time and recall the interchange. What I'm wondering about is the actual *place* of the text in question. (I should point out in fairness to both Smith and the discussion, that the forgery question was raised but it has not been answered to the satisfaction of all; before everyone jumps on that bandwagon, they should reread Smith's longer treatment of the question in his _Clement of Alexandria..._; I was inspired to do so by the discussion, and despite my propensity to think he forged it, have to say that his analysis is *extremely* compelling -- the sort of thing that loses almost everything in translation. If he did forge this thing, it's one the most amazing feats of scholarship in the 20th century; and he would have done so at a remarkably young age.)
In any event, does anyone else know where the ms itself is?
-- Bart D. Ehrman
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By Maurice Robinson @mercury.interpath.com
Saturday
April 27, 1996 03:06 PM PST
On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, Bart Ehrman wrote:
Despite my propensity to think he forged it, have to say that his analysis is *extremely* compelling -- the sort of thing that loses almost everything in translation. If he did forge this thing, it's one the most amazing feats of scholarship in the 20th century; and he would have done so at a remarkably young age.
This sounds much like the matter of the Brazilian Paraiba inscription which Cyrus Gordon pronounced authentic (it recounts some Phoenecians blown off course while attempting to circumnavigate Africa, ending up in what is now Brazil). Gordon's point there was that there were certain grammatical peculiarities in the inscription (found in 1898) which were not known within northwest Semitic until the Ugaritic materials had been discovered. Nevertheless, most scholars still considered the Paraiba inscription to be a forgery, which seems peculiar.
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D. Assoc. Prof./Greek and New Testament Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Wake Forest, North Carolina
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By William L. Petersen @psu.edu
Friday
April 26, 1996 02:20 PM PST
Just a quick bibliographic note: P.W. van der Horst, of Utrecht, published an article in Dutch in 1979 in _Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift_ 33, pp. 27-51, titled "Het 'geheime Markusevangelie'. Over een nieuwe vondst" ("The 'Secret Gospel of Mark.' Concerning a new find"). It is a survey of the first 5 years' scholarly reaction to Smith's publication of the text(which appeared in 1973), and deserves study. He has, with typical thoroughness, examined every position; therefore, even if you don't read Dutch, the bibliography in the notes is valuable.
The article is reprinted in v.d. Horst's collected essays, _De onbekende god_, Utrechtse Theologische Reeks 2 (Utrecht 1988), pp. 37-64.
Petersen--Penn State University
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By shemichaeX@aol.com
Friday
April 26, 1996 10:06 PM PST
In a message dated 96-04-26 11:55:38 EDT, you write:
The long and short of it is: scholars concluded that it was a forgery; and Smith was not amused!
It was a 16th century text incorporating the Secret Mark text, wasn't it? Was it supposed to have been a 16th century forgery? If so, it was a hidden one, used as the back of another text as I remember, or was it? Who was trying to fool whom? Smith had so many questions, himself, that I thought he rather ran through most of the possibilities of fraud.
Hobbs et al. on Smith & Secret Mark, I
By GLENN WOODEN@acadiau.ca
Monday
April 29, 1996 11:36 AM PST
Edward Hobbs forwarded his archived material on Smith and the controversy surrounding the letter of Clement of Alex, with permission to forward it to this list for those interested. It has some up-to-date bibliography (1995) on the matter. Because it was so long I am sending it in two sections.
Glenn Wooden
Forwarded material, #1: a long collection.
From: "pmoseX@cpua.it.luc.edu" "Paul Moser" 5-MAY-1995 15:31:26.14
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Secret Mark, Neusner, Smith, etc.
I wonder if any listmember knows of a careful review of Jacob Neusner, *Are There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels?* (Scholars Press, 1993). The book is a vigorous criticism of Morton Smith's *Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels*. In addition, Neusner announces that Smith's proposed evidence for the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark "must now be declared the forgery of the century" (p. 28). Neusner suggests that Smith himself forged the Clement of Alexandria fragment that allegedly surfaced in a library in Sinai in 1958, giving evidence of the Secret Gospel. As one might have expected, Helmut Koester and J.D. Crossan regard canonical Mark as postdating Secret Mark. For overwhelming evidence against the latter view, see Robert Gundry, *Mark* (Eerdmans, 1993); cf. F.F. Bruce, *The Canon of Scripture*, and J.H. Charlesworth & C.A. Evans, in *Studying the Historical Jesus* (Brill, 1994), pp. 526-32. Neusner, in any case, clearly has higher standards for authenticity than Koester or Crossan. Neusner suggests that Smith presented only photographs, not the actual MS, of the Clement fragment.-- Paul Moser, Loyola University of Chicago.
From: "gdoudnX@ednet1.osl.or.gov" 5-MAY-1995 23:05:04.04
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Secret Mark, Neusner, Smith, etc.
I had not heard of Neusner's claim or this particular work of Neusner's (_Are There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels?_) but I have studied this issue of Secret Mark and had become convinced that Morton Smith perpetrated a fraud, also. Not a single reference to or reaction against this alleged Clement letter is known in history; and the book in which Morton Smith found the letter at the Mar Saba monastery was not listed in any previous catalogue of that monastery. Morton Smith made no effort whatever toward conservation of the manuscript, nor has the document apparently been seen or brought to light for testing and analysis by anyone else. (I do not doubt that a genuine 17th century book with a letter in the back exists; but there is no evidence beyond M Smith's word that he found it in the monastery.) The shocking contents of the letter sound suspiciously like theories Morton Smith was working on; and there is much more. I am unfamiliar with Neusner's analysis, but in my own reading of Smith's account of the discovery I have noted strange ways Smith puts things. For example, he dedicated his book on the Secret Gospel, cryptically, "To the one who knows"; and never disclosed who this person was or what this person knew.
For articulation of suspicions of forgery before now Quentin Quesnell in _Catholic Biblical Quarterly_ 37 (1975): 48-67 is a classic, and see also M. Smith's reply and Quesnell's reply to Smith's reply in the next issue, CBQ 38. There is a good discussion of the forgery question in _Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation, or Old Tradition?- ed. R. Fuller (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 1976). This list's very own Edward Hobbs was at the Colloquium reported in this last citation, where Smith was also present at the discussion of whether his discovery was a forgery; perhaps Dr. Hobbs can offer some illuminating firsthand anecdotal information of that occasion! Greg Doudna West Linn, Oregonx
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 14-MAY-1995 18:46:02.72
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Lengthy account of Secret Mark
Dear Friends of the B-Greek List:
Thanks to several of you who have asked me to comment on the "Secret Mark" issue, and the 18th Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, called "Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation, or Old Tradition?". I'll post in two parts: this one, and a follow-up which will be the first part of the text of my Critique, not including the Synopsis (in Greek) which I produced to show the obvious Gospel source of every phrase in Smith's supposed Secret Mark.
BACKGROUND (Skip to SECRET MARK if you wish.)
The Center (founded in 1969 by me and Dieter Georgi, in a [vain] effort to keep Dieter in Berkeley rather than leaving for Harvard) brought together faculty from U.C.Berkeley, GTU, Stanford, Un. of S.F., Un. of Santa Clara, U.C.Santa Cruz, occasionally others. Nine departments of U.C. Berkeley were participants! At the Colloquies, we solicited a Position Paper (from scholars everywhere: besides the Bay Area, Harvard (many times), Columbia (Morton Smith himself!), Chicago, Bryn Mawr, Claremont, SUNY, as well as Oxford, St. Andrews, Constanz, Cologne, Zurich, Paris (Sorbonne), and on and on. The Position Paper was printed and distributed to a select group of Critics (local and elsewhere), who wrote Critiques. The Position Paper and the Critiques were then printed together and sent to the participants a couple of weeks before the Colloquy met. At the Colloquy, we first had 45 minutes of fine wines (from my cellar) and nibbles, with pleasant conversation. Then we met in a giant circle (if possible -- when 40 or more showed up we had to use concentric circles), the Paper author had 15 minutes to respond orally to the Critics, followed by general discussion, following a series of questions which I usually presented as we began. All this was tape-recorded (by my son Kevin--now a mathematician, one of the "Hubble-fixers" who designed the new lenses for the Hubble space telescope). The tape-recording was then transcribed (by one of my graduate students), and copies of everyone's remarks (now severely edited down, usually by me or a trusted graduate student) were typed up and sent to every speaker who was being summarized. Each speaker was allowed to expunge idiocies unless they provoked further discussion, to edit down further, and to improve their English. (Imagine doing all this without computers!) After taking all these things into account, the results were published in a series of Protocols (also handled physically by me, dealing with various local printers and binders), and sent out to subscribers by another of my graduate students (Sharon Boucher, who was never paid for years of this). My colleague at PSR, Wilhelm Wuellner, dearly loved the limelight, and so we usually called him Chairman, often Editor, etc., though in fact all the labors were done by unsung others. We met thus three to seven times a year.
SECRET MARK
Reginald Fuller (of Virginia Theological Seminary at that time) was planning to visit Berkeley for a few weeks, and wrote to say that he had a paper in the works on Morton Smith's "Secret Mark", wondering whether we wanted to us it as a Position Paper. We agreed, and the Colloquy was initiated (actual meeting on 7 December 1975). Smith himself wrote a Critique, as well as Helmut Koester (always a fan of Smith, to my eternal puzzlement), Hans Dieter Betz, Birger Pearson (UC-SB), Bud (Paul) Achtemeier (Union-Virginia), and locals (including me, and my then-student Daryl Schmidt). Charles Murgia, then Chairman of the Dept. of Classics at Berkeley, wrote a devastating proof of forgery. In the discussion, he said that he didn't think Smith himself did the forging, because Smith's knowledge of Greek was inferior to that of the author/forger, and because the forger had an excellent sense of humor, which Smith lacked. (My reaction was to say that I'd rather be accused of forgery than of lacking a sense of humor and being deficient in Greek!) My own effort in advance was to prepare a Greek Synopsis, with three columns: "Clement's" Text, Parallels in Mark, and Parallels in John. I thought it evidenced that the work was a "pastiche" created from canonical Gospel materials. (I also said that since I wasn't a Clement-scholar, I couldn't judge whether the forgery was pre- or post-Clement, hence I would simply assume Robert Grant's opinion that the letter sounded like Clement. I didn't believe it, but I didn't want to take on THAT issue as well. Smith later cited me, in Harvard Theological Review, as one who accepted the authenticity of the work!) After publication, the hate-mail from Smith began. He quickly learned that I was the center of this vortex, and letter after letter of vitriol, spite, irrational attacks, and the like were showered upon me. This was despite the fact that I had refrained from voicing my personal opinion, that the "letter" and the "secret Mark text" never existed, but were invented by Smith. He produced no MS., only some "photographs" he claimed to have made at Mar Saba monastery in 1958. He kept the matter secret for 14 years, then published two books, a "scholarly" one and a "popular" one. No other person has ever been able to locate the book in which this stuff was supposedly written (mainly on the flyleaf and the binding paper). The entire affair reeks of fraud, which Quentin Quesnell had the courage to publish aloud (I DID have the courage to call attention to his work during the Colloquy!)
A SECOND ATTEMPT (to debunk Jesus)
Three years later, I was Visiting Professor at Claremont, and working with the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. Hans Dieter Betz (this was before he went to Chicago) was Chairman, and he asked me to be the critic for an all-day session planned to discuss Smith's new MS. which he had sent ahead, "Jesus the Magician".(Having failed to convince everyone that Jesus was executed for running a gay-liberation group, caught in the act in Gethsemane, he now turned to prove that he was executed for being a magician.) I tried to beg off, but Betz was insistent; he assured me that Smith would be quite open to any valid criticism. The typed MS. was about three inches thick, and ruined a week for me. When the day arrived, he walked in, took one look at me, and paled noticeably. He was furious that I had been chosen, but had to sit quietly for 45 minutes while I took his MS. apart (the published version withdrew EVERYTHING I leveled my fire at, fortunately for him). I even pointed out that his major evidence for claiming that Jesus was the bastard child of a German soldier, was in Alfred Rosenberg's Nazi pseudo- philosophical work, _The Myth of the 20th Century_; Smith quoted the German title, and thought readers would assume this was from some renowned German historian! He raged at me for about half an hour, but then (thankfully) Jim Robinson picked up on the attack, and we had a heavy day of argument, about it and about. That evening, it turned out that Smith and I were the guests of honor at a dinner put on by Betz! And we were seated together! So we discussed magical amulets, about which he knew a great deal and I knew nothing, thus escaping ulcers for the evening. The hate-mail began pouring in about a week later; but I noticed that the published book eliminated all the stupidities and errors I had nastily pointed out. Thereafter, when we met at the annual Harvard receptions for faculty (including me) and alumni (including him) at the AAR/SBL national meetings, we avoided each other conspicuously.
TWO LOYAL COLLEAGUES
Chopped into mincemeat at the 1979 SBL meeting in NYC, a special event was held for Pierson Parker (of General Seminary most of his life), focusing on his early-fifties book _The Gospel before Mark_ [positing a kind of Ur-Markus called K, on which Matthew was based, with canonical Matthew being thus earlier than canonical Mark]. Four speakers were lined up, one of whom had been a student of Parker (Rhys was his name), and another of whom was Morton Smith. Smith was chosen at Parker's request, for Parker had always championed Smith and his work, even though most others in the guild despised (and feared) him. Rhys gave a pleasant little talk, followed by Smith, who worked himself up into a rage over Rhys's words. He said that this speech should be printed as an example of every stupidity possible in the scholarly world. He then went on to attack Parker, saying that Parker's view that Matthew was prior to Mark was simply the old Roman Catholic view, and that Parker, being an Episcopal priest, was sucking up to Rome, as Episcopal priests always do. It was a horrifying performance! When the brief time for discussion arrived, the Chair wanted to close things off quickly. But I leaped to my feat and asked just how it was that Episcopal priest Parker was driven into bias by that fact, whereas somehow Episcopal priest Smith had miraculously escaped, and was enabled to be objective and full of truth? I pressed the issue of ad hominem attacks, questioning whether anyone--EVEN MORTON SMITH--had a right to behave in that fashion at a scholarly meeting. He sputtered for a moment, then stalked out. About ten years ago (I think it was in Chicago, but all these hotels are so similar I'm not sure), Smith took the platform to denounce the translation by Jacob Neusner of an ancient rabbinic document. Neusner claimed this was the first time it had appeared in English, and that he had done the translation. Smith revealed that it in fact was lifted from a translation made centuries ago. Neusner was publicly humiliated, and found it hard to show up for things for a few years. (My vagueness about the exact titles, etc., is because I was in an adjacent room, and did not directly hear this attack; I was told of it many times over during the hours and days which followed.) Now, the interesting thing about this is not that such a thing could happen; plagiarism is shameful, maybe on a par with forgery (?). It is that Jacob Neusner was one of Smith's few ardent champions (Parker and Koester being two of the other three or four). Smith had turned on one of the few friends he had left! Finally: I gather Neusner is now having his revenge!
Edward C. Hobbs
Hobbs et al. on Smith & Secret Mark, II
By GLENN WOODEN @acadiau.ca
Monday
April 29, 1996 11:36 AM PST
Forwarded material, #2: a long collection.
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 14-MAY-1995 18:47:00.73
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Portion of My Critique on "Secret Mark" [Colloquy 18] [This material is Copyright 1975.]
The issue before us in this Colloquy (as it properly is in each of our Colloquies) should be the fundamental methodological one: How is it that we solve problems about the interpretation of a text? This is a special form of the more general issue of how we make historical judgments. Since we deal with the unrepeatable, and thus are deprived of the experimental method in any strict sense, and since we further are not engaged with logical deduction from postulates in the fashion of mathematics, we are faced with the criterion of probability. Thus much is, however, granted by everyone (or, almost everyone!). The problem remains, what constitutes probability?
I wish to suggest that one crucial dimension of any theory of probability, whether in the natural sciences or in the humanistic disciplines including history, is the well-proven Law of Parsimony, or Ockham's Razor: Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem. Ockham himself, as is well-known, did not invent the principle; but he used it effectively and constantly (though not in this exact formulation which goes by his name; he preferred two other wordings), and he has handed on to us a tool for cutting away flights of fancy and distinguishing the probable from the merely possible. The modern form of it in the sciences usually demands the postulation of the fewest unobservable commensurate with or necessary to explain the evidence. Morton Smith acknowledges the criterion of probability quite explicitly (e.g., The Secret Gospel, p. 148--the last paragraph of the book; and Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, pp. 289-290--a passage parallel to the previous one); but he also undercuts the criterion by saying, "But the truth is that improbable things sometimes happen. Therefore truth is necessarily stranger than history." (The Secret Gospel, p. 148) Unless this sentence has a hidden meaning (and Smith seems to love them), he seems to be saying that our notions of probability are not fitted to the actual course of happenings in the world, and thus that "truth" (what really happened?) is stranger than "history" (what non-Smith historians write down?). This is a curious notion of probability, indeed! At the level of small detail, Smith's work is indeed "erudite," as it is usually called; his Clement volume is filled with a wealth of homework preparatory to historical explanation.
At the next stage of work, however, he moves suddenly into a rarified realm from which he is able to dismiss all scholars and all scholarly methods in general use with whom and which he differs; scholars' work at odds with his (or even potentially at odds, in the future: see, e.g., Clement, p. 287, "To prevent foreseeable stupidities...") regularly is labeled "worthless," "ludicrous," "hostile," "muddled," "stupidity," in some cases "malicious and deliberately deceitful" (he says there are several of these apparently, while singling out one as "most" so), "extravagance of exegetic fantasy, " and the like. Tools basic to the discipline seem either to be non-existent (e.g. redaction criticism) or to be so badly used by everyone else that "alternatives" need to be used (e.g. form criticism). Important redaction-critical work is ignored or else dismissed as "fantasy" (so with Marxsen's important work), and recent form-critical study, even of this precise passage of Mark, is nowhere mentioned (e.g. H.-W. Kuhn's work). In view of this treatment of differing scholars and methods, our deliberations are unlikely to meet any different fate at the hands of Smith; those who are sympathetic to his work will be praised, and those who differ will be damned (will we, hopefully, be allowed to choose whether we are to be labeled "stupid," "ludicrous," or merely engaging in "fantasy"?).
It seems to me that Ockham's Razor demands that we utilize the least new hypotheses to account for this text. Smith calls his explanation an "account" or a "history"; it is, in fact, an elaborate web of many hypotheses, each one constructed to fit the facts of the text to the previously constructed hypothesis. It is ingenious, and is just the method adopted by the author of historical fiction--one constructs an account which will touch on the known facts at as many points as possible, so as to create the effect "Yes, it might well have happened like this, indeed!" Like many scholars and others, I enjoy historical fiction; I become uneasy only when the word "fiction" is omitted from the sub-title or jacket description. And note that "fiction" does not here mean untrue; it is possible that it happened in such fashion. But the historian does not call his elaborate construction that touches all points while going far beyond them, a "history"; he reserves that term for the work to which he has applied Ockham's Razor, removing all absolutely unessential or unnecessary unobservables.
The simplest explanation is one which accords with other phenomena already known to us from early Christian history. (In what follows, I am assuming that the Letter is indeed from Clement. I am uncertain of this; but Robert Grant, who is far more capable than I to judge the question, considers that Smith has proved this point, and I accept his judgment.) It is roughly as follows:
(1) Following Paul's lead (Romans 6:1-11), some Christians in Alexandria (Carpocratians, apparently, and others) interpreted baptism as resurrection. Someone among them felt the need of an account in the Gospels to illustrate this, and set out to fill the need.
(2) Our author, working after the collection of our four Gospels, is acquainted with the texts of all of them; but he best knows Mark (long associated with Alexandria), just as most people have a favorite Gospel. The Lazarus story (John 11) is the one lengthy resurrection account, but it cannot be simply duplicated. Luke has a resurrection story concerning a male (all of the Synoptics have the story of Jairus' daughter), also; he is called *neaniskos*, a term also occurring in Mark's story of the empty tomb.
(3) Our author has his clues, and begins to piece together his paradigmatic pericope. The to-be-resurrected *neaniskos* has (a mother--Luke? two sisters--John?) a sister, who intercedes for him. The details of the pericope are easily assembled from other healing accounts in Mark, plus the obvious Lazarus-parallel. Especially attractive are some accounts which involve "resurrection" (*egeiro*,1:31; 5:41; 10:49; 16:6) or a "tomb" (*mnemeion*, 5:2,3,5; 15:46;16:2,3,5,8).
(4) The *neaniskos* produces by easy connections his clothing (Mark 14:51) which is like that of the pre-resurrected Jesus (Mark 15:46) and the statement that "looking on him, he loved him" (Mark 10:21, with its Matthaean parallel for *neaniskos*), as well as his wealth (Mark 10:22; cf. Luke 18:23 for exact wording).
(5) The locale is given by the Lazarus story--perhaps also by Mark 8:22, text of Codex Beza. As noted by Smith, the pericope's text often accords with the "Western" text; but the simpler explanation is that our author actually read such a text (coming into being about 150 by the usual dating), rather than that the Western text derived from "Longer Mark," a theory that explains nothing about the Western text in the rest of the Gospels and Acts. Even the dating is given by the Lazarus story, conflated (or maybe not, though the wording is identical) with the opening of Mark's Transfiguration story (in which Jesus is clothed in white, as is the *neaniskos* in the empty tomb).
(6) Our author at the end has to get Jesus back to where the account in Mark continues. The entire process is a simple one: A Mark-sounding story is produced by utilizing related stories in Mark and their phrasing, combined with the obvious resurrection story in John, and some inevitable wording derived from memory of the Matthew and Luke parallels (cf. our own "rich young ruler," a description which is a conflation of the synoptic accounts). To account for the similarities to Mark by having a translator (working from an Aramaic Vorlage) deliberately imitate Mark's style is "multiplying entities," indeed. Finally, could such an "invention" (a "pastiche" might be the best term) be interpolated into Mark's text, even though the Gospel was already accepted as in some sense "canonical"? Of course it could!--all we have to recall is the way in which the pericope on the adulterous woman was inserted into various places, without fire falling from heaven (after Luke 21:38; after John 7:36; after John 7:52; after John 21:24), or the way in which various endings were attached to Mark, endings pieced together in much the fashion we have observed here. If Stendhal's statement (quoted on p. 85, Clement) means that the text cannot have originated in the late second century or after, then it is demonstrably wrong, on the evidence of the pericopes just cited and their textual history; perhaps, however, Stendhal's comment refers to a time after the fixing of the text, i.e., after the supremacy of the Byzantine text.
(by: Edward C. Hobbs -- From the Protocol of the 18th Colloquy)
From: "lisatiX@aol.com" 15-MAY-1995 03:43:41.88
To: "ehobbX@wellesley.edu" CC: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: RE: Lengthy account of Secret...
Dear Professor Hobbs and friends, Thanks to the professor for recalling Morton's visit to Berkeley in 1975. The topic seems now to be more important and exciting than it was at the time, which is a surprise to me. I just want to add a few things in order to balance out the report of E. Hobbs. No one that I knew took Professor Smith seriously at that time. I never cease to be amazed when I hear people twenty years later talking about his invention. Prof. Hobbs is right when he consigns this gospel to the genre of historical novel. We all knew our visitor was mad, but now people don't know this. I didn't know that Prof. Hobbs openly contradicted our visitor. I don't remember anyone wanting to offend the mad one. We thought it our duty to humor him and give him an open forum at the Hermeneutic Center. At the time he was travelling all over California attracting big crowds and newspaper coverage. I was sent to the airport to pick him up and found a place for him to stay in Benton Hall. I think I heard him speak but was more interested in Professor Hobbs's selections of California reds at the time. Professor Smith's apologia in the Harvard Theological Review came as a real shock to me, him marshalling and counting all these famous names who believed in his historical romance. I really do not understand how anyone, student or professor, can take seriously his fantasy. On the other hand, I am concerned that apparently people are doing just that. That's the reason I am saying that at that time no one who knew him took this seriously but people tried to be courteous and not offend someone who was obviously deranged.
Richard Arthur, Merrimack NHlisatiX@aol.com
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 15-MAY-1995 13:08:17.51
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Smith's visit to Berkeley: correction
Richard Arthur's supplement to my account was a pleasant reminder that other people still live who were there. But I'm afraid he is remembering the wrong Colloquy. Smith visited Berkeley only once, to my knowledge; it was for Colloquy 6, held on 12 April 1973. The subject of his position paper was "The Aretalogy Used by Mark". It was on that occasion that Richard Arthur picked up Smith and took him to his room at PSR. Colloquy 18 is the one we have been discussing. Smith was not present; neither was Richard Arthur (who may have graduated by then?). The date for this Colloquy was close to three years later, on 7 December 1975. The Position Paper was by Reginald Fuller. Secret Mark had not even been published when Smith was present in early 1973, so of course I did not challenge him on it (never having heard of it). I stand by my statement sent yesterday. How I wish everyone had thought Smith deranged! But I did take him on, not only then (in his absence), but on several later occasions, two of which I reported to all of you yesterday. There was never an agreement to be nice to him, at least not one I signed. I wasn't even nice to Ernest Badian (Harvard) when he was with us in 1976 (what an arrogant fellow he was). Incidentally, I received a message asking if I knew Morton Smith was dead. Yes, I knew, almost immediately. So does Neusner know. Edward Hobbs
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 17-MAY-1995 15:46:38.71
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Secret Mark, Smith, Ad Hominem, & Koester
First, may I thank most warmly those of you who have responded to unwarranted innuendoes about my report on the Secret Mark controversy. I did not write that material of my own choice; I was asked by more than a half-dozen of you to do so. Nothing in it was fabricated, and nothing in it suggested that because Smith behaved outrageously when crossed, his scholarship was to be disregarded. A student from Canada has exhorted us to avoid ad hominem attacks, implying that I had engaged in them. It was precisely for that reason I had reported Smith's repeated use of the ad hominem attack; but I did not use it myself. May I point out that;
(1) I personally spent most of two months of 1975 in organizing, conducting, and editing/publishing a careful analysis of Smith's "Secret Mark" work. I also pointed out that I had carefully refrained from expressing my private belief that the supposed MS. was a recent forgery (i.e., within the last 1800 years). Surely this counts as "judging his views on the basis of his written legacy."
(2) "Jesus the Magician" was the recipient of more than 40 hours of my time, in 1976, resulting in more than 50 pages of criticism delivered to Smith by me, along with a 45-minute oral summary at the beginning of a day-long discussion of his MS. The published volume altered almost every one of the passages I criticized; had I not devoted that extended time to working through his original MS., the published volume would have been far more roundly criticized by its reviewers. This was not an ad hominem attack. That I reported to you some of what was asked for -- namely, the living-person relationship I had with Smith -- was offered not to attack his views, but to report what almost everyone knew about him who disagreed with him. Bob Kraft has rightly -- and generously -- pointed out the supportive, humorous, and congenial way Smith (at times) treated his friends. He also acknowledged his cantankerous, intimidating, confrontational ways on other occasions. I happen to admire Bob Kraft for his loyalty toward his friends, even when dead; I count this a great quality in a person. As I pointed out, sometimes Smith did not share this quality (re: Parker and Neusner, for example). And I want to state emphatically that Helmut Koester also possesses this quality, even at great cost to himself (as in the Bob Funk affair). Hence Helmut has loyally defended Smith through the years, and gave him a forum at Harvard when he otherwise would have been dismissed out of hand. Helmut is an honest scholar, and a great scholar. He and I disagree about many matters of N.T. scholarship, but he has never dismissed me or my work as a consequence. He was my department chairman at the time of my second major broadside against the Q-hypothesis (at SBL in Chicago, six years after my first), and even then he only declined to speak to me for two days! Then all was well again. I cannot want for a better friend and colleague. May I suggest that when we evaluate the written legacy of a scholar, we also take the trouble to read the written legacy of those who have faulted that scholar's legacy. Apparently Smith has supporters of his views who have not bothered to read the reviews and follow-up work. (And among these I do NOT count either Bob Kraft or Helmut Koester.)
Edward Hobbs
From: "emkrentX@mcs.com" "Edgar M. Krentz" 15-JUN-1995 11:22:23.14
To: "b-greeX@virginia.edu"
Subject: Secret Gospel of Mark
There was a recent lengthy string about the _Secret Gospel of Mark_ published by Morton Smith. Those interested may want to read a reent article: A. H. Criddle, "On the Mar Saba Letter Attributed to Clement of Alexandria," _Journal of Early Christian Studies_ 2,3 (Summer 1995) 215-220. Criddle argues that the Clement letter is spurious and that _Secret Mark_ is therefore of dubious authenticity. His argument is based on a model of vocabulary statistics that he and an analysis of uaantitative rhythms.
Edgar Krentz [emkrentX@mcs.com]
Magic And Homosexuality
Magic And Ancient Christianity - & Homosexuality?
What follows are the discourses and comments of Biblical, ancient authorities
and scholars on the discoveries, by Morton Smith about 50 years ago in a Jerusalem
library, of what may be a "secret gospel" coming from Mark.
The purpose of this work is to offer to the scholars and students of knowledge
in Islam the opportunity to see the actual workings going on within the scholarly
world of Biblical criticism.
The Strange Case of the Secret Gospel according to Mark How Morton Smith's
Discovery of a Lost Letter by Clement of Alexandria Scandalized Biblical Scholarship
Shawn Eyer
"Dear reader, do not be alarmed at the parallels between.. magic and ancient
Christianity. Christianity never claimed to be original. It claimed . . .
to be true!"
With these words in the New York Times Book Review, Pierson Parker reassured
the faithful American public that it need not be concerned with the latest
news from the obscure and bookish world of New Testament scholarship.
[1]
It was 1973, and the Biblical studies community, as well as the popular
press, was in a stir over a small manuscript discovery that--to judge from
the reactions of some--seemingly threatened to call down the apocalypse. A
newly-released book by Columbia University's Morton Smith, presenting a translation
and interpretation of a fragment of a newly-recovered Secret Gospel of Mark,
was at the center of the controversy.
The Discovery:1958-1960
In the spring of 1958 Smith, then a graduate student in Theology at Columbia
University, was invited to catalogue the manuscript holdings in the library
of the Mar Saba monastery, located twelve miles south of Jerusalem. Smith
had been a guest of the same hermitage years earlier, when he was stranded
in Palestine by the conflagrations of the second World War.
What Smith found during his task in the tower library surprised him. He discovered
some new scholia of Sophocles, for instance, and dozens of other manuscripts.
[2]
Despite these finds, however, the beleaguered scholar soon resigned
himself to what looked like a reasonable conclusion: he would find nothing
of major importance at Mar Saba. His malaise evaporated one day as he first
deciphered the manuscript that would always thereafter be identified with
him:
[. . .]One afternoon near the end of my stay, I found myself in my cell,
staring incredulously at a text written in a tiny scrawl. [. . .]If this
writing was what it claimed to be, I had a hitherto unknown text by a writer
of major significance for early church history.
[3]
What Smith then began photographing was a three-page handwritten addition
penned into the endpapers of a printed book, Isaac Voss' 1646 edition of the
Epistolae Genuinae S. Ignatii Martyris.
[4]
It identified itself as a letter by Clement of the Stromateis, i.e.,
Clement of Alexandria, the second-century church father well-known for his
neo-platonic applications of Christian belief. Clement writes "to Theodore,"
congratulating him for success in his disputes with the Carpocratians, a
heterodoxical sect about which little is known. Apparently in their conflict
with Theodore, the Carpocratians appealed to Mark's gospel.
Clement responds by recounting a new story about the Gospel. After Peter's
death, Mark brought his original gospel to Alexandria and wrote a "more spiritual
gospel for the use of those who were being perfected." Clement says this text
is kept by the Alexandrian church for use only in the initiation into "the
great mysteries."
However, Carpocrates the heretic, by means of magical stealth, obtained a
copy and adapted it to his own ends. Because this version of the "secret"
or "mystery" gospel had been polluted with "shameless lies," Clement urges
Theodore to deny its Markan authorship even under oath. "Not all true things
are to be said to all men," he advises.
Theodore has asked questions about particular passages of the special Carpocratian
Gospel of Mark, and by way of reply Clement transcribes two sections which
he claims have been distorted by the heretics. The first fragment of the Secret
Gospel of Mark, meant to be inserted between Mark 10.34 and 35, reads:
They came to Bethany. There was one woman there whose brother had died. She
came and prostrated herself before Jesus and spoke to him. "Son of David,
pity me!" But the disciples rebuked her. Jesus was angry and went with her
into the garden where the tomb was. Immediately a great cry was heard from
the tomb. And going up to it, Jesus rolled the stone away from the door of
the tomb, and immediately went in where the young man was. Stretching out
his hand, he lifted him up, taking hold his hand. And the youth, looking intently
at him, loved him and started begging him to let him remain with him. And
going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich.
And after six days Jesus gave him an order and, at evening, the young man
came to him wearing nothing but a linen cloth. And he stayed with him for
the night, because Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. And
then when he left he went back to the other side of the Jordan.
Then a second fragment of Secret Mark is given, this time to be inserted into
Mark 10.46. This has long been recognized as a narrative snag in Mark's Gospel,
as it awkwardly reads, "Then they come to Jericho. As he was leaving Jericho
with his disciples.."
Then he came into Jericho. And the sister of the young man whom Jesus loved
was there with his mother and Salome, but Jesus would not receive them. Just
as Clement prepares to reveal the "real interpretation" of these verses to
Theodore, the copyist discontinues and Smith's discovery is, sadly, complete.
Smith stopped briefly in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to share his discovery
with Gerschom Scholem.
[5]
He then returned to America where he sought the opinions of his mentors
Erwin Goodenough and Arthur Darby Nock. "God knows what you've got hold of,"
Goodenough said.
[6]
"They made up all sorts of stuff in the fifth century," said Nock.
"But, I say, it is exciting."
[7]
At the 1960 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Morton Smith
announced his discovery to the scholarly community, openly presenting a translation
and discussion of the Clementine letter. A well-written account of his presentation,
with a photograph of the Mar Saba monastery, appeared the next morning on
the front page of The New York Times.
[8]
A list of the seventy-five manuscripts Smith catalogued appeared the
same year in the journal Archaeology
[9]
as well as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate journal, Nea Sion.
[10]
And Morton Smith embarked on a decade of meticulous investigation
into the nature of his find.
The Reaction (1973--1982)
While there may seem nothing particularly scandalous about the apocryphal
episodes of Secret Mark in and of themselves, the release of the material
to the general public aroused a great deal of popular and scholarly derision.
Smith wrote two books on the subject: first, the voluminous and intricate
scholarly analysis Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, and
then The Secret Gospel, a thin and conversational popular account of the discovery
and its interpretation. The first book was delivered to the Harvard University
Press in 1966, but was very slow at going through the press.
[11]
Smith's popular treatment, however, was released by Harper and Row
in the summer of 1973. This is the version that most scholars had in their
hands first. What did it say that was so shocking?
Smith's analysis of the Secret Mark text--and consequently the wider body
of literature bearing on the history of early Christianity--brought him to
consider unusual possibilities. Because Secret Mark presents a miracle story,
this meant a particular concentration upon material of a like type. Smith
was working outside of the traditional school of Biblical criticism which
automatically regarded all miracle accounts as mythological inventions of
the early Christian communities.
[12]
Instead of taking as his goal the theological deconstruction of the
miracle traditions, Smith asked to what degree the miracle stories of the
gospels might in fact be based upon actions of Jesus, much in the same way
scholars examine the sayings traditions.
It has been typical for critical scholars of the Bible to reject any historical
foundation for the "miracle-worker" stories about Jesus. Because such tales
would tend to rely on the supernatural, and scholars seek to understand the
origins of the Bible in realistic terms, it is more plausible for the modern
critic to propose reasons for which an early Christian community might have
come to understand Jesus as a miracle-worker and subsequently engage in the
production of mythologies depicting him in that mold. Smith's understanding
of the kingdom language in the Christian writings, with its well-known ambivalent
eschatological and yet emphatically present or "realized" tendencies, evolved
to the conclusion that:
[Jesus] could admit his followers to the kingdom of God, and he could do it
in some special way, so that they were not there merely by anticipation, nor
by virtue of belief and obedience, nor by some other figure of speech, but
were really, actually, in.
[13]
Smith held that the best explanation for the literary and historical evidence
surrounding the miracles of Jesus was that Jesus himself actually performed--or
meant to and was understood to have performed--magical feats. Among these
was a baptismal initiation rite through which he was able to "give" his disciples
a vision of the heavenly spheres. This was in the form of an altered state
of consciousness induced by "the recitation of repetitive, hypnotic prayers
and hymns," a technique common in Jewish mystical texts, Qumran material,
Greek magical papyri and later Christian practices such as the Byzantine liturgy.
[14]
This is a radical departure from the mainstream scholarship which
seeks to minimize or eliminate altogether any possible "supernatural" elements
attached to the Historical Jesus, who is most often understood as a speaker
on social issues and applied ethics . . . an Elijahform social worker, if
you will.
Morton Smith did not begin with that assumption, nor did his reinterpretation
of Christian history arrive at it. Thus, the new theory summarized in his
1973 book for general readership displeased practically everyone:
[. . .]From the scattered indications in the canonical Gospels and the secret
Gospel of Mark, we can put together a picture of Jesus' baptism, "the mystery
of the kingdom of God." It was a water baptism administered by Jesus to chosen
disciples, singly and by night. The costume, for the disciple, was a linen
cloth worn over the naked body. This cloth was probably removed for the baptism
proper, the immersion in water, which was now reduced to a preparatory purification.
After that, by unknown ceremonies, the disciple was possessed by Jesus' spirit
and so united with Jesus. One with him, he participated by hallucination in
Jesus' ascent into the heavens, he entered the kingdom of God, and was thereby
set free from the laws ordained for and in the lower world. Freedom from the
law may have resulted in completion of the spiritual union by physical union.
This certainly occurred in many forms of gnostic Christianity; how early it
began there is no telling.
[15]
In an interview with The New York Times just before his books were released
onto the market, Smith noted with appreciation, "Thank God I have tenure."
[16]
The Inquisition: Let's Begin
Not a moment was lost in the ensuing backlash. Smith had laid aside the canon
of unwritten rules that most Biblical scholars worked by. He took the Gospels
as more firmly rooted in history than in the imagination of the early church.
He refused to operate with an artificially thick barrier between pagan and
Christian, magic and mythology. And he not only promulgated his theories from
his office in Columbia University via obscure scholarly periodicals: he had
given them to the world in plain, understandable and all-too-clear language.
Thus there was no time for the typical scholarly method of thorough, researched,
logical refutation. The public attention span was short. It was imperative
that Smith be discredited before too many Biblical scholars told the press
that there might be something to his theories. Some of the high-pitched remarks
of well-known scholars are amusing to us in retrospect:
Patrick Skehan: "...a morbid concatenation of fancies.."
[17]
Joseph Fitzmyer: "...venal popularization.."
[18]
"...replete with innuendos and eisegesis..."
[19]
Paul J. Achtemeier: "Characteristically, his arguments are awash in speculation."
[20]
"...an a priori principle of selective credulity.."
[21]
William Beardslee: "...ill- founded..."
[22]
Pierson Parker: "...the alleged parallels are fa r-fetched..."
[23]
Hans Conzelmann: "...science fiction.."
[24]
"...Does not belong to scholarly, nor even ...discussable, literature.."
[25]
Raymond Brown: "...debunking attitude towards Christianity.."
[26]
Frederick Danker: "...in the same niche with Allegro's mushroom fantasies
and Eisler's salmagundi."
[27]
Helmut Merkel: "Once again total warfare has been declared on New Testament
scholarship."
[28]
The possibility that the initiation could have included elements of eroticism
was unthinkable to many scholars, whose reaction was to project onto Smith's
entire interpretive work an imaginary emphasis on Jesus being a homosexual:
[. . . T]he fact that the young man comes to Jesus "wearing a linen cloth
over his naked body" naturally suggests implications which Smith does not
fail to infer.
[29]
Hostility has marked some of the initial reactions to Smith's publication
because of his debunking attitude towards Christianity and his unpleasant
suggestion that Jesus engaged in homosexual practices with his disciples.
[30]
Many others cited rather prominently the homoerotic overtures of Smith's thesis
in their objections to his overall work.
[31]
Another criticism, which holds more weight from a scholar's standpoint,
was Smith's rejection of the form and redaction critical techniques preferred
by the reviewer.
[32]
Two scholars, embarrassingly, found a flaw in Smith's use of what they considered
too much documentation, as a ploy to confuse the reader.
[33]
Many scholars felt that the Secret Mark fragments were a pastiche from the
four gospels, some even suggesting that Mark's style is so simple to imitate
the fragment must be a useless pseudepigraphon.
[34]
In reaction to Clement's claim to perform initiation rites, some scholars
simply dogmatized that Alexandrian Christians only used words like "initiation"
and "mystery" in a figurative sense, therefore the letter must not be authentic.
[35]
Finally, some reactions truly border on the petty. Two scholars held that
Morton Smith didn't really "discover" the Secret Gospel of Mark at all. Because
the letter only contains two fragments of it, Smith is described as dishonest
in his subtitle "The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel of
Mark."
[36]
Worst of all is Danker, who complains that the Smith's first, non-technical
book does not include the Greek text. "The designer of the jacket, as though
fond of palimpsests, has obscured with the book title and the editor's name
even the partial reproduction of Clement's letter," and that while there is
another photo inside the book, "the publishers do not supply a magnifying
glass with which to read it."
[37]
All this just to tell us that, after he and a companion had painstakingly
transcribed the Greek text, Smith's transcription and translation are "substantially
correct."
[38]
He deceptively omits that Smith's Harvard edition includes large,
easily legible photographic plates of the original manuscript, alleging that
Smith was "reluctant...to share the Greek text"
[39]
he had discovered.
Only one reviewer, Fitzmeyer, saw it worthwhile to point out that Morton Smith
was bald. Whatever importance we may attach to the thickness of a scholar's
hair, it seems that detached scholarly criticism fails when certain tenets
of faith--even "enlightened" liberal faith--are called into question.
Is the Ink Still Wet? The Question of a Forgery
Inevitably a document which is so controversial as Secret Mark will be accused
of being a forgery. This is precisely what happened in 1975 when Quentin Quesnell
published his lengthy paper "The Mar Saba Clementine: A Question of Evidence"
in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. In this article he brings to bear a host
of objections to Smith's treatment of the document.
Foremost is the lack of the physical manuscript. Smith left the manuscript
in the tower at Mar Saba in 1958 and had been working with his set of photographs
ever since. Quesnell regards this as a neglect of Smith's scholarly duties.
[40]
Perhaps those duties might be assumed to include the theft of the
volume a la Sinaiticus or the Jung Codex. In fact, even Smith's publication
of photographic plates of the Ms. is considered sub-standard by Quesnell.
They "do not include the margins and edges of the pages," they "are only black
and white," and are in Quesnell's eyes marred by "numerous discrepancies in
shading, in wrinkles and dips in the paper."
[41]
Quesnell calls into question all of Smith's efforts to date the manuscript
to the eighteenth century. Although Smith consulted many paleographic experts,
Quesnell feels this information to be useless as compared to a chemical analysis
of the ink, and a "microscopic examination of the writing."
[42]
Then he asks the "unavoidable next question"
[43]
: was the letter of Clement a modern forgery? He remarks that Smith
"tells a story on himself that could make clear the kind of motivation that
might stir a serious scholar even apart from any long-concealed spirit of
fun."
[44]
Pointing out Smith's interest in how scholars tend to fit newly-discovered
evidence into their previously-held sacrosanct interpretive paradigms,
[45]
and how Smith requested scholars in his longer treatise to keep him
abreast of their research,
[46]
Quesnell asks if it might not be that a certain modern forger who
shall not be named might have "found himself moved to concoct some 'evidence'
in order to set up a controlled experiment?"
[47]
Quesnell raises still more objections, and representative of them is his claim
that the mass of documentation Smith brought to bear in Clement of Alexandria
and a Secret Gospel of Mark is really a ploy to distract the reader. "[. .
.] It is hard to believe that this material is included as a serious contribution
to scholarly investigation," Quesnell suggests.
[48]
In fact, he insinuates that its function is really to "deepen the
darkness."
[49]
Quesnell did not feel that scholarly discussion could "reasonably continue"
until all these issues--and more--were resolved.
[50]
Smith's answer to the accusation of forgery was published in the next volume
of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. Humorously he advised his detractor that
"one should not suppose a text spurious simply because one dislikes what it
says."
[51]
"Not at all," was Quesnell's reply. "I find it quite harmless."
[52]
Quesnell's arguments were still echoed in 1983 by Per Beskow, who wrote that
Smith "can only present some mediocre photographs, which do not even cover
the entire margins of the manuscript."
[53]
While the photographic plates in the Harvard volume do not extend
to the margins due to the cropping of the publishers,
[54]
Smith's photographs are printed elsewhere and do include the margins
of the pages. Furthermore, they are quite in-focus and cannot be described
as mediocre.
The Popular Response
The religious right was particularly displeased with the new Secret Gospel
of Mark. Even without the magical interpretation of earliest Christianity
Smith promulgated in his two books, the discovery of another apocryphal gospel
only spells trouble for conservative theologians and apologists. What information
about Secret Mark made it past the blockade into the evangelical press? There
was Ronald J. Sider's quick review in Christianity Today:
Unfounded . . . wildly speculative ...pockmarked with irresponsible inferences
. . . highly speculative . . .operates with the presupposition that Jesus
could not have been the incarnate Son of God filled with the Holy Spirit .
. . simply absurd! . . . unacceptable . . . highly speculative . . . numerous
other fundamental weaknesses . . . highly speculative . . . irresponsible
. . . will not fool the careful reader.
[55]
Evangelical scholarship has since treated Secret Mark as it traditionally
has any other non-canonical text: as a peculiar but ultimately unimportant
document which would be spiritually dangerous to take seriously.
Secret Mark and Da Avabhasa's Initiation to Ecstasy
Perhaps the strangest chapter in Secret Mark's long history was its appropriation
by the Free Daist Communion, a California-based Eastern religious group led
by American-born guru Da Avabhasa (formerly known as Franklin Jones, Da Free
John, and Da Kalki). In 1982, The Dawn Horse Press, the voice of this interesting
sect, re-published Smith's Harper and Row volume, with a new foreword by Elaine
Pagels and an added postscript by Smith himself.
In 1991 I made contact with this publisher in order to ascertain why they
were interested in Secret Mark. I was answered by Saniel Bonder, Da Avabhasa's
official biographer and a main spokesman for the Communion.
Heart-Master Da Avabhasa is Himself a great Spiritual "Transmitter" or "Baptizer"
of the highest type. And this is the key to understanding both His interest
in, and The Dawn Horse Press's publication of, Smith's Secret Gospel. What
Smith discovered, in the fragment of the letter by Clement of Alexandria,
is--to Heart-Master Da--an apparent ancient confirmation that Jesus too was
a Spirit-Baptizer who initiated disciples into the authentic Spiritual and
Yogic process, by night and in circumstances of sacred privacy. This is the
single reason why Heart-Master Da was so interested in the story. As it happened,
Morton Smith's contract with a previous publisher had expired, and so he was
happy to arrange for us to publish the book.
[56]
Because of the general compatibility of Smith's interpretation of the historical
Jesus and the practices of the Da Free John community, the group's leader
was inclined to promulgate Smith's theory. It is difficult to judge the precise
degree of ritual identity which exists between Master Da and Jesus the magician.
Some identity, however, is explicit, as revealed in Bonder's official biography
of Master Da:
Over the course of Heart-Master Da's Teaching years, His devotees explored
all manner of emotional-sexual possibilities, including celibacy, promiscuity,
heterosexuality, homosexuality, monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, and many different
kinds of living arrangements between intimate partners and among groups of
devotees in our various communities.
[57]
The parallel between the Daist community during this time and the libertine
Christian rituals described by Smith is made stronger by the spiritual leader's
intimate involvement with this thorough exploration of the group's erogeny.
"Heart-Master Da never withheld Himself from participation in the play of
our experiments with us . . ."
[58]
George Feuerstein has published an interview with an anonymous devotee
of Master Da who describes a party during which the Master borrowed his wife
in order to free him of egotistical jealousy.
[59]
Like the Carpocratians of eighteen-hundred years ago, and the Corinthian
Christians of a century earlier still, the devotees of the Daist Communion
sought to come to terms with and conquer their sexual obstacles to ultimate
liberation not by merely denying the natural urges, but by immersing themselves
in them.
For many years Da Avabhasa himself was surrounded by an "innermost circle"
of nine female devotees, which was dismantled in 1986 after the Community
and the Master himself had been through trying experiences.
[60]
In 1988 Da Avabhasa formally declared four of these original nine
longtime female devotees his "Kanyas," the significance of which is described
well by Saniel Bonder:
Kanyadana is an ancient traditional practice in India, wherein a chaste young
woman...is given...to a Sat-Guru either in formal marriage, or as a consort,
or simply as a serving intimate. Each kanya thus becomes devoted...in a manner
that in unique among all His devotees. She serves the Sat-Guru Personally
at all times and, in that unique context, at all times is the recipient of
His very Personal Instructions, Blessings, and Regard.
[61]
As a kanyadana "kumari", a young woman is necessarily "pure"--that is, chaste
and self-transcending in her practice, but also Spiritually Awakened by her
Guru, whether she is celibate or Yogically sexually active.
[62]
The formation of the Da Avabhasa Gurukala Kanyadana Kumari Order should be
seen against the background of sexual experimentation and confrontation through
which the Master's community had passed in the decade before, and in light
of the sexuality-affirming stance of the Daist Communion in general. The Secret
Gospel presented a picture of Jesus as an initiator into ecstasy and a libertine
bearing more than a little resemblance to the radical and challenging lessons
of Master Da Avabhasa, in place long before 1982 when The Dawn Horse Press
re-issued the book.
[63]
The Cultural Fringe and Secret Mark
Occasionally one still encounter brief references to Secret Mark in marginal
or sensational literature. A simple but accurate account of its discovery
was related in the 1982 British best-seller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
Written by three television documentary reporters, the book describes an actual
French society called the Priory of Sion which seeks to restore the French
monarchy to a particular family which, it seems, traces its blood-line back
to Jesus himself. In the course of arguing that this could actually be the
truth, the authors find it convenient to cite Secret Mark as an example of
how the early church edited unwanted elements from its scriptures. "This missing
fragment had not been lost. On the contrary, it had apparently been deliberately
suppressed."
[64]
A quick reference to Secret Mark is made in Elizabeth Clare Prophet's book
on the supposed "lost years" of Jesus. She writes that discoveries such as
Secret Mark "strongly suggest that early Christians possessed a larger, markedly
more diverse body of writings and traditions on the life of Jesus that appears
in what has been handed down to us in the New Testament."
[65]
However, the remainder of the book speculates about whether Jesus
might have studied yoga in India, and has little to do with Secret Mark or
Jesus the magician.
Final Discussion And References
And Finally - the Conclusion of the Discussion of the Discovery of a Lost
Letter by Clement of Alexandria (Egypt) Scandalized Biblical Scholarship -
A Lost Gospel of Mark:
Where Are We Now? (Scholarly Interest from 1982 to the present)
For scholars the problem remains unsettled. While even the most acid of reviews
often ended with a statement to wit that a real conclusion would require an
in-depth treatment of Smith's books, none came. In 1982 Smith commented wryly
on the rhetoric of the reviews which made work on the Secret Mark problem
almost impossible in the 1970s:
For example, Achtemeier's review, of which the predendedly factual statements
are often grossly inaccurate. Though worthless as criticism, it cannot confidently
be described as "useless." It probably pleased Fitzmyer, who was then editor
of The Journal of Biblical Literature, and thus may have helped Achtemeier
get the secretaryship of the Society of Biblical Literature. That both names
rhyme with "liar" is a curious coincidence.
[66]
Some important Catholic scholars, including Achtemeier, Fitzmyer,
Quesnell, Skehan and Brown, have tended to ignore Secret Mark or dismiss it
as worthless. C.S. Mann's Anchor Bible commentary on Mark, published in 1986,
represents the whole controversy as finished, a matter of "mere curiosity."
[67]
With the blessing of the Imprimatur behind him, John P. Meier advised
in 1991 that Secret Mark, the Gospels of Thomas and Peter, the Egerton Gospel
and all other non-canonical Jesus material were worthless and might simply
be thrown "back into the sea."
[68]
At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of scholars producing
Secret Mark studies since 1982. That "Morton Smith seems quite alone in his
view that the fragment is a piece of genuine Gospel material," as claimed
in 1983 by Beskow is manifestly false.
[69]
Smith's work in the early 70s was greeted with more-or-less positive
reviews by a small number of important scholars including Helmut Koester,
Cyril Richardson, George MacRae, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. Some scholars did
not write reviews but openly expressed the notion that Smith's work was meritorious.
When asked by the New York Times about Smith's interpretation of Jesus as
a magician, Krister Stendhal tactfully replied, "I have much sympathy for
that way of placing Jesus in the social setting of his time."
[70]
While that sympathy does not remain particularly widespread, accepting Smith's
magical Jesus has nothing to do with taking Secret Mark seriously. The two
issues may be discussed separately: the argument for magical practices in
early Christianity may certainly be made without reference to Secret Mark,
and Secret Mark may be discussed as a text with no more magical implications
than we find in canonical Mark.
In Thomas Talley's 1982 article on ancient liturgy, he describes his own attempt
to physically examine the Secret Mark manuscript. As his is the last word
on the physical artifact in question, it is fortuitous to quote him at length:
Given the late date of the manuscript itself and the fact that Prof. Smith
published photographs of it, it seemed rather beside the point that some scholars
wished to dispute the very existence of a manuscript which no one but the
editor had seen. My own attempts to see the manuscript in January of 19080
were frustrated, but as witnesses to its existence I can cite the Archimandrite
Meliton of the Jerusalem Greek Patriarchate who, after the publication of
Smith's work, found the volume at Mar Saba and removed it to the patriarchal
library, and the patriarchal librarian, Father Kallistos, who told me that
the manuscript (two folios) has been removed from the printed volume and is
being repaired.
[71]
Although one wishes this document were available for the examination of Western
scholars, it is no longer reasonable to doubt the existence of the manuscript
itself. That it represents an authentic tradition from Clement of Alexandria
is disputed only by a handful of scholars and, as Talley also points out,
the letter has itself been included in the standard edition of the Alexandrian
father's writings since 1980.
[72]
Taking on the pressing question of Secret Mark's textual relationship with
the version of Mark in our New Testament, Helmut Koester has published two
intriguing studies arguing that the development of Mark was an evolutionary
process. First came the version of Mark known by Matthew and Luke, the proto-Mark
or Urmarkus long known to scholars of the synoptic problem. After this original
version of Mark was published, the expanded version used by the Alexandrian
church in Christian mysteries was made (and from that, its gnosticized Carpocration
version). Soon afterward or simultaneously, a mostly expurgated version of
Secret Mark was published widely and became canonical Mark.
[73]
The original Urmarkus, lacking anything not found in Matthew or Luke,
went the way of the sayings source and was not preserved.
Koester's view has made some inroads. Hans-Martin Schenke adopts it with the
modification that Carpocratian Mark predates the Secret Mark of the Alexandrian
Church.
[74]
John Dominic Crossan developed a theory like Koester's in his 1985
Four Other Gospels. Secret Mark has been included in the texts being translated
as part of the Scholars Version project, and is described as an early gospel
fragment in material that the Jesus Seminar has been making available to popular
audiences. None of these treatments is significantly affected by one's assessment
of the magical Jesus suggested by Smith.
Still, Jesus as magician is not a dead issue. John Dominic Crossan's very
intriguing book on The Historical Jesus has an extended discussion of the
topic. He argues that Jesus may indeed be understood as a magician. He rejects
an artificial dichotomy between magic and religion, saying, "The prescriptive
distinction that states that we practice religion but they practice magic
should be seen for what it is, a political validation of the approved and
the official against the unapproved and unofficial."
[75]
Conclusion: Where No Secret Gospel Has Gone Before Secret Mark's plight constitutes
a warning to all scholars as to the dangers of allowing sentiments of faith
to cloud or prevent critical examination of evidence. When seen in light of
the massive literature which has been produced by the other major manuscript
finds of our century, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi codices, the comparative
dearth of good studies on this piece in particular cannot be explained in
any other way that a stubborn refusal to deal with information which might
challenge deeply-held personal convictions. It is good to keep in mind an
unofficial directive of the Jesus Seminar: "Beware of finding a Jesus entirely
congenial to you."
[76]
"It is my opinion," writes Hans Dieter Betz, "that Smith's book and the texts
he discovered should be carefully and seriously studied. Criticizing Smith
is not enough."
[77]
Certainly it is reasonable to concur. After twenty years of confusion,
it must be time to set aside emotionalism and approach both this fragment
and Morton Smith's assessment of the role of magic in early Christianity with
objective and critical eyes. However that question is ultimately to be resolved,
Secret Mark provides yet another fascinating window into the remarkable ritual
diversity we may identify in the first phases of the development of Christianity.
FOOTNOTES
1 Parker, "An Early Christian Cover-up?", 5.
2 Smith, "Monasteries and their Manuscripts."
3 Smith, The Secret Gospel, 12.
4 Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel according to Mark, 1.
5 Smith, The Secret Gospel, 13-14.
6 ibid., 24.
7 ibid., 25.
8 Knox, "A New Gospel Ascribed to Mark."
9 Smith, "Monasteries and their Manuscripts."
10 Smith, "Hellenika Cheirographa en tei Monei tou Hagiou Sabba."
11 Smith, The Secret Gospel, 76.
12 Smith, Jesus the Magician, 3-4.
13 Smith, The Secret Gospel, 94.
14 ibid., 113n1.
15 ibid., 113-114.
16 Shenker, "A Scholar Infers Jesus Practiced Magic."
17 Skehan, review of Smith's work in Catholic Historical Review, 452.
18 Fitzmyer, "How to Exploit a Secret Gospel," 572.
19 Fitzmyer, "Mark's 'Secret Gospel?'", 65.
20 Achtemeier, review of Smith in Journal of Biblical Literature, 626.
21 ibid.
22 Beardslee, review of Smith in Interpretation, 234.
23 Parker, "An Early Christian Cover-Up?", 5.
24 Conzelmann, "Literaturbericht zu den Synoptischen Evangelien (Fortsetzung).",
321. (Translation from Schenke, "The Mystery of the Gospel of Mark," 70-71.)
25 ibid., 23. (Translation from Schenke, "The Mystery of the Gospel of Mark,"
70-71.)
26 Brown, "The Relation of 'The Secret Gospel of Mark' to the Fourth Gospel,"
466n1.
27 Danker, review of Smith in Dialog, 316.
28 Merkel, "Auf den Spuren des Urmarkus?", 123. (Translation from Schenke,
"The Mystery of the Gospel of Mark," 69.)
29 Musurillo, "Morton Smith's Secret Gospel," 328.
30 Brown, "The Relation of 'The Secret Gospel of Mark' to the Fourth Gospel,"
466n1.
31 Including Fitzmeyer, "How to Exploit a Secret Gospel"; Parker, "An Early
Christian Cover-Up?"; Skehan, review of Smith in Catholic Historical Review
60(1974); Gibbs, review of Smith in Theology Today 30 (1974); Grant, "Morton
Smith's Two Books"; Merkel, "Auf den Spuren des Urmarkus?"; Kummel, "Ein
Jahrzehnt Jesusforchung"; and Beskow, Strange Tales about Jesus. Anitra
Kolenkow's comments on this bias are salient: "We know that the gospel of
John long has been known as possibly containing both gnostic and homosexual
motifs. John may have been written at approximately the same time as Mark.
What difference does it make to us if Jesus is not separated from a homosexual
situation?" (Quoted from Kolenkow's response to Reginald Fuller, Longer
Mark, 33.)
32 Examples are Achtemeier, review of Smith in the Journal of Biblical Literature
93(1974); MacRae, "Yet Another Jesus"; Gibbs, review of Smith in Theology
Today 30(1974); and Fuller, Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation, or Old
Tradition?
33 See the statements to this effect in Quesnell, "The Mar Saba Clementine,"
and Hobbs (response in Fuller, Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation, or Old
Tradition?).
34 Such scholars included Pierson Parker, Edward Hobbs and Per Beskow.
35 See Bruce, The 'Secret' Gospel of Mark; Musurillo, "Morton Smith's Secret
Gospel"; and Kummel, "Ein Jahrzehnt Jesusforschung."
36 Fitzmyer, "How to Exploit a Secret Gospel"; Gibbs, review of Smith in
Theology Today 30(1974).
37 Danker, review of Smith in Dialog, 316.
38 ibid.
39 ibid.
40 Quesnell, "The Mar Saba Clementine," 49.
41 ibid., 50.
42 ibid., 52.
43 ibid., 53.
44 ibid., 57.
45 Smith, The Secret Gospel, 25.
46 Smith, Clement of Alexandria, ix.
47 Quesnell, "The Mar Saba Clementine," 58.
48 ibid., 61.
49 ibid., 60n30.
50 ibid., 48.
51 Smith, "On the Authenticity of the Mar Saba Letter of Clement," 196.
52 Quesnell, "A Reply to Morton Smith," 201.
53 Beskow, Strange Tales about Jesus, 101.
54 Smith, "On the Authenticity of the Mar Saba Letter of Clement," 196.
55 Sider, "Unfounded 'Secret'," 160.
56 Private correspondence with Saniel Bonder.
57 Bonder, The Divine Emergence of the World-Teacher, 234.
58 ibid., 235.
59 Feuerstein, Holy Madness, 90-92.
60 ibid., 94.
61 Bonder, The Divine Emergence of the World-Teacher, 287.
62 ibid., 288.
63 It is necessary to stipulate that nothing in the above discussion of
the Free Daist Communion should be read as derogatory. The purpose is simple
description. Despite the controversy which has sometimes surrounded this
movement, the author does not feel that its practices are in any way fraudulent
or abusive. Scholars should consider the possibility that examination of
modern new religious movements such as the Da Avabhasa sect might be extraordinarily
helpful in our understanding of the community dynamics of early libertine
Christians such as the Carpocratians.
64 Baigent et al, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 290.
65 Prophet, The Lost Years of Jesus, 9. Most interestingly, in her notes
Prophet quotes a 1984 telephone interview with scholar Birger A. Pearson,
in which he says that "many scholars, maybe even most, would now accept
the authenticity of the Clement fragment, including what it said about the
Secret Gospel of Mark." (434n16)
66 Smith, The Secret Gospel (1982 Dawn Horse edition), 150n7.
67 Mann, Mark (The Anchor Bible), 423.
68 Meier, A Marginal Jew, 140.
69 Beskow, Strange Tales about Jesus, 99. One wonders what a "genuine piece
of gospel material" might be. Are gospel additions such as the second ending
of Mark (16.9-20) and the famous story of the adulterous woman (John 8.53-9.11)
"genuine gospel material," even if we know they were not originally part
of the gospels in which they are found?
70 Shenker, "Jesus: New Ideas about his Powers."
71 Talley, "Liturgical Time in the Ancient Church," 45.
72 ibid.
73 See Koester, "History and Development of Mark's Gospel," and Ancient
Christian Gospels.
74 Schenke, "The Mystery of the Gospel of Mark," 76.
75 Crossan, The Historical Jesus, 310.
76 Funk et al., The Five Gospels, 5.
77 Fuller, Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation, or Old Tradition?, 18.
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Author's note: The author would like to offer thanks to Saniel Bonder of the
Mountain of Attention Sanctuary for his kind assistance in providing research
materials and his willingness to share with me information pertaining to The
Dawn Horse Press and The Secret Gospel. Further thanks are due to Dr. Jon
Daniels of The Defiance College for his helpful insights into the subject
matter of this study.
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