Morton Smith and the Secret Mark Gospel Hoax

Morton Smith and the Secret Mark Gospel Hoax

A review of Stephen CARLSON, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's invention of Secret Mark, Texas: Baylor University Press (2005)



In 1958 an obscure US scholar named Morton Smith claimed that he had discovered an otherwise unknown letter by Clement of Alexandria in a volume at the monastery of Mar Saba, a few miles from Jerusalem. The letter to a certain Theodore referred to a previously unknown version of Mark's Gospel which, the letter said, the Alexandrian church kept in secret. It then quoted a section from it. The text suggested to most people that the Carpocratian heretics believed that Jesus was a sodomite, appealing to this Secret Mark in evidence; and that the text given of Secret Mark rather suggested that this was not an unreasonable inference.

The text of Theodore was written on the end-papers of a 17th century printed edition of the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, edited by Isaac Voss and printed at Amsterdam. The script was an 18th century cursive hand, occupying some two and half pages. Smith was to publish some cropped monochrome photographs of these; some colour photographs were taken on a subsequent trip with other scholars; and then the manuscript disappeared.

It was not long before the authenticity of this text was disputed. Many people felt uneasy with the lack of a manuscript to subject to scientific tests, and dismissed the text on those grounds. Likewise the subject-matter was not one that many people felt very comfortable with. Smith's personal peculiarities did nothing to abate suspicions that so colourful a character would not be above forgery, in certain circumstances. But the subject has never gone away, and now receives its first book-length treatment, apart from those by Smith himself.

Stephen Carlson has investigated the text on three levels; (1) the manuscript itself, as seen from the photographs, (2) the content of Theodore and (3) the content of Secret Mark. All three, he believes, show that the text is not authentic, and was composed by Morton Smith himself. Interestingly he also believes that all three contain a signature confession by Morton Smith, indicating that the text was a hoax designed to be exposed after a suitable period, and not a forgery for money or reputation.

His chapters are stuffed full of data, and can be quite dense going. This is not a populist treatment, but one that explores every possible avenue in order to bring some objectivity to the subject. Not all of the arguments will convince everyone, but Carlson has clearly opened up many new areas for investigation, and placed the whole subject on a sounder footing.

The research carried out is very convincing. The only question is whether it is conclusive. One problem with all competent forgeries is that it is rarely possible to give them a 'killer blow' without some technological or scholarly advance unavailable at the time of composition. So any such can only be unmasked by an accumulation of inconsistencies and anachronisms. On the other hand such a compilation runs the risk of descending into fault-finding and debunking, which most of us have seen used by the unwary or unscrupulous merely as a means to dispose of inconvenient evidence in the interest of one theory or another. Carlson's book is not of this character. To evaluate his evidence, however, we need to consider the other side of the question, and ensure that at each stage all sides of the question are fairly explored.

Thankfully the book is entirely free of rancour. While the portrait of Smith that appears is unamiable, it is impossible to consider him merely a crank. Such a person could not have carried out the hoax.

Carlson begins by providing a review of scholarship on the subject so far. He then goes on to discuss the nature of literary fakes in a particularly useful manner. Most fakes are obvious once times change -- that which convinced the Victorians now looks evidently Victorian to us. But Carlson has carried this analysis a stage further, and found a way to reduce the subjective element. He notes that any fake must address an area which is controversial in its own time. If it does not, it will never come to notice.

This is obviously true: for example anyone may write fake letters on a subject no-one cares about, and, if the forgery is clever enough, get them published and accepted -- until times change. But how would this benefit the forger? A fake must be noticed to achieve its aim. Thus it must address an area of controversy at the time of composition; a text that addresses an issue which is highly controversial in the era in which it appears, but much less so in the era to which it supposedly belongs, is thereby marked as a possible forgery for contemporary advantage. Carlson's book is worthwhile for this insight alone, because it removes much of the subjective element from assessing the content of a text for forgery. It is one thing to feel, as some have done, that Secret Mark 'feels modern.' It is quite another to assess the degree to which it explicitly addresses issues specific to one period in history, and that not the 1st century AD.

1. Manuscript

Carlson has applied a number of objective tests to the script displayed in the photographs. In particular he uses material derived from the modern forensic science of handwriting analysis. Using various reference sources from this discipline, he shows that the script displays characteristics that in a modern text would be considered evidence of forgery. In particular he refers to the "forger's tremor." This is a blot of ink in the middle of a curve where it should not arise, if the line is being written naturally. It occurs because the forger is slowly drawing a copy of the image before him and pauses in the middle of a stroke to see where the line should go next. The pause allows ink to gather on the page. This is present in the letters in what is supposedly a rapidly written cursive script.

This is a strong argument indeed, and will convince many. However the argument needs further development to be final, at more length than Carlson's book permits, to exclude the possibility of a false positive here. Using material from a specialism other than one's own is always risky, since it may be that this can occur innocently. In order to investigate this, for instance, it would be useful to know whether there are other examples of 18th century Greek cursive which display this feature, but are nevertheless written, not drawn. Carlson addresses a number of possible problems in a careful way, but more needs to be done in this area before the argument can be considered conclusive. It is, however, a strong argument strongly made. It is doubtful that Smith was familiar with this science of handwriting verification, for instance.

Carlson has made other discoveries. He identifies the script as identical to another on part of a binding of another Saba ms (no. 22 in Smith's catalogue), described by Morton Smith as 20th century and written by an unknown "M. Madiotes." This is also a valuable discovery. But paleographers can differ, and it would be useful to hear whether others agree with this identification. The content of the fragment is not mentioned, which is surprising; the image printed was too small to be readable by me.

Likewise he has discovered that the script in Theodore is unlike that in a sample of other 18th century Saba Mss. I was unclear what the criterion for the selection of Saba manuscripts was; a larger group would be better. But tellingly, Carlson has found examples of Morton Smith's own Greek hand in marginalia in his own copies of various texts -- thus unlikely to be written for public inspection --, which are far closer to Theodore than Theodore is to the other Saba mss. It may or may not be relevant that Smith ordered his papers burned. This is all instructive. But for finality a larger sample of manuscripts from Saba, and from Smith, is needed. Do letter-forms like those of Smith exist in 18th century cursive anywhere? This would be harder to check, but such a check might well be fatal to the authenticity of Theodore.

Carlson has also discovered that no modern Greek surname 'Madiotes' exists, indicating that this name is a pseudo-name or nickname. Apparently it means 'swindler' or 'bald-headed man' -- and Smith was bald. This, Carlson feels, is deliberate, and one of the tell-tales marks left by Smith to show how clever he had been. It seems that Smith had that type of sense of humour. Carlson was right to raise the issue, but this sort of 'proof' is commonplace among cranks, and so will not convince many of the inauthenticity of Theodore: it smells too much of the arguments used by enthusiasts for (e.g.) numerology.

All the points added together raise some very serious questions about the manuscript itself. For finality the possibility of false positives needs to be investigated further -- although Carlson has made it a matter of drudgery rather than prophetic inspiration, which is a welcome advance all by itself. The material is not finally conclusive; but it leaves the defenders of Theodore with some very hard questions to answer. Many will ask how it comes about that this now lost manuscript has so many curious features, if it is genuine.

2. Theodore

Carlson accepts Andrew Criddle's (1995) arguments that Theodore is statistically too close to the mean of Clementine usage to be authentic. In particular letters are often distinct in language from more formally composed texts, yet Theodore is not. Carlson makes this point, and that Smith was a specialist in Clement's works, and possessed an index of his usage created in the 1930's. Here many of us will feel a faint unease; human beings are not computers, and do not observe statistical laws. Can this argument be falsified by comparisons of other texts? The data sample is rather small, after all.

The investigation then proceeds to show various anachronisms in Theodore. For instance Carlson highlights a problem with the reference to salt -- that it can be adulterated by adding an ingredient, and suggests this involves assuming free-flowing salt, a modern invention. He also highlights a lack of references to adulteration in antiquity. Finally he points out that this free-flowing salt was invented by the Morton salt company -- Morton salt is such a very high profile brand in the US, that this like finding a reference to a hula-hoop! -- and that a verse of the bible quoted with a passage missing contains a reference to a smith in the missing passage. This again he takes as a deliberate self-reference.

How convincing are these arguments? Carlson argues them well, and without obvious one-sidedness. On the other hand there is clearly the possibility of false positives, and not nearly the same exploration of the possible alternatives that there was in the manuscript chapter. More work is needed here. Still Carlson's arguments are suggestive, and it is anachronisms that tell against any forgery.

3. Secret Mark

Carlson then moved on to examine Secret Mark itself. Various points are made concerning the over-faithfulness to Mark, again usefully. A key phrase in the text is shown to have no parallel in any ancient text -- something only possible to discover in these days of computerisation and the TLG -- and to convey a very modern meaning.

But his principal argument is that the text is designed to convey to a modern reader something it would not have conveyed to an ancient reader -- that Jesus was, or might have been, a sodomite, and that his arrest in Gethsemane might have been for soliciting. The analysis of the text, pointing out what it would say in context in antiquity, is really very well done, and convincing. Ancient sodomy took place in a social context other than our own, and he shows the text speaks strongly to our generation, but not at all to theirs.

Likewise his documentation of the controversies of the 1950's concerning 'cottaging' and the legal record of these shows fairly convincingly that the manner in which the insinuation is made could only belong to the 1950's. Earlier than this the controversy was not active in the same manner; later than this and the influence of the gay rights movement on liberal America would mean a different bait would be needed to achieve the same impact. This dates the text to a specific period other than that to which it purports to belong. Apparently Smith would have been aware that such an insinuation would have been grossly offensive to Christians, and like so many atheists he loved to bait this group.

All these arguments are subjective to some extent, although much less so than is usually the case. But the detailed analysis does tend to suggest strongly that Secret Mark is designed for 1950's America. It has the keynote intention to address a contemporary controversy. This portion of Carlson's argument seems very strong, and is argued as objectively as possible. Indeed it is quite hard to summarise in a few words, and the reader is referred to the tightly argued text.

Finally Carlson shows that Smith had referred to all the issues raised by Secret Mark before he supposedly discovered it, and this, he argues, is again a confession. That Smith did indeed so write is shown: that he intended others to discover this and recognise a hoax is less clear.

The question with all of this, however, is whether a false positive would be possible. This is not explored in the book, unfortunately; but the nature of the argument means that such is always possible. But the reader inevitably is impressed by the cumulative effect of all these oddities in one text.

Conclusion

It is hard to detect a good forgery. The best of them go on for centuries. It is also very hard to produce an argument against a forgery which is not capable of producing false positives. The key argument is, and always was, anachronism: the mention of things which are inappropriate to a period. This argument Carlson has refined, in a manner that will be generally useful.

As a rule, when a forgery appears, it takes time before the evidence gradually builds against it. Only crude fakes can be unmasked by a single conclusive test soon after manufacture. Decades or centuries later a new scientific technique can show when an item such as the Shroud of Turin was made; its contemporaries had no such tools. Likewise the arguments deployed by Lorenzo Valla against the Donation of Constantine have not all stood the test of time, and could be evaded in various ways if one chose.

Has Carlson decisively disposed of Secret Mark? The answer must be no, for more work would need to be done to validate what he has discovered with a larger data sample and tie up some loose ends. But he has made it very difficult for anyone to accept that it is genuine. It is possible that other examples will be found that show that some genuine manuscripts may be written with the "forger's tremor." But what are the chances that Theodore should be one of them? It is possible that texts will be found which answer the other objections, at least occasionally. But how likely is it that Theodore should have so many problems? The defenders of Theodore can only rely on the limited data sample that it was possible for Carlson to use in the time available as a reason to mark his conclusions as provisional; and every day of any further investigation is likely to make that uncertainty smaller and smaller.

The Gospel Hoax opens up new avenues of investigation. Suddenly it is possible to move the investigation forward into new territories. But these territories may never be explored; for it seems entirely possible that this book will dispose of Secret Mark, without further work being done. Few will devote time to what nearly everyone considers a hoax.



Constructive feedback is welcomed to Roger Pearse.

Written 29th October 2005.
Revised 31st October 2005 to modify tone slightly.



http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/reviews/carlson_gospel_hoax.htm

THE SECRET GOSPEL OF MARK

Venetia Anastasopoulou’s report

http://www.bib-arch.org/pdf/secret-mark-analysis.pdf

The “Secret Mark” Translation

The “Secret Mark” Translation
While looking for ancient documents in the Mar Saba monastery library in the Judean Desert, scholar Morton Smith made a discovery that rocked the academic world: Copied onto the end-pages of a 17th-century book was a previously unknown letter from Clement of Alexandria, a second-century church father, which contained passages of a lost “secret” gospel of Mark. Over fifty years after this remarkable revelation, the debate over the authenticity of the document continues. But what did the letter say? What follows is Morton Smith’s translation as it appears in his book Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark.
Folio I
Recto From the letters of the most holy Clement, the author of the Stromateis. To Theodore.
You did well in silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians. For these are the “wandering stars” referred to in the prophecy, who wander from the narrow road of the commandments into a boundless abyss of the carnal and
5 bodily sins. | i For, priding themselves in knowledge, as they say, “of the deep things of Satan,” they do not know that they are casting themselves away into “the nether world of the darkness” of falsity, and, boasting that they are free, they have become slaves of servile desires. Such men are to be opposed in all ways and altogether. For, even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not, even so, agree with them. For not all true things are
10 the truth, nor should | that truth which merely seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faith. Now of the things they keep saying about the divinely inspired Gospel according to Mark, some are altogether falsifications, and others, even if they do contain some true elements, nevertheless are not reported truly. For the true things being mixed with inventions, are falsified, so that, as the saying goes, even the
15 salt | loses its savor.
As for Mark, then, during Peter’s stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord’s doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to
20 Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, | from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but
25 to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain | sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils. Thus, in sum, he prepared matters, neither grudgingly nor incautiously, in my
I verso opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in | Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.
But since the foul demons are always devising destruction for the race of men,
5 Carpocrates, instructed by them and using deceitful arts, | so enslaved a certain presbyter of the church in Alexandria that he got from him a copy of the secret Gospel, which he both interpreted according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine and, moreover, polluted, mixing with the spotless and holy words
10 utterly shameless lies. From this mixture is drawn off | the teaching of the Carpocratians. To them, therefore, as I said above, one must never give way; nor, when they put forward their falsifications, should one concede that the secret Gospel is by Mark, but should even deny it on oath. For, “Not all true things are to be said to all men.” For this reason the Wisdom of God, through Solomon, advises,
15 “Answer the fool from his folly,” | teaching that the light of the truth should be hidden from those who are mentally blind. Again it says, “From him who has not shall be taken away,” and, “Let the fool walk in darkness.” But we are “children of light,” having been illuminated by “the dayspring” of the spirit of the Lord “from on high,” and “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” it says, “there is liberty,” for “All things are pure to the pure.”
20 To you, therefore, I shall not hesitate to answer the questions you have asked, | refuting the falsifications by the very words of the Gospel. For example, after “And they were in the road going up to Jerusalem,” and what follows, until “After three days he shall arise,” the secret Gospel brings the following material word for word: “And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus
25 and says to him, ‘Son of David, | have mercy on me.’ But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where
2 recto the tomb was, and | straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and | began to beseech
5 him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for | Jesus taught him the mystery of
10 the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.” After these words follows the text, “And James and John come to him,” and all that section. But “naked man with naked man,” and the other things about which you wrote, are not found. And after the words, “And he comes into Jericho,” the secret Gospel adds only,
15 And | the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.” But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are falsifications. Now the true explanation and that which accords with the true philosophy

[Here the fragment ends.]
Notes
i. These lines indicate as closely as possible the beginning of each fifth line of the Greek text.
To read about the continuing debate over Morton Smith and the “Secret Mark” letter, see “Secret Mark”: An Amazing Discovery by Charles W. Hedrick in the November/December 2009 issue of BAR
In italiano vedi: http://digilander.libero.it/Hard_Rain/Secret_Mark.pdf



http://www.bibbiablog.com/2009/10/24/the-%e2%80%9csecret-mark%e2%80%9d-translation/

Did Morton Smith Forge ‘Secret Mark’?

A Handwriting Expert Weighs In
Did Morton Smith Forge ‘Secret Mark’?
Did Columbia University professor Morton Smith forge the famous Clement letter containing two passages from a secret and different copy of the Gospel of Mark? A number of scholars have concluded, on inadequate grounds in our view, that Smith was a forger.

In a four-part treatment, including contributions by eminent New Testament scholars Helmut Koester and Charles Hedrick, BAR concluded that Smith, now dead, was innocent.*



Photo by Kallistos Dourvas
The controversial text that Smith discovered was a Greek manuscript written on the endpages of a 17th-century book. The apparently 18th-century handwriting recorded a copy of a previously unknown letter from Clement of Alexandria to someone named Theodore.
Oddly enough, despite the scores of articles and books that have been written on the subject, no one has bothered to consult a handwriting expert in the language in which the alleged forged letter is written: Greek. To Smith’s detractors, that was apparently unnecessary. According to critic Bart Ehrman, “With any skill at all, and a little practice,” it would be easy for Smith to learn to fake the 18th-century handwriting in which the Clement letter is written. Yet no one ever followed through by consulting a Greek handwriting expert. BAR has now done so.

Venetia Anastasopoulou is a prominent handwriting expert living in Athens who has frequently testified in Greek courts. BAR retained her to compare the handwriting in which the Clement letter was written with Greek handwriting known to be Smith’s. She is a member of the National Association of Document Examiners (U.S.A.) and the International Graphology Association (U.K.). She holds a Certificate in Forensic Sciences from the University of Lancashire (U.K.) and a diploma in Handwriting Analysis from the International Graphology Association (U.K.).

Anastasopoulou compares numerous letters, parts of letters and words in the Clement letter with Smith’s Greek handwriting in her 36-page report. We are offering the entire document here for those sufficiently familiar with Greek handwriting to understand and appreciate her examination.

Click here to download Venetia Anastasopoulou’s report.



continue (pdf version)
http://www.bibbiablog.com/2010/05/20/did-morton-smith-forge-%e2%80%98secret-mark%e2%80%99-a-handwriting-expert-weighs-in/

Secret Gospel of Mark: Recent news

Friday, April 16, 2010
Secret Gospel of Mark: Recent news
The Secret Gospel of Mark is attracting more attention, from rather different perspectives (cf. previously here and here).

Francis Watson has attempted to move from 'suspicion of forgery' to 'beyond reasonable doubt' in a paper published recently in JTS. This is an interesting read, and raises some questions, although occasionally it gets a bit ridiculous. To my mind it doesn't close the discussion.

Francis Watson, 'Beyond Suspicion: on the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark' JTS 61 (2010), 128-170.

Roger Viklund has posed some questions about Stephen Carlson's use of relatively poor photographs in his hand-writing analysis: Tremors, or Just an Optical Illusion? A Further Evaluation of Carlson’s Handwriting Analysis.

Scott G. Brown and Allan J. Pantuck have posed some questions about Stephen Carlson's use of an external hand-writing expert in 'Stephen Carlson’s Questionable Questioned Document Examination' here at Timo S. Paananen's web-site which is a good resource on SGM matters).

Up-date: The BAR have recently published an opinion on the Letter to Theodore by a "qualified" document expert (I use the quotation marks deliberately - check out the qualifications!) which opines that Smith probably did not write the 18th Cent. Greek text. Here. (It is not dated; hopefully it was not the first of April.)
Up-date 1a: Peter Jeffery comments on the hand-writing analyses here with discussion here.
Up-date 1b: Some questions are raised about the qualifications of the "expert" in the comments here.
Up-date 2: Surprise, surprise ... the other BAR expert (who seems actually to be an expert), apparently disagrees, but his report is not finished so you'll have to buy the next issue. See here.



What do I think? I wish I knew. Here is something I wrote recently:
M. Smith discovered a letter from Clement of Alexandria to (an otherwise unknown) Theodore written in an eighteenth-century hand in the back of a published book (see M. Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973) also ‘Clement of Alexandria and Secret Mark: The Score at the End of the First Decade’, HTR 75 (1982), 449-461). Among other things this letter mentions three expanded forms of Mark’s Gospel: the original Gospel, a secret gospel also written by Mark (on the basis of notes), and a further expansion used by Carpocratians (on whom cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I.25). If this was an authentic letter of Clement it would provide evidence for expanded versions of Mark known in Alexandria, and in the third case at least, the expansions would reflect the views of a libertarian sect. However, I consider this letter to be of doubtful authenticity – specifically on the grounds of its extremely late attestation, the uncertain provenance of the manuscript, certain stylistic questions about the relationship of the letter to Clement’s normal style (A. H. Criddle, ‘On the Mar Saba Letter Attributed to Clement of Alexandria’ JECS 3.2 (1995), 215-220), and the impression that the letter seeks to disclose the contents of the secret gospel (F. Watson), and the air of mystery which the original editor encouraged by his dedication of his book ‘to the one who knows’. I have not, however, found recent attempts to prove that M. Smith was himself the author of the Clementine letter (S. Carlson, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Texas: Baylor University Press, 2005); P. Jeffrey, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery (Yale: Yale University Press, 2007); F. Watson, ‘Beyond Suspicion: On the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark’ JTS (forthcoming)) completely persuasive (cf. esp. S.G. Brown, Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery (ESCJ 15; Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005); ‘Factualizing the Folklore: Stephen Carlson's Case Against Morton Smith’ HTR 99 (2006), 291-327; ‘The Question of Motive in the Case Against Morton Smith’ JBL 125 (2006), 351-383; ‘Reply to Stephen Carlson’ ExpT 117:4 (2006), 144-149; ‘The Letter to Theodore: Stephen Carlson’s Case against Clement’s Authorship’ JECS 16 (2008), 535-572 and recently R. Viklund, ‘Tremors, or Just an Optical Illusion? A Further Evaluation of Carlson’s Handwriting Analysis’ http://www.jesusgranskad.se/theodore2.htm (accessed March 2010)).


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http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2010/04/secret-gospel-of-mark-recent-news.html

THE SECRET GOSPEL OF MARK BY LOREN ROSSON

Beyond Suspicion, Beyond Doubt: Secret Mark Put to Rest

Francis Watson's "Beyond Suspicion: on the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark" can be taken as the final part of a remarkable sleuthing trilogy that began with Stephen Carlson's bombshell, The Gospel Hoax, and Peter Jeffery's psychoanalytic tour-de-force, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled. The trilogy convicts Morton Smith beyond doubt as the forger of Clement's letter, just in case you were too blind to accept the obvious after reading Carlson.

Many of Watson's arguments complement those developed by Carlson and Jeffery, but extend to new developments. Here are the five high points of the article.

A. The Inappropriate Response to Theodore

Clement's letter supposedly answers Theodore's questions about the Carpocratian version of Mark's gospel, but as Watson explains, the reply is inappropriate on every level (see pp 146-147). Theodore wants reassurance that the Carpocratian gospel is a perversion of the canonical Mark, but Clement's emphasis is on the fact that it's mostly true aside from the remark about Jesus and the young man being naked. "The authentic Secret Mark is only slightly less prurient than the falsified one" (147). Theodore is then instructed not to correct the Carpocratians on this point. "He must resist the temptation to parade his new text-critical knowledge" (ibid), and must continue to deny, even on oath, that Mark ever wrote a secret gospel. On top of that (and as Charles Murgia outlined decades ago), Clement goes to considerable lengths to inform Theodore what he already knows. These red flags show that
"The real intention of the letter is evidently to disclose the existence and content of the Secret Gospel, not to respond appropriately to Theodore. If that is the case, however, then Clement's role as revealer of the Secret Gospel is parallel to Morton Smith's as its discover. Clement's text aims not to assist the embattled Theodore but to divulge the shocking fact that the Carpocratian claim about the two versions of the Gospel of Mark is largely true. There is indeed a Secret Gospel, and the addressee must come to terms with it. That is also the message of Smith's two books on the Secret Gospel. Clement is concerned to establish the authenticity of the Secret Gospel, and that is also Morton Smith's concern as he labors to establish the authenticity of Clement. What Smith argues about the letter is what Clement argues within it." (p 148)
In other words, Smith was projecting onto Clement his own project.

B. Dependence on Papias

Watson demonstrates that Clement is dependent on Papias with the same ease and persuasive power that Andrew Criddle wielded in proving that Clement sounds too much like himself to be true. "It is all too easy to imagine a modern author gratefully availing himself of Papias' assistance as he laboriously crafts his pseudo-Clementine fictions" (p 151), in contrast to (the real) Clement's account of Markan origins as preserved in Eusebius -- where echoes of Papias are discernible, but not abundant.

C. Morton Salt Revisited

By far the most amusing aspect of Clement's letter is the hoaxer's signature which puns the tradition of Mt 5:13/Lk 14:34-35: "For the true things being mixed with inventions are falsified, so that, as the saying goes, even the salt loses its savor." Stephen Carlson exposed this confession, pointing out that adulterated salt was unknown in the ancient world, free flowing salt being a modern invention -- of Morton Salt. Watson suggests an even looser connection between the "falsification of truth" and the corruption of salt, since the word "falsification" itself implies "forgery". And since, originally, a "forger" was simply one who worked at a forge, "another word must now be employed to differentiate the sinister figure of the 'forger' from the innocent and useful worker at the forge" (p 153), namely, the smith. The full confessional signature of "Morton Smith" has now been exposed.

D. Clement's Letter Validating Smith's Views

What has most astounded me in the Secret Mark controversy is that, prior to Stephen Carlson, no one picked up on the fact that Smith published ideas connecting Clement and "the mystery of the kingdom of God" (in Mk 4:11) to sexual immorality (in T. Hagigah 2:1), and that he published them before his alleged discovery in 1958. Watson takes this further, showing how Smith had already believed (by 1955) that Mark censored offensive material out of his gospel, some of which he thought common to Mark and John, and that there was a secrecy tradition (of esoteric mysteries and sexual immorality) extending from Mark back to Paul and Jesus, to which he finally (in early 1958) connected Clement as a witness:
"Before Smith left for his visit to Mar Saba in the summer of 1958, many of the elements that comprise the letter to Theodore were already present in his published work. These elements do not simply recur in Smith's interpretation of the letter, as one would expect; rather, they are embedded within the letter itself." (p 160)
And as if this weren't enough to close the case against Smith...

E. The Two Mysteries of Mar Saba

Saving the best for last, Watson compares the circumstances surrounding Smith's expedition to Mar Saba with the fictionalized adventure related in James Hunters' obscure 1940 novel, The Mystery of Mar Saba. The novel, as we know, is about a forgery at the Mar Saba library -- quelle surprise -- exactly where Smith "discovered" Clement's letter, and the parallels are so transparent they're embarrassing. Both documents are preoccupied with death, burial, and removing stones from tombs. Both associate, in good Johannine fashion, Joseph of Arimathea's tomb with a garden, and extend the idea to another tomb in another garden. Both flirt with the figure of Nicodemus, who "came to Jesus by night" just as the young man did in the Secret Gospel, and who is supposedly the author of the Mar Saba text in Hunter's novel. Watson is perhaps putting it too kindly when he writes:
"Had The Mystery of Mar Saba been first published in c. 1975, the analysis presented here would show it to be heavily dependent on The Secret Gospel (1973), both in its account of the immediate circumstances of the discovery and in the rationale, content, and construction of the controversial Greek fragment. But The Mystery of Mar Saba was first published in 1940, eighteen years before the second Mar Saba 'discovery'. There is no alternative but to conclude that Smith is dependent on the novel, and that he himself is the author of the fragments of the Secret Gospel of Mark together with the pseudo-Clementine letter in which they are embedded." (p 170)
As I've said before, it's really this that puts the issue beyond doubt. If Hunter's novel had been spotted by biblical specialists long before 2001, a lot less people would have been duped, and Secret Mark would have been put to rest before scholars like Koester ran wild with it and made a monster that, incredibly, can't be let go. You can throw out everything else as far as I'm concerned -- the Morton Salt signature, the homoerotic overtones aligning with Smith's orientation, the Anglican Paschal liturgy invoked by the resurrection symbolism and white cloth, the hyper-Clementine and hyper-Papias language, the way Clement speaks to modern concerns instead of answering Theodore appropriately, and even the fact that Secret Mark vindicates Smith's published views -- all of that is damning enough. But you can argue around The Mystery of Mar Saba novel only by becoming the willful fool.

And so it ends. For good. We bid Secret Mark a final farewell, even if in admiration for Morton Smith's genius -- and admiration that, for my part, can only increase the more scholars like Scott Brown persist in denial. Their rejoinders at this point should simply be ignored.

posted by Loren Rosson III @ 4/15/2010

http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2010/04/beyond-suspicion-beyond-doubt-secret.html

Jeffery on Secret Mark

The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery, by Peter Jeffery. Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-300-11760-4.

Like Stephen Carlson a year ago, Peter Jeffery is able to show how obvious it is that Morton Smith fabricated Clement's letter to Theodore. One would think that Carlson exhausted all of Smith's anachronisms (the "bald swindler" M. Madiotes, Morton Salt, and modern gays in the 1950s being arrested in public Gethsemanes), but Jeffery has spotted more:

* The three features of Secret Mark's initiation rite -- resurrection symbolism, a period of teaching followed by a night vigil, and the wearing of a white cloth -- point to the Anglican Paschal liturgy as it was before the 1960s liturgical renewal movement. In addition, Clement and the Alexandrian church had a theology of baptism that was based not on the easter event of Jesus' resurrection, but on the epiphany event of Jesus' baptism by John. Secret Mark should thus have epiphany motifs (i.e. creation, the heavens opening with light, the descent of the Holy Spirit and fire, the seal of priestly and messianic anointings) rather than easter motifs (i.e. Pauline associations between baptism and resurrection).

* The homoeroticism in Secret Mark makes no sense in an ancient context. Adult males were supposed to pursue young boys/men, who in turn were supposed to acquiesce only after "playing hard to get" and only if the boy perceived that the sex would have intiatory value (i.e. that the man would go beyond sex and educate him in proper mores). But in Secret Mark, Jesus does not pursue the young man: just the opposite if anything, and this would have been shamefully unacceptable. Secret Mark was evidently written by a modern person who assumed that ancient homosexuality would have followed Plato's model of an older teacher with a young disciple, but who didn't quite understand how the roles played out -- and such misunderstandings were common in academic circles before the work of K.J. Dover in the late 70s. (This would seem to improve on Carlson, who argued that the homoeroticism in Secret Mark makes no sense since Jesus and the young man are depicted as social peers. But a "young man", however rich, suggests they're not quite peers.)

* Clement's letter is riddled with allusions to Oscar Wilde's 19th-century play, Salome, and Wilde was a homosexual martyr to boot. In the play Salome does the "dance of the seven veils", which is punned by Smith's Clement, who writes about "the truth hidden by seven veils". She is punned, in turn, by Smith's Salome, whom Jesus rejects along with the rest of the female race.

On top of this, Jeffery catches Smith in some pretty amusing lies. A notable one: whereupon discovering Clement's letter, Smith says he went to Vespers instead of staying to investigate his discovery, apparently forgetting what he said two pages earlier (in The Secret Gospel, p 10) -- that he had stopped attending religious services because he no longer "responded" to them.

Jeffery examines Smith's brief career as an Anglican priest, noting his excessively harsh judgments on homosexuals in a 1949 article -- very severe by Anglican standards at the time. Any fool can make the diagnosis: Smith was going through his own sexual crisis that caused him to leave the priesthood a year later. Interestingly, in that same 1949 article, Smith referenced a 19th-century debate between Catholics and Protestants over whether Clement of Alexandria believed that lying was justified if it served the causes of the church. Quelle surprise: the letter to Theodore answers that very question.

Jeffery goes after Morton Smith pretty hard, unlike Carlson who seemed (at least in part) to respect or admire a man who had the skills to bamboozle so many academics. Jeffery expresses sorrow and contempt: Smith "became what he opposed: a hypocritical Clement who condoned lying for the sake of a fundamentalist sexology"; "a man in great personal pain", who didn't even understand himself despite pretensions to a superior gnosticism; a bitter academic, whose hoax stands as "the most grandiose and reticulated 'Fuck You' ever perpetuated in the long and vituperative history of scholarship". He's right about that last one, but whether Smith wrote his hoax more out of experimental amusement or angry revenge remains unclear.

The names Stephen Carlson and Peter Jeffery will soon become closely associated, and that's a credit to them both. But who has the stronger case? Carlson has the edge with his forensic handwriting analysis. The Morton Salt exhibit (Carlson) and Anglican liturgical analysis (Jeffery) each point to Morton Smith in particular. Both address the homosexuality issue -- which also puts Smith directly on the spot -- though Jeffery more satisfyingly. Carlson insists on the pernicious nature of fakes, while Jeffery seems more interested in the perniciousness of Morton Smith himself. They complement each other perfectly, and stand as definitive twin debunkings of the Secret Mark hoax.

UPDATE: Don't miss Stephen Carlson's reflections, as he compares and contrasts Jeffery's work with his own.

posted by Loren Rosson III @ 11/17/2006

http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2006/11/jeffery-on-secret-mark.html

The Motives of Morton Smith

Don't miss Stephen Carlson's series on the motives of Morton Smith, in response to Scott Brown's "The Question of Motive in the Case against Morton Smith," JBL 125 (2006): 351-383. I'll post the links to new installments as they appear.

Part I: Carlson discusses the role of motive in criminal law (misunderstood by Brown), the distinction between motive and intent, and why, in any case, it's inappropriate to use criminal law standards to determine the authenticity of texts in historical criticism.

Part II: "The Gay Gospel Hypothesis". Brown devotes most of his attention to refuting this hypothesis instead of the two stronger ones that follow. Perhaps this is a rhetorical trick, meant to imply that skeptics of Secret Mark are homophobes.

Part III: "The Hoax Hypothesis". This is a good installment, focusing on Brown's "nonfeasance" as he fails to address the the jokes embedded in Secret Mark, and the arguments of Akenson and Carlson in general -- particularly Carlson's demonstration that the confessions in Secret Mark parallel an aspect of Coleman-Norton's denture joke.

Part IV: "The Hoax Hypothesis" (continued). Brown claims that Smith put too much effort into publishing Secret Mark for it to be a hoax. (I wonder what Brown would make of all the hours I wasted in my undergrad years composing prank letters to a friend, in place of studying and doing other productive things.)

Part V: "The Hoax Hypothesis" (continued). Brown claims that for someone who supposedly put so much effort into creating a hoax about a libertine Jesus, Smith almost never referred to his discovery in his subsequent articles about libertinism. But as Carlson says in his book, that just means Smith was smart enough not to become a victim of his own hoax.

Part VI: "The Controlled Experiment Hypothesis". Carlson: "Although I think that Smith could have well have been a little curious at the process in which Secret Mark was accepted, I agree, largely for the reasons canvassed by Brown, that [this] hypothesis is unlikely to be the primary or a major motivating reason behind Secret Mark."

Part VII: Carlson re-emphasizes the pitfall of comparing Secret Mark with Smith's subsequent writings instead of his prior ones.

Part VIII: Secret Mark has the "scale and depth" to qualify as a forgery done to support beliefs and opinions, the crucial factor for Anthony Grafton in Forgers and Critics.

Part IX: Carlson wraps up, emphasizing that circumstantial evidence is stronger in law than in popular misconception, and with a wonderfully rhetorical question: "If Brown had a devastating critique of my position, why didn't he share it in one of the most prestigious journals in the field when he had the chance?"

posted by Loren Rosson III @ 7/28/2006

http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2006/07/motives-of-morton-smith.html

Peter Jeffery on the Handwriting of the Mar Saba Document

Of all the nails in Morton's Smith's coffin, handwriting analysis hasn't been pounded home, and doubtfully ever will be. I've always been leery of such analysis, which is why I've avoided blogging about it over the years, and even in my review of Gospel Hoax I barely mentioned that part of Stephen Carlson's case. Recent analyses both for and against Smith don't exactly reinforce reliability here. As a forensic method, handwriting analysis has been handled cautiously by the courts in recent decades, and it seems the answer to Secret Mark will remain in the content of Theodore's letter itself, which of course points to a plain conclusion.

Peter Jeffery has written a five-point response to developments on the handwriting front, and his last makes the same point about the primacy of the letter's content over handwriting style.
"Since the handwriting cannot be earlier than the 17th century (the date of the book in which it was found), no graphological analysis can prove that the Mar Saba text was composed in ancient times. Those who think it a forgery have based their arguments mostly on content, and among them there is general agreement on the features that point to a modern origin: the text was constructed by re-using words and phrases from the canonical gospels and Clement’s authentic writings, the general picture of the Alexandrian church and its practices looks more like the fifth century than the second, Clement’s advocacy of lying seems inauthentic and references modern debates, the hints of ritualized homosexuality seem to assume a modern sexology, Smith’s own account of his discovery is demonstrably deceptive, the many apparent jokes uncannily resemble Smith’s own sense of humor. Those who consider the text ancient, on the other hand, completely disagree with each other as to its origin and interpretation. Does the Secret Gospel pre-date or post-date canonical Mark? Why the secrecy? Are the sexual innuendoes actually present or not? What are the Carpocratians actually being accused of? What is the meaning of Salome’s expanded role? Before they declare victory, those who would place the document in the second century need to face such questions instead of ignoring or minimizing them, and come to some level of consensus on a compelling interpretation that shows why their dating makes the most sense."
And to all the above must be added Hunter's Mar Saba novel, and the fact that Smith's "discovery" confirmed his scholarly views already published, some just months before.

posted by Loren Rosson III @ 4/25/2010



http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2010/04/peter-jeffery-on-handwriting-of-mar.html

THE SECET GOSPEL OF MARK-A LITERARY FORGERY

The secret gospel of Mark.
A literary forgery from century XX.

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The text.
The controversy.
The forgery (a review of Stephen C. Carlson, The Gospel Hoax).

The text.
In 1960 Morton Smith claimed to have discovered, in the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem in 1958, a copy of an epistle from Clement of Alexandria to one Theodore. The epistle contained two passages that Clement claimed came from a secret expansion of the canonical gospel of Mark. The story of this Clementine letter, as well as of this secret gospel of Mark, can be found in two books by Morton Smith himself, The Secret Gospel and Clement of Alexandria and the Secret Gospel of Mark.

The Greek text is based on that which Smith provides in the first book. The translations are my own.

The first passage belongs between Mark 10.34 and 35, according to Clement of Alexandria, and comes from folio 1 verso, line 23, through folio 2 recto, line 11a:

Και ερχονται εις Βηθανιαν, και ην εκει μια γυνη ης ο αδελφος αυτης απεθανεν· και ελθουσα προσεκυνησε τον Ιησουν και λεγει αυτω· Υιε Δαβιδ, ελεησον με. οι δε μαθηται επετιμησαν αυτη· και οργισθεις ο Ιησους απηλθεν μετ αυτης εις τον κηπον οπου ην το μνημειον· και ευθυς ηκουσθη εκ του μνημειου φωνη μεγαλη, και προσελθων ο Ιησους απεκυλισε τον λιθον απο της θυρας του μνημειου· και εισελθων ευθυς οπου ην ο νεανισκος εξετεινεν την χειρα και ηγειρεν αυτον, κρατησαστης χειρος· ο δε νεανισκος εμβλεψας αυτω ηγαπησεν αυτον και ηρξατο παρακαλειν αυτον ινα μετ αυτου η· και εξελθοντες εκ του μνημειου ηλθον εις την οικιαν του νεανισκου· ην γαρ πλουσιος· και μεθ ημερας εξ επεταξεν αυτω ο Ιησους· και οψιας γενομενης ερχεται ο νεανισκος προς αυτον, περιβεβλημενος σινδονα επι γυμνου, και εμεινε συν αυτω την νυκτα εκεινην· εδιδασκε γαρ αυτον ο Ιησους το μυστηριον της βασιλειας του θεου· εκειθεν δε αναστασεπεστρεψεν εις το περαν του Ιορδανου.

And they come into Bethany, and there was one woman there whose brother had died. And having come she worshiped Jesus and says to him: Son of David, have mercy on me. But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus got angry and went away with her into the village where the tomb was. And immediately there was heard from the tomb a great voice, and Jesus went up to and rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And he went inside immediately where the young man was and stretched out the hand and raised him up, clutching his hand. And the young man looked at him and loved him and began to call him alongside to be with him. And he went out of the tomb and went into the house of the young man, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus commanded him. And when it was late the young man goes to him, dressed with a shroud upon his naked body, and remained with him that night. For Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And from there he turned to the other side of the Jordan.

The second passage belongs between Mark 10.46a and 46b, right after the words και ερχεται εις Ιεριχω (and they come into Jericho), again according to Clement, and comes from folio 2 recto, lines 14b-16:

Και ησαν εκει η αδελφη του νεανισκου ον ηγαπα αυτον ο Ιησους, και η μητηρ αυτου και Σαλωμη, και ουκ απεδεξατο αυτας ο Ιησους.

And there were the sister of the young man whom Jesus loved, and his mother and Salome, and Jesus did not receive them.

The controversy.
The epistle from Clement to Theodore and the two passages of the secret gospel of Mark together encompass several concentric circles of controversy. The pressing issues range along the following spectrum of interrelationships:

What is the relationship of this secret version of Mark to the canonical version? Which came first? Is the secret version a genuine recension of Mark, written by the same author? Or is it a forged gospel?
What is the relationship of the Clementine epistle to the rest of the Clementine corpus? Is the epistle a genuine letter of the Alexandrian church father? Or is it a forged epistle?
What is the relationship of the manuscript discovered by Morton Smith to the rest of the manuscripts at Mar Saba? Is the manuscript, which is said to be written in an eighteenth-century hand, a genuine document of that century? Or is it a modern forged manuscript?
The answers to these three (sets of) questions produce four basic possibilities for the secret gospel and the letter describing it:

The secret gospel is genuine, written by Mark (or by whoever wrote the canonical gospel), whether before or after he wrote the canonical version.
The secret gospel is an ancient forgery, written by an ancient author imitating Mark.
The entire Clementine epistle is an ancient, medieval, or early modern forgery.
The manuscript itself is a late modern forgery, probably engineered by Morton Smith himself.
Technically, the secret gospel could itself be genuine while the Clementine letter describing it is not, but that possibility seems so remote as to deserve little reflection. And it is hardly possible after nearly two millennia for the manuscript itself to be inauthentic, yet its contents authentic. So these four degrees are a basic working quartet of possibilities.

For general information on the secret gospel, including images, refer to the helpful homepage put together by Wieland Willker. For arguments that the secret gospel is authentic, read the interesting essays by Yuri Kuchinsky, to which I have also responded.

I myself have always tended to gravitate to the second option on that list, softly rejecting hypotheses of an academic hoax or of a pious or impious Clementine forgery, though I freely admit that I am no expert in either Clementine studies or in eighteenth-century handwriting. On the other side, I find it difficult to believe that the author of the secret version is also the author of the canonical version. The second option, therefore, has been my default position for some time.

Until recently, anyway.

The forgery.
Stephen Carlson, best known online for his Synoptic Problem Website, is now destined to become even better known as the author of The Gospel Hoax, a book that attempts to pin the composition of both the secret Marcan gospel and the Clementine epistle, not on Mark, nor on an ancient imitator, nor on a medieval forger, but squarely on Morton Smith himself.

This book has generated a fair number of online references and reviews, both positive and negative. I have assembled links to many of them in a list at the bottom of this page, and also wish to add my own review to the mix, in four parts.

This review is quite lengthy. If you are pressed for time you may wish to skip to the heart of the review.

Introductory considerations.
Levels of argumentation.
Dovetailing evidence.
Concluding remarks.


Introductory considerations.
In the interests of full disclosure, I think it proper to briefly outline what is at stake for me personally in the case for or against the authenticity of the Clementine epistle to Theodore.

On the one hand, I am a lover of intertextuality, and the secret gospel of Mark offers intertextuality galore. While I have never been persuaded that the author of the secret gospel and the author of the canonical gospel are one and the same, I am not naturally averse to the suggestion of a common source between the gospel of John (in the Lazarus story) and the secret gospel of Mark. I love a good intertextual mystery such as the conjunction of the Johannine Lazarus with the Marcan youth might offer. For if the secret gospel in any way reflects a genuinely ancient tradition then the student of the text is presented with a fivefold spectrum of potential character identifications:

The rich man in Mark 10.17-22.
The young man in the tomb in Mark 16.5-7.
The young man in Mark 14.51-52.
Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha in John 11.1-46; 12.1-2, 9-11, 17-19.
The beloved disciple in John 13.23-26; 19.26-27; 20.2-10; 21.20-24.
This tapestry of connections can be wrapped around a great variety of hypotheses of gospel relationships, such as that which Miles Fowler explores in Identification of the Bethany Youth in the Secret Gospel of Mark with other Figures Found in Mark and John. A lover of intertextuality such as myself does not have to agree with every identification in such a reconstruction, but cannot fail to appreciate the rich complexity of the case, and can scarcely resist to attempt his or her own reconstruction.

In other words, to lose the secret gospel of Mark is to waste a magnificently fertile field for the sowing and growing of theories on gospel origins. This is my personal stake in the Clementine letter. I frankly do not tremble at the more controversial implications of either the letter or the gospel discussed within; what I would miss most is the interplay of the Marcan and Johannine gospels at this raw textual level.

On the other hand, however, I am a student of the patristic statements on gospel origins, and what Clement says about the composition of Mark in his epistle to Theodore is not easy to square with a certain hypothesis of mine which I have spent much time developing as to the origins of our extant text of Mark. This is neither the time nor the place to go into the details of my reconstruction, but suffice it to say that to have Mark taking his finished gospel to Alexandria after the death of Peter, along with his own notes of the Petrine preaching, is rather inconvenient to my hypothesis, at least as it presently stands.

In other words, to lose the Clementine epistle to Theodore is to help clear the path for a pet notion of mine that depends on the essential reliability of most of the patristic testimonia to the second canonical gospel before the fourth or fifth century. I cannot yet tell whether I am on the right track in my thoughts on this topic, but what is certain is that I would not at all miss having to fit this new Clementine testimonium to the origins of Mark into the picture.

I am honestly not aware of any other significant personal benefits or detriments to either retaining or casting away the Mar Saba discovery.

Levels of argumentation.
There are several things about the secret gospel of Mark and the Clementine epistle to Theodore that have bothered me with respect to their genuineness over the years, but I never considered them powerful enough to impeach either the text or its discoverer. They have always amounted only to intuitions or suspicions, nothing more. Furthermore, most of my inclinations to at least provisionally accept the epistle to Theodore as ancient have amounted to little more than hunches or the vague notion that a scholar such as Morton Smith would never stoop to forgery. Informed intuition, then, I regard as one level of argumentation, albeit a rather low level, a kind best relegated to footnotes or passing comments in a scholarly work.

Higher up the scale is the kind of argumentation that ought to form and inform the basic content of a scholarly work. This level is that of careful logic based on the extant evidence. It relies on the sifting, weighing, and evaluation of multiple soft data, or on the application of new methods to old evidence.

The highest level of argumentation is also fit for the basic content of a scholarly work, but is no longer so closely attached to the logical manipulation of available evidence. Rather, its purpose is to make further evidence available. The driving force behind this kind of argumentation is the discovery of a manuscript, artifact, or other hard datum hitherto unknown.

It seems clear to me that The Gospel Hoax is aiming for that middle category. It neither relies on intuition nor heralds the discovery of new hard evidence, such as some long lost deathbed confession by Morton Smith. Yet one online reviewer of the book writes:

I must say that I am disappointed with the book. Perhaps this was my fault, because I expected, based on the early advertisements, some groundbreaking discovery by Carlson.
If the reviewer, Wieland Willker, cracked the cover for the first time expecting to find argumentation of that highest level detailed above, then I can sympathize with his disappointment. However, I am not certain whence Willker got that impression of the book. The early advertisements and reviews that I read, all online, were often enthusiastic, to be sure, but I never got the sense that Carlson had uncovered a lost document or the like.

So if Willker was let down in his expectations of the highest kind of argument, what kind of argument did he find? In his own words:

What I found in the book, though, is an accumulation of mini-arguments against the genuineness of the Clement letter.
If by mini-arguments Willker means the kind of logical rationales that characterize my middle level of argumentation, then I agree. If he means the kind of suspicions and intuitions that characterize my lowest level of argumentation, then I disagree. Perhaps he intends the former and prefixes the mini in frustration at not having found my highest level of argumentation, a fresh discovery, which could presumably have been prefixed by maxi.

To come at last to my point, what I find in the book is fairly close to what I expected, namely an accumulation, as Willker aptly puts it, of arguments (most of which fall into my middle category above) of various degrees of potency. For Carlson attacks the problem from three different angles, adducing an array of individual arguments for each:

The Mar Saba manuscript is modern (its handwriting, not its paper material).
The epistle of Clement to Theodore is modern.
The secret gospel of Mark is modern.
(I was pleased to notice that these three prongs, each given its own chapter in the book, line up elegantly, though in inverse order, with my three relational questions about the controversy surrounding the text.)

The potential power of such an approach is obvious. If one aspect of the case should seem relatively weak to a given reader, there may well be another that seems relatively strong. Moreover, each prong is technically independent of the others. Carlson certainly wants the reader to see the same mind at work behind all three aspects, but his case does not depend on that perception. If even one of his thesis statements is true, his case is proven true. He is not betting the entire fortune on one hand.

But I can also see how a reader might peg this kind of approach as apologetic, as merely hurling objections at the target en masse, hoping that at least one of them sticks. Avoiding this image depends entirely on the quality, not the quantity, of the arguments bolstering each of the three thesis statements.

So how many, if any, of his three statements are supported by potent arguments?

Dovetailing evidence.
After a foreword by Larry W. Hurtado and a preface and introduction by the author himself, Carlson reruns the discovery of the Mar Saba text in chapter 1. This chapter, written in the most neutral terms, closes with a reference to Quentin Quesnell, the scholar who in 1975 began to openly question the authenticity of the document. This reference in turn leads right into chapter 2, about exposing literary fakes. It is this chapter that lays the foundation for the rest of the argumentation in the book.

For those who have not yet purchased the book, the entire first chapter and all but two pages of the second are available for download as a .pdf file from the publisher, Baylor University Press.

The basic insight of the second chapter is that a literary fake will inevitably bear the imprint of the generation to which it belongs. This imprint may be all but invisible to the contemporaries for whom the fake was intended, but the passage of time ought to set the character of the fake in bold relief as the burning issues of that generation fade into memory. As Roger Pearse cleverly words it, that which convinced the Victorians now looks evidently Victorian to us. Any fake that fails to address one of the burning issues of the day runs the risk of going unnoticed in its own generation. And there is no reward to be had for a forger whose forgery goes unnoticed in its own generation.

The Mar Saba manuscript, with its Clementine letter and Marcan gospel, certainly did not go unnoticed. Is that fact enough to convict it as a fake? Not at all, according to Carlson. It merely paves the way for the more detailed inquiry that will fill the next three chapters. Carlson seems well aware of the level of argumentation that he is presenting in each case. Toward the end of the second chapter, for example, on pages 19-20, he (A) notes the similarity of the Mar Saba find to the 1940 novel The Mystery of Mar Saba and (B) echoes Bart Ehrman in finding irony in the fact that the Clementine letter was found at the end of a 1646 edition of the genuine epistles of Ignatius by Isaac Voss, a text intended to weed out forged members of the Ignatian corpus. But Carlson then writes of these evidences on page 20:

These parallels between Secret Mark and known fakes may be grounds for suspicion but are not proof. Rather, as Smith himself argued, "the supposition of forgery must be justified by demonstration either that the style or content of the the work contains elements not likely to have come from the alleged author, or that some known historical circumstances would have furnished a likely occasion for the forgery" (Clement 89, n. 1).
In other words, according to that quotation of Smith himself, one must show either that the alleged fake could not have come from its purported author or that it more likely came from a different timeframe.

It is at this point that Carlson ambitiously proposes to demonstrate not just either of these contingencies but both, and not only with respect to one aspect of the disputed text but indeed with respect to all three aspects (the Mar Saba document, the Clementine epistle, and the Marcan gospel). He intends to show that each of these three elements (A) does not belong to its purported timeframe and (B) does belong to the middle of the twentieth century. The next three chapters then tackle each of the three aspects of the text in turn.

How potent, then, is each of the three main lines of argumentation?

The Mar Saba manuscript belongs to century XX, not to century XVIII.
The Clementine epistle belongs to century XX, not to century II.
The Marcan gospel recension belongs to century XX, not to century I or II.

The case against the Mar Saba manuscript. Carlson spends chapter 3 attacking the Mar Saba manuscript, purportedly a document from the quill of a monastic scribe from the eighteenth century, by studying its handwriting and then adding auxiliary supports. He approaches this issue from the following angles:

Carlson compares the handwriting of this Mar Saba manuscript with that of other manuscripts from Mar Saba by offering several useful photographic images of each. Figure 1 paves the way with two genuine and two forged modern signatures that highlight three telltale signs of forgery, to wit, blunt ends (instead of flying ends) on the cursive letters, tremors, and midstroke pen lifts. In his text Carlson also adds retouching as a fourth sign. Figures 2A-C show lines from three different Mar Saba documents dated to the eighteenth century. Figures 3A-F then show lines from the Mar Saba document that Smith discovered, with figures 4A-C providing close-ups of some of the letters.

Carlson argues that, while the other Mar Saba manuscripts feature handwriting that is both fluent and natural, the Smith manuscript instead features evidence that the purportedly cursive strokes and letters were drawn, not written. Overall, I can see exactly what he is talking about in the examples that he provides. It does indeed appear that many, though not all, of the letters were carefully drawn instead of quickly written, belying the usual purpose of cursive writing, namely speed. My only concern is that this evidence is not a clean break; not all of the letters in the disputed manuscript appear drawn, and (more importantly) not all of the letters in the other Mar Saba manuscripts appear free of the telltale signs. For example, what are we to make of the blob of ink on the stroke joining the second alpha with the pi of the word αναπαυσον in figure 2B? Is that a midstroke pen lift? Despite some overlap, however, it is clear that, in the samples provided, the Smith manuscript is rather more heavily riddled with such indications. The best, indeed perhaps the only, way to counter Carlson at this juncture would be to display a pool of handwriting samples broader than the few lines pictured in the book (a limitation of the print medium, to be sure) to see whether what Carlson shows us is merely a fluke. But, if the samples from the book are indeed representative of the available evidence not shown, we have a winner. The Smith manuscript was drawn, not written.

Peter Head disputes the significance of the telltale signs of forgery in a review posted on the Textual Criticism List when he observes that nobody doubts that Theodore is a copied text, so everybody would expect to find indications of hesitation in it. But Carlson is correct to point out that the samples from the other Mar Saba manuscripts also come from copied texts, so any differences still stand out. Moreover, there is to my mind a huge difference between hesitating between words or phrases, which we might expect from the ordinary copying of a text as the scribe periodically turns to his exemplar, and hesitating between letters or strokes, which would be quite unnecessary in ordinary copying unless for some reason the very shape of each letter is important, which leads squarely back into the point that Carlson is making.


Carlson also points out inconsistencies between the disputed Mar Saba manuscript and the other manuscripts at Mar Saba with regard to the scribal symbol with which the disputed text begins, the choice of quill used to copy it, the execution of the nomina sacra, and the kind of ink used.

No one ought to mistake these observations for showcase arguments. Each is adduced as reinforcement for the handwriting discrepancies already detailed. I myself do not find any of this evidence very persuasive on its own; it belongs in the class of suspicion and intuition.


Carlson points out similar anomalies with regard to the Isaac Voss book itself, one of the few printed books in the Mar Saba collection. He identifies several very clear differences between this book and the other printed books at Mar Saba, including place of publication, subject matter, and titular language, as well as the unusual fact that the Voss book was written for the papal controversy between Catholics and Protestants, surely not much of an issue for an Orthodox monastery.

I find these differences fascinating. They certainly make it look like the Voss book came to the monastery by a route different than that or those by which the other printed Mar Saba books came to be collected there. This does not prove, of course, that it came to the monastery in the hands of Morton Smith, and I do not think that Carlson means this part of the argument to bear that weight, but I for one find it highly suggestive, and quite supportive of the more concrete evidence laid out so far.


Carlson follows these observations up with a search for how Morton Smith himself describes his finding of the Voss book at Mar Saba. Surprisingly, Carlson finds that Smith nowhere asserts or even really implies that the manuscript was present in the monastery library before he himself got there. His statements on the issue, while not exactly evasive, are not exactly as forthright as his statements about other manuscripts in the library.

This evidence again is only support for the main thrust of the argument, but again I find it rather suggestive. The best way to counter Carlson on this point would be to dig up a paragraph in which Smith unambiguously describes his actual finding of the manuscript at Mar Saba (as opposed to, for example, his finding of himself reading the manuscript at Mar Saba).


Carlson moves on to consider the handwriting once again, this time from the vantage point of another manuscript that Morton Smith catalogued from Mar Saba, number 22. Figure 5A is a photograph of this manuscript; figure 5B is a closeup of it. Carlson argues that one of the scribes who worked on this manuscript was Morton Smith himself, but under a modern Greek pseudonym the meaning of which could be taken as bald and swindler. Smith was bald, or very nearly so, and if Carlson is correct also a hoaxer, not a very long stretch as a synonym for swindler. This part of the argument points up the distinction that Carlson makes between an ordinary forgery and a hoax. The difference is motive. A forgery is usually done for profit or for fame, or to further an ideological position. The purpose of a hoax, however, is to test the experts; accordingly, a hoaxer will often plant clues in the fake that will at some point expose it for what it is and thus make the experts look foolish. According to Carlson, the modern Greek pseudonym of one of the scribes of manuscript 22 is just such an intentional clue; it is, in fact, an embedded confession on the part of the hoaxer.

I frankly do not yet know what to make of this part of the argument. On one level I can see why a hoaxer would embed clues to the hoax, but on another this kind of clue just seems so quirky. The acrostic that Dionysius the Renegade embedded in his forged Sophocles play, which Dionysius himself eventually pointed out to his rival in order to shame him, would seem a sure sign that a hoax has been perpetrated. But, in the case of the disputed Mar Saba manuscript and number 22, what guarantee did Smith either have or put into place that the hoax would ever be exposed? Did he overestimate the critical acumen of his colleagues? And, if it turns out that he never really intended for it to be exposed, then why embed a clue at all? I am simply not convinced that this is the confession of a hoaxer.

Peter Head questions the identification of which scribe of manuscript 22 actually bore the Greek name from which Carlson derives so much meaning in another post to the Textual Criticism List. Which scribe is which matters because Carlson concludes that it was Smith by comparing the handwriting of manuscript 22 with that of the disputed Mar Saba manuscript. I myself am quite unqualified to evaluate the arguments for or against the identification that Carlson has made, but it appears to be a debate well worth keeping abreast of; so far Carlson appears to have the edge.


Carlson wraps up a very full chapter 3 with yet another handwriting comparison, this time between the Smith manuscript from Mar Saba and the scholia, or marginal notes, of Morton Smith himself in his personal copy of the critical edition of Clement of Alexandria by Otto Stählin (this volume is part of the Morton Smith Collection at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York). Figures 6A-B present samples of his own handwriting in Greek. Carlson then uses these samples to fill out figure 7, a table coordinating three different Greek letters (theta, lambda, and tau) from (A) seven undisputed Mar Saba manuscripts, (B) the scholia of Morton Smith, and (C) the disputed Mar Saba manuscript. The point, of course, is that the letters from Smith and from his discovered manuscript share distinguishing features that the letters from the other Mar Saba manuscripts do not. For the theta the former two often share a medial horizontal leadstroke lacking in the latter. For the lambda the former two share a very low intersection of strokes, an intersection that sits much higher in the latter. For the tau the former two share a peculiar formation from one stroke that comes out as two strokes in the latter.

There appears to be a small clerical error on page 47, where Carlson refers the reader to instances of the letter tau in figure 5A; the accompanying endnote, number 65, lists words containing that letter that clearly derive from figure 6A.

This evidence seems on a par with that with which Carlson began the chapter; the best, or even the only, way to counter him would be to poll a broader sample and attempt to demonstrate that what Carlson shows us is a fluke. If his observations hold out across the board, then I think Carlson has made a powerful point.


If we sift out the supportive, suggestive arguments and focus only on the handwriting comparisons between the scholia, the disputed Mar Saba manuscript, and the other Mar Saba manuscripts, I think that Carlson has, barring a plethora of counterexamples from a widened pool of samples, made a very good case that the hand that scribed the document was, in fact, a modern hand and was, in fact, the hand of Morton Smith. I am much less convinced, however, that the scribing of manuscript 22 was an intentional clue on his part. And I am also very glad that Carlson did not end his book at this point; it is, as he points out on several occasions, the compilation of independent arguments that will point the finger directly at Morton Smith.

The case against the Clementine epistle to Theodore.

Carlson now uses chapter 4 to date the epistle to Theodore, purportedly a document from the quill of Clement, almost eighteen centuries later than the time of the great Alexandrian father. He approaches this issue from the following angles:

Carlson accepts the analysis of Andrew Criddle (one of the scholars I most dearly wish had a weblog) in On the Mar Saba Manuscript Attributed to Clement of Alexandria, Journal of Early Christian Studies 3, pages 215-220 (1995), regarding the Clementine nature of the epistle to Theodore. Criddle argues from the hapax legomena (words singly attested) of the text that Clement did not author it. Perhaps surprisingly, he arrives at this conclusion by noting not how many new Clementine vocabulary entries appear in the epistle but rather how few there are, much fewer than would be expected from a typical piece of written work. In other words, the epistle is too Clementine to be of Clement. (Such a finding echoes the not infrequently expressed sentiment that the secret gospel text is too Marcan to be of Mark.) He concludes, then, that somebody other than Clement himself deliberately tried to imitate the Clementine writing style, concentrating on keeping the number of hapax legomena down. Carlson adds that such a concern betrays a date later than the alleged penning of the text in the eighteenth century, since hapax legomena were not appreciated as a potential test for authorship until the nineteenth century. He further argues that it betrays a date later than 1936, when Stählin published his critical text of Clement with an accompanying concordance, thus making the imitation of Clement feasible.

I find the statistical approach to answering questions of authorship very promising and useful, but I adamantly insist that it not stand in isolation (an insistence with which Criddle himself appears to agree). Fortunately, Carlson has not left it on its own; it is but one log in the growing woodpile.


Carlson now turns to several instances in the epistle of information that the ancient readership would not need but modern scholars would be glad to get. He follows up on an argument by Charles E. Murgia that the epistle contains a literary sphragis, or seal of authorship, that would be unnecessary for Theodore. Carlson also notes that in the letter Clement states that the secret version of Mark is closely guarded in Alexandria. To spell out the name of the location implies that Clement is not currently in Alexandria himself, else an adverb like here would be more natural, but then Clement apparently quotes from the secret version verbatim, implying that he has a copy of the text that he has just said is carefully guarded in Alexandria. Did the Alexandrian church let Clement smuggle a copy out with him? According to the letter, the Carpocratians themselves had to corrupt one of the Alexandrian elders to even get hold of the text. Carlson also wonders why, if Clement was no longer in Alexandria, Theodore would not rather write to someone who was still there, such as Origen. Finally, Carlson notes that quoting the text verbatim to Theodore was not actually necessary anyway, since his only concern appears to have been whether a line about naked men was extant in the text or not, and he would be unable to check the passages that Clement quotes for him on his own at any rate if the secret version were kept under guard in Alexandria.

This section is a mixed bag, in my opinion. I do not really see the point about the sphragis very clearly, since the text does not actually say that Clement had opposed the Carpocratians in another of his works; it at most implies it, which seems to be what we would expect in a personal letter. As for writing to Clement away from Alexandria instead of to Origen in Alexandria, there are just too many unknowns to make a judgment call. Perhaps Theodore knew Clement, but not Origen, personally in some way. The paradox of the reference to Alexandria, however, is intriguing. I can think of no easy solution to the problem that does not sound like an outright apologetic for the text. The reference does indeed make it sound like Clement was away from Alexandria at the time of writing, yet somehow he had his own copy of this secret text, and for some reason decided to quote from it to an individual who apparently had no way to check on the text anyway, despite the fact that the original inquiry could have been answered with a simple denial. None of this information seems either relevant or even cogent in the late second or early third century, but all of it is fascinating for a modern scholar. Perhaps, then, it was in fact written for the modern scholar.


Carlson just touches on the testimonium to the origins of the gospel of Mark present in the epistle. He observes that this testimony is more about Mark taking notes of the Petrine preaching than about Mark remembering it, in contrast to the usual way of testifying to Mark in the second century. He also recites in a footnote the suspicions of Attila Jakab regarding the story of Mark coming to Alexandria, since in this epistle it seems to imply that a Christian community was already in existence there upon his arrival, against what Eusebius says about Mark founding the Alexandrian church.

But it is surely too much to ask that the patristic traditions march in lockstep on such matters. One has only to think of the divide between Clement and Irenaeus as to the status of Peter when Mark wrote his gospel: Was he alive or dead? And shall we regard either of these patristic testimonies as forged because of the difference? As for the focus on notes instead of memory, Clement himself claims elsewhere that Mark drew up a note (υπομνημα, apud Eusebius, History of the Church 2.15.1) of what Peter had taught. I do not find these kinds of evidences persuasive, and am glad that Carlson touched upon them only briefly and in footnotes.


Now we come to what may be the most important observation of the chapter, perhaps even the book. In his epistle to Theodore Clement speaks of the adulteration of truth with falsehoods in terms of salt losing its savor. But this image of salt losing its savor due to adulteration with additives is thoroughly modern, according to Carlson, since free-flowing salt was not invented until 1910; moreover, the adulteration of salt became a topic of interest a couple of decades before Morton Smith discovered the epistle to Theodore when potassium iodide was added to free-flowing table salt. The ancient norm was apparently lumps of salt which had to be broken apart on the spot with a mallet. Adulterating a lump seems as incongruous as adulterating a free-flowing medium is natural.

This kind of anachronism is exactly what the reader needs in order to eliminate subjectivity in deciding the issue of forgery. When I ask myself how an ancient reader would have conceived of adulterating salt, I draw a blank. Countering Carlson on this point would mean finding a reference to ancient adulterated salt. References to salt becoming tasteless (or insipid) are not uncommon, but that is not at all the same thing. In an admittedly incomplete and amateurish search on Perseus for ancient references to salt I could not come up with any that presupposed the ability to mix salt with additives of any kind. Furthermore, Carlson claims that Pliny lacks any discussion of the adulteration of salt amongst his many references to adulterated foods in the Natural History, a telling omission given that Pliny mentions salt so frequently in that work. It looks to me like a reference to adulterating salt would be intended for a modern readership much more appropriately than for an ancient one.

The reference in Pliny, Natural History 31.39, to the salt called hammoniacum being adulterated with Sicilian salt is only apparently an exception, since Pliny makes it clear that it is called a salt only because it is found under the sand (quia sub harenis inveniatur).


Carlson does not linger long to savor this anachronism; he goes on to argue that Morton Smith was deliberately toying with the reader when he wrote the bit about adulterated salt into the text. It was, after all, a chemist from the Morton Salt Company who discovered the secret to free-flowing salt. And Carlson points out a comment that Smith drops on this part of the epistle in which he writes of an unutterable mystery, and then mysteriously neglects to utter the part of a quotation from Jeremiah 28.17 that speaks of a confounded smith. This, says Carlson, is the second confession to his hoax that Morton Smith planted in the text.

But again I am not convinced that this is a confession. The anachronistic reference to adulterated salt looks more like a simple mistake to me. The snipped passage from Jeremiah 28.17 comes not from the epistle to Theodore but from his later Clement of Alexandria; so it was certainly not a part of the original hoax. And again the entire thing just looks quirky. Why embed so slight a clue, with no guarantee that it would ever be discovered? (Only Carlson, to my knowledge, has ever suggested these details as clues.) I am not convinced that they comprise the confession of a hoaxer.
With the exception of the confessions that he finds embedded in the text, Carlson appears to mark out his stronger arguments from his weaker arguments by briefly skipping through the latter and methodically expounding the former. In this chapter the arguments that sway me are the hapax legomena, the Alexandrian paradox, and the salt anachronism.

The case against the secret gospel of Mark.

Chapter 5 is the shortest of the three chapters carrying the bulk of the argumentation. In it Carlson argues that the two excerpts that Clement provides of the secret version of Mark are modern and appear to fit best in the middle of the twentieth century. His case rests principally upon the following two observations:
The first excerpt from the secret gospel actually contains two separated but related incidents. The first is the resurrection of a young man that closely resembles the Lazarus miracle of John 11; the second is the nocturnal initiation of the youth into the mystery of the kingdom with Jesus. In this latter incident the youth is said to be naked under his linen garment, or shroud, and is also said to have spent the night with Jesus. Both of these details resound with homosexual connotations for the modern reader. Then, in the very brief second excerpt from the secret gospel, Jesus is said to have rejected three women; with the homosexual overtones of the previous passage still echoing in the ears this rejection of the women sounds to the modern reader like a deliberate choice of individual sexual orientation. But, Carlson argues, none of those details would have triggered such connotations for the ancient reader. How odd that three independent details in an ancient text should so powerfully converge for the modern reader into a portrait of a gay Jesus. Carlson points out that the Greek phrase translated as spending the night is apparently unique to the present text. Furthermore, the weight of the homosexual imagery called to the mind of the modern reader of the secret version necessarily turns the clearly related Gethsemane episode in our canonical Mark 14.51-52 into a homosexual encounter in a public park area, one of the burning issues of the decade in which this text was brought to light.

What can I say? This is Carlson at his best. He has identified another anachronism in the text. These details come together more cogently and cohesively for the modern reader than for the ancient reader for whom they were purportedly intended. I might add that the Carpocratian interpretation of these details, naked man with naked man, sounds more to me like the modern egalitarian approach to homosexual relations than the ranked pedastery of ancient times; but I may be mistaken.


Carlson follows up this triumph with another gem; he finds a paragraph in Morton Smith himself, Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels, pages 155-156, connecting the mystery of the kingdom in Mark 4.11 with secret teachings on forbidden sexual relationships. Smith wrote this book, his dissertation, about a decade before finding himself staring at the secret gospel of Mark at Mar Saba. In other words, just as Bruce Metzger knew the amusing agraphon discovered by Coleman-Norton to be a fake because he had heard him deliver the punchline before finding the lost text, Carlson knows (and now his readers also know) the shocking connection of kingdom mystery and sexual encounter to be a fake because Morton Smith had already discussed the link in his dissertation.

Carlson interprets this material parallel as Smith writing his own sphragis referring the reader to his previous work. I do not think I would press it that far. The parallel is palpable, but I do not see at present any reason to suppose that Smith left it as a deliberate clue. Perhaps, rather, the connection had been on his mind for years and was simply one of his reasons for forging an ancient document.
This chapter, though the briefest of the three basic prongs of the argument, packs a punch. The argument is cumulative, and it culminates admirably in the solid dating of the secret gospel of Mark to the middle of century XX.

In chapter 6 Carlson runs through the forgery again with an eye to the classic legal triad of means, motive, and opportunity, finding that Smith had all three. I would like to call attention to one item in particular in this chapter: Carlson calls the abrupt midsentence stop of the Smith text a cliffhanger ending (page 79). I think I know what Carlson means, but would probably express it differently. One of the things that has always bothered me about this text is precisely that, even though it comes to a halt midsentence, it is not a cliffhanger, at least not for the modern scholar. The text ends as follows:

Η μεν ουν αληθης και κατα την αληθη φιλοσοφιαν εξηγησις....

The true exegesis, therefore, and that which is according to the true philosophy....

One of the most frustrating things about ancient fragmented manuscript finds is the painful awareness that, had the sands of time only preserved more of the text, we should have more of our questions answered. When such a fragment breaks off there is always a scholarly sense of loss, the knowledge that more of the text would have followed if the document were intact.

Not so with Clement to Theodore. The extant ending is a sign to the modern critic that we have either all that there was or all that the author cared to share of the text in question. The author is finished with the direct quotes, and has now moved on to interpretation. But modern scholars routinely ignore patristic interpretations of their source texts, preferring to reconstruct each source for themselves and study it without patristic interference. And that is just what the Mar Saba text allows us to do. We have had the doubly good fortune of (A) having Clement quote the Marcan excerpts so exactly as to preserve both their Marcan character and their exact Marcan position and (B) having only the Clementine interpretations, not the Clementine efforts at text preservation, cut off by the ravages of time and circumstance.

And, if Carlson is correct that the Mar Saba manuscript is a hoax, then the joke might be that Morton Smith himself gets to supply in his related books what is lacking in the text, namely the true interpretation (and that which accords with the true philosophy) of his perfectly preserved gospel fragments.

But I suspect that this last point is reading too much into text and context. I still do not find myself agreeing with Carlson that Morton Smith perpetrated a hoax. The first two confessions seem stretched to me, and the third appears to admit of a more straightforward explanation: Smith was using his textual fake for the third purpose that Carlson identifies for a forgery, to further his own ideology (as expressed, for example, in his dissertation), and never intended for a Stephen Carlson to come along and catch him out.

Carlson makes the invaluable point on page 80 that the best place to look for what Smith might have gained ideologically is not in those works that postdate 1958 but rather in those that predate that fateful year. And of course he follows up this insight with relevant and compelling examples.

Finally, chapter 7 steps back out of the close argumentation to take another look at fakes in general. The single appendix offers excerpts from the 1960 catalog that Smith assembled of Mar Saba manuscripts. The endnotes follow, then the bibliography, and then a very useful index, always appreciated.

Concluding remarks.
This book certainly makes the most of its 151 pages; it has singlehandedly changed my position on the secret gospel of Mark from probably authentically ancient to almost certainly not. I have revised my site references to this text accordingly.

The multifaceted approach that Carlson applies to the disputed text pays off. One could embrace far fewer of his points than I do and still come away with the realization that the text is a modern forgery or hoax. I myself am not (yet) persuaded of the hidden confessions from which Carlson argues for a hoax, but even my demurral on those points does not spare me from the force of his other arguments.

Other hoaxes and forgeries throughout history have been exposed on much less evidence than Carlson marshals. The Mar Saba manuscript is, in my newfound best judgment, a modern forgery perpetrated by Morton Smith.


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Online references to and reviews of the book.
Baylor University Press: Gospel hoax (press release, cover reviews).
Amazon: Gospel hoax (with reviews).

Stephen Carlson: Comments on my book.
Stephen Carlson: Initial reviews, second opinion.
Stephen Carlson: Keeping the Faith interview (as either streaming RealAudio or .mp3 download; scroll to November 27, 2005).

Rick Brannan: Wow.
Bruce Chilton: Not necessarily Smith, but a fraud nonetheless.
Mark Goodacre: An utterly convincing case.
Stephen Goranson: I recommend the book.
Stephen Goranson: A vanishingly small chance at vindicating the secret gospel of Mark.
James Hannam: Secret Mark is now forged Mark.
Phil Harland: Not yet a smoking gun.
Peter Head: Handwriting arguments not persuasive.
Jake Jones IV: The ball is in the other court.
Yuri Kuchinsky: No smoking guns.
Yuri Kuchinsky: Completely silly.
Luigi Walt: The work of a forger (in Italian).
Glenn Miller: A fun, fun book (comments on Carlson in an update toward the end of the page).
Michael Pahl: A book I wish I had written.
Roger Pearse: New avenues of investigation.
Philosophy 4 Christians comment: A heap of weak arguments (posted by godlovesfaithfulness).
Chris Price: The secret gospel of Mark and a cheesy Christian novel.
Loren Rosson: Nearly irrefutable.
Loren Rosson: A sobering lesson.
Loren Rosson: Top twenty literary hoaxes (including the secret gospel of Mark).
Loren Rosson: It took a legal expert.
Michael Turton: Blown away.
Michael Turton: The arc of forgery (referenced on page xvi of the book).
Michael Turton: A primer in how to understand hoaxes and fakes.
Brandon Wason: A great achievement.
Chris Weimer: Cuts straight to the chase.
Jim West: Must reading.
Wieland Willker: Disappointed with the book (repeated on his website).
Wikipedia: The secret gospel of Mark (comments on Carlson in the authenticity section).
Danny Zacharias and Craig Evans: All lingering doubts removed.


Carlson has also responded to an essay by Scott Brown (in devastating fashion, I daresay) in a series of weblog posts; part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9. Recommended reading! His summary (in part 8) of his triple argument for Smith having previous knowledge of the contents of secret Mark is especially succinct:

In 1951, Smith linked Mark 4:11 ("the mystery of the kingdom of God") and T. Hag. 2.1 on what Smith characterized as "forbidden sexual relationships" (Tannaitic Parallels, 155-156). Seven years later, Smith would return from Mar Saba with photographs of a new text that describes, in terms that are sexually charged for the 20th century reader, a young man with a linen cloth over his naked body spending the night with Jesus and being taught the mystery of the kingdom of God.
In the spring of 1958, Smith, who rarely wrote about Clement of Alexandria before, published a piece linking Clement’s notion of secrecy to T. Hag. 2.1 ("Image of God," BJRL 40 (1958): 507). Just a few months later, Smith would come back with a new letter ascribed to Clement that denounces the sexual practices of the Carpocratians and enjoins its recipient to secrecy.
In his lengthy 1955 review of Vincent Taylor’s commentary on Mark, Smith suggested the existence of a common source behind Mark and John. Three years later, Smith would possess a new text with a form critically primitive version of the raising of Lazarus that lends support to Smith’s prior suggestion. Smith’s new text would also support other of Smith’s beliefs and opinions expressed in the review (see Gospel Hoax, 80-84).
Well said. Also, Philip Esler and Ronald Piper have now favorably mentioned the book in print.


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