Thoughts on Antiquity

The panel discussion involved four scholars discussing and one moderating, representing the two extremes of the opinions on this controversial gospel. Birger Pearson and Dennis MacDonald (moderator) took the position that the Clementine epistle and the gospel were both forgeries by Morton Smith, whereas Gesine Robinson, John Dart and Marvin Meyer were of the view that Secret Mark represents the original form of the canonical Gospel of Mark. The audience consisted of a large number of students, a large number of community members, along with a few other prominent names in New Testament studies: James Robinson and Burton L. Mack. Claremont Graduate University’s Institute for Antiquity and Christianity hosted the event on Thursday, February 28, 2008. Information about each of the panelists can be found at http://iac.cgu.edu/deslecspr08.html.

A foretaste of the Secret Mark feast to come was given when Pearson dropped in and attended the better part of MacDonald’s “The Gospel of Luke/Acts of the Apostles” course and briefly summarized his position on the night’s topic, which almost exclusively consisted of an enthusiastic review/summary of Stephen Carlson’s The Gospel Hoax, all of which was reiterated during his presentation. During the mid-class break period, I chatted briefly with Pearson about Carlson’s work.

That evening, the auditorium had almost no empty seats, and I managed to get a spot in the front row, next to the podium. After a brief plug for the fact that four of the panelists recently published books through Continuum Press and the books were available with a discount through the IAC, MacDonald introduced the topic. Each speaker would be given about 15–20 minutes, followed by questions from the public. MacDonald began by summarizing the uncontested events during the mid-1970s relevant to the Secret Gospel of Mark: in 1973 Morton Smith published a hitherto unknown Clementine letter to a similarly unknown “Theodore” with two fragments of – you guessed it – an unknown gospel from Mar Saba. The Clementine latter was read in its entirety from Ron Cameron’s The Other Gospels.

First to present was Birger Pearson, who recalled the fact that one of his early publications declared that there was no reason to doubt the authenticity of Secret Mark, originally suggesting a date of the mid-second century CE for this version of the gospel. In 1979, Beskow published a book, Strange Tales about Jesus, in Swedish with a chapter that observed the extent of the verbal parallels to the critical text of the canonical gospels, mostly that of Mark. Vestoff suggested that Secret Mark was a modern forgery done in imitation of Markan style. Pearson, finding the book to be insightful (though not necessarily in agreement with the suggestions about Secret Mark) suggested that it be translated into English, and such was done in 1983. Shortly after it was published, Pearson received a letter from the publisher, which concerned a letter that they had recently received from Smith containing legal threats. The most notable of the was that Smith had the intention to sue for $1 million dollars for libel. Pearson assured the publisher that the legal basis was empty, but out of caution the book was taken out of print; interestingly, it was later reprinted without the offending chapter.

For Pearson, the Secret Gospel of Mark is “a 20th Century fake.” He identified the work of two individuals – whom he did not hesitate to observe were outsiders to the field of New Testament studies – as particularly important in his conversion from presumed-authenticity to assured-forgery. The first of these was that of Stephen Carlson, whose book he came across at the 2005 San Antonio SBL meeting. Pearson summarized some of the book’s points which he found most cogent. First was the evidence for a forger’s tremor: the hand seems to have been drawing the letters rather than writing them with ease. As a result of this, there were ink blots mid-word at various points in the photographs of the letter. Smith must have read the book at the New York public library, seen the extra pages in the back, bought a copy for himself, written the letter, planted it in his visit to Mar Saba in the 1950s, and later (re-)discovered it. Second, he liked Carlson’s suggestion that it was unnecessary to quote the text of Secret Mark, as Theodore would have obviously known what Clement was talking about. Third, though not all of this can be traced back to Carlson, there are a number of anachronisms in Secret Mark, the one Pearson spent the most time on was the well-known “gay-gospel” hypothesis. Carlson, he believes, has shown that New Testament scholarship has been “duped” by Morton Smith.

The second of Pearson’s major contributors was Peter Jeffery (The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled), an expert in Christian liturgy and its historiography. From Jeffery, he found the most important contribution to be that of the five levels of the Markan text within the Clementine letter: 1) canonical Mark, 2) Secret Mark, 3) the unwritten interpretation, 4) Alexandrian initiation rites, 5) Carpocratian Mark. In the Alexandrian rites (4), the worship assumes resurrection/Easter themes, when it would have more probably been those of the epiphany. Even more importantly, the letter’s depiction of Alexandrian rites cannot be made to fit into any time of Alexandrian history. Picking up again on the “gay-gospel” hypothesis, he noted that Secret Mark (2) offers a problematic depiction of male-male sexual relations. The portrayal of what moderns call “homosexuality” within Secret Mark is anachronistic, assuming practice like that of urban 1950s, when anonymous sex was performed in restrooms or in public parks. Indeed, this can be seen in each of the items 2–5, indicating that everything in the letter was written by the a single author with this topic in mind. Additionally, Smith’s interpretation of the character Salome appears to have been based on Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name, referring to the seven veils. Pearson concluded with the Jeffery’s quote about Smith offering a big “eff you” (Pearson cleaning up Jeffery’s language) to NT scholarship. Pearson found these works to be so convincing that “there should be no further discussion.”

Meyer was next up, who started off by joking that there indeed would be “further discussion” that night. He focused about equally on the person of Morton Smith, responding to the work of Carlson and Jeffery, and the insight that can be found once the fragments of Secret Mark are restored to its canonical counterpart. A charismatic speaker if ever there were one, he opened by saying Carlson and Jeffery were dancing on the grave of Smith, but he conceded that Smith did his fair share of dancing, too. Meyer befriended Smith and recalled an earlier time when young scholars across the field would fear that Smith would get ahold of their book, dislike it, and then publish his trademarked notoriously-harsh-review. Meyer said that there had always been controversy surrounding Secret Mark, with the charge of forgery dating back to Quesnell’s early review of Smith’s work. Meyer even acknowledged that if anyone could have forged it, it would have been Smith; if anyone would have done it, it would also have been Smith. However, he was far from convinced by the arguments. As a result of the books by Carlson and Jeffery, many rats were jumping ship; Meyer, referring to himself, said that “this rat is staying on the ship” (Meyer was not being malicious and merely joking). He said that because he did not have the capacity to assess Carlson’s “forger’s tremor” argument, he would not be swayed either way concerning it.

He then summarized Carlson’s salt argument with more than a touch of sarcasm: the salt reference to salt seems to assume that it was granulated, rather than crystallized. However, such salt was not available until its creation by Morton Salt Company. He followed with the same treatment of Carlson’s “M. Madiotes” (baldy, swindler) and Jeffery’s “Oscar Wilde” arguments. Meyer said these were unconvincing because a conspiracy theory can be found wherever one wants to find it and these arguments were rather contrived. Everyone who knew Smith said one thing about him: he had an undeterred devotion to Secret Mark and the Clementine letter. Any homosexuality or homoeroticism was a matter of eisegesis and is not inherent to the document.

Meyer (and some other panelists) believed that the strongest argument for authenticity was that Smith himself did not understand the document properly. Smith focused on the historical Jesus and the early Jesus movement, rather than on how this would contribute to the study of the Gospel of Mark. Secret Mark elucidates the importance of the neaniskos (young man) in Mark (14:51, 16:5), whose sub-plot is a paradigm for discipleship: death, resurrection, fear of death, and the final presence of Christ. He concluded by pointing out that the second fragment, which concerns a brief episode in Jericho, makes sense of an otherwise pointless passage.

Gesine Robinson agreed that Smith did not seem to understand his own “forgery.” However, as a Coptologist, her interest was largely in the Carpocratians and what information Smith’s discovery provided for such. She summarized what is known about this Christian sect: Irenaeus and Clement are our major sources for their belief system, as none of their writings survived. They formed in Alexandria in the 2nd Century CE, and had at least one commentary on the sayings of Jesus. Carpocritus formed this sect during the reign of Hadrian, claiming that Jesus was born naturally of Joseph and Mary, but imbued with a divine soul. Jesus, Carpocritus said, despised the Torah. They believed in a demiurge and that the body was a prison. Irenaeus claims that they saw life in corporeal bodies as paying off a debt, but Robinson said this had a weak claim to going back to the Carpocratians and is probably instead Irenaeus’ eisegesis. Though Irenaeus agreed with the Carpocratians that one is saved through faith and love, they departed at what the consequences of this were. Irenaeus said that Carpocratians said that this meant that everything else was arbitrary, including obeying the law. Carpocritus had a son named Epiphanus, who died at age 17, but was deified; Epiphanus taught free love and communal possession of property, greatly expanding his father’s theology.

For the second part of Robinson’s presentation, she looked at the implications for gospel studies. Secret Mark, in her view, is not an Ur-Markus, but supports the idea of such. Indeed, by the time of Clement’s letter, there were four other versions of Mark circulating: Matthew, Luke, Secret Mark, and Carpocratian Mark. She also observed the motif of love and the rich man in Mark (10:21). But there are a number of issues in the interpretation of Secret Mark that need resolution: Why the robe before the baptism? Why is the young man still wearing the cloth during his baptism? Robinson suggested that this was instead a tomb-wrapping and that one need not import a baptismal liturgy into the text. The cloth represents willingness to follow Jesus to death. She concluded with a new way to approach the synoptic problem, which seemed rather Helmut Koester-esque. A narrative source was used roughly at the same time in the composition of an Ur-Markus, an Ur-John, and Secret Mark. Ur-Markus was later redacted by Matthew and Luke (in addition to using Q), Ur-John received accretions to mold it into its canonical form, and Secret Mark was edited into canonical Mark (of no relation to the text used by Matthew and Luke) and another form by the Carpocratians. Her time was cut short.

Dart, who went next, said that he wished Scott Brown could have been present that evening, since he defends Smith. Dart briefly noted that there had been some responses to Jeffery and Carlson, including the well-known 50+-page review of Jeffery’s work in the Review of Biblical Literature. Dart rejected Carlson’s suggestion of a “forger’s tremor,” as there are a few other possible explanations for oddities in the ink, including pausing while copying in order to read the manuscript. Like the others, Dart said that Smith did not know how best to interpret Secret Mark, focusing on the historical Jesus and magic. Dart observed that nudity and potentially homoerotic elements of the canonical gospels are considered no big deal (Mark 14:51, John 13), but for some reason it is for this gospel. He favorably quoted Scott Brown’s observation that Smith waffled on the historical reliability of Mark.

Dart’s main point is that literary criticism suggests that Secret Mark is authentic. Markan sandwich stories tend to contrast (e.g., Jesus’ trail/Peter’s denial/Jesus’ trial), as is the case here. In 1989 Dart sent a manuscript of his book Decoding Mark to Smith for him to comment upon, which deals largely with the chiastic structures in Mark. Smith replied that there were never any signs of literary arrangement in Mark and that it seems to have been written by a literate simpleton. However, Dart found evidence of chiastic structures in the Secret Mark fragments that resemble those of secure Markan material. Chiastic structure can be found in nearly every narrative in Mark. Other literary looks at Mark seem to confirm its authenticity. Paul Fulmer at GTU observes the ambiguous death motif in Mark (e.g., 5:39), recalling the fact that in Secret Mark the voice calls out before Jesus gets to the tomb. Dart was also cut short for time.

The last to present was Dennis MacDonald, whose presentation was comparatively short. He started by telling a story about a public lecture he gave at Union Theological Seminary in the early 1990s about how the neaniskos in Mark is derived from the Homeric character of Elpenor. Smith, who was in the audience, was livid about MacDonald’s presentation and died two weeks later. It was Smith’s final appearance at a public event. MacDonald’s students later joked that he had “killed” Smith. Secret Mark, he says, does not fit with Markan style, as new characters are introduced in the narrative with the indefinite pronoun tis. This is precisely the way in which the neaniskos is introduced in Mark 14:51, happening long after the character was allegedly introduced in the first fragment of Secret Mark.

The neaniskos in Mark parallels Jesus a few important ways: he is nude like Jesus at his crucifixion and has a shroud, just as Jesus receives during the passion. MacDonald holds the position which he gave at the aforementioned lecture at Union, that Mark’s neaniskos is based on Elpenor in book 10 of The Odyssey, situated in the larger context of Homeric mimesis in the Markan passion narrative. The parallels he finds are numerous, the most significant to the discussion are the following: “[Homer] then introduces a new character, an unheroic young man, who, though previously unmentioned, had accompanied Odysseus on his journey from the beginning. Elpenor died and his soul fled to Hades [Artists sometimes depicted Elpenor nude.]” This parallels the Markan figure: “The evangelist then introduces a new character, an unheroic young man, who, though previously unmentioned, had accompanied Jesus for some time. The young man fled naked, leaving his shroud.” (Quotes from his handout) Secret Mark is incompatible with this.

There was then a time for questions and answers, the first of which concerned why Secret Mark interrupted the prediction-misunderstanding pattern in Mark. Pearson responded quickly with “Because it’s a fraud!” causing laughter. Dart responded saying that Mark has multiple patterns he is using and he is allowed to prioritize and interrupt one in favor of another (that is, to maintain a chiastic structure). He also noted that Scott Brown says that Secret Mark added this later, another way of resolving the problem, though Dart did endorse this argument.

Another question was the obvious and inevitable one regarding ink tests in order to determine authenticity. Meyer responded by noting that the original photographs were poor, and that this went into the realm of speculation. It is important to remember that monasteries serve other purposes than to just satisfy our curiosity regarding Secret Mark and such ought to be respected. All panelists wanted to make sure that it was known that the letter is no longer available and the pages were subsequently removed from the book and lost.

A Ph.D. student asked Robinson why Secret Mark was edited into canonical Mark. Robinson said that is the only direction it could plausibly go. The student clarified his question: what was the motivation to edit down Secret Mark? She more or less took the view of the Clementine letter itself, that the various editions were used for different people, depending on the how far through the initiation process they were.

James Robinson provided an anecdote that Smith’s work on Secret Mark was first presented at an IAC meeting in 1972, and that Smith wanted to include it within a larger program for the IAC, which the IAC agreed to do if he could get a book published in time. He was unable to do so.

Another Ph.D. student asked the panel why it takes people outside of our field to argue for its inauthenticity. Pearson was the first to respond with the reply of “Because we’re a bunch of losers!” He further took up Jeffery’s suggestion that liturgists in the 1950s thought they knew something about Alexandrian worship, but have been subsequently shown to be wrong. Meyer said that homoerotic interpretations of Smith’s find are wholly unnecessary, to which MacDonald retorted that the letter discusses alleged passages about a naked “blank” with a naked “blank.” Are we to suppose that these blanks are something other than men? Pearson said that there had also been a great fear of charges of homophobia in the academy, which probably prevented many people from commenting upon it critically. He also noted that Smith claimed Clement was a liar. MacDonald commented that there had never been a satisfactory explanation to the neaniskos in Mark 14:51 and 16:5, and Secret Mark provided such for many people. All the panelists agreed that the young man at the tomb is just that, and not an angel.

The final question of the night involved other examples of nudity in Mark. MacDonald responded that every other alleged instance in Mark was simply a removal of the himation (cloak) and certainly did not imply nudity.

As if this already wasn’t too much about Secret Mark, I’ll post my comments on that night shortly in a separate post.