Latest News Secret Mark

Latest News - Secret Mark



2012:
Oct 2012
 Timo S. Paananen wrote the following article: "From Stalemate to Deadlock: Clement's Letter to Theodore in Recent Scholarship" in Currents in Biblical Research 2012 11: 87-125.
I must admit that I don't really understand what Paananen wants to say. The article is good though for its extensive bibliography.

2011:
Feb. 2011
 Allan Pantuck wrote a reply to Francis Watson (JTS 61 2010):
"I will reply to two of Watson's main arguments that Shanks appears to have found most persuasive. The first involves a critical book review that Smith wrote in the years prior to his discovery of the Secret Gospel (Smith's "Comments on Taylor's Commentary on Mark") that Watson argues includes an idiosyncratic analysis of the canonical Gospel of Mark by Smith that would later be "confirmed" by his discovery.
The second revolves around some provocative similarities between the details of Smith's discovery of the Secret Gospel, which occurred at the monastery of Mar Saba in 1958, and a novel titled The Mystery of Mar Saba published by James H. Hunter in 1940, eighteen years before Smith's discovery."


2010:
Nov. 2010
 Hershel Shanks has a new article in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of BAR:
First Person: Shakespeare, the Earl of Oxford and Morton Smith
The "trench warfare" involved in the Secret Mark controversy continues.
As well as a "sidebar" to the above article:
Sidebar: Is "Secret Mark" a Forgery? Read the Latest Report

April 2010
Biblical Archeological Review: Handwriting expert says No.
Venetia Anastasopoulou, a greek document examiner, concludes:
"It is my professional opinion that the writers of the questioned document of 'Secret Mark' on the document listed as Q1, Q2 an Q3 and Morton Smith's handwriting on the documents listed as K1 – K27, are most probably not the same.
Therefore it is highly probable that Morton Smith could not have simulated the document of 'Secret Mark'.
Link: BAR (where you can download the complete report)

New article: Pantuck, Allan J.; Brown, Scott G.
Stephen Carlson’s Questionable Questioned Document Examination
Excerpt: When first contacted, Edison responded, "Regretfully, I do not recall offering a professional opinion regarding Morton Smith's Letter of Clement." With further prompting, she recalled having spent a single afternoon in 2005 with Carlson looking, we presume, at the black-and-white halftone reproduction of the letter in Smith's book: "We only looked at a book containing writings attributed to Clement; and possibly a sheet containing symbols of the 18th century Greek alphabet." She recalled that "Mr. Carlson spent a great deal of time regarding who may have written Clement's letter; he was considering writing a book." She was quick to add, "However, please be advised, no professional evaluation of mine was put into writing."
Essence: Carlson's handwriting analysis is worth nothing, basically.
Well, I always said that Carlson acted as a lawyer, or better, prosecuting attorney in his book, not as a scientist. So he twisted everything to his advantage. That's ok for an attorny, but is not helpful in this case. In my view, the case is still fully open. I haven't seen any convincing argument pro forgery so far. But that does not mean that it is genuine either. It is necessary to find the original manuscript!


2009:
Scott Brown's dissertation can be downloaded here: (PDF, 30 MB)
Scott Gregory Brown, The More Spiritual Gospel: Markan Literary Techniques in the Longer Gospel of Mark.

Timo S. Paananen has written a masters thesis on the authenticity of Secret Mark, and includes a full critique of Stephen C. Carlson’s attempt to prove it a hoax. (in his blog, starting in June 2009, he is giving English translations of his thesis chapters!)

Roger Viklund has done an analysis of the handwriting of the "Secret Mark" letter to Theodore (supposed to be) by Clement of Alexandria. His last sentence of the conclusion:
"I therefore suggest that the scribe was an elderly person writing in the eighteenth century."

2008:
Assessment of Carlson's book by Walter M. Shandruk: Part 1 and Part 2.


New article: Pantuck, Allan J.; Brown, Scott G.
"Morton Smith as M. Madiotes: Stephen Carlson's Attribution of Secret Mark to a Bald Swindler"
(download as PDF)
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008) 106-125
Abstract:
In 1960, Morton Smith announced that he had discovered in the Mar Saba monastery tower library a fragment of a previously unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria containing excerpts from a longer version of the Gospel of Mark that Smith called the 'Secret Gospel of Mark'. Controversial since its publication in 1973, this discovery has recently been criticized in print as both an academic hoax and a malicious forgery. This paper uses newly discovered manuscript photographs and archived documents to refute a claim found in Stephen C. Carlson's The Gospel Hoax, namely that Smith invented a pseudonymous twentieth-century individual named 'M. Madiotes' as an elaborate and deliberate clue that he himself had forged the letter of Clement.

I fully concur with what is written in this article. Carlson's theory breaks down. I never bought it from the beginning. It is all just too far-fetched.
The more the alleged hoax evidence is discussed the less remains. We are still at the beginning.


The Secret Gospel of Mark: Find or Forgery? – Panel Discussion
"Meyer (and some other panelists) believed that the strongest argument for authenticity was that Smith himself did not understand the document properly."


2007:
Important review article:
Pierluigi Piovanelli
L'Évangile secret de Marc trente trois ans après, entre potentialités exégétiques et difficultés techniques
Revue Biblique 114 (2007) 52-72 and 237-54
Abstract: "This article looks back to the discovery and interpretation of the Secret Gospel of Mark, with particular reference to recent research by John Dart, Scott G. Brown and Stephen C. Carlson. Finally, we shall ask what part this apocryphal text played and continues to play, in contemporary research on Christian origins and the historical Jesus."


Another book:
The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled
by Peter Jeffery
ISBN: 0300117604
Review of this book by Scott G. Brown
Reply to this review by Jeffery
Reply by S. Carlson

I find Jefferey's argumentation absolutely unconvincing. I admire Brown's patience to write such a lengthy review. This book is not worth buying.


And yet another book:
From Q to "Secret" Mark
by Hugh M. Humphrey
ISBN: 0567025128
Review by Kari Syreeni


October 2005:
Another book:
Stephen Carlson
The Gospel Hoax - Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark
ISBN 1932792481

Carlson writes:
"In case it's not perfectly clear, my position is that Secret Mark is an academic hoax engineered by Morton Smith. (More like a practical joke than a forgery.) [I will present] new evidence and new analyses not previously applied to Secret Mark."


Mai 2005:
New book:
Scott Brown
"Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery"
(Studies in Christianity and Judaism, Uni of Toronto thesis)
332 pages - Wilfrid Laurier Univ Press
ISBN: 0889204616

The author thinks that the Secret Gospel of Mark is by Mark himself.

July 2003:
Three new articles appeared, without stating anything really new, except perhaps that G. Stoumsa has seen the MS in 1976:
Journal of Early Christian Studies
Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2003

  • Charles W. Hedrick: "The Secret Gospel of Mark: Stalemate in the Academy"
  • Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa: "Comments on Charles Hedrick's Article: A Testimony"
  • Bart D. Ehrman: "Response to Charles Hedrick's Stalemate"


    Feb. 2001:
    Unfortunately Kallistos' return trip to Israel "had to be cancelled" (why that, C. Hedrick does not know). He (Hedrick) will, however, be in Greece again this summer (2001).

    Sept. 2000:
    Extracted from:
    Charles W. Hedrick and Nikolaos Olympiou
    "Secret Mark"
    in: "The Fourth R" (J. of the Westar institute) Vol. 13 (2000) p. 3 - 16
    There were small color images on their server, but they have been removed. They are available from me on request. Better full page images are available in the printed "The Fourth R" edition, available from the Institute.

    "In June of 2000, I visited Athens hoping to see Kallistos, but Olympiou was unable to contact him. So 1 returned to Athens in August 2000. When I arrived in Glyfada from America on the afternoon of August 6, I found a message to call Professor Olympiou. He said we could see Kallistos later that evening, if I was up to it. We drove to the church, where Kallistos, Olympiou, and Vassilios Chryssovitsiotis (a student of Professor Olympiou), and I met to talk about the missing letter of Clement. Chryssovitsiotis translated. From what Kallistos told us, Olympiou and I were able to put together the following sequence of events.

    - Smith visits the monastery in 1958 and photographs the letter of Clement still in the back of the 1646 edition of Ignatius published by Voss.

    - Fifteen years later (1973) Smith simultaneously publishes his two books.

    - Four years later (1977), Archimandrite Melito brought the Voss book, with the letter of Clement still attached, to the Patriarchate library from Hagios Sabbas.

    Although Melito acted on his own initiative in bringing the single volume to the library, the transfer was described by Kallistos as part of a general transfer of manuscripts from Hagios Sabbas to the Patriarchate library in order to better provide for their care. Kallistos planned on shelving printed books in one location and manuscripts in another location, but that distribution of library holdings never occurred.

    That same year (1977), Kallistos removed the Clement manuscript from the printed Voss edition of Ignatius for the purpose of photographing it, and then for shelving along with other manuscripts in the Patriarchate library, in keeping with his original plan for distributing the library holdings.

    For as long as he was librarian (until 1990), the Clement letter was kept with the Voss edition, but as separate items. Kallistos does not know what has happened to the manuscript since he ceased being librarian. He does not recall whether or not he catalogued the Voss book and the letter of Clement into the library. He thinks the reason the present staff cannot find the letter is that the Clement letter has nothing distinctive about it, and for that reason is difficult to locate. He says they frequently ask him where to find things.

    Kallistos intends to return to Jerusalem on September 14, 2000, and will look for the Clement letter. If it is there, he is optimistic that he will be able to find it. When I asked him why he photographed the Clement letter he replied that it was because of its importance. I asked him why it was important; he replied because it is the only copy of the manuscript that exists, and also because it contains a great deal of "diversity." (I took this to mean that the text diverges significantly from the acknowledged tradition of the Church.) He further said (without a question from me) that the manuscript may provide the basis for a "sexual Jesus," as has been portrayed in popular movies and hooks. He said that he had not read Smith's books, but others have spoken to him about them. He does not remember meeting Thomas Talley (who had reported on his failure to see the manuscript in 1980). In addition to the negatives of the photographs printed with this article, he has color slides of the Clement manuscript."



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