Thoughts on Secret Mark by Smith and Landau

[andrewcriddle]

First of all this isn't a proper review I'm going to concentrate on things that I found new and interesting.
Secondly this book is an important contribution to the debate and because my post will emphasise points where I have issues it is liable to seem over-critical.

The book argues that Secret Mark was not composed by Morton Smith nor is it even a Modern Forgery (MF i.e. composed after say 1700 CE) but it is not a genuine work by Clement of Alexandria either and is in fact a post-Nicene work. The book contains a sympathetic but not uncritical account of Morton Smith's life and work, which possibly neglects to consider possible parallels with the Mar Saba letter. (E.G. I didn't previously know Morton Smith was brought up Swedenborgian and I couldn't help imagining parallels between the sexual mysticism and esoteric symbolism of Swedenborgianism and that of Secret Mark.) The book gives an account of Morton Smith's discovery of Secret Mark and the subsequent controversy. A lot of this is previously well known and the arguments for and against authenticity discussed at length on this forum and other places. I'll just pick out some new ideas, evidence and emphases in the book.

Murgia claimed that the manuscript in the Voss book was the original, if it was a copy going back to a late Antique text one would expect more copying errors. It was interesting to be given Morton Smith's unpublished reply, but his argument, (basically that copies of Greek prose require less emendation than the Latin poems Murgia worked with), may be inadequate. The Letter to Diognetus, mentioned by Smith and Landau as a possible parallel to Secret Mark, seems textually in worse condition than does the Mar Saba letter. For many of us this book will be their first encounter with the very problematic behaviour of Quentin Quesnell, a history largely uncovered by Stephan Huller. I am unsure whether or not the book over-emphasises Quesnell's influence on the controversy about Secret Mark. The coverage of the relevant literature is explicitly and legitimately selective but I have some queries. The paper by AH Criddle is mentioned once and the important analysis by Ernest Best of the stylistic relation of canonical Mark to Secret Mark not at all. This is IMO relevant to the maybe misguided attempt to explain Ehrman's sympathy for Secret Mark being a MF as a result of being influenced by his doctoral supervisor Metzger. Apart from Ehrman being able to make up his own mind, the overt parallel between Ehrman on Secret Mark and Metzger (Reminiscences of an Octogenarian) is not that one had been the student of the other but that both emphasise the paper by AH Criddle published (1995) long after Ehrman had completed his doctorate.

The chapter on handwriting analysis is excellent and a significant contribution. However it is IMHO inconclusive and deals with a subject I am entirely incompetent to discuss. My next post will deal with Smith and Landau's positive proposals for the origin of Secret Mark.

Andrew Criddle

[andrewcriddle]

Smith and Landau present arguments that Secret Mark is post-Clementine. Mainly a strong case that the author knew the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. I agree both with the conclusion and the arguments put forward by Smith and Landau. Because they reject the idea that it is a MF they look for a date in very late Antiquity. One issue with their particular approach is that IIUC they regard the Mar Saba letter, as we have it, as containing the entirety of the pseudonymous work composed in very late Antiquity. (Other scholars seem to have assumed a collection of letters attributed rightly or wrongly to Clement from which an incomplete excerpt was made of one of the letters in the 18th century.) This position avoids some problems but raises others. E.G. I am unsure in what form this short passage could plausibly have been preserved (On empty pages at the end of a manuscript of the genuine works of Clement perhaps ?).

Smith and Landau think it likely that the original work broke off before providing us with the promised true explanation of the controversial material previously disclosed. One issue is that the resulting fictitious Clement constructed by the true author is a very problematic figure. What some on this forum would call a Falsifying Father with his real agenda disclosed. The author of Secret Mark was rejecting Clement of Alexandria and the version of orthodoxy he stood for. I have difficulties with finding a location for these attitudes within late Antique Christianity.

There are also some detailed problems with their reconstruction. They interpret a passage from Eusebius as representing an ancient tradition of Clement as a letter writer.

Alexander, a servant and prisoner of Jesus Christ, to the blessed church of Antioch, greeting in the Lord. The Lord has made my bonds during the time of my imprisonment light and easy, since I learned that, by the Divine Providence, Asclepiades, who in regard to the true faith is eminently qualified, has undertaken the bishopric of your holy church at Antioch.
He indicates that he sent this epistle by Clement, writing toward its close as follows:
My honored brethren, I have sent this letter to you by Clement, the blessed presbyter, a man virtuous and approved, whom you yourselves also know and will recognize. Being here, in the providence and oversight of the Master, he has strengthened and built up the Church of the Lord.

This is surely a mistake. Clement is delivering a letter from Alexander not writing one himself. In the absence of an ancient tradition of Clement as a letter writer more attention should have been paid to how the idea of letters of Clement of Alexandria developed and whether or not it was a context in which an accurate imitation of Clement of Alexandria was likely.

Smith and Landau locate Secret Mark in the context of late Antique monastic concerns about intimate male-male relations. This might be a plausible context for the passages from the Secret Gospel, if one disregards the problematic pseudo-Clementine letter in which they are embedded. However the alleged parallels from the Spiritual Meadow of Moschus are unconvincing. I am surprised that they find these strange stories convincing parallels while regarding the parallels drawn by Jeffery between Secret Mark and Salome as flimsy. Also although Moschus was interested in Clement of Alexandria he was particularly interested in the Clement of the Hypotyposeis. Whether a context in which the Clement of interest was rather different from the Clement of the surviving works is a plausible basis for a pseudo-Clementine work which successfully imitates the Clement of the surviving works is dubious. (I owe this argument to Carlson's Gospel Hoax.)

Smith and Landau also note the interest in the Carpocratians by John of Damascus and Sophronius. I haven't been able to track down Sophronius on the Carpocratians, bur John of Damascus is using the epitome of Epiphanius' Panarion rather than the vast Panarion itself. This may be a problem since the author of the Mar Saba letter probably used the full Panarion a work of limited influence before modern printing.

In general I have a problem here with many supporters and opponents of the authenticity of the Mar Saba letter. They are primarily concerned with finding a context for the extracts from the alleged Secret Gospel and insufficiently concerned with the allegedly Clementine material and its possible context.

Andrew Criddle

[lclapshaw]

Very nice sir. That was an enjoyable read.

[Secret Alias]

Andrew is an (inter)national treasure. Hard not to be impressed with his objectivity. I am just mad that everyone else seems to have gotten a copy of the book except for me.

[MrMacSon]

Geoffrey Smith and Brent Landau, The Secret Gospel of Mark: a Controversial Scholar, a Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, and the Fierce Debate over Its Authenticity, Yale University Press. Due 21 Mar. 2023.

There's also fairly recently:

• Michael Kok “Morton Smith and the Carpocratians” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 97.4 (2021): 623-645
  
  
  Abstract
  “Before the publication of Morton Smith’s scholarly and popular monographs on the Letter to Theodore ascribed to Clement of Alexandria,^1,2 scholars generally summarized rather than critically interrogated the heresiological sources about the Carpocratians ... [Smith] added the Letter to Theodore to the database on the Carpocratians ... Smith undervalued the philosophical underpinnings of the Carpocratians’ worldview and overemphasised the antinomian and magical practices that were attributed to the Carpocratians by their Christian opponents.”
  
  

  ---

  
  1 Morton Smith Clement of Alexandria and a secret Gospel of Mark, Harvard university Press, 1973)
  
  2 Morton Smith The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel of Mark, New York, Harper & Row, 1973.
  
  
  
  
  • Kok's blogpost refers to a colleague "working on a monograph on the Carpocratians that was not available to me when I wrote this article" which is likely to be Litwa's 2022 book, Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes. Kok refers to a PhD:
    
    • Whitley, T. J. “The Greatest Blasphemy: Sex, Souls, and the Carpocratian Heresy.” PhD Thesis, Florida State University, 2016.
  
  In 2017:
  • Hüller, Stephan; Gullotta, Daniel N. (2017). "Quentin Quesnell's "Secret Mark Secret": A Report on Quentin Quesnell's 1983 trip to Jerusalem and his inspection of the Mar Saba Document". Vigiliae Christianae. 71(4): 353–378 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26407429
  
  And, in 2013:
  
  • Tony Burke, ed., Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery? The Secret Gospel of Mark in Debate, Eugene: Cascade Books, 2013.
  
  Letter of Clement of Alexandria on Secret Mark : English : Greek

[StephenGoranson]

As previously noted, Geoffrey Smith made a good case--before this book was completed and which is repeated in the book--that the Letter to Theodore was probably written, not by Clement, but at some time later than the 320s, by someone who probably made use of writing of Eusebius.
The book provides some information that is new to me. For example, that Morton Smith made another visit to Mar Saba, in 1944. The evidence is from a sketchbook (MS was an artist) given to Thomas Alwood. (The book Acknowledgements section misspelled his name as Allwood.)
The book insufficiently appreciates the observations of Agamemnon Tselikas.
The book does not in my opinion make a good case that this anomalous text was written some time between the 4th and 8th centuries.

[mbuckley3]

Andrew, some first thoughts on your first thoughts.

(E.G. I didn't previously know Morton Smith was brought up Swedenborgian and I couldn't help imagining parallels between the sexual mysticism and esoteric symbolism of Swedenborgianism and that of Secret Mark.)

To be fair, it was Stephan Huller who illuminated the details of MS's Swedenborgian background a few years back on his blog. And it was a constant : Swedenborg is cited five times in MS's late (1980), strange book, Hope and History. There can be no doubt that this inspired his fascination with accounts of heavenly ascents in antiquity.

However, this sentence of yours seems to confuse (an interpretation of) MS's interpretation of 'Secret Mark' with the text itself, which can be seen as being stubbornly unsuited to the use made of it. In the long run, MS made a huge mistake in attempting to crowbar the Letter to Theodore into his (emerging) theory of Christian origins. If he had simply established the likelihood of Clement's authorship, with the quotations from 'Secret Mark' we would have been left with additional evidence of canonical gospels circulating with additional passages, not unlike the Pericope Adulterae in John, and, by this point in time, it would count as interesting but not important.

What is often overlooked is how conservative an NT scholar MS was in many ways. He accepted the conventional early dating of the canonical gospels, and placed a high evidential value on their content as regards the 'historical Jesus'. (It's just his viewing of the data through the prism of the PGM which led to 'unedifying' results). So in his monograph he does his best to push 'Secret Mark' back to the C1; and when his analysis suggests that it is 'too Markan to be Mark', posits an Aramaic original to keep it as evidence.

Again, a reminder of how tenuous the link is to his origins theory. Using conventional scholarship (Jeremias) which separates Mk.4.11 from the following verses, he shows that μυστηριον 'can' refer to a rite, identifies the rite here as baptism, and interprets baptism as a magical/quasi-Pauline spiritual union which leads to heavenly ascent. This has to be read into 'Secret Mark'; which is, to put it politely, quite a stretch. It's not unlike the great Richard Reitzenstein getting 'lost in the sands of the Iranian desert', with his grand theory of the Persian origins of Greek philosophy depending on (his interpretation of) a single treatise in the Hippocratic corpus which he (eccentrically) dated early.

In short, the 'Secret Mark' quotations, essentially innocuous, should not be seen through MS's presentation/eisegesis.

■■■■■

[mbuckley3]

In general I have a problem here with many supporters and opponents of the authenticity of the Mar Saba letter. They are primarily concerned with finding a context for the extracts from the alleged Secret Gospel and insufficiently concerned with the allegedly Clementine material and its possible context.

By far the most impressive part of MS's monograph is the initial section arguing the case for Clement's authorship of the Letter. This is because, as the most widely collaborative part of the book, he has to seriously engage with Clementine texts and Clementine scholarship.

He makes a very good case. But he clearly felt that Eusebian dependency was a credible alternative. This is apparent from the space allowed to the (reasoned) view of Johannes Munck, that the Letter is dependant on Eusebius, and to the (not decisive) efforts made by MS to refute his arguments.

So Smith/Landau do indeed make an attractive proposition for Eusebian priority. Specifically, (additional to Munck), the notion that the story of the inveigling of a copy of the 'Secret Gospel' from a presbyter is a personalised plagiarism of H.E. 4.7.10; and, (following Munck), that the impersonal φασιν of H.E. 2.16 was misunderstood as referring to Clement and Papias as sources for Mark's journey to Alexandria, otherwise first attested by Eusebius.

What would clinch the deal would be a credible/compelling context for the writing of such a forgery in late antiquity. But here, as you have carefully outlined, Smith/Landau disappoint.

■■■■■

For what it's worth, I think the evidence is sufficient to show that MS did not have the capability to forge the Letter, and 'incline' to view it as authentic (but not important). However, it is not a hill to die on. I would be intrigued if a detailed C18 context could be established, as I would be for the C5.

But as a caveat, all 'incliners' should read an article by the fine Virgil scholar, Nicholas Horsfall : 'Fraud as Scholarship : The Helen Episode and the Appendix Vergiliana' (Illinois Classical Studies, 2006-7). The 'Helen Episode', Aeneid 2, lines 567-588, is first attested in the commentary of Servius (early C5). It purports to be a passage deleted by Virgil's editor, recovered after four centuries. A prime suspect for forgery. We tend to assume that such a piece would be banal hack work, such as the Paul/Seneca correspondence. But "the poet of the HE stands out as exceptionally skilled. Many would say, that that is because he is Virgil." Developing the work of, yes, Charles Murgia, Horsfall makes a detailed case for forgery by emphasising the profound understanding the writer had of the poet, both in how Virgil sourced neologisms, and how he deployed his stylistic mannerisms. The only fault is that, within 22 lines, "repeatedly, the writing is excessively Virgilian, the work of one who spares no effort to prove that the author is Virgil." Ceteris paribus, in the C4/C5, in some circles the intellectual skills existed to produce a work as convincingly Clementine as MS showed the Letter to Theodore to be.

[StephenGoranson]

The G. Smith/B. Landau book is not comprehensive.
That may be because it may have been edited down from a longer manuscript.
That may be because they were selective in what they wished to address.
Or both.
For example, the relevant view of Johannes Munck, mentioned in the post above, is not recorded, not addressed, in this book.

[Secret Alias]

Gullotta didn't get a free copy either.