Apocryphicity

Just a few things recently noted in other people's blogs:

Timo Panaanen at Salainan evankelista offers a critique of Francis Watson's article"Beyond Suspicion: On the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark" from JTS. Read also the extensive critiqueat Synoptic Solutions.

April DeConick a The Forbidden Gospels reports on the restoration of images of Peter, Paul, John and Andrew in the Thecla catacomb in Rome.

Mark Goodacre at NTBlog reports Prince Charles' odd use of the Gospel of Mary in a recent speech.

My course on the New Testament Apocrypha focused yesterday on “Mark and Related Apocrypha,” including fragmentary gospels (PEgerton, POxy 840, Gospel  of Peter, Secret Mark) and agrapha. The bulk of the class was taken up by a discussion of Secret Mark. I told the class that this is a particularly interesting text because the scholars (and non-scholars) who work on it are deeply invested in the issue of its authenticity, thus leading to some fiery debate. We looked at Stephen Carlson’s evidence for forgery (he prefers “hoax”) and the various responses to that evidence by Scott Brown, Allan Pantuck, Roger Viklund, and others.

I’ll use this space here to point the students to a number of resources mentioned in class that can deepen our discussion of the text.

1. Stephen Carlson’s blog Hypotyposeis. Carlson discusses Secret Mark very little these days, but there are some archival posts here about his book and reactions to it.

2. Scott Brown’s review of Peter Jeffery’s book, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, and Jeffery’s response to the review.

3. Timo Paananen's Salainan evankelista blog, featuring chapter’s from his thesis on Secret Mark.

4. My summary of the Secret Mark panel at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

5. Roger Viklund’s article on the so-called “forger’s tremor” of the Secret Mark manuscript. And look HERE for some comments from an anonymous commentator on the photo debate (he mentions a correspondence between himself and a scholar who says Carlson thinks there is something fishy about the colour photographs Viklund uses for his article).

6. Scott Brown and Allan Pantuck’s discussion of Carlson’s handwriting expert.

7. The results of the handwriting analysis conducted by Biblical Archeological Review (and comments on this analysis from Salainan evankelista, HERE and HERE).

8. And the video shown in class of Lee Strobel commenting on the text (and see HERE for Roger Viklund’s response to Strobel and Evans’ book).

Scott Brown and Allan Pantuck, now well-known as critics of Stephen Carlson's book The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark, have composed a guest-post on Timo Paananen's Salainan evankelista blog. It is an excellent piece that confronts Carlson's argument that the manuscript of Secret Mark betrays signs of a forger's tremor. (And if you read to the end you'll see a little comment from me).

Timo S. Paananen at the Salainen Evankelista blog has posted on a recent article by David Landry on the Secret Mark debate. Landry is rather positive about Stephen Carlson’s achievements, but strangely negative about the rebuttals of Scott Brown and Allan Pantuck. For my part, I am still interested in mounting a real debate on the text in a public forum and will be pursuing the idea when the time comes for us Canadian scholars to beg for government funding. Stay tuned.

Roger Viklund has posted this excellent response to a discussion between Craig Evans and lee Strobel about Secret Mark (from Strobel's The Case For the Real Jesus). The comments Evans makes are similar (and thus similarly erroneous) to those he makes in his own book, Fabricating Jesus, which I discussed back in 2007 in this post. Viklund has written now several compelling on-line articles about Secret Mark. They can be found on his web site HERE.

There is an interesting article on the Friends of CSNTM (Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts) page on the recent uncovering of a forged NT manuscript (HERE). I don't know, though–let's see, it was written on one side of a page, the page had paragraph divisions, capitalized names, and no nomina sacra. What was their first clue? Thankfully, Morton Smith knew well enough not to make these blunders

Peter Jeffery, author of The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, added a comment to my post from a few weeks ago on the Secret Mark articles in Biblical Archeological Review. He wrote:

I did not write for BAR because I was never asked to. I didn't know there would be a special issue on the Secret Gospel until it was actually out. If I had been asked and given a reasonable deadline I would have written something. Koester was not on the 2008 SBL panel but spoke from the floor. I was not on that panel either because I wasn't asked to be. Nor was I permitted to publish a response to Brown's RBL review. "When is a real scholarly debate about Secret Mark going to happen?" you ask. When people start including me.

First, my mistake, Koester was not on the panel; he’s just such a big presence, I guess, that my memory elevated him to featured speaker (heh). More to the point, Jeffery’s comment has led me to thinking about what would be an appropriate forum for a full debate on the text. One of the problems with the SBL panel is that the panelists did not adequately respond to one another’s evidence for forgery/hoax—Brown and Pantuck did respond to points previously made by Carlson, but Carlson and the other panelists did not respond to Brown and Pantuck. But to be fair, Carlson et al should be granted opportunity to prepare a cogent rebuttal. Another problem with the panel is that some panelists were not experts on the text nor aware of Brown’s and Pantuck’s published articles that argued against Carlson’s (and Jeffery’s) position.

What is needed is a forum in which the true experts on the text—Brown, Pantuck, Carlson, Jeffery, Charles Hedrick, Guy Stroumsa, Marvin Meyer, and perhaps newcomer Jeff Jay—can communicate with each other effectively. Specifically, a workshop environment with papers prepared and disseminated to participants beforehand, so that time is spent more in fruitful dialogue than in inflammatory attacks. Perhaps then some clarity can be found regarding the arguments for or against the forgery/hoax hypothesis and scholarship on the text can progress in some meaningful direction.

Would this scenario be amenable to the Secret Mark scholars? Would this get the debate started?

The latest issue of Biblical Archeological Review (Nov/Dec 2009) features a series of articles on Secret Mark. This is the second time in recent memory (Scott Brown contributed a piece back in 2005) that BAR has looked at the text. Presumably the topic is attractive to BAR editor Hershel Shanks, who is a vociferous supporter of the authenticity of certain artifacts such as the James Ossuary. Several other bloggers have commented on the articles (including James Tabor at Taborblog, and Timo Paananen at Salainen evankelista; note also Mark Goodacre at NTblog has recently posted a clip of an interview by Morton Smith from 1984); I’d like to offer a few comments on them also.

The first article, available for free on the BAR web site, is an overview written by Charles Hedrick of the discovery of the manuscript. Hedrick has been one of the most vocal supporters of the manuscript’s authenticity but his task here was to provide a neutral discussion of the basic facts of the discovery, Smith’s early work on the text, the scholarly reaction to this work, and the three recent monographs on Secret Mark written by Scott Brown, Stephen Carlson, and Peter Jeffery.

The second article presents the case for the forgery of the text. It is written not by Carlson nor by Jeffery nor by any other supporter of the forgery hypothesis (such as Birger Pearson or Bart Ehrman) but by Hershel Shanks. Shanks’ requests to such scholars were turned down for various reasons, so he was forced to write the piece himself. It is particularly unfortunate that Carlson refused the request; according to Shanks, Carlson “declined because he understandably felt it would be unfair to put him up against two giants like Helmut Koester and Charles Hedrick” (p. 52). But Carlson has “put himself up” against such giants simply by publishing his book on the text (The Gospel Hoax). Perhaps Carlson’s reluctance is more due to his general shying away from defending his position against criticism. At the Secret Mark panel at last year’s SBL, Carlson seemed unable or unwilling to answer Scott Brown’s and Allan Pantuck’s concerns about the case for forgery (or better, in Carlson’s argument, “hoax”). Carlson also rarely discusses the text on his own blog, Hypotyposeis; one rare Secret Mark post summarizing the  SBL panel led Pantuck to add numerous comments challenging Carlson, but Carlson barely acknowledged them, leading Pantuck to write, “Steve C. seems to have disappeared–should we send out a search party for him?”

Pearson declined the offer because he, “was reluctant to write in opposition to the conclusion of his Doktorvater, Helmut Koester, for whom Pearson has enormous respect” (p. 52). Shanks doesn’t buy Pearson’s excuse, particularly since Pearson appeared opposite Koester at the SBL panel (as did Carlson). Why such hesitation? Is it because these scholars are starting to rethink their positions? Or could it simply be because they don’t want to write for BAR? Whatever the reason, the forgery position is not served well by Shanks’ presentation, as he consistently argues against each of the arguments as he discusses them.

The third piece, “Was Morton Smith a Great Thespian and I a Great Fool?” is by Helmut Koester. It is essentially a summary of his presentation at the SBL panel, which itself was a statement of his long-held theory about the development of Markan traditions (a Proto-Mark lacking certain details including the naked young man of Mark 14:51-52 was used by Matthew and Luke, this was expanded into an Intermediate-Mark as we find it in Secret Mark, and then truncated with the removal of the Secret Mark material to form Canonical Mark). It is an interesting hypothesis, and one that accounts well for the minor and major agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark. But it is not an argument for the authenticity of Smith’s text, just a compelling use for it if indeed it is legitimate.

The final article, “Restoring a Dead Scholar’s Reputation,” is a conclusion to the debate written, again, by Shanks. As the title suggests, Shanks places his support behind the case for authenticity, citing among his evidence Scott Brown’s response to Carlson’s argument that the text’s reference to adulterated salt is an anachronism and a joke planted by Smith and casting doubt on Carlson’s claim that the manuscript shows signs of a “forger’s tremor.” BAR has gone so far as to enlist the services of two Greek handwriting experts to examine the manuscript and determine if it is a forgery; the magazine is hoping to raise money for the examination through donations. Of course, they are limited in their efforts by having to work only with photographs of the manuscript; so their results may not be conclusive.

The BAR articles succeed at bringing the text to a wide audience and at keeping the debate in the attention of academics who read the magazine, but it fails in advancing the discussion beyond the impasse that has gripped it for decades, even despite the important works in the last decade by Brown, Carlson, and Jeffery. The real debate should involve the principle writers on the text—including the aforementioned scholars, Allan Pantuck, and a few others—but they either refused or were not asked to participate. Last year’s SBL panel was a well-meaning effort to get the scholars in a room to discuss the text, but Carlson largely refused to answer Brown’s and Pantuck’s criticisms, and most of the others who spoke (including Pearson and Ehrman) were not aware of the current arguments about the text. When is a real scholarly debate about Secret Mark going to happen?

Timo S. Paananen, a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, recently began a blog, Salainen evankelista, dedicated to the Secret Gospel of Mark.  Over the summer he posted excerpts from his Master’s thesis (also focusing on Secret Mark) and has a new post summarizing recent blog activity about the text.

I was a rather bad boy at this year’s SBL, attending only one day of the conference, the day that comprised my own paper on the Syriac tradition of Infancy Thomas and the afternoon session on Secret Mark (“Secret Mark after Fifty Years”). I decided to compose a post on the session because of the text’s importance for those who study the Christian Apocrypha and because of the session’s relation to my recent article and postings on conservative scholars’ approaches to the CA (Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium). My apologies in advance for any infelicities in recording and summarizing the event.

The session was chaired by Mark Goodacre and featured two pairs of scholars: Stephen Carlson (known for his book The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark) and Birger Pearson, who deny the text’s authenticity, and Scott Brown (known for his own monograph on Secret Mark, Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s Controversial Discovery, and for his responses to Carlson’s book) and Allan Pantuck, who believe it to be an authentic ancient text. There were also two respondents: Charles Hedrick who supported Brown’s and Pantuck’s position, and Bart Ehrman who sided with Carlson and Pearson.

Pearson’s presentation, “The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Twentieth-Century Fake,” offered a selective overview of research on the text—selective, that is, in that it focused on the scholarship that convinced Pearson to go from a supporter of its authenticity to a critic. He cited particularly Per Beskow’s Strange Tales About Jesus: A Survey of Unfamiliar Gospels, along with Carlson’s book and the more recent book by Peter Jeffery (The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled). Pearson offered nothing new on the debate on origins of the text but the presentation served as a useful introduction to the issues for those new to the topic.

Carlson followed with “Can the Academy Protect Itself from One of Its Own? The Case of Secret Mark.” Despite its title, the presentation’s real focus was on responses to some of Brown’s criticisms of Carlson and Jeffery. Brown had stated previously that Morton Smith could not have forged the letter of Clement that contains the Secret Mark passages because extensive work on Clement was not available to Smith and Smith himself had little acquaintance with the study of Clement. Carlson cited some evidence to the contrary and also noted that Smith had an interest and skill in paleography and in church history. Summing up, Carlson said that an argument therefore cannot be made for the authenticity of Secret Mark based on Smith’s incompetence. Carlson also made the point that evidence of forgery is easier to see as time passes because the twentieth-century anachronisms in Secret Mark become more apparent as the twentieth-century looks more and more alien to us.

Allan Pantuck followed Carlson with “Can Morton Smith’s Archival Writings and Correspondence Shine Any Light on the Authenticity of Secret Mark?’ Pantuck focused on refuting Carlson’s claim that Smith’s motive for the forgery (or “hoax” as Carlson prefers) was sour grapes over being fired from his position at Brown. Pantuck used Smith’s own private correspondence to show that Smith was not fired (his contract was merely not renewed), nor was he bitter about it (indeed, a year later he was happy to be free to do research), nor was his reputation among his peers in any way diminished as a result. Smith’s archival writings also indicate that he did not begin research on Clement of Alexandria until his discovery of Secret Mark in 1958.

The presentations came to a conclusion with Scott Brown’s “Fifty Years of Befuddlement: Ten Enduring Misconceptions about the ‘Secret’ Gospel of Mark.” Due to time constraints, Brown decided to limit his presentation to five misconceptions, and ended up only covering four of them. They are:

1. Clement’s letter represents Secret Mark as the liturgical reading for baptism. Brown counters this “misconception” by stating that Clement connects the text to “the great mysteries,” which is more likely a reference to initiation into a more profound study of God, not baptism.

2. Secret Mark excerpt one depicts Jesus baptizing the young man. Brown counters that there is no reference to water in the text, nor is there to sex, to Jesus being naked, etc. The text only says that Jesus taught him the mystery of God.

3. Secret Mark is a “Secret Gospel.” Brown counters that Clement’s term for the text is more accurately translated as “Mystical Mark.” The title “Secret Mark” comes from Smith’s translation preference.

4. There is something gay about a young man wearing only a linen sheet. Brown counters that no-one makes a similar claim about the young man who loses his linen sheet in canonical Mark. Brown connects the linen sheet to burial practices, suggesting that the teaching of Jesus in Secret Mark is about death.

Brown concluded with an indictment against the critics of Secret Mark for not using exegesis to understand the contents of the text. He said that this is something done regularly for the canonical texts but not for Secret Mark. He hoped it would not take another fifty years for scholars to figure this out.

Charles Hedrick’s response was a direct challenge to Carlson’s legal rhetoric. He said that all three elements needed for a crime—motive, opportunity, and means—were lacking in this case. For motive, Hedrick said all of Carlson’s remarks regarding Smith’s motive were false. For opportunity, Hedrick said that Smith would not be able to create the text under field conditions at the monastery and there is no evidence that the book containing the letter was not at the library before Smith’s visit. And for means, Hedrick said Smith’s skills were not sufficient to create the text. Hedrick finished his response with a call for a letter from the SBL to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem to locate the missing manuscript so that it can be studied and perhaps settle the issue of its authenticity once and for all.

Bart Ehrman’s response focused on motive. He declared that Brown’s and Pantuck’s presentations were not sufficient as they, in Ehrman’s view, took one argument for motive and cast doubt upon it. Motives can be complex and multi-faceted. Ehrman went on to discuss motives for forgery from antiquity and concluded Smith may have forged the text to sew discord in the academy or for the purpose of mystification (i.e., to see if he could get away with it). Ehrman agreed with Carlson and Jeffery that Smith left clues of his crime behind—namely, the anachronistic reference to adulterated salt and the use of the Voss book (the first edition of Ignatius’ uninterpolated letters) as the vehicle for the letter.

The audience response to the papers was not particularly engaging. Helmut Koester took the opportunity to state his own position on the text (Secret Mark is actually original Mark, and canonical Mark is an abbreviation of it which Matthew and Luke subsequently used to create their texts). Another audience member called for an end to the legal rhetoric in the discussion on the text. The final, and most interesting, response came from one man who seemed frustrated by Brown’s and Pantuck’s position and asked them for a proper response to Carlson. Both responded in their own way that such responses had already been published and they didn’t want to repeat themselves in the session. Brown then asked Carlson to respond to these articles, frustrated that there had yet to be a proper debate between the two sides. Carlson said such a response will come at the appropriate time. Brown asked, “When?” Carlson shrugged his shoulders. Brown asked, “After your Ph.D. thesis?” Another shrug. Brown: “I won’t hold my breath.”

Many who came out of the session may have been surprised at Brown’s demeanour. But I think it justified. The two main writers against the authenticity of the text, Carlson and Jeffery, are not biblical scholars. Their arguments are not based on the methodology used by biblical scholars. Yet many of their readers have been convinced by them, likely because their arguments merely confirmed in their minds what they hoped would be the case and not because the readers had sufficient knowledge of the contents of the text, nor of previous scholarship on it to make an informed decision. Furthermore, Brown and Pantuck have crafted some very detailed responses to Carlson and Jeffery that seem to be getting overlooked—Ehrman, for one, did not seem to be cognizant of the one article refuting the salt claim, and there were two allusions made to the size of Brown’s and Pantuck’s responses, as if thorough, detailed scholarly work was a bad thing. Brown is justifiably frustrated at the state of so-called scholarship (much of it he called “poppycock”) on Secret Mark.

I have no personal or professional stake in this discussion. I have been pleased to remain agnostic in the debate, though I have followed it closely. My own frustration is with those who leap to embrace a position on a controversial text merely because it allows them to dispense of the text and not because the position is based on sound argumentation. Several writers I cover in the Heresy Hunting article believe that Carlson had “proven” Secret Mark a fake. But they cite no scholarship to the contrary (including Brown’s initial responses) and spend much of their time misinforming their readers about its contents. Indeed, no-one can “prove” the text a forgery, they can only present an argument for it, which may or may not be compelling. Carlson’s presentation asked “Can the Academy Protect Itself from One of Its Own?” but I’m more worried that the academy cannot protect itself from those within it who let their presuppositions interfere with proper study.