Stephan Huller has posted an interview on his blog (HERE) with paleographer Agamemnon Tselikas conducted earlier in the year by Charlie Hedrick. Tselikas is one of two experts commissioned by Biblical Archeology Review to examine the images of the Secret Mark manuscript for signs of forgery. His report should see publication very soon.
Some time ago Peter Jeffery (author of The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled) and I discussed on Apocryphicity (see HERE) the idea of assembling scholars of Secret Mark for some kind of fruitful debate–more fruitful, at least, than previous attempts which featured little more than a presentation of papers. Phil Harland and I (in consultation with Jeffery and Allan Pantuck) have since put together a proposal for such an event, which, if all goes well, will take place at York University in May of 2011.
The biggest challenge in planning this symposium thus far has been in securing the participation of scholars who argue that the text is a modern hoax or a forgery. Certainly many hold that opinion, but of the few scholars in North America (and we are trying to focus only on North American scholars) who have published significant works arguing that position, only Peter Jeffery and Bruce Chilton have accepted our invitation to attend. Is the argument in jeopardy, particularly with BAR's publication of the report of a handwriting expert? Or have efforts by Allan Pantuck, Scott Brown, and others to dismantle the argument for Morton Smith's creation of the text succeeded in silencing some of the proponents for the theory?
Allan Pantuck passed along to me a few links to the BAR website with recent articles on the handwriting analyses of the Secret Mark manuscript (or better, photographs of the manuscript) commissioned by BAR. The first is Peter Jeffery's response to the results (from April). The second is an editorial by Hershel Shanks comparing the conflict over the text to debate on who wrote Shakespeare's plays.
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?