[...]... the issue of forgery in 1975, generating a heated exchange the following year.7 Neither Quesnell nor Smith gave ground and the controversy continued Some took Smith’s side on the antiquity of Secret Mark and explored how the canonical Mark could have been a censored version of Secret Mark. 8 Others occasionally questioned the authenticity of Secret Mark only to have Smith tenaciously counterattack the. .. in the tower when I picked out the book containing it But now that I came to 10 THE GOSPEL HOAX puzzle it out, it began, “From the letters of the most holy Clement, the author of the Stromateis To Theodore,” and it went on to praise the recipient for having “shut up” the Carpocratians The Stromateis, I knew, was a work by Clement of Alexandria, one of the earliest and most mysterious of the great fathers... that the absence of a thorough, physical examination of the sole manuscript of Secret Mark raises the possibility of a contemporary hoax because the same tools that Smith used to authenticate the text on internal grounds can be used by a hoaxer to fabricate the text.2 Quesnell’s caution over the authenticity of Secret Mark, however, was not based on specific positive evidence such as errors in the manuscript... interpretation of Secret Mark that took Smith years to develop— involving water baptism, union with Jesus, the work of the Spirit, magic, ascent into the heavens, and liberation from the Law Smith summarized the interpretation as follows: Thus from the differences between Paul’s baptism and that of the Baptist, and from the scattered indications in the canonical Gospels and the secret Gospel of Mark, we... libertine sect, the Carpocratians, and proceeds to denounce the Carpocratians in very strong terms (I.2–11) In particular, the letter reassures Theodore that the Carpocratians were lying about what was taught in a secret edition of the Gospel of Mark: Now of the things they keep saying about the divinely inspired Gospel according to Mark, some are altogether falsifications, and others, even if they do contain... taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God” (Clement 447) But this was not the end of the mysteries surrounding Secret Mark Compounding the mystery were the peculiarities of its preservation Unlike the finds at Qumran and Nag Hammadi, Secret Mark was not preserved in any ancient document It was 1 2 THE GOSPEL HOAX found as a quotation in a letter, also previously unknown, ascribed to Clement of Alexandria... I expected the author of the Gospel of Mark to have written Secret Mark did not make much of an impression on me, however, and I missed the homoerotic intimation at the end of the passage Perhaps I was a bit too young to notice it, but the authors of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail series did not call attention to it presumably because it would have contradicted their central premise Rather, they focused... arguing that Secret Mark was actually written by the same author as the canonical Mark. 18 Even in this “rethinking” of Secret Mark, Brown’s treatment of the arguments for its authenticity has stayed largely within the same well-plowed field that has changed so few minds over the past thirty years.19 Resolving the uncertainty over Secret Mark s status requires a new examination of the evidence 1 The Revelation... ascent into the heavens, he entered the kingdom of God, and was thereby set free from the laws ordained for and in 12 THE GOSPEL HOAX the lower world Freedom from the law may have resulted in completion of the spiritual union by physical union This certainly occurred in many forms of gnostic Christianity; how early it began there is no telling (Secret Gospel 113–14) Most of the initial reviews of Smith’s... evidence 1 The Revelation of Secret Mark The fragments of Secret Mark that Smith photographed are found in a letter copied into the end papers of a seventeenthcentury edition of the genuine epistles of Ignatius The letter is ostensibly from an early church father, Clement of Alexandria (d 215), and addressed to someone named Theodore (Theod I.1).1 The letter begins by congratulating Theodore for opposing . xv Introduction 1 1 The Revelation of Secret Mark 5 2 Uncovering Literary Fakes 13 3 The Modernity of the Mar Saba Manuscript 23 4 The Modernity of Theodore 49 5 The Modernity of Secret Mark 65 6 Morton Smith’s. I expected the author of the Gospel of Mark to have written. Secret Mark did not make much of an impression on me, how- ever, and I missed the homoerotic intimation at the end of the passage heard of the Secret Gospel of Mark as a teenager in the mid 1980s when I read an extract of it quoted in the Holy Blood, Holy Grail series—a sensationalistic exposition of the supposed bloodline of