Chapter 60 of 404

A Twentieth-Century Forgery

The “Secret Gospel of Mark,” not to be confused with the canonical Gospel of Mark, is an important source for John Dominic Crossan’s reconstruction of the historical Jesus. But while some scholars have wished to use the “Secret Gospel of Mark,” more scholars have cautiously warned against its use in reconstructing the life of Jesus.¹¹² In fact, Secret Mark, once hailed by some New Testament scholars (especially by its putative discoverer Morton Smith) as an early (even pre-Mark) source,¹¹³ has come to be regarded by most as a forgery dating from anywhere between the late second and the twentieth century.¹¹⁴ The most recent discussion suggests that a twentieth-century date is most likely for the forgery, offering New Testament scholarship’s own version of science’s famous “Piltdown Man.”¹¹⁵

The only manuscript (actually, a photograph of a manuscript) seems to derive from a different provenance than the monastery where it was supposedly found, and evidence appears to suggest that it appeared at the monastery only in recent times.¹¹⁶ Its attribution to Clement is stylistically open to question;¹¹⁷ it also clearly presupposes modern idiom and perhaps modern custom.¹¹⁸ In fact, recent analysis reveals the typical “forger’s tremor” throughout the document, ¹¹⁹ as well as characteristics of Morton Smith’s Greek handwriting style, convincing many that Smith himself was the forger.¹²⁰

Smith’s publications on Secret Mark reflect the same “cut-and-paste” excerpting techniques that characterize the composition of both Secret Mark and the allegedly Clementine document in which it is embedded.¹²¹ Its understanding of homosexuality reflects that of Smith and his twentieth-century context rather than that held in the first century,¹²² and some thus suggest that it may have been composed precisely to advance that twentieth-century perspective.¹²³

The work may even reflect some twentieth-century literary models.¹²⁴ These include a novel about a fraudulent document discrediting Christianity, discovered at the very same monastery and exposed by one “Lord Moreton” — published one year before Morton Smith’s first visit to this monastery!¹²⁵ We are all capable of being taken in occasionally, and it is understandable that many scholars (including myself) would have been reticent to charge such a noted scholar as Morton Smith with forgery. Given the breadth of information today, we must depend on other scholars at many points. The evidence, however, now seems to be in on this case: the Secret Gospel of Mark is a forgery, hence any reconstructions based on it must be re-reconstructed.

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