Decoding Mark revealed Secret Mark

[gryan]

Re: the case of Mark Hofmann and the mind of a master religious document forger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann

This weekend I watched the Netfix documentary on Mark Hofmann, and all the while, I was pondering the possibility that Morton Smith was an even better document forger. The parallels helped me imagine something that was unimaginable to even Hoffman's closest friends until the evidence came and in the end, in a pea bargain, he confessed. A master forger can pass lie detector tests. A master forger studies the context of his document and matches context. Just as Hoffman got into finding and selling historical documents as a cover for vending his forgeries; I began to imagine Morton Smith getting into the field of New Testament Studies for the purpose of passing off his forged Secret Mark.

To do it, you have as smart or smarter than the people you want to dupe, but mostly, you just have to practice the cool showmanship of a magician. By writing about Jesus as Magician, Smith could have been creating a back story for his forgery.

It is so convenient that all we have is a photo! That makes it so much easier.

The parallels with a novel written earlier become more convincing proof of forgery as one gives up on the presumption of Smith's integrity and honesty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._ ... aba_(1940)

I think the evidence tilts toward forgery.

The next obvious question is this: Was Smith imitating an ancient art of forgery practiced by the writers of the NT?

[MrMacSon]

This weekend I watched the Netfix documentary on Mark Hofmann, and all the while, I was pondering the possibility that Morton Smith was an even better document forger ... I think the evidence tilts toward forgery.

I've posted two documents that argue for Secret Marks authenticity. Whether they're good argument I'm not sure. But there are clearly scholars who agree it was real.

.
[From] Behind the Seven Veils, I: The Gnostic Life Setting of the Mystic Gospel of Mark

... I have come to realize that the Letter to Theodore contains another, less direct and entirely overlooked indication of the life setting of the mystic gospel. This is found in the detail that Mark created it by adding “certain traditions (λόγια) of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of the sevenfold veiled truth” (I.24—26) ... evidence from Clement’s writings verifies the gnostic life setting of the mystic gospel and the letter’s concordance with Clement’s program of Christian education ... The Letter to Theodore similarly designates Mark’s mystic gospel as a mystagogue, and the unwritten explanations (“the hierophantic teaching of the Lord”) as the hierophant ...

Clement uses geometry, one of the disciplines studied in the lesser mysteries, to elucidate deeper meanings of certain design specifications presented in scripture. He explains that the tabernacle and Noah’s ark were “built so as to be of the most rational proportions, divine in conception, to accord with that gift of understanding which leads us from sensible to intelligible things, or rather from these particular objects to holy things and to the holy of holies.” The Letter to Theodore’s information that Mark “transferred to his former book the things suitable to those studies which make for progress toward gnosis” (I.20—21) would refer to passages of this sort, which are elucidated by knowledge gained through training in the encyclical disciplines that investigate the physical world (Strom. I.1.15.3).

... the gnostic life setting[s] of the mystic gospel are founded on the meaning of initiation into the great mysteries in Clement’s Stromateis (I.28.176.1—2; IV.1.3.1; V.11.70.7—71.5; cf. I.1.15.3).


CONCLUSIONS

Everything that the Letter to Theodore says about the mystic gospel fits within this framework. It explains that Mark’s Alexandrian gospel was expanded with “the things suitable to those studies which make for progress toward gnosis,” which naturally implies an audience of aspiring gnostics (I.20—21; see the appendix on the meaning of “those who were being perfected”). Further, the letter tells us that the mystic gospel was “kept with utmost discretion, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.” ... This sentence rather implies a select few, as we would expect if the audience consists of the gnostics, whom Clement frequently refers to as “the few” ... [pp.277]
.

... I began to imagine Morton Smith getting into the field of New Testament Studies for the purpose of passing off his forged Secret Mark ... By writing about Jesus as Magician, Smith could have been creating a back story for his forgery.

• A conspiracy theory might need more premises tied together

[rakovsky]

Re: Secret Gospel of Mark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Gospel_of_Mark

The jury is still out on this one.

If anyone had what it would take to create such a forgery, it would have been Morton Smith! What are the odds that he, of all people, would be the one to find an authentic one-of-a-kind document such as "The Secret Gospel of Mark"? On the face of it, forgery seems likely.

Years ago, after reading SC Carlsons book attempting to debunk it, I decided it was probably fake. But as time goes on, I'm not so sure.

My mind is more open now to unlikely things happening in meaningfully unlikely ways. Jung called it synchroicity. I have experienced it with texts.

An interesting synchronicity is the DSS and Nag Hammadi scrolls being released about the same time, in 1947.

But with "Secret Mark," the coincidences/circumstantial evidence/smoking guns of forgery pile up so much that it becomes practically obvious that it was a forgery with tongue in cheek by M. Smith. That M. Smith had a notated phrasebook compendium of all phrases used by Clement of Alexandria is one in a giant pile of circumstantial evidence that he was involved in forging it.

"The secret Gospel of Mark unveiled" by Peter Jeffery does a good job "unveiling" the forgery.

[MrMacSon]

"The secret Gospel of Mark unveiled" by Peter Jeffery does a good job "unveiling" the forgery.

"In the end, Jeffery’s exposé of the longer Gospel as a [supposed] forgery fails due to his persistent misreading of the evidence and falls under the weight of its own logical inconsistencies." Essay review of Peter Jeffrey's 'The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled' by Scott G Brown

[rakovsky]

With Secret Mark, the problem is that the coincidences pile up enough to show that it's a forgery when you understand that circumstantial evidence can prove forgery by a preponderance of circumstantial evidence.

It's not a case of proving forgery beyond a reasonable doubt. We don't need M. Smith to have gone on camera and announce that he forged it to recognize that he did.

It's not that we just have 1) M. Smith proposing a very unique arcane theory about secret original Christian rites BEFORE he announced his very unique find, nor that 2) he just HAPPENED to have a hand notated compendium of all of Clement of Alexandria's phrases, thereby making him capable of producing a forgery whose wording would be hard to distinguish from classical Clementine writings, nor that 3) catalogues of the library's books made before he supposedly found his copy of the letter in the library do not mention Vossius's book in the library. It's that we have a heap of these kind of "coincidences" that just HAPPEN to match a forgery by M. Smith.

[rakovsky]

Re: the case of Mark Hofmann and the mind of a master religious document forger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann

Yes, I saw that documentary a few days ago and it reminded me a lot of "Secret Mark."

[gryan]

Morton Smith bio
https://www.encyclopedia.com/environmen ... ith-morton

Smith was perhaps at the height of his perceived credibility during the time of his interview on
the 1984 documentary TV series titled Jesus: The Evidence (Smith's bit is introduced with the night moon scene at 34:45):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czAXC23_yFU

In this film he is making a case for the authenticity of "Secret Mark" and he is also trying to speak in a persuasive manner, with a steady eye to eye gaze into the camera, as if he were a mystical adept initiating (hypnotizing) his students.

[gryan]

"Before Smith left for his visit to Mar Saba in the summer of 1958, many of the elements that comprise the letter to Theodore were already present in his published work. These elements do not simply recur in Smith's interpretation of the letter, as onewould expect; rather, they are embedded within the letter itself. By 1958 Smith already saw Clement as articulating a tradition according to which Jesus taught higher truths in secret, a tradition summed up in the Markan 'mystery of the kingdom of God'. He had already surmised that Mark may have omitted or censored material present in the older authentic tradition he inherited—tradition shared in part with the Fourth Evangelist. In the letter to Theodore, all this finds its confirmation. Only in retrospect, in the light of the letter, can these undeveloped points from Smith's earlier work be reassembled into a pattern. Yet, given the content of the letter, the pattern is compelling evidence that the discoverer of this remarkable text is actually its author."

From pp 160-161 of BEYOND SUSPICION: ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE MAR SABA LETTER AND THE SECRET GOSPEL OF MARK, by Francis Watson, in The Journal of Theological Studies NEW SERIES, Vol. 61, No. 1 (APRIL 2010), pp. 128-170 Published By: Oxford University Press

[Secret Alias]

I've been trying to stay out of this discussion but come on.

"Before Smith left for his visit to Mar Saba in the summer of 1958, many of the elements that comprise the letter to Theodore were already present in his published work. These elements do not simply recur in Smith's interpretation of the letter, as onewould expect; rather, they are embedded within the letter itself. By 1958 Smith already saw Clement as articulating a tradition according to which Jesus taught higher truths in secret, a tradition summed up in the Markan 'mystery of the kingdom of God'. He had already surmised that Mark may have omitted or censored material present in the older authentic tradition he inherited—tradition shared in part with the Fourth Evangelist. In the letter to Theodore, all this finds its confirmation. Only in retrospect, in the light of the letter, can these undeveloped points from Smith's earlier work be reassembled into a pattern. Yet, given the content of the letter, the pattern is compelling evidence that the discoverer of this remarkable text is actually its author."

You know the saying 'where ever you go you take the weather with you.' But come on. He's a Biblical scholar. He discovered a letter of a Church Father about the Gospel of Mark. How surprising is it that after getting two degrees that there wouldn't be SOME overlap with things he published. How many Indians add spice to Western food? How many Germans think a beer goes with just about anything? The fact that Morton Smith discovered something and somehow managed to fit it within pre-existing paradigms of his thought is hardly surprising. This is what we all do. Look at Giuseppe at this forum. He could find a 'mythicist angle' to a loaf of bread.

Look at this:

He had already surmised that Mark may have omitted or censored material present in the older authentic tradition he inherited—tradition shared in part with the Fourth Evangelist

Isn't the Johannine use of the synoptics a topic that many prominent scholars even today continue to write about? To make this into a proof of 'forgery' is eisegesis plain and simple. While there are three synoptic gospels Matthew and Luke are forgeries of Mark. John bears some sort of relation to Mark by virtue of the fact that the two texts were bundled together. None of this is surprising.

Smith's treatment of the document is a separate thing from the document itself. All of us find it difficult to keep more than one thought in our heads. One of my favorite football trainers has a practice called 'hunter and rabbit' in German to train footballers to think one thing with their eyes and do a different skill with their feet:

[gryan]

"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 some true elements, nevertheless are not reported truly. For the true things, being mixed with inventions, are falsified, so that, as the saying goes, even the salt loses its savor."

From Letter of Clement of Alexandria on Secret Mark. Translated by Morton Smith.

"I wonder, with all the warnings of Clement to his reader to beware of Gnostic forgeries, whether Smith is not winking to his readers to beware of his own hoax! This almost qualifies as a form-critical feature of gospel hoaxes. I call it "the wink statement"

From Second Thoughts on the Secret Gospel by Robert M. Price.
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_secret.htm