Here is an overview of Smith's conclusions about the document. Hardly things that he needed the document to prove:
Primitive Source
The secret Gospel recounts a story Professor Smith sees as almost identical with the account that John expanded into the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. “It helps us complete a long line of parallels between Mark and John, filling the gap that existed,” Professor Smith suggested. “The parallelism now continues from the sixth chapter of both Mark and John until the account of the Crucifixion.”
Stylistically, the secret Gospel is close to the Bible's Gospel according to Mark, and Professor Smith suggests there was a primitive gospel from which the books of Mark and John were both drawn.
“This would take us back well before the year 70,” he suggested. “It would give us a notion of the Gospel circulating at or before the time of Paul, who is our earliest source for Christianity, and could thus be much closer to the time of Jesus than the canonical Gospels. This is not an outlandish possibility. Most scholars agree that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are both taken from Mark.”
Professor Smith credits Prof. Cyril C. Richardson, dean of graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary, with the breakthrough leading to the remaining conclusions. What Professor Richardson suggested was that Mark 10:13 to 10:45 closely reflects the content of an early baptismal service. (These passages deal with Jesus's blessing children, a rich, young ruler, rewards, Jesus's foretelling death and resurrection and responding to requests of James and John.)
“Professor Richardson's suggestion enables us to understand the nature of the initiation rite that the secret Gospel reports,” Professor Smith said. “We now see that ‘the mystery of the kingdom of God’ is the content of baptism. The canonical Gospel's story [Mark 14:51‐52] of a young man apprehended at night alone with Jesus at the time of Jesus's arrest (a story which scholars have puzzled over for 1,800 years) is now un derstandable as an account of a baptismal rite conducted by Jesus in which the believer united with Jesus and was possessed by his spirit.
“Once we have this report that Jesus administered a nocturnal, secret initiation, we naturally ask, ‘Why nocturnal? Why secret? Particularly if this was only a baptism? What was going on?”
Schisms Noted
Professor Smith suggested that the answers could be determined from a consideration of the splits in early Christianity. Some Christians, he said, insisted on strict obedience to Jewish law, others argued for selective obedience, a third group declared itself emancipated from Jewish law and dedicated to guidance by the spirit and a fourth group was blatantly libertine.
Jesus himself violated Jewish law: he did not observe the Sabbath, he consorted with publicans and sinners, he did not fast, or wash his hands before eating. But at times he urged observance of the law.
Some scholars said that Jesus's words should be taken figuratively, others argued that the libertine texts were exaggerated or misunderstood and still others maintained that Jesus taught that moral law was binding, ritual law not.
Professor Smith argued that Jesus distinguished between levels of his following: For those already in the kingdom of heaven (thanks to secret baptism), the law was not ‐binding. But Jesus urged others to respect the law.
How did Jesus persuade his intimates of his special position and of their membership in the heavenlyelect? Professor Smith replied: “I believe the answer is that Jesus had a way with schizophrenics, and that he practiced some sort of hypnotic or suggestive discipline embodied in rituals derived from ancient magic.
“If you take as your task the problem of finding what social type Jesus is, in the gallery of figures provided by the Greco‐Roman period, the best answer is the mirecle‐working magician.”
Magical Practices
Professor Smith compiled a long list of practices associated with magicians of antiquity and ascribed by the New Testament to Jesus—“the power to make anyone he wanted follow him, exorcism (even at a distance), remote control of spirits, giving disciples power over demons, miraculous cures of hysterical conditions including fever, paralysis, hemorrhage, deafness, blindness, loss of speech, raising the dead, stilling storms, walking on water, miraculously providing food, miraculous escapes, making himself invisible, foreknowledge, mindreading, claiming to be a god or son of god or in image of god.”
“All these claims and stories and rites are those of a magician, not of a rabbi or a Messiah,” Professor Smith, notes in “The Secret Gospel.” “Who ever heard of the Messiah's being an exorcist, let alone being eaten?”
Professor Smith noted that many of the powers claimed are paralleled’ by practices described in the so‐called magical papyri—documents discovered in Egypt that report pagan practices. The magical papyrus most closely associated with a eucharistlike practice deals with erotic magic. And the magical papyri as well as Jewish handbooks purport to explain the hypnotic technique allowing men to enjoy and transmit the illusion of ascent into heaven. “The stories of Jesus's resurrection seem distorted versions of such an illusory ascent,” Professor Smith suggested.
A Time of Danger
“The spirit was at first the spirit of Jesus, then gradually became independent of him and was eventually located in the Trinity,” he went on, noting: “When the spirit went public, the Aposties lost much of their control of the company and came into danger of displacement.”
“If the Christians were an innocent sect practicing pure benevolence, why did the Romans make such strenu ous efforts to stamp them out?” Professor Smith asked rhetorically, and replied: “It was because the Christians engaged in magical practices, and magic was a criminal act.”
Professor Smith expects lively controversy about his findings, less from documents than from people. “I'm reconciled to the attacks,” he said. “Thank God I have tenure!”
A version of this archives appears in print on May 29, 1973, on page 39 of the New York edition with the headline: A Scholar Infers Jesus Practiced Magic. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
It has always been my contention that there is a huge chasm between what the MS actually says about Jesus and Morton Smith's interests and pet theories (= magic, Judaism, Hebrew gospel). If, as many claim, Smith invented the text to further his own beliefs, practices, you simply can't get to Jesus the magician from this text. You can't prove that there was a Hebrew gospel before Mark from this text. It's stupid.