Was Morton Smith a forger?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Secret Alias
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by Secret Alias »

Pierson Parker
seriously questioned
that day
Ok. And what was the ground of his objection?
Secret Alias
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by Secret Alias »

Here's the quote I find:

"Dear reader, do not be alarmed at the parallels between... magic and ancient Christianity. Christianity never claimed to be original. It claimed . . . to be true!"

Earlier I wrote:
Let me ask SG. When does he think the first criticism of Morton Smith or Secret Mark was published WHICH WASN'T DEVELOPED FROM (a) personal animus or (b) motivated by a defense of 'the true religion'? When did 'good' research into the forgery of Secret Mark begin?
I would say this is (b).
Secret Alias
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by Secret Alias »

December 1960? = An Early Christian Cover-up?" New York Times Book Review (22 July 1973)


https://books.google.com/books?id=1n_ey ... 22&f=false

Here's what I find online:

After Morton Smith had published his two books on the Secret Gospel of Mark, Pierson published a somewhat critical review in The New York Times, wondering whether the document was “an early Christian cover-up” and saying that the passages “read not like Mark’s work but like a late and not wholly successful imitation” made before the time of Clement of Alexandria.[4]
Secret Alias
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by Secret Alias »

Found it:

In 1958 Morton Smith, professor of ancient history at Columbia Uni versity, was cataloguing a library at the Monastery of Mar Saba, just south of Jerusalem. In the end pap ers of an old printed book (a volume of letters of Ignatius of Antioch) Smith found what purports to be copy of a letter from this Clement of Alexandria. The letter was pre viously unknown. It accuses Carpo crates's group of adding false pas sages to the Gospel of Mark, so as to make Mark support their perver sions. But, the letter goes on to say, Mark did in fact come to Alexandria, and there did make some changes in the Gospel the public had known.

The letter quotes two passages which, it says, Mark inserted into his earlier book. One is a brief note that, at Jericho, Jesus refused to re ceive some women. A much longer insertion tells how a wealthy youth got buried in a garden tomb. Jesus, urged by the youth's sister, went to the tomb. The youth yelled. Jesus rolled the covering stone away, went in and raised the lad by the hand. The lad asked to stay with Jesus, so they went and “abode” at the lad's house. After six days the lad came, clad only in a white robe, and spent the night with Jesus, who proceeded to teach him “the mystery of the Kingdom of God.” This longer form of Mark's Gospel, the letter adds, is kept secret from the public but is read in the church at Alexandria.

Pierson Parker is sub ‐ dean and professor of New Testament at the General Theological Seminary.

With this as a starter, and draw ing on his vast knowledge of an cient magic and lively contacts with modern scholarship, Smith comes up with a set of conclusions that are, to say the least, interesting. The Cle ment letter he believes to be gen uine. But, he says, Mark did not add these passages; they were in Mark's original book. They got cut out only when it became necessary to hush up some primitive Christian doings.

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Now the letter locates its longer story, about the youth, in a section of Mark that was, probably, read at baptisms in Clement's church. So, Smith decides, Jesus himself bap tized. He did it always at night, and accompanied it with erotic union with himself. That was what Jesus was up to, also, when he got ar rested in Gethsemane. (The men Jesus had detailed to keep a look out fell asleep). Such initiation, hyp notic but including union with Jesus, enabled the devotee to perform magic and have mystical ascents to heaven, just like his master. And that, of course, is why early Christians got persecuted. Their magic was ille gal, their libertine behavior an of fense. In time all record of their rites was erased.

Smith's “The Secret Gospel” seems intended for popular reading. It is extremely well written, and is full of reminiscences of Mar Saba and other spots. “Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark” is longer, more close‐knit, technical re port. In both, and especially in the latter, Smith makes if not a conclu sive case, certainly a strong one for the genuineness of the Clement let ter. (The copy, which Smith found, is in 18th‐century handwriting; but that of course tells us nothing about the date of the original letter.)

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It is when he gets past that, that Smith's argument and his method get more questionable with almost every page. Take the alleged Gospel pas sages. Smith carefully compares these with the New Testament Gos pels, but apparently has not kept tab on his results. I have. He finds the new material closest to Matthew 17 times, Mark 26, Luke 9, John 9, while 19 cases are about evenly balanced between two or more Gos pels, and 3 are unlike any of them. One would think that almost any writer, steeped in the Gospels and wanting to imitate one of them, could do that well, but Smith will have none of that.

Similar to Matthew? Then Mat thew must have known and used this “longer text” of Mark. Resembles Luke? Then either Clement forgot what the “Secret Gospel” said, or else some copyist changed it. There are, however, other differences be tween Mark and this “Secret Gos pel,” which Smith does not examine.

In Mark (and Matthew too) no body but blind men ever address Jesus as huie David (son of David, vocative). Nobody in Mark ever “abides” with anybody else. Nobody ever rolls away a stone or any other object. Mark never mentions a gar den, never makes “loud voice” the subject of a sentence.

Alexandria was a breeding ground for late and spurious Gospel tracts. The present passages, too, read not like Mark's work but like a late and not wholly successful imitation. If Clement accepted them, that is not surprising. He was notoriously gul ible about fake documents and fake traditions. Smith himself gives many examples of Clement's credulity, though he does not relate them to the present letter.

In both Smith's volumes, facile ex planations abound. If Jesus said, “I spoke openly for all the world to hear; I taught where all the Jews meet together” (John 18:20) he was, we are told, just trying to save his own skin. When John 4:2 says that Jesus left all the baptizing to the dis ciples, that must be a mistranslation from an Aramaic source. (The sup posed source has, of course, long since disappeared.) The Gospels give not one example of Jesus baptizing anybody, not one nocturnal initia tion, not one instance of erotic be havior; and Mark has nothing about Christian baptism, and never uses the word “secret.”

All that that means, says Smith, is that the Gospel authors suppressed information about Jesus’ secret rites. Presumably the same was true, though Smith does not say so, of words like, “He spoke openly,” “What I say to you I say to all.” “These things were not done in corner” (Mark 8:20; 13:37; Acts 26:26). Smith acknowledges but does not quite explain why, later, the apostles kept baptism but discon tinued Jesus’ way of doing it. Per haps, with so many thousands com ing into the church, it would have been a bit awkward.

All this misbehavior, on Jesus’ part, is inferred from a single in cident in Mark where a young man, about to be set upon by a mob, runs away, leaving his garment behind him (Mark 14:51). But, we are fur ther told, bystanders knew that Jesus’ love for Lazarus too was homosexual (Smith's word). That the New Testament does not say that, that Jesus also loved Martha and Mary and the Father, that he com manded, “Love your enemies” are these just more cover‐up? Smith does not say.

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Yet if Professor Smith's conclu sions seem wild (to some of us), he has nonetheless contributed richly to technical scholarship. For one thing, he has amassed materials about the Carpocratians with a thoroughness that cannot, I think, be matched elsewhere. Then he makes a fascinat ing comparison of sequences in the Gospels of Mark and John; and cer tainly their links are closer when Clement's pieces are inserted.

I wish Smith had paid more at tention to the fact that, whereas John's Lazarus undergoes a miracle, Clement's lad does not. He is alive and noisy before Jesus gets there; and Jesus risks no defilement from touching a corpse — as he does in Mark's story of Jairus's daughter and Luke's of the dead youth at Nain. In his shorter book Smith himself recalls a suggestion, by Cyril Rich ardson of Union Theological Semin ary that Clement's story got inserted because Alexandria had many rich Christians, who balked at some of Jesus’ words against wealth. The leap, from Clement's tales to Smith's discourse on magic, is a long one.

Finally, Smith's knowledge of an cient magic is prodigious, and will provide a mine of information for students. But, dear reader, do not be alarmed at the parallels which here are found, between ancient magic and ancient Christianity. For one thing, some of the alleged parallels are far‐fetched, Far more important, resemblances to Christianity are al ways turning up, in China, India, Egypt, Palestine, almost anywhere. That is natural, for human intuitions and needs are much the same the world around. Christianity never claimed to be “original.” It claimed, rightly or wrongly, to be true, to give reality to what had been only poetry or myth or longing. So, Christianity says, Jesus really did touch the life around him with spark of the divine.

Every age, it seems, tries to fit Jesus to its own enthusiasms. In the 1920's many called him a social re former. In the 1960's some of the foremost historians decided he was violent revolutionary. Is it sheer ac cident that, at just “this point in time,” we should hear that Jesus and his friends turned away from the law, to tinker with sex and to en gage in magic? But enthusiasms change, and will change again. Jesus no more fits Smith's new frame than he fit those others, which had their day and ceased to be. Jesus was more than these. ∎
Secret Alias
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by Secret Alias »

Smith makes if not a conclu sive case, certainly a strong one for the genuineness of the Clement let ter. (The copy, which Smith found, is in 18th‐century handwriting; but that of course tells us nothing about the date of the original letter.)
This is an argument for 'forgery'? The author seems to (a) question Smith's conclusions which is fair and is shared by most people including myself (b) questions the link with magic which is reasonable and (c) assumes that the canonical gospels were preferable. If these are the questions being raised (aside from the salacious representation of Smith's suggestion of homosexuality) I am all in. So we're already at 1973. The serious questions about Morton Smith's interpretation as far as I see.
Secret Alias
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by Secret Alias »

The homosexual thing seems to be bone of contention. I hope you can see that this is Smith's interpretation and not part of the document.
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John T
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by John T »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 11:45 am There are experts on both sides of the issue. As I said scholarship isn't dogma. At best we strive for suggestions. Whether or not people take up our suggestions is out of our hands. Scholarship isn't religion.
Stop moving the goal post, your going to throw your back out with all of your gymnastic flip-flops.
Time to move on.
Secret Alias
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

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I don't understand. Why is everything Manichaean? There are brilliant people who get things wrong. There are complete morons that get one thing right in their life. Truth is a tricky thing. Just because you're smart doesn't mean you're never wrong.
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John T
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by John T »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 3:57 pm I don't understand. Why is everything Manichaean? There are brilliant people who get things wrong. There are complete morons that get one thing right in their life. Truth is a tricky thing. Just because you're smart doesn't mean you're never wrong.
Look into the mirror and repeat that, often. :cheers:
schillingklaus
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Re: Was Morton Smith a forger?

Post by schillingklaus »

Only naive scholars read homosexuality into the secret gospel. Others recognize that the nudity must be understood metaphysically, not literally as positivists would do.
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