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Secret Mark
Charles W. Hedrick with Nikolaos Olympiou
From The Fourth R
Volume 13-5
SeptemberOctober 2000
The photographs described in this article appear in The Fourth R volume 13-5. Order the issue.
One of the most controversial manuscript discoveries of the twentieth century was a fragment of a previously
unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria (end of the second century) to an otherwise unknown Theodore. This
fragment contained two very brief excerpts from a text Clement called the Secret Gospel of Mark.
The fragment of Clements letter, with the excerpts from Secret Mark, was discovered by Columbia University
Professor Morton Smith in the summer of 1958 at the Greek Orthodox monastery of Hagios Sabbas (known in
Arabic as Mar Saba), near Jerusalem. Smith was there as a guest of the Partriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church
in Jerusalem studying the manuscript collection of the monastery. His project was to search all printed books as
opposed to handwritten manuscripts for manuscripts hand-copied into them. The results of his search published
in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate journal Nea Sion listed Clements letter as manuscript #65.
One day in his cell, toward the end of his stay at the monastery, he began puzzling over a text written in a tiny
scrawl. The manuscript he was reading turned out to be a fragment of a letter by Clement of Alexandria. It
appeared at the back of an edition of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch published by Isaac Voss in 1646 and was
written over both sides of the last page (which was blank) of the original book and over half of the recto of a sheet
of binders paper./1/ It was a common practice for monks to hand copy manuscripts onto the unused pages of old
books.
Smith photographed the text three times for good measure. Judging from his published photographs, they were
taken while the Clement manuscript was still bound into the book./2/ He also took photographs of the first
preserved page (the title page was missing) and the last page of the Voss edition of Ignatius to use later in
identifying the date of the volume in which the letter of Clement was written. In 1973, fifteen years after his
discovery, Smith published the fragment of Clements letter, simultaneously, in two separate volumes a critical
edition containing an extensive analysis of the text (Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark), and a
popular volume describing the discovery ( The Secret Gospel. The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret
Gospel According to Mark)./3/
The publication of Clements letter with the excerpts from Secret Mark immediately drew charges of forgery and
fraud from the scholarly community. These accusations were encouraged by subsequent failed attempts by other
Western scholars to see and study the fragment, which had apparently disappeared in the meantime. Privately,
scholars wondered if the manuscript even existed and, if it did, why was no one able to see it. Now new
photographs and new information, published here for the first time ever, may shed light on some of the questions
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surrounding the manuscript.
Clement and the Secret Gospel of Mark
The excerpts from the Secret Gospel of Mark are quoted in Clements letter to Theodore. Theodore had written
Clement asking whether or not certain things were found in the Secret Gospel. Clement replies that Mark had
written two gospels. His original gospel, intended for beginners, was written at Rome. The second gospel, Mark
wrote sometime later in Alexandria, Egypt. This second gospel, Clement says, is an expanded version of the
original gospel. Mark simply added to the earlier gospel whatever seemed appropriate for persons progressing
toward a more advanced level of instruction in Christian faith. This expanded version Clement dubbed the Secret
Gospel, and described it as a more spiritual gospel. Clement denied that the Secret Gospel divulged the sacred
mysteries of the Lord, or revealed things not to be uttered. These comments by Clement indicate the existence of
an arcane Christian tradition in Alexandria. Clement assured Theodore that only enough information was given in
Secret Mark to lead advanced initiates into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils.
There were apparently several copies of the Secret Gospel
in use in Alexandria. One of the presbyters of the church
gave a copy to the leader of an Alexandrian Gnostic sect in
Alexandria, the Carpocratians. The leader of this sect
(Carpocrates) apparently revised the Secret Gospel,
adding to it other information, which Clement regarded as
shameless lies. Carpocrates proceeded to interpret his
expanded version of Secret Mark in line with his own
carnal teachings.
It seems likely that Theodore did not have a copy of the
Secret Gospel available to him, since Clement found it
necessary to quote brief sections to answer Theodores
questions. The first and longer section (which Clement
placed between Mark 10:34 and 35 in our canonical
gospel) describes Jesus raising a dead youth. This
narrative has close parallels to the raising of Lazarus in
John 11:3844. The youth is said to love Jesus, wanting
to be with him. Six days after being raised he comes to
Jesus wearing a linen cloth over his naked body
(compare canonical Mark 14:5152). The youth remained with Jesus that night and Jesus taught him the mystery
of the Kingdom of God.
Theodore must have asked Clement some specific questions about this incident, for Clement responds that naked
man with naked man, and the other things Theodore inquired about are not found in the Secret Gospel.
Theodore had also inquired about another section of Secret Mark (which Clement indicated occurred between
Mark 10:46a and 10:46b in our canonical gospel). Whatever Theodore may have suggested the section contained,
Clement flatly denied and called falsifications.
Morton Smiths Analysis
Smiths high regard for the historical value of the fragment led him to suggest a radical revision of Christian origins.
He argued that the Christian movement began with Jesus practicing a baptismal initiation in which the initiate
received the spirit of Jesus and ascended into the kingdom of God during the initiation.
It was a baptism administered by Jesus to chosen disciples, singly, and by night. In this baptism the disciple was
united with Jesus. The union may have been physical (there is no telling how far symbolism went in Jesus rite)
but the essential thing is that the disciple was possessed by Jesus spirit. One with Jesus, he participated in Jesus
ascent into the heavens, and was thereby set free from the laws ordained for and in the lower world./4/
For obvious reasons, this founding-rite of the early Christian movement was covered up by the dominant form of
Christianity in the second and third centuries.
The Reception of Smiths Theories
In general, early reviewers of Smiths books tended to agree that the letter of Clement is genuine, though a number
of scholars have rejected its genuineness./5/ They are sharply divided, however, on the historical value of the
contents of the letter. Virtually no one takes seriously Smiths conclusion that a secret erotic rite is to be traced to
the historical Jesus. Even Clement had denied that such a rite was a part of the Secret Gospel (note his comment
that naked man with naked man was not in the Secret Gospel). Reviewers uniformly did not care for Smiths
conclusion that the baptismal rite included a physical union between Jesus and the initiate, but most kept both the
tone and style of their reviews irenic, though some at times attacked Smith personally, and others bordered on the
apologetic./6/
No general consensus has emerged with regard to the historical value of Clements information about the Secret
Gospel. Pierson Parker argued that the quotations from Secret Mark are probably not genuine. They do not reflect
a distinctively Markan style, but rather assume a knowledge of all the canonical gospels and other parts of the New
Testament, as well. Thus Parker concludes: Clement is wrong about where these expansions come from. They
are much more likely to be the work of some Alexandrian Christian Jew, who lived before Clement, and who was
familiar with one or more of our canonical gospels./7/ In other words, Mark was not the author of the excerpts. On
the other hand, even Parker thought there was historical value to Clements comments about Secret Mark. For one
thing they provide additional information that Mark had gone to Alexandria, and
Next, the letter supposes Mark capable of a more spiritual Gospel. It attributes to Mark a narrative somewhat
like that of the raising of Lazarus. It declares that a book by Mark went through two editions. Every one of these
things could be true without committing us to Clements identification of what Mark wrote./8/
Is the Letter a Forgery?
The accusation that the fragment is a forgery has cast the darkest shadow over Smiths admittedly spectacular
discovery. In a sharply critical review of Smiths two books, Quentin Quesnell made a case that the fragment was
forged sometime between 1936 and 1958./9/ Quesnell broadly hinted that Smith himself had perpetrated the
hoax.10 One major element in his argument was the inaccessibility of the manuscript to scholars. No Western
scholar, except for Smith, had ever seen the manuscript at the time of Quesnells review (1975)and that remains
true today, a half century after its discovery. In support of his argument that physical evidence was absolutely
essential to evaluate the manuscript, Quesnell quoted at length from E. J. Goodspeeds, Strange New Gospels.
Goodspeed had argued, says Quesnell, that an examination of the original text of new discoveries is absolutely
essential to establishing their historical value, a judgment with which few will argue. Quesnell did, however, omit
one line from the Goodspeed quotation that gives a rather different tone to the whole:
What the scholar really desires is to see the very document itself, but failing that a photograph of it will usually
answer the purposes of his investigation. He naturally wishes to scrutinize its material, whether papyrus,
parchment, or paper; to examine the writing with an eye to determining its date; and in general to interrogate the
discovery on a whole series of particulars bearing upon the all-important question of its genuineness.
If, however, even a photograph is out of the question, the scholar may for a time be content with a competent
copy./11/
Quesnell is correct: working with the original manuscript is best. But so is Goodspeed correct: sometimes a
photograph will have to serve. Most of us are forced to work with photographs in any case.
Those who take their investigations into the field know well the problems of working under the constraints of
bureaucracies that control the antiquities we study. The research scholar is at best a temporary inconvenience to
the routine of the bureaucrats occupational activity. They simply do not have the same agendas as the scholar. In
response to Quesnells scathing criticism of Smiths failure to assure the safety of his find, it must be said that the
scholar cannot control, or necessarily even modify, the policies and practices of the places around the world where
New Testament research is done in the field.
12
Maybe Smith could have done more to encourage the care and
conservation of the manuscript, but in the final analysis he was not, and could not be, responsible for the
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manuscript.
Quesnells Rationale that the letter is a Forgery
In his article, The Mar Saba Clementine, Quesnell offers
several reasons for thinking that the letter of Clement may
have been forged.
1. The original manuscript has not been available for
examination by other scholars (pp. 4850). Therefore
the issues that scholars usually raise about original
manuscript discoveries cannot be investigated.
Whether or not it is authentic, according to Quesnell,
hinges on the investigation of the original manuscript
(pp. 5253). Quesnells point is that nothing is
available for scholars to examine, so as to confirm or
deny Smiths conclusions.
2. Smiths photographs are inadequate as a basis for
scholarly judgments, since they do not include
margins/ edges of the pages and are only black and
white. Color photographs are preferred (p. 50).
3. Smith does not include the full body of evidence from the scholars who judged the dating of the scribal hand
(that is, Smiths questions and their answers). Quesnell raises numerous questions about Smiths printed
conclusions on the scribal hand (pp. 5051).
4. The mastery of the details and style of Clements writings (so as to avoid blunders in vocabulary,
phraseology, and style, if one were forging the letter) has been possible since 1936, when Sthlin
published Volume IV of his critical edition of the works of Clement. 828 pages are devoted to final summary
indexing. Clements vocabulary is covered on pp. 197828. Every occurrence listed is accompanied with a
quotation long enough to show how the word is used in context (p. 55). Thus, since 1936 it would be an
easy matter for a competent scholar to forge a letter of Clement (pp. 5356).
5. Because of the lack of supervision and proper care of the manuscript in the monastery library, ample
opportunity existed during the period 19361958 for someone to perpetrate a hoax (p. 56).
6. Motivation for forgeries by nature of the case, must normally remain a matter of speculation. But literary
and other forgeries and hoaxes must always have been produced. And when successful, they have usually
been produced by competent scholars of serious reputation (p. 56). Therefore Quesnell concludes (p. 58):
The motives of the one who might have produced [this hoax] must remaina matter of speculation. But the
history of known hoaxes, as well as some comments by Smith, show that the speculation would not have to
range beyond the bounds of conceivable scholarly concerns (Smiths concerns as Quesnell describes
them, pp. 5960).
7. And finally Quesnell asks is there a reasonable probability of forgery? The answer working with only the
evidence Smith presents, seems to be clearly yes (p. 67).
Smith specifically replies to challenges #2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in his article On the Authenticity of the Mar Saba
Letter, but he only partially addresses #1 (the charge against Smith that the original manuscript has not been
available to other scholars), and this issue Quesnell raises again (A Reply to Morton Smith, p. 200)./13/
An examination of the physical manuscript, if it ever turns up, will likely not satisfy Smiths persistent critics. Its
absence continues to cast a shadow over the discovery. The missing letter and the fact that no other Western
scholar has ever seen it continue to fuel the speculation that Smith forged the manuscript.
Is the Manuscript Missing?
In 1980, Thomas Talley, Professor at General Theological Seminary in New York, visited the Patriarchate library in
Jerusalem and inquired after Clements letter. He was told by Archimandrite Melito
14
(a priest in the Patriarchate)
that Melito himself brought it (apparently meaning Clements letter, rather than the Voss book) from Hagios
Sabbas to the library in Jerusalem.
Talley further reported that the librarian (Father Kallistos) of the Patriarchate library acknowledged that it had been
received into the library, but (as Smith later reported on Talleys statement) it had been taken out of the volume of
Ignatius, was being studied, and was not available for inspection./15/ Actually what Talley reported was that le
manuscript en deux folios ne se trouvait plus aux cts du volume imprim parce quil tait de en cours rparation.
That is to say, the letter of Clement was being repaired. Talley offered this brief report as proof that the letter of
Clement actually existed, since some scholars had challenged the very existence of the manuscript, which only its
editor had seen./16/ What Talley was offering for proof was the acknowledgement by both a representative of the
Patriarchate (Melito) and the Patriarchate librarian (Kallistos) that the manuscript actually existed. The report by
Talley does not answer the questions: Who removed the manuscript from the Ignatius volume? When was it
removed, and why? And why have persons visiting the library since 1980 not been able at least to view the
manuscript?
Searching for the Missing Manuscript
My personal involvement in the activities that led to this article began in 1990 at Banias, Israel, about thirty years
after Smith was at Hagios Sabbas. I presented a lecture on the Secret Gospel of Mark to the students and staff
participating in the Banias archaeological excavation (at the site of ancient Caesarea Phillipi) at our residence in
Metulla, Israel. Among the groups participating in the excavation was a team from the University of Athens led by
Professor Nikolaos Olympiou, Professor of Old Testament at the University of Athens. After hearing my lecture and
learning of the intense interest in Secret Mark in the U.S. and the striking fact that no scholar except Smith had
ever claimed to have seen the manuscript, Professor Olympiou decided that it would be possible for him, me, and
his team of Greek students to pay a visit to Hagios Sabbas to inquire about the book on Ignatius published by
Voss, and perhaps see the manuscript of Clements letter. The Abbots assistant at the monastery was a former
student of his. Though the Intefada was then in effect, Professor Olympiou engaged a Palestinian taxi and we all
piled in: Hedrick, Olympiou, and his four students./17/ It was a memorable visit, but Vosss book was not at the
monastery. We were told that it had earlier been taken to the Patriarchate library in Jerusalem.
Two years later, in 1992, Professor Olympiou and I went to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate library in Jerusalem,
but the book could not be located. Subsequently Professor Olympiou reported that he had found the priest who
served as librarian from 1975 to 1990. He is Archimandrite (an honorary title for a priest in the hierarchy of the
Church) Kallistos Dourvas, and, as it turns out, he was also a former student of Professor Olympiou at the
University of Athens. Today he serves as parish priest in the church of Eisodia tes Theotokou (Presentation of the
Virgin Mary), which is located in Plateia Karaiskaki in Ano Glyfada near Athens.
Kallistos told Olympiou that he had removed the manuscript of the letter of Clement from the Voss edition of
Ignatius at the time he photographed it, shortly after he received it into the Patriarchate library. He gave black and
white photographs of the manuscript of the Clement letter to Olympiou, who later gave copies to me. Subsequently,
Olympiou acquired color photographs of the manuscript from Kallistos and loaned them to me in June of 2000 for
this article. Professor Olympiou told me that he had been unable to reach Kallistos to inquire further about the
manuscript. From June 1021, Olympiou was again in Jerusalem and visited the Patriarchate. He saw the 1646
Voss edition of the letters of Ignatius (without the letter of Clement) for a second time, having seen it earlier at the
library in December 1998. On this second trip he secured photographs of Voss 1646 edition of Ignatius with the
help of Bishop Aristarchos, the current librarian of the Patriarchate. Some of those photographs are published with
this article.
As for the missing leaves of Clements letter, Professor Olympiou surmises that they were likely concealed by
certain well-meaning persons at the Patriarchate library for reasons of piety. When Smiths books appeared in
1973, the concern over his interpretation of the fragment and the portrayal of Jesus in the excerpts from the Secret
Gospel (Smith had suggested that the mystery initiation may have involved a homosexual encounter between
Jesus and a young man raised from the dead) led these persons to conceal the manuscript. Smith had also
suggested that the Carpocratians may have inserted material into their bootlegged copy of Secret Mark authorizing
the homosexual relationship Clement specifically denied was in Secret Mark./18/ In any case, if Theodore had
been enough concerned to write Clement about the matter, why should it be a surprise that today persons in the
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Greek Orthodox Church are no less concerned?
In June of 2000, I visited Athens hoping to see Kallistos,
but Olympiou was unable to contact him. So I returned to
Athens in August 2000. When I arrived in Glyfada from
America on the afternoon of August 6, I found a message
to call Professor Olympiou. He said we could see Kallistos
later that evening, if I was up to it. We drove to the church,
where Kallistos, Olympiou, and Vassilios Chryssovitsiotis
(a student of Professor Olympiou), and I met to talk about
the missing letter of Clement. Chryssovitsiotis
translated./19/ From what Kallistos told us, Olympiou and I
were able to put together the following sequence of events.
Smith visits the monastery in 1958 and photographs the
letter of Clement still in the back of the 1646 edition of
Ignatius published by Voss.
Fifteen years later (1973) Smith simultaneously publishes
his two books.
Four years later (1977), Archimandrite Melito brought the Voss book, with the letter of Clement still attached, to the
Patriarchate library from Hagios Sabbas .
Although Melito acted on his own initiative in bringing the single volume to the library, the transfer was described by
Kallistos as part of a general transfer of manuscripts from Hagios Sabbas to the Patriarchate library in order to
better provide for their care. Kallistos planned on shelving printed books in one location and manuscripts in another
location, but that distribution of library holdings never occurred.
That same year (1977), Kallistos removed the Clement manuscript from the printed Voss edition of Ignatius for the
purpose of photographing it, and then for shelving along with other manuscripts in the Patriarchate library, in
keeping with his original plan for distributing the library holdings.
For as long as he was librarian (until 1990), the Clement letter was kept with the Voss edition, but as separate
items. Kallistos does not know what has happened to the manuscript since he ceased being librarian. He does not
recall whether or not he catalogued the Voss book and the letter of Clement into the library. He thinks the reason
the present staff cannot find the letter is that the Clement letter has nothing distinctive about it, and for that reason
is difficult to locate. He says they frequently ask him where to find things.
Kallistos intends to return to Jerusalem on September 14, 2000, and will look for the Clement letter. If it is there, he
is optimistic that he will be able to find it. When I asked him why he photographed the Clement letter he replied that
it was because of its importance. I asked him why it was important; he replied because it is the only copy of the
manuscript that exists, and also because it contains a great deal of diversity. (I took this to mean that the text
diverges significantly from the acknowledged tradition of the Church.) He further said (without a question from me)
that the manuscript may provide the basis for a sexual Jesus, as has been portrayed in popular movies and
books. He said that he had not read Smiths books, but others have spoken to him about them. He does not
remember meeting Thomas Talley (who had reported on his failure to see the manuscript in 1980). In addition to
the negatives of the photographs printed with this article, he has color slides of the Clement manuscript.
The photographs/20/ of the 1646 Voss edition of the letters of Ignatius that Professor Olympiou brought to Greece
in June of 2000 inadvertently contain evidence that the letter of Clement was indeed at one time included in the
back of the Voss edition, and confirm that Smith found it where he said he did. Page one of the Voss book has the
following modern inscription written in blue ink: Smith 65. In his 1960 Nea Sion article, sixty-five is the number
Smith gave to the manuscript (the letter of Clement) he found written in the back of Voss 1646 edition of Ignatius.
In the bottom left hand corner of the photograph of page 318, the last page in the Voss edition, there appears a
small circular discoloration (see illustration). That identical discoloration is found at the bottom of the right hand side
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of the first page of Clements letter at exactly the spot you would expect to find it, if p. 318 and the first page of the
Clement letter were facing pages, and the discoloration (water stain, or brown foxing) had migrated from one page
to the other. The small circular discoloration has also migrated through to the verso of the leaf and thus appears on
p. 2 of the letter of Clement at the bottom left hand corner of the page. The small circular mark is just visible at the
bottom right hand side of the sheet of binders paper, which is the last page of the Clement manuscript. It did not
migrate through onto the sheets on the back cover beneath the sheet of binders paper on which the last page of
the Clement letter was written. The same discoloration is also visible in the photograph published by Smith
showing p. 318 of the Voss book and the first page of Clements letter bound into the Voss edition./21/ This
demonstrates that photographs published with this article are of the same manuscript photographed by Smith in
1958.
So far as I know, no one has followed up on Smiths photographs, which may still be among his personal effects. If
uncropped, those photographs should prove beyond question whether the pages were still bound into the volume
at the time he photographed them.
The Value of the Letter of Clement
The letter of Clement does exist, and the consensus (with some dissenting opinions) is that it is genuine. Thus at
the end of the second century multiple different versions of the Gospel of Mark were known to exist. Scholars have
been reluctant to accept Clements testimony and assign the fragments of the Secret Gospel to the hand of the
author of original Mark. But in spite of their reluctance, clearly Clements letter confirms that a second Gospel of
Mark thought to be by the author of the original Gospel of Mark was used in the Alexandrian Church, and it is to be
dated before the end of the second century. As Smith noted, the real issue seems to be whether they [the excerpts
from Secret Mark] should be classed with the pseudepigraphic gospels of the mid- and later second century, or with
the canonical gospels and others of that type (P. Egerton 2, G. Hebrews, etc.)./22/ Whether or not this spiritual
gospel of Mark might, in principle, contain information about the historical Jesus depends on how early the
fragments are dated (are they early enough to preserve original oral memory about Jesus), as well as on other
usual criteria for determining the originality of traditions.
Perhaps the real value of the Secret Gospel of Mark for the
historian of Christian origins is its confirmation of the
instability of gospel texts during the period between 70
C.E. and 200 C.E./23/ Virtually all manuscripts of Greek
New Testament texts are dated third century and later.
Based on multiple different readings of the same text
among the earliest manuscripts, scholars have known all
along that, from the earliest period, gospel texts underwent
modification./24/ So it should not be surprising that multiple
different versions of the same gospel existed at the end of
the second century. The difference between the situation
with our earliest known manuscripts and what Clement
tells us about original Mark and Secret Mark is only a
matter of degree, except, of course, for the unusual nature
of the contents of the Secret Gospel. The places where
Clements fragments of Secret Mark fall in the sequence of
canonical Mark, and Clements affirmation that the text he
quotes is known to be an expanded version of original
Mark seem to confirm the existence of such a gospel in the
second century.
The most significant question still left unresolved is the authorship of the two brief excerpts from the Secret Gospel
of Mark: are they written by the same author who wrote canonical Mark? Studies of twenty years ago argued that
they were not by the same author, but the arguments seem far from compelling. Even if scholars eventually reach
a consensus that they were not by our canonical author, their significance for writing early Christian history is not
diminished in the least. In Alexandria in the second century, Clement thought they were written by Mark and used
them as authentic tradition.
Want to know more? Try How Did Jesus Become God and Why? by Lloyd Geering, or The Da Vinci Fraud by
Robert M. Price.
Notes
The research for this article was partially funded by an award from the Southwest Commission on Religious
Studies.
1
Smith, Clement of Alexandria, p. 1. He later identified the book as Isaac Voss, Epistulae genuinae S. Ignatii
Martyris (Amsterdam: J. Blaeu, 1646).
2
Smith, The Secret Gospel , p. 12. He notes: My permission to study the volumes did not include permission to
take them apart. Though he did remove cartonnage from leather bindings, soak it, and thus recover almost a
dozen [pages], several of which turned out to contain fragments of texts [of St. Macarius of Egypt] unknown to the
standard editions (p. 13). The photographs he published do seem to show the manuscript still bound into the book
in The Secret Gospel, p. 38. But in his critical edition the photographs are too closely cropped on the margins to be
certain: Clement of Alexandria , pp. 44853. A comparison of Smiths published photographs with photographs
published with this article, however, suggests that they were still bound in. Compare the ragged left margin of the
last page of Secret Mark fourth line from the bottom in the current photographs to what Smith published in Clement
of Alexandria, p. 453.
3
Translations of the complete text of the letter to Clement are to be found in the following: The Secret Gospel, pp.
1417; Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark , pp. 44647 (Greek transcription, pp. 44852); and
Ron Cameron, The Other Gospels, pp. 6771.
4
Clement of Alexandria, p. 251.
5
See Smiths review essay, The Score at the End of the First Decade, particularly p. 450. One rather positive
review of Smiths books (they were almost all uniformly negative) was by Cyril C. Richardson. He did not, however,
accept Smiths grand reconstruction of Christian origins, but was sympathetic to a baptismal interpretation of
Clements letter.
6
See for example, E. A. Yamauchi. Other scholars made uncomplimentary personal remarks about Smith in their
reviews. See Hans-Martin Schenke who provides (pp. 6971) translations of uncomplimentary German reactions to
Smith.
7
Parker, p. 57.
8
Parker, p. 57.
9
Quentin Quesnell, The Mar Saba Clementine, see in particular pp. 5358.
10
Quesnell, The Mar Saba Clementine, p. 58. See the exchange between Smith and Quesnell in The Catholic
Biblical Quarterly.
11
Goodspeed, Strange New Gospels, pp. 34. Compare Quesnell, Mar Saba Clementine, pp. 4849. Italics
indicate the line that Quesnell omitted.
12
Quesnell, The Mar Saba Clementine, pp. 4950.
13
And raised again by Paul Achtemeier, Response to Reginald H. Fuller, p. 16.
14
Now Assistant Bishop of the Archbishophric of Athens as Bishop of Marathon.
15
The score at the End of the First Decade, pp. 45859. Smith reported, on the basis of Talleys article, that the
Clement manuscript was being studied and therefore not available for review.
16
Talley, Le temps liturgique, p. 52
17
Antonios Finitsis, Demetrios Peristeropoulos, Spiros Bogdanos, and Kostos Psarros.
18
Smith, Clement of Alexandria, p. 185.
19
I also made a tape recording of the session.
20
Olympiou gave me ten color prints of the Voss edition: two prints of the first extant page of the book; one print of
the second page; one print of the third page (with part of the second page visible); two prints of the second and
third pages lying open and attached to the spine of the book; three prints of p. 318, and one print of the blank back
cover.
21
The Secret Gospel, p. 38.
22
Response to Reginald H. Fuller, p. 14.
23
Helmut Koester (pp. 4142) uses the excerpts from Secret Mark in precisely this way. Koester, however, goes
further and suggests that Secret Mark is an earlier version of Mark than our canonical Mark and was the version
used by Matthew and Luke. Hence, Koester rejects Quesnells hoax theory.
24
Classic examples are the multiple longer endings to Mark and the problem of John 7:538:11, among others.
Bibliography
Achtemeier, Paul. Response to Reginald H. Fuller, p. 16 in Wilhelm Wuellner, ed., Longer Mark: Forgery,
Interpretation, or Old Tradition? Center for Hermeneutical Studies, Colloquy 18. Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical
Studies, 1975.
Altaner, Berthold. Patrology. Hilda C. Graef, trans. Freiburg: Herder and Herder, 1960, pp. 21522.
Best, Ernest. Review of E. J. Pryke, Redactional Style in the Marcan Gospel, Journal for the Study of the New
Testament 4 (1979): 6976.
Cameron, Ron. The Other Gospels. Non-Canonical Gospel Texts. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982, pp. 67
71.
Goodspeed, E. J. Strange New Gospels. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931.
Koester, Helmut. History and Development of Marks Gospel (From Mark to Secret Mark ), pp. 3557 in Bruce C.
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