Gospel Hoax
 by Stephen Carlson

Many scholars have long suspected that Morton Smith
fabricated the letter in which Clement of Alexandria
cites a homoerotic passage from a secret version of
the gospel of Mark. Now, almost 50 years after Smith’s
controversial discovery in 1958, Stephen Carlson has
proven this beyond a reasonable doubt. His case for a
modern author of Clement's letter/Secret Mark -- and
for Morton Smith in particular -- is strong enough to
be deemed conclusive. It can be summarized as follows.

* The author of Secret Mark must have read James
Hunter's novel, The Mystery of Mar Saba, published in
1940. Philip Jenkins first made this connection in
2001, and I’m sure that if it had been made back in
the 70s, a lot less people would have been duped. The
novel is about a forgery at the Mar Saba library,
exactly where Smith "discovered" Clement's letter.
Furthermore, as Carlson notes, both Secret Mark and
the novel's fictional discovery reinterpret a
resurrection account from the gospels in naturalistic
terms.

* The letter to Theodore sounds hyper-Clementine, as
if someone went out of his way to mimic Clement
(argued at length by Andrew Criddle in 1995).

* The letter conveniently goes out of its way to
authenticate Secret Mark, identifying the author
Clement, who in turn vouches for Secret Mark’s
authenticity; and his full citation of Secret Mark is
unnecessary and gratuitous for the concerns he is
supposedly addressing (pointed out by Robert Murgia
back in 1976).

* Smith published a paper -- right before his
discovery of Secret Mark -- in which he connected both
Clement of Alexandria and "the mystery of the kingdom
of God" (in Mk 4:11) to sexual immorality (in T.
Hagigah 2:1), which, of course, is exactly what Secret
Mark is all about. Amazingly, no one ever picked up on
this before Carlson.

* Smith deliberately planted three confessions which
reveal himself to be the author of Clement's letter:

(1) M. Madiotes -- the "bald swindler".
(2) Morton Salt -- the company which invented the kind
of salt presupposed in Clement's letter.
(3) Jesus' gay affair -- with the young man later seen
in Gethsemane, where Jesus was arrested, thus evoking
the cultural milieu of America in the 1950s, where
police were cracking down on gay men who met in public
parks and gardens.

Identifying these last signature-confessions
constitutes the bulk of this book, and it's brilliant
detective work on Carlson’s part. When taken in
conjunction with the rest of the damning evidence,
forger's tremors, and convenient "coincidences", they
suffocate Smith’s hoax once and for all.

Carlson insists on distinguishing hoaxes from
forgeries, and believes that associating Secret Mark
with the latter has hindered a proper understanding of
what Morton Smith was really up to. While I certainly
think Secret Mark can be called a forgery, I
appreciate Carlson’s concern about motive. He's
essentially right: Smith didn’t fabricate Secret Mark
to support his academic theories; he wanted to test
his colleagues with an elaborate prank. Secret Mark
belongs in a category of hoaxes which include the Ern
Malley Poems, Alan Sokol's postmodern hoax, and the
play by Sophocles really written by Dionysius the
Renegade. In this sense, in terms of motive, it’s
quite different from forgeries like Macpherson's
poetry, the Hitler Diaries, or Ireland's Shakespeare
play.

Donald Akenson wrote in Saint Saul five years ago: it
doesn’t take a specialist to spot the fakery in Secret
Mark. But it did take an expert like Carlson -- a
legal expert, not surprisingly -- to prove it.

Review by Loren Rosson III