I am grateful to Stephen Goranson for this guest post, and I must apologise that it has taken me so long to post it. I get so busy during term time that I end up neglecting the blog.
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1915, May, 28: Robert Morton Smith born. Died July 11, 1991. His father was Rupert Morton Smith.
1936: His Harvard senior honors paper, "[John] Arbuthnot's Influence upon [Jonathan] Swift," showcases his lifelong appreciation of mordant humor.
1941: Mar Saba visit, including participation in the liturgy.
1944: A sketchbook depicting Mar Saba demonstrates his graphic artistic ability.
1945ff: In letters to Gershom Scholem (edited by Guy G. Stroumsa, 2008), Smith makes clear that, before 1958, he intensely studied both Mark and Clement of Alexandria.
1949: In Journal of Pastoral Care 3, "Psychiatric Practice and Christian Dogma," 12-20 (here 16-17), Smith wrote, "He must be told that homosexuality is a sin far worse than fornication, and that unwillingness to repent of it automatically debars the sinner from the sacraments." Though Smith nominally retained his Episcopal priest status, he had lost his faith, and mocked Christian faith, before and after 1958. Whether denial of tenure at Brown (1955) was a factor is speculative. (Harvard U president Nathan Pusey vetoed hiring Smith, despite having two PhDs, in 1963.)
1958: He said he found the text at Mar Saba -- or he brought the 1646 Voss ed. Ignatius letters book with him, pre-inscribed. It was missing the front cover and spine and title page, where ownership marks usually appear. There is no record of that book being at Mar Saba before 1958.
1958: He showed Scholem the text and presented it as a parallel to Sabbatai Sevi's antinomianism. Scholem was not persuaded.
1958: In neat handwriting, neater than his book annotation marginal notes, Smith copied it as "Manuscript Material from the Monastery of Mar Saba, discovered, transcribed and translated by Morton Smith, copyright 1958, All rights Reserved, Manufactured in the United States."
1958-1959?: He showed Arthur Darby Nock the text, who, on sight reading, declared it not by Clement, but an imitation.
1960 December: SBL conference presentation. New York Times was invited, and reported, twice, Dec. 30 & 31, the second time with doubts by Pierson Parker.
1960: Nea Sion 52, 110-125, 245-256. Greek translation of St. Saba catalog. Not fully forthcoming about the text, number 65.
1973: Published The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark (Harper & Row). It is curious in tone, suggesting memory may be unreliable.
1973: Published Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Harvard UP). In Score, 1982, 456, he called it "a dreadfully complex book." Dedicated to Arthur Darby Nock, perhaps the first person who told Smith the Letter was not by Clement!
1975: Quentin Quesnell, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 37, 48-67, "The Mar Saba Clementine: A Question of Evidence," and following exchange in CBQ, 1976. Noted that Tübingen Prof. Johann Christoph Pfaff in 1715 wrote a 647 page defense of his Irenaeus forgeries, showing that such a case is not unprecedented.
1979: Published Jesus the Magician (Harper & Row), with scant scant mention of Secret Mark, so the book's arguments could stand on their own without any link. A review and exchange with Frank Kermode in New York Review of Books followed.
1982: HTR 75, 449-61, "Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark: The Score at the End of the First Decade." "Score" sounds like a sporting term. Contra Murgia, Musurillo, Munck and others.
c.1984f: Jewish Theological Seminary archive has another defense of the Letter, typed, corrected and, marked up for publishing but unpublished: "The Letter of Clement and Secret Mark: Evidence and Arguments."
1985: Eric Osborn, "Clement of Alexandria: A Review of Research, 1958-1982," Second Century 3, 219-244. Argues that Clement would not have written the letter.
1985: Postscript to the British republication of the Harper 1973 ed. of Secret Mark, Wellingborough: Aquarius, pages 149-54. Mentions a favorable review by Hugh Trevor-Roper in the Sunday Times (London), June 30, 1974; Trevor-Roper was later (in April, 1983) fooled by the Hitler Diaries fraud.
1991, July 13: Obituary by Glenn Fowler, New York Times, section 1, p. 9.
1991, Oct.: Obituary by Levon Avdoyan pages 4-5 in https://associationofancienthistorians. ... _2Fall.pdf
1992: Obituary by William M. Calder III, Gnomon 64,383-384.
2005: Stephen C. Carlson, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Baylor UP), makes a quite strong case for Smith having the means, motive, and opportunity. Before the Mar Saba sketchbook became available, underestimates the artistic copying ability of Smith. A self-identification as "Madiotēs" is doubtful according to Allan Pantuck and Scott Brown.
2005: Scott G. Brown, Mark's Other Gospel (Wilfrid Laurier UP). A defense of ancientness.
2007: Peter Jeffery, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery. Strong on matters of misleading humor and history of liturgy. Recommended by the editor of the Hermeneia Commentary on Mark, Adela Yarbro Collins: "Peter Jeffery's book proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Morton Smith forged the discovered text."
2009, October: Biblical Archaeology Review. Agamemnon Tselikas, expert historical paleographer, presents the handwriting as an attempt to copy 18th-century handwriting in the 20th century: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dai ... is-report/
2010: Albert I. Baumgarten, Columbia PhD under Smith, 1972, in Elias Bickerman as a Historian of the Jews, has a section on Smith, 205-210. On 209 he quotes Columbia colleague, Theodor Gaster, "Morton Smith is like a little boy whose goal in life is to write curse words all over the altar in church, and then get caught."
2022: Grant Adamson, "What Are the Odds? Serapion, Eusebius and Secret Mark." Novum Testamentum 64.3, 364-384. Argues that the Letter to Theodore was not by Clement of Alexandria, but by someone later than Eusebius.
2022: Jonathan Klawans, "Nastiness, Nonsense, Antinomianism, and Abuse: Morton Smith versus Morton Smith on Jesus, Secret Mark, and the Letter to Theodore," Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 9 (2022): 43-71; http://www.jjmjs.org/issues.html.
2023: Geoffrey S. Smith and Brent C. Landau, The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Controversial Scholar, a Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, and the Fierce Debate over its Authenticity (Yale UP). Makes a good case that the Letter to Theodore was not by Clement of Alexandria, but by someone later than Eusebius. But it dismisses with disdain the possibility of Morton Smith, rather than engaging the possibility; used the dismissive word "breadcrumbs" thirty times.
2024 April: The Atlantic, Ariel Sabar on a case more skilled than Gospel of Jesus' Wife, "The 'Secret' Gospel and a Scandalous New Episode in the Life of Jesus." Well researched and well written.
2024: Roy D. Kotansky. "Back to the Garden (of Gethsemane). Restoring the Text and Meaning of Secret Mark." Early Christianity 15.4, 478-513. One of the examples of the argument that Smith found a genuine text, but that he misunderstood it.
2025: Clare K. Rothschild, "Secret Mark in the Circle of Dutch Humanists." Journal of Religion [Chicago] 105/2, 176-201.
This is a selective, incomplete list. For additional bibliography, see, especially:
Shaye J. D. Cohen ed., "Writings of Morton Smith, including PhD dissertations as main advisor, and In Memoriam Morton Smith," pages 257-285 in vol. 2, 1996, of The Cult of Yahweh (Brill).
and
Michael J. Kok, Secret Gospel of Mark bibliography, https://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christ ... l-of-mark/
and
Jewish Theological Seminary Archive, Morton Smith Papers, https://archives.jtsa.edu/repositories/2/resources/118
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