Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s Controversial Discovery

Preface

Afew of my conventions require explanation. Most readers are struck by my aversion to the title the Secret Gospel of Mark. This title is a translation of the words mystikon euangelion, which Clement of Alexandria used in his Letter to Theodore to describe a longer version of Mark’s gospel that was used only in Alexandria (II.6, 12). I deliberately avoid using that translation as a title because I consider it not only incorrect but also misleading. A “mystic gospel” is not a concealed gospel but a gospel that contains concealed meanings. Unfortunately, the English word mystic does not have the same connotations as the Greek word upon which it is based, and I could not think of a better term. So I settled on the bland expression “the longer Gospel of Mark,” which is a description that was often used by Morton Smith, the man who discovered the letter. Clement’s expression mystikon euangelion is actually not the title for this gospel but only one of two descriptive phrases he used to distinguish this edition of Mark from the more familiar, canonical gospel. I likewise use a variety of phrases to denote the longer gospel, such as longer Mark, the longer text, the mystic gospel, and the amplified gospel. Perhaps the best description is Clement’s own expression “a more spiritual gospel,” by which he meant a gospel that concentrates on the interior, symbolic significance (“spirit”) of the external narrative (“body”). When relating the positions of scholars who think of this text as a secret gospel, I sometimes put secret in quotation marks in order to indicate my rejection of this characterization. I also use the phrase “the Markan gospel” as a way of referring to the contents that canonical Mark and longer Mark have in common, that is, to the literary context in which the distinctive longer text materials existed. Although I intend to demonstrate that Mark wrote both gospels, I use the cumbersome phrase “the author of the longer gospel” in order not to
Preface  Notes to preface start on page 239 xi brown_00_fm.qxd 2005/04/26 12:22 PM Page xi prejudice my argument. When I wrote my dissertation, I did not consider the question of authorship to be important to my literary-critical analysis. When I started rewriting my dissertation for publication as a book, I decided to investigate this question, motivated by the reality that the matter of authorship would preoccupy my readers. I was surprised to discover that my literary-critical observations could answer this historical question. Readers unfamiliar with Clement of Alexandria may be confused by my references to his gnosis. When I use the terms gnosis and gnostic in connection with Clement’s Alexandrian theology, I am referring to something other than speculative theories about the origins of the universe and dualistic myths of descent into matter. For Clement, gnosis determines one’s spiritual progression toward God, but not in the sense of the return of a divine being to the realm from which it had fallen. Clement subscribed to the gnostic mythology that Jesus (the Word) descended to impart to a select few a saving gnosis that would permit their eventual deification and perfect, mystic contemplation of God, through education and instruction in secret traditions. He also thought that this progressive self-deification would be completed after death. But in contrast to most gnostics, Clement did not perceive any innate differences among Christians, only acquired differences in their stages of perfection, which he hoped would not be permanent.1 The Greek transcription of the Letter to Theodore used in this book is from Morton Smith’s scholarly book on longer Mark but follows the corrections made in the commentary section.2 The Roman numerals refer to the page of the manuscript. Numeral “I” refers to folio 1 recto, “II” to folio 1 verso, and “III” to folio 2 recto. The numbers following these Roman numerals refer to the line number. The line divisions given are not exactly those of the manuscript , for it proved simpler not to split up individual words at the line divisions , particularly in English translation. References to Clement’s other writings use Roman numerals in the conventional way, to refer to book divisions within a larger book. For example, Strom. I.11.50.1 refers to Stromateis Book One, chapter 11, paragraph 50 (counted from the beginning of a book, not from the beginning of that chapter), section (“verse”) 1. Likewise, Prot. 12.120...