On the Mar Saba Letter Attributed to Clement of Alexandria

In 1973 Morton Smith published a previously unknown letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria,¹ a letter which he himself had discovered in the Mar Saba monastery in Palestine. Since the publication of this letter there has been a great deal of controversy as to its significance and its authenticity. Most scholars have accepted the letter as an authentic work of Clement, important exceptions being Murgia,² Musurillo,³ and Quesnell,⁴ as well as Professor Osborn,⁵ who in a magisterial review of recent research on Clement argues that the letter is a pious forgery with an account of the life of Mark later than Eusebius of Caesarea. He regards the letter as successfully imitating Clement's style but misunderstanding Clement's ideas concerning secret tradition and treating literally Clement's metaphor (Strom. 7.17) of heretics breaking into the Church in order to steal its teaching.

There is, however, a wide variety of views, among those who accept the authenticity of the letter, concerning the apocryphal gospel from which it quotes. Some, such as Morton Smith, Koester,⁶ and Crossan,⁷ believe that this gospel may preserve traditions earlier than the canonical gospels. Other scholars believe that the extracts quoted are based on the canonical gospels, and a strong case has been made by Best⁸ that the extracts have many more "Markan" stylistic traits than a passage of similar length from the canonical Mark, and should be regarded as a deliberate imitation of Mark's style. Morton Smith discusses the problem of the large number of phrases in the Secret Gospel repeated in the canonical gospels, but argues that if the letter is in fact by Clement, the Secret Gospel must be too early to be a cento derived from the canonical gospels. This argument may be valid but the conclusion is only correct if the letter really is by Clement of Alexandria.

Among the most important recent contributions to the debate is an article by Meyer,⁹ who regards the letter as probably authentic. This paper provides a review of the literature, and some speculations about the relation between the Secret Gospel and Canonical Mark. It does not, however, discuss in any detail the arguments of those such as Osborn and Murgia who have claimed that, although superficially similar, the ideas about secrecy and esoteric tradition implied by the letter are difficult or impossible to reconcile with those stated, or implied, in Clement's undoubted works.

The present study seeks to show that the letter proper (i.e., excluding the heading and the extracts from the secret gospel), contains too high a ratio of Clementine to non-Clementine traits to be authentic and should be regarded as a deliberate imitation of Clement's style. One of the most striking pieces of evidence comes from a comparison of the vocabulary of the letter with the vocabulary of Clement's acknowledged works. Morton Smith lists seven words in the letter proper not otherwise found in Clement and fifteen words found only once. These figures are based on Stahlin's index,¹⁰ but use idiosyncratic criteria as to what is a new word as distinct from a new form of a previously occurring word. For example Morton Smith treats the comparative and superlative of an adjective as new words, and the active and middle of a verb as separate words. There is also the problem that Stahlin provides an incomplete listing of the occurrence of words in quotations by Clement from other works, particularly from the Bible.

Correcting for these problems as far as possible, one finds that five words (aperatos, apographon, aprophulaktôs, prosporeuomai, and phthonerôs) are not otherwise found in Clement. All five words are used once only in the letter. Ten words, however, are used once and once only in Clement's acknowledged works: andrapodôdês, asphalôs, ensômatos, exaggellô, exantleô, Hierichô (Jericho), hierophantikos, katapseudomai, mêchanaô (active in letter, used once in the middle in Clement's acknowledged works), and prosepagô. Of these ten words katapseudomai occurs twice in the letter, the...