"And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and said to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me." But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan."
In 1958, Morton Smith, a scholar of ancient history at Columbia University, discovered the Greek version of that passage, copied in an eighteenth-century hand, while exploring a monastery library east of Jerusalem. It's part of an incomplete letter by an early bishop of Alexandria that doesn't otherwise survive. The letter says that an augmented version of the Gospel of Mark including those lines was circulating in some second-century communities.
Unless the letter was Morton Smith's own forgery. Or an eighteenth-century forgery. Or a copy of a fifth-century forgery. Or anything else that could save modern scholars from taking it seriously as additional verses from an authentic alternative version of the Gospel of Mark. There's no dogfight more endless than a New Testament scholars' dogfight.
An article in the April 2024 issue of The Atlantic gives a précis of the controversy, which has continued unresolved since shortly after Smith published his book on the subject in 1973. The scholarly debate, however, isn't the main topic of Ariel Sabar's essay, "The 'Secret' Gospel and a Scandalous New Episode in the Life of Jesus." Instead, springboarding from a recent book on the controversy by Geoffrey Smith and Brett Landau, Sabar focuses on Morton Smith's biography as a gay Episcopal priest who broke with the Church, taught the rest of his career at Columbia, lived most of his life in the closet, held some wicked academic grudges, and committed suicide in 1991. (For a much fuller account of ongoing arguments over the passage's authenticity, the extensive Wikipedia article is a good place to start.)
For all the accusations that have been levelled at Morton Smith's scholarly bias, the new book finally turns its attention directly on the bias of his opponents' claims in their own right, and the weakly supported arguments they've made against the letter's authenticity. (Which no one has seen in decades, since shortly after it was taken into the "safekeeping" of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.)
The authors of the new study argue that the letter is a forgery, but a much earlier one, occasioned by anxiety over deep bonds formed by pairs of Eastern Orthodox monks. Such friendships were often celebrated, and honored by formal ceremonies of "becoming brothers," but they also came under suspicion of carnal attachment.
The version of the Gospel of Mark to which the letter attests has come to be generally known as the "Secret Gospel of Mark." "Secret Gospel" was Smith's translation of the phrase "mystikon euangelion," but the Greek phrase could just as easily be translated as the "mystical Gospel" or perhaps the "initiated Gospel." Those alternative translations suggest more clearly the idea of an inner teaching, accessible to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, but ignored or opposed by those who don't.
It would be great to know whether this passage really did circulate within some Christian communities in the second century. I can't deny that I hope it was. But I'm ready to assert its spiritual importance even if it was concocted in the fifth century--or indeed, in the eighteenth--by a monk whose devotional life embraced an erotic understanding of the Divine, and how a very fleshly Savior had touched his life.
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