PARTS: I
- II
- III
- IV
Addendum - Hobbs Critique And More
Discussion on Crosstalk 1996
Addendum on Secret Mark
By Bart Ehrman @email.unc.edu
Thursday
April 25, 1996 11:13 PM PST
An addendum to my posting on a sixth=century ms of Mark. I also asked Charlesworth
if he had ever thought about trying to track down the 18th century copy of
the letter of Clement of Alexandria found in an edition of the letters of
Ignatius in the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem which allegedly preserves
Clement's discussion of the Secret Gospel of Mark (Morton Smith published
his own photographs of the letter, but no one else has actually seen the thing
itself). Charlesworth told me that he has in fact made some inquiries, but
that the book in which the letter is found has been moved to Jerusalem, and
no one, evidently, knows exactly where.
Does anyone else have additional information on this?
-- Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By GLENN WOODEN @acadiau.ca
Friday
April 26, 1996 12:54 PM PST
Bart and others interested in Smith and the letter of Clement of Alex:
Last year at this time there was an extended discussion about this very topic
on B-Greek. At that time Professor Edward Hobbs posted a lengthy article in
which he relates various discussions and events surrounding Smith's claims
about the said document. With Hobbs' permission (I have sent a request to
him) I will forward that post to this list, hopefully soon. The long and short
of it is: scholars concluded that it was a forgery; and Smith was not amused!
Glenn Wooden
Acadia Divinity College
Wolfville N.S.
Canada
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By Bart Ehrman @email.unc.edu
Friday
April 26, 1996 02:49 PM PST
Glenn,
Yes, I was on B-Greek at the time and recall the interchange. What I'm wondering
about is the actual *place* of the text in question. (I should point out in
fairness to both Smith and the discussion, that the forgery question was raised
but it has not been answered to the satisfaction of all; before everyone jumps
on that bandwagon, they should reread Smith's longer treatment of the question
in his _Clement of Alexandria..._; I was inspired to do so by the discussion,
and despite my propensity to think he forged it, have to say that his analysis
is *extremely* compelling -- the sort of thing that loses almost everything
in translation. If he did forge this thing, it's one the most amazing feats
of scholarship in the 20th century; and he would have done so at a remarkably
young age.)
In any event, does anyone else know where the ms itself is?
-- Bart D. Ehrman
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By Maurice Robinson @mercury.interpath.com
Saturday
April 27, 1996 03:06 PM PST
On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, Bart Ehrman wrote:
Despite my propensity to think he forged it, have to say that his analysis
is *extremely* compelling -- the sort of thing that loses almost everything
in translation. If he did forge this thing, it's one the most amazing feats
of scholarship in the 20th century; and he would have done so at a remarkably
young age.
This sounds much like the matter of the Brazilian Paraiba inscription which
Cyrus Gordon pronounced authentic (it recounts some Phoenecians blown off
course while attempting to circumnavigate Africa, ending up in what is now
Brazil). Gordon's point there was that there were certain grammatical peculiarities
in the inscription (found in 1898) which were not known within northwest Semitic
until the Ugaritic materials had been discovered. Nevertheless, most scholars
still considered the Paraiba inscription to be a forgery, which seems peculiar.
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D. Assoc. Prof./Greek and New Testament Southeastern
Baptist Theological Seminary Wake Forest, North Carolina
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By William L. Petersen @psu.edu
Friday
April 26, 1996 02:20 PM PST
Just a quick bibliographic note: P.W. van der Horst, of Utrecht, published
an article in Dutch in 1979 in _Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift_ 33, pp.
27-51, titled "Het 'geheime Markusevangelie'. Over een nieuwe vondst" ("The
'Secret Gospel of Mark.' Concerning a new find"). It is a survey of the first
5 years' scholarly reaction to Smith's publication of the text(which appeared
in 1973), and deserves study. He has, with typical thoroughness, examined
every position; therefore, even if you don't read Dutch, the bibliography
in the notes is valuable.
The article is reprinted in v.d. Horst's collected essays, _De onbekende god_,
Utrechtse Theologische Reeks 2 (Utrecht 1988), pp. 37-64.
Petersen--Penn State University
Re: Addendum on Secret Mark
By [email protected]
Friday
April 26, 1996 10:06 PM PST
In a message dated 96-04-26 11:55:38 EDT, you write:
The long and short of it is: scholars concluded that it was a forgery; and
Smith was not amused!
It was a 16th century text incorporating the Secret Mark text, wasn't it?
Was it supposed to have been a 16th century forgery? If so, it was a hidden
one, used as the back of another text as I remember, or was it? Who was trying
to fool whom? Smith had so many questions, himself, that I thought he rather
ran through most of the possibilities of fraud.
Hobbs et al. on Smith & Secret Mark, I
By GLENN [email protected]
Monday
April 29, 1996 11:36 AM PST
Edward Hobbs forwarded his archived material on Smith and the controversy
surrounding the letter of Clement of Alex, with permission to forward it to
this list for those interested. It has some up-to-date bibliography (1995)
on the matter. Because it was so long I am sending it in two sections.
Glenn Wooden
Forwarded material, #1: a long collection.
From: "[email protected]" "Paul Moser" 5-MAY-1995 15:31:26.14
To: "[email protected]"
Subject: Secret Mark, Neusner, Smith, etc.
I wonder if any listmember knows of a careful review of Jacob Neusner, *Are
There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels?* (Scholars Press, 1993).
The book is a vigorous criticism of Morton Smith's *Tannaitic Parallels to
the Gospels*. In addition, Neusner announces that Smith's proposed evidence
for the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark "must now be declared the forgery
of the century" (p. 28). Neusner suggests that Smith himself forged the Clement
of Alexandria fragment that allegedly surfaced in a library in Sinai in 1958,
giving evidence of the Secret Gospel. As one might have expected, Helmut Koester
and J.D. Crossan regard canonical Mark as postdating Secret Mark. For overwhelming
evidence against the latter view, see Robert Gundry, *Mark* (Eerdmans, 1993);
cf. F.F. Bruce, *The Canon of Scripture*, and J.H. Charlesworth & C.A. Evans,
in *Studying the Historical Jesus* (Brill, 1994), pp. 526-32. Neusner, in
any case, clearly has higher standards for authenticity than Koester or Crossan.
Neusner suggests that Smith presented only photographs, not the actual MS,
of the Clement fragment.-- Paul Moser, Loyola University of Chicago.
From: "[email protected]" 5-MAY-1995 23:05:04.04
To: "[email protected]"
Subject: Secret Mark, Neusner, Smith, etc.
I had not heard of Neusner's claim or this particular work of Neusner's (_Are
There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels?_) but I have studied this
issue of Secret Mark and had become convinced that Morton Smith perpetrated
a fraud, also. Not a single reference to or reaction against this alleged
Clement letter is known in history; and the book in which Morton Smith found
the letter at the Mar Saba monastery was not listed in any previous catalogue
of that monastery. Morton Smith made no effort whatever toward conservation
of the manuscript, nor has the document apparently been seen or brought to
light for testing and analysis by anyone else. (I do not doubt that a genuine
17th century book with a letter in the back exists; but there is no evidence
beyond M Smith's word that he found it in the monastery.) The shocking contents
of the letter sound suspiciously like theories Morton Smith was working on;
and there is much more. I am unfamiliar with Neusner's analysis, but in my
own reading of Smith's account of the discovery I have noted strange ways
Smith puts things. For example, he dedicated his book on the Secret Gospel,
cryptically, "To the one who knows"; and never disclosed who this person was
or what this person knew.
For articulation of suspicions of forgery before now Quentin Quesnell in _Catholic
Biblical Quarterly_ 37 (1975): 48-67 is a classic, and see also M. Smith's
reply and Quesnell's reply to Smith's reply in the next issue, CBQ 38. There
is a good discussion of the forgery question in _Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation,
or Old Tradition?- ed. R. Fuller (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies,
1976). This list's very own Edward Hobbs was at the Colloquium reported in
this last citation, where Smith was also present at the discussion of whether
his discovery was a forgery; perhaps Dr. Hobbs can offer some illuminating
firsthand anecdotal information of that occasion! Greg Doudna West Linn, Oregonx
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 14-MAY-1995 18:46:02.72
To: "[email protected]"
Subject: Lengthy account of Secret Mark
Dear Friends of the B-Greek List:
Thanks to several of you who have asked me to comment on the "Secret Mark"
issue, and the 18th Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic
and Modern Culture, called "Longer Mark: Forgery, Interpolation, or Old Tradition?".
I'll post in two parts: this one, and a follow-up which will be the first
part of the text of my Critique, not including the Synopsis (in Greek) which
I produced to show the obvious Gospel source of every phrase in Smith's supposed
Secret Mark.
BACKGROUND (Skip to SECRET MARK if you wish.)
The Center (founded in 1969 by me and Dieter Georgi, in a [vain] effort to
keep Dieter in Berkeley rather than leaving for Harvard) brought together
faculty from U.C.Berkeley, GTU, Stanford, Un. of S.F., Un. of Santa Clara,
U.C.Santa Cruz, occasionally others. Nine departments of U.C. Berkeley were
participants! At the Colloquies, we solicited a Position Paper (from scholars
everywhere: besides the Bay Area, Harvard (many times), Columbia (Morton Smith
himself!), Chicago, Bryn Mawr, Claremont, SUNY, as well as Oxford, St. Andrews,
Constanz, Cologne, Zurich, Paris (Sorbonne), and on and on. The Position Paper
was printed and distributed to a select group of Critics (local and elsewhere),
who wrote Critiques. The Position Paper and the Critiques were then printed
together and sent to the participants a couple of weeks before the Colloquy
met. At the Colloquy, we first had 45 minutes of fine wines (from my cellar)
and nibbles, with pleasant conversation. Then we met in a giant circle (if
possible -- when 40 or more showed up we had to use concentric circles), the
Paper author had 15 minutes to respond orally to the Critics, followed by
general discussion, following a series of questions which I usually presented
as we began. All this was tape-recorded (by my son Kevin--now a mathematician,
one of the "Hubble-fixers" who designed the new lenses for the Hubble space
telescope). The tape-recording was then transcribed (by one of my graduate
students), and copies of everyone's remarks (now severely edited down, usually
by me or a trusted graduate student) were typed up and sent to every speaker
who was being summarized. Each speaker was allowed to expunge idiocies unless
they provoked further discussion, to edit down further, and to improve their
English. (Imagine doing all this without computers!) After taking all these
things into account, the results were published in a series of Protocols (also
handled physically by me, dealing with various local printers and binders),
and sent out to subscribers by another of my graduate students (Sharon Boucher,
who was never paid for years of this). My colleague at PSR, Wilhelm Wuellner,
dearly loved the limelight, and so we usually called him Chairman, often Editor,
etc., though in fact all the labors were done by unsung others. We met thus
three to seven times a year.
SECRET MARK
Reginald Fuller (of Virginia Theological Seminary at that time) was planning
to visit Berkeley for a few weeks, and wrote to say that he had a paper in
the works on Morton Smith's "Secret Mark", wondering whether we wanted to
us it as a Position Paper. We agreed, and the Colloquy was initiated (actual
meeting on 7 December 1975). Smith himself wrote a Critique, as well as Helmut
Koester (always a fan of Smith, to my eternal puzzlement), Hans Dieter Betz,
Birger Pearson (UC-SB), Bud (Paul) Achtemeier (Union-Virginia), and locals
(including me, and my then-student Daryl Schmidt). Charles Murgia, then Chairman
of the Dept. of Classics at Berkeley, wrote a devastating proof of forgery.
In the discussion, he said that he didn't think Smith himself did the forging,
because Smith's knowledge of Greek was inferior to that of the author/forger,
and because the forger had an excellent sense of humor, which Smith lacked.
(My reaction was to say that I'd rather be accused of forgery than of lacking
a sense of humor and being deficient in Greek!) My own effort in advance was
to prepare a Greek Synopsis, with three columns: "Clement's" Text, Parallels
in Mark, and Parallels in John. I thought it evidenced that the work was a
"pastiche" created from canonical Gospel materials. (I also said that since
I wasn't a Clement-scholar, I couldn't judge whether the forgery was pre-
or post-Clement, hence I would simply assume Robert Grant's opinion that the
letter sounded like Clement. I didn't believe it, but I didn't want to take
on THAT issue as well. Smith later cited me, in Harvard Theological Review,
as one who accepted the authenticity of the work!) After publication, the
hate-mail from Smith began. He quickly learned that I was the center of this
vortex, and letter after letter of vitriol, spite, irrational attacks, and
the like were showered upon me. This was despite the fact that I had refrained
from voicing my personal opinion, that the "letter" and the "secret Mark text"
never existed, but were invented by Smith. He produced no MS., only some "photographs"
he claimed to have made at Mar Saba monastery in 1958. He kept the matter
secret for 14 years, then published two books, a "scholarly" one and a "popular"
one. No other person has ever been able to locate the book in which this stuff
was supposedly written (mainly on the flyleaf and the binding paper). The
entire affair reeks of fraud, which Quentin Quesnell had the courage to publish
aloud (I DID have the courage to call attention to his work during the Colloquy!)
A SECOND ATTEMPT (to debunk Jesus)
Three years later, I was Visiting Professor at Claremont, and working with
the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. Hans Dieter Betz (this was before
he went to Chicago) was Chairman, and he asked me to be the critic for an
all-day session planned to discuss Smith's new MS. which he had sent ahead,
"Jesus the Magician".(Having failed to convince everyone that Jesus was executed
for running a gay-liberation group, caught in the act in Gethsemane, he now
turned to prove that he was executed for being a magician.) I tried to beg
off, but Betz was insistent; he assured me that Smith would be quite open
to any valid criticism. The typed MS. was about three inches thick, and ruined
a week for me. When the day arrived, he walked in, took one look at me, and
paled noticeably. He was furious that I had been chosen, but had to sit quietly
for 45 minutes while I took his MS. apart (the published version withdrew
EVERYTHING I leveled my fire at, fortunately for him). I even pointed out
that his major evidence for claiming that Jesus was the bastard child of a
German soldier, was in Alfred Rosenberg's Nazi pseudo- philosophical work,
_The Myth of the 20th Century_; Smith quoted the German title, and thought
readers would assume this was from some renowned German historian! He raged
at me for about half an hour, but then (thankfully) Jim Robinson picked up
on the attack, and we had a heavy day of argument, about it and about. That
evening, it turned out that Smith and I were the guests of honor at a dinner
put on by Betz! And we were seated together! So we discussed magical amulets,
about which he knew a great deal and I knew nothing, thus escaping ulcers
for the evening. The hate-mail began pouring in about a week later; but I
noticed that the published book eliminated all the stupidities and errors
I had nastily pointed out. Thereafter, when we met at the annual Harvard receptions
for faculty (including me) and alumni (including him) at the AAR/SBL national
meetings, we avoided each other conspicuously.
TWO LOYAL COLLEAGUES
Chopped into mincemeat at the 1979 SBL meeting in NYC, a special event was
held for Pierson Parker (of General Seminary most of his life), focusing
on his early-fifties book _The Gospel before Mark_ [positing a kind of Ur-Markus
called K, on which Matthew was based, with canonical Matthew being thus earlier
than canonical Mark]. Four speakers were lined up, one of whom had been a
student of Parker (Rhys was his name), and another of whom was Morton Smith.
Smith was chosen at Parker's request, for Parker had always championed Smith
and his work, even though most others in the guild despised (and feared) him.
Rhys gave a pleasant little talk, followed by Smith, who worked himself up
into a rage over Rhys's words. He said that this speech should be printed
as an example of every stupidity possible in the scholarly world. He then
went on to attack Parker, saying that Parker's view that Matthew was prior
to Mark was simply the old Roman Catholic view, and that Parker, being an
Episcopal priest, was sucking up to Rome, as Episcopal priests always do.
It was a horrifying performance! When the brief time for discussion arrived,
the Chair wanted to close things off quickly. But I leaped to my feat and
asked just how it was that Episcopal priest Parker was driven into bias by
that fact, whereas somehow Episcopal priest Smith had miraculously escaped,
and was enabled to be objective and full of truth? I pressed the issue of
ad hominem attacks, questioning whether anyone--EVEN MORTON SMITH--had a right
to behave in that fashion at a scholarly meeting. He sputtered for a moment,
then stalked out. About ten years ago (I think it was in Chicago, but all
these hotels are so similar I'm not sure), Smith took the platform to denounce
the translation by Jacob Neusner of an ancient rabbinic document. Neusner
claimed this was the first time it had appeared in English, and that he had
done the translation. Smith revealed that it in fact was lifted from a translation
made centuries ago. Neusner was publicly humiliated, and found it hard to
show up for things for a few years. (My vagueness about the exact titles,
etc., is because I was in an adjacent room, and did not directly hear this
attack; I was told of it many times over during the hours and days which followed.)
Now, the interesting thing about this is not that such a thing could happen;
plagiarism is shameful, maybe on a par with forgery (?). It is that Jacob
Neusner was one of Smith's few ardent champions (Parker and Koester being
two of the other three or four). Smith had turned on one of the few friends
he had left! Finally: I gather Neusner is now having his revenge!
Edward C. Hobbs
Hobbs et al. on Smith & Secret Mark, II
By GLENN WOODEN @acadiau.ca
Monday
April 29, 1996 11:36 AM PST
Forwarded material, #2: a long collection.
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 14-MAY-1995 18:47:00.73
To: "[email protected]"
Subject: Portion of My Critique on "Secret Mark" [Colloquy 18] [This material
is Copyright 1975.]
The issue before us in this Colloquy (as it properly is in each of our Colloquies)
should be the fundamental methodological one: How is it that we solve problems
about the interpretation of a text? This is a special form of the more general
issue of how we make historical judgments. Since we deal with the unrepeatable,
and thus are deprived of the experimental method in any strict sense, and
since we further are not engaged with logical deduction from postulates in
the fashion of mathematics, we are faced with the criterion of probability.
Thus much is, however, granted by everyone (or, almost everyone!). The problem
remains, what constitutes probability?
I wish to suggest that one crucial dimension of any theory of probability,
whether in the natural sciences or in the humanistic disciplines including
history, is the well-proven Law of Parsimony, or Ockham's Razor: Non sunt
multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem. Ockham himself, as is well-known,
did not invent the principle; but he used it effectively and constantly (though
not in this exact formulation which goes by his name; he preferred two other
wordings), and he has handed on to us a tool for cutting away flights of fancy
and distinguishing the probable from the merely possible. The modern form
of it in the sciences usually demands the postulation of the fewest unobservable
commensurate with or necessary to explain the evidence. Morton Smith acknowledges
the criterion of probability quite explicitly (e.g., The Secret Gospel, p.
148--the last paragraph of the book; and Clement of Alexandria and a Secret
Gospel of Mark, pp. 289-290--a passage parallel to the previous one); but
he also undercuts the criterion by saying, "But the truth is that improbable
things sometimes happen. Therefore truth is necessarily stranger than history."
(The Secret Gospel, p. 148) Unless this sentence has a hidden meaning (and
Smith seems to love them), he seems to be saying that our notions of probability
are not fitted to the actual course of happenings in the world, and thus that
"truth" (what really happened?) is stranger than "history" (what non-Smith
historians write down?). This is a curious notion of probability, indeed!
At the level of small detail, Smith's work is indeed "erudite," as it is usually
called; his Clement volume is filled with a wealth of homework preparatory
to historical explanation.
At the next stage of work, however, he moves suddenly into a rarified realm
from which he is able to dismiss all scholars and all scholarly methods in
general use with whom and which he differs; scholars' work at odds with his
(or even potentially at odds, in the future: see, e.g., Clement, p. 287, "To
prevent foreseeable stupidities...") regularly is labeled "worthless," "ludicrous,"
"hostile," "muddled," "stupidity," in some cases "malicious and deliberately
deceitful" (he says there are several of these apparently, while singling
out one as "most" so), "extravagance of exegetic fantasy, " and the like.
Tools basic to the discipline seem either to be non-existent (e.g. redaction
criticism) or to be so badly used by everyone else that "alternatives" need
to be used (e.g. form criticism). Important redaction-critical work is ignored
or else dismissed as "fantasy" (so with Marxsen's important work), and recent
form-critical study, even of this precise passage of Mark, is nowhere mentioned
(e.g. H.-W. Kuhn's work). In view of this treatment of differing scholars and
methods, our deliberations are unlikely to meet any different fate at the
hands of Smith; those who are sympathetic to his work will be praised, and
those who differ will be damned (will we, hopefully, be allowed to choose
whether we are to be labeled "stupid," "ludicrous," or merely engaging in
"fantasy"?).
It seems to me that Ockham's Razor demands that we utilize the least new hypotheses
to account for this text. Smith calls his explanation an "account" or a "history";
it is, in fact, an elaborate web of many hypotheses, each one constructed
to fit the facts of the text to the previously constructed hypothesis. It
is ingenious, and is just the method adopted by the author of historical fiction--one
constructs an account which will touch on the known facts at as many points
as possible, so as to create the effect "Yes, it might well have happened
like this, indeed!" Like many scholars and others, I enjoy historical fiction;
I become uneasy only when the word "fiction" is omitted from the sub-title
or jacket description. And note that "fiction" does not here mean untrue;
it is possible that it happened in such fashion. But the historian does not
call his elaborate construction that touches all points while going far beyond
them, a "history"; he reserves that term for the work to which he has applied
Ockham's Razor, removing all absolutely unessential or unnecessary unobservables.
The simplest explanation is one which accords with other phenomena already
known to us from early Christian history. (In what follows, I am assuming
that the Letter is indeed from Clement. I am uncertain of this; but Robert
Grant, who is far more capable than I to judge the question, considers that
Smith has proved this point, and I accept his judgment.) It is roughly as
follows:
(1) Following Paul's lead (Romans 6:1-11), some Christians in Alexandria (Carpocratians,
apparently, and others) interpreted baptism as resurrection. Someone among
them felt the need of an account in the Gospels to illustrate this, and set
out to fill the need.
(2) Our author, working after the collection of our four Gospels, is acquainted
with the texts of all of them; but he best knows Mark (long associated with
Alexandria), just as most people have a favorite Gospel. The Lazarus story
(John 11) is the one lengthy resurrection account, but it cannot be simply
duplicated. Luke has a resurrection story concerning a male (all of the Synoptics
have the story of Jairus' daughter), also; he is called *neaniskos*, a term
also occurring in Mark's story of the empty tomb.
(3) Our author has his clues, and begins to piece together his paradigmatic
pericope. The to-be-resurrected *neaniskos* has (a mother--Luke? two sisters--John?)
a sister, who intercedes for him. The details of the pericope are easily assembled
from other healing accounts in Mark, plus the obvious Lazarus-parallel. Especially
attractive are some accounts which involve "resurrection" (*egeiro*,1:31;
5:41; 10:49; 16:6) or a "tomb" (*mnemeion*, 5:2,3,5; 15:46;16:2,3,5,8).
(4) The *neaniskos* produces by easy connections his clothing (Mark 14:51)
which is like that of the pre-resurrected Jesus (Mark 15:46) and the statement
that "looking on him, he loved him" (Mark 10:21, with its Matthaean parallel
for *neaniskos*), as well as his wealth (Mark 10:22; cf. Luke 18:23 for exact
wording).
(5) The locale is given by the Lazarus story--perhaps also by Mark 8:22, text
of Codex Beza. As noted by Smith, the pericope's text often accords with the
"Western" text; but the simpler explanation is that our author actually read
such a text (coming into being about 150 by the usual dating), rather than
that the Western text derived from "Longer Mark," a theory that explains nothing
about the Western text in the rest of the Gospels and Acts. Even the dating
is given by the Lazarus story, conflated (or maybe not, though the wording
is identical) with the opening of Mark's Transfiguration story (in which Jesus
is clothed in white, as is the *neaniskos* in the empty tomb).
(6) Our author at the end has to get Jesus back to where the account in Mark
continues. The entire process is a simple one: A Mark-sounding story is produced
by utilizing related stories in Mark and their phrasing, combined with the
obvious resurrection story in John, and some inevitable wording derived from
memory of the Matthew and Luke parallels (cf. our own "rich young ruler,"
a description which is a conflation of the synoptic accounts). To account
for the similarities to Mark by having a translator (working from an Aramaic
Vorlage) deliberately imitate Mark's style is "multiplying entities," indeed.
Finally, could such an "invention" (a "pastiche" might be the best term) be
interpolated into Mark's text, even though the Gospel was already accepted
as in some sense "canonical"? Of course it could!--all we have to recall is
the way in which the pericope on the adulterous woman was inserted into various
places, without fire falling from heaven (after Luke 21:38; after John 7:36;
after John 7:52; after John 21:24), or the way in which various endings were
attached to Mark, endings pieced together in much the fashion we have observed
here. If Stendhal's statement (quoted on p. 85, Clement) means that the text
cannot have originated in the late second century or after, then it is demonstrably
wrong, on the evidence of the pericopes just cited and their textual history;
perhaps, however, Stendhal's comment refers to a time after the fixing of
the text, i.e., after the supremacy of the Byzantine text.
(by: Edward C. Hobbs -- From the Protocol of the 18th Colloquy)
From: "[email protected]" 15-MAY-1995 03:43:41.88
To: "[email protected]" CC: "[email protected]"
Subject: RE: Lengthy account of Secret...
Dear Professor Hobbs and friends, Thanks to the professor for recalling Morton's
visit to Berkeley in 1975. The topic seems now to be more important and exciting
than it was at the time, which is a surprise to me. I just want to add a few
things in order to balance out the report of E. Hobbs. No one that I knew took
Professor Smith seriously at that time. I never cease to be amazed when I
hear people twenty years later talking about his invention. Prof. Hobbs is
right when he consigns this gospel to the genre of historical novel. We all
knew our visitor was mad, but now people don't know this. I didn't know that
Prof. Hobbs openly contradicted our visitor. I don't remember anyone wanting
to offend the mad one. We thought it our duty to humor him and give him an
open forum at the Hermeneutic Center. At the time he was travelling all over
California attracting big crowds and newspaper coverage. I was sent to the
airport to pick him up and found a place for him to stay in Benton Hall. I
think I heard him speak but was more interested in Professor Hobbs's selections
of California reds at the time. Professor Smith's apologia in the Harvard
Theological Review came as a real shock to me, him marshalling and counting
all these famous names who believed in his historical romance. I really do
not understand how anyone, student or professor, can take seriously his fantasy.
On the other hand, I am concerned that apparently people are doing just that.
That's the reason I am saying that at that time no one who knew him took this
seriously but people tried to be courteous and not offend someone who was
obviously deranged.
Richard Arthur, Merrimack [email protected]
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 15-MAY-1995 13:08:17.51
To: "[email protected]"
Subject: Smith's visit to Berkeley: correction
Richard Arthur's supplement to my account was a pleasant reminder that other
people still live who were there. But I'm afraid he is remembering the wrong
Colloquy. Smith visited Berkeley only once, to my knowledge; it was for Colloquy
6, held on 12 April 1973. The subject of his position paper was "The Aretalogy
Used by Mark". It was on that occasion that Richard Arthur picked up Smith
and took him to his room at PSR. Colloquy 18 is the one we have been discussing.
Smith was not present; neither was Richard Arthur (who may have graduated
by then?). The date for this Colloquy was close to three years later, on 7
December 1975. The Position Paper was by Reginald Fuller. Secret Mark had
not even been published when Smith was present in early 1973, so of course
I did not challenge him on it (never having heard of it). I stand by my statement
sent yesterday. How I wish everyone had thought Smith deranged! But I did
take him on, not only then (in his absence), but on several later occasions,
two of which I reported to all of you yesterday. There was never an agreement
to be nice to him, at least not one I signed. I wasn't even nice to Ernest
Badian (Harvard) when he was with us in 1976 (what an arrogant fellow he was).
Incidentally, I received a message asking if I knew Morton Smith was dead.
Yes, I knew, almost immediately. So does Neusner know. Edward Hobbs
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 17-MAY-1995 15:46:38.71
To: "[email protected]"
Secret Mark, Smith, Ad Hominem, & Koester
First, may I thank most warmly those of you who have responded to unwarranted
innuendoes about my report on the Secret Mark controversy. I did not write
that material of my own choice; I was asked by more than a half-dozen of you
to do so. Nothing in it was fabricated, and nothing in it suggested that because
Smith behaved outrageously when crossed, his scholarship was to be disregarded.
A student from Canada has exhorted us to avoid ad hominem attacks, implying
that I had engaged in them. It was precisely for that reason I had reported
Smith's repeated use of the ad hominem attack; but I did not use it myself.
May I point out that;
(1) I personally spent most of two months of 1975 in organizing, conducting,
and editing/publishing a careful analysis of Smith's "Secret Mark" work. I
also pointed out that I had carefully refrained from expressing my private
belief that the supposed MS. was a recent forgery (i.e., within the last 1800
years). Surely this counts as "judging his views on the basis of his written
legacy."
(2) "Jesus the Magician" was the recipient of more than 40 hours of my time,
in 1976, resulting in more than 50 pages of criticism delivered to Smith by
me, along with a 45-minute oral summary at the beginning of a day-long discussion
of his MS. The published volume altered almost every one of the passages I
criticized; had I not devoted that extended time to working through his original
MS., the published volume would have been far more roundly criticized by its
reviewers. This was not an ad hominem attack. That I reported to you some
of what was asked for -- namely, the living-person relationship I had with
Smith -- was offered not to attack his views, but to report what almost everyone
knew about him who disagreed with him. Bob Kraft has rightly -- and generously
-- pointed out the supportive, humorous, and congenial way Smith (at times)
treated his friends. He also acknowledged his cantankerous, intimidating,
confrontational ways on other occasions. I happen to admire Bob Kraft for
his loyalty toward his friends, even when dead; I count this a great quality
in a person. As I pointed out, sometimes Smith did not share this quality
(re: Parker and Neusner, for example). And I want to state emphatically that
Helmut Koester also possesses this quality, even at great cost to himself
(as in the Bob Funk affair). Hence Helmut has loyally defended Smith through
the years, and gave him a forum at Harvard when he otherwise would have been
dismissed out of hand. Helmut is an honest scholar, and a great scholar. He
and I disagree about many matters of N.T. scholarship, but he has never dismissed
me or my work as a consequence. He was my department chairman at the time
of my second major broadside against the Q-hypothesis (at SBL in Chicago,
six years after my first), and even then he only declined to speak to me for
two days! Then all was well again. I cannot want for a better friend and colleague.
May I suggest that when we evaluate the written legacy of a scholar, we also
take the trouble to read the written legacy of those who have faulted that
scholar's legacy. Apparently Smith has supporters of his views who have not
bothered to read the reviews and follow-up work. (And among these I do NOT
count either Bob Kraft or Helmut Koester.)
Edward Hobbs
From: "[email protected]" "Edgar M. Krentz" 15-JUN-1995 11:22:23.14
To: "[email protected]"
Subject: Secret Gospel of Mark
There was a recent lengthy string about the _Secret Gospel of Mark_ published
by Morton Smith. Those interested may want to read a reent article: A. H.
Criddle, "On the Mar Saba Letter Attributed to Clement of Alexandria," _Journal
of Early Christian Studies_ 2,3 (Summer 1995) 215-220. Criddle argues that
the Clement letter is spurious and that _Secret Mark_ is therefore of dubious
authenticity. His argument is based on a model of vocabulary statistics that he and an analysis of uaantitative rhythms.
Edgar Krentz [[email protected]]
[Please continue to part 3 - "Magic
And Ancient Christianity - & Homosexuality?"]