Morton Smith

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Morton Smith

Born May 29, 1915
Flag of the United States Philadelphia
Died July 11, 1991
Flag of the United States Manhattan
Occupation Historian

Morton Smith (May 29, 1915 – July 11, 1991) was an American professor of ancient history at Columbia University. He is best known for his discovery of the Mar Saba letter, a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria containing excerpts from a Secret Gospel of Mark during a visit to the monastery at Mar Saba in 1958. This letter fragment has had many names, from The Secret Gospel through The Mar Saba Fragment and the Theodoros. [1]

He was born in Philadelphia on May 29, 1915. He received his bachelor's degrees from Harvard College and the Harvard Divinity School, a Ph.D. from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in theology from Harvard Divinity School. He taught at Brown University and Drew University and then he became a teacher at Columbia University in 1957. He became professor emeritus in 1985 and continued as a lecturer in religion until 1990. He died of heart failure on July 11, 1991 in Manhattan. [2]

Contents

[edit] Mar Saba letter

[edit] Discovery of the letter

The manuscript discovery was fairly small, consisting of three pages of Greek manuscript bound in as end-papers to another book, an edition of the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch. Morton Smith photographed the three pages of Greek manuscript, and returned the volume to its original place in the library.

[edit] Contents

First, it was a previously unknown letter written by Clement of Alexandria. Second, it was a secret letter to his disciple Theodore. The letter congratulates Theodore on silencing the Carpocratians, who were citing a libertine version of the Gospel of Mark. The bulk of the letter is spent acknowledging the fact that there is indeed a "secret Gospel of Mark," but Clement's version of Mark is not the version which the Carpocratians are using.

In particular, the letter quotes "Secret Mark" to the effect that Jesus had a practice of initiating his male followers into the "mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven." But, also in particular, Clement insists that "Secret Mark" does not include the verbiage "naked male with naked male."

Morton Smith published his findings in 1973 in two different books: one was a rigorously academic volume from Harvard entitled Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, while the second was a popular explanation entitled The Secret Gospel.

[edit] Accusations of forgery

It did not take long for the first accusations of forgery to be made. In 1975, Quentin Quesnell published a lengthy article in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, claiming that Smith had forged the document then photographed his alleged forgery. An incensed Smith issued a furious rebuttal, but the debate never progressed beyond these extremes; the unresolved questions lingered on and have continued to tarnish his reputation.

Scholars Philip Jenkins, Robert M. Price and Scott G. Brown noticed parallels between The Secret Gospel of Mark and a novel by James Hunter published in 1940 entitled The Mystery of Mar Saba. [3]

[edit] History of the manuscript

Morton Smith reported he found the manuscript in the Mar Saba monastery in 1958, photographed it carefully, and then left the book where he found it. He, cautiously, did not publish until 1973. When people asked him where the original manuscript was, he replied, "On the third floor of the library, where I found it." Four scholars found the manuscript there and saw it. [4]

Then the chief monk got involved, and transferred the book to the Patriarchal Library in Jerusalem. Supposedly, this was part of a project to move all the Mar Saba books to safer keeping. It was never completed. The librarian at the Patriarchal Library removed the manuscripts from the end-papers of the book where Smith had found it, and took more photographs. This was part of a plan, it was said at the time, to keep the books and the manuscripts in separate places. And this plan evidently was never completed. The current stance of the Greek Orthodox Church is that "they cannot find it." [5]

[edit] Books arguing for and against forgery

There are, as of 2007, at least three books in print which deal with the allegations of forgery: Stephen C. Carlson's The Gospel Hoax, Baylor University Press, 2005; Scott G. Brown's Mark's Other Gospel, Wilfrid Laurier, 2005; and Peter Jeffery's The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, Yale University Press, 2006. In his recent book, Lost Christianities (Oxford University Press, 2003), New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman offers an overview and discussion of the Smith affair, leaving the question open to debate.

The controversy is ongoing and far from settled, although there is no lack of scholars on both sides already claiming victory.

One curious fact is that the letter was accepted as genuinely Clementine in 1980, and has appeared ever since in the collected writings of Clement of Alexandria. As Smith remarked at the time, the letter was accepted as genuine with near unanimity, while the letter's attribution of the Secret Gospel to Mark was accepted by virtually nobody.

In the end, as many scholars have realized, Smith's discovery was not all that world-shaking. Yes, it implied that the Carpocratians indulged in homosexual relations. That was nothing new. More significantly, it revealed that the Christian Church of Clement had a strong gnostic element[citation needed]. This was surprising, but not too calamitous, since Clement had already been removed from the roster of saints — centuries before — for his unorthodox opinions. Perhaps some of the most violent opposition arose, not from the manuscript discovery, but from Smith's interpretations of it.

[edit] Contribution to Old Testament studies

Smith's major contribution to Old Testament studies was contained in his "Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament" (1971). Using form criticism to reconstruct the social background to the Old Testament, Smith advanced the proposal that two parties had vied for supremacy in ancient Israel, the first composed of those which worshipped many gods of which Yahweh was chief, while the other, the "Yahweh-alone" faction, was largely the party of the priests of Jerusalem, who wished to establish a monopoly for Yahweh. In monarchic Judah the Yahweh-alone party were a permanent minority; although sometimes able to win over a king like Josiah to their cause, the population at large, including most of the kings, remained stubbornly polytheistic, worshipping the same gods as their neighbours in Moab, Ammon etc. In the post-Exilic period the idea of Yahweh as the only god of Israel finally triumphed, but a new division emerged, between the separatists, who wished the Jews to remain strictly apart from their neighbours, (this separation being defined in terms of purity), and the assimilationists who wished for normal relations with them. Ultimately, by the late Persian/early Hellenistic period, the purists won, the modern version of the Hebrew bible was written, and a recognisably modern Judaism emerged.[6]

[edit] Publications

Books:

  • Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels (1951)
  • The Ancient Greeks (1960)
  • Heroes and Gods: Spiritual Biographies in Antiquity [in collaboration with Moses Hadas] (1965)
  • Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (1971)
  • Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (1973)
  • The Secret Gospel (1973)
  • The Ancient History of Western Civilization [with Elias Bickerman] (1976)
  • Jesus the Magician (1978)
  • Hope and History (1980)
  • Studies in the Cult of Yahweh. Vol. 1. Historical Method, Ancient Israel, Ancient Judaism. Vol. 2. New Testament, Early Christianity, and Magic [edited by Shaye J. D. Cohen] (1996)

[edit] Awards

  • Lionel Trilling Book Award for Jesus the Magician
  • Ralph Marcus Centennial Award of the Society of Biblical Literature

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Was It a Hoax? Debate on a 'Secret Mark' Gospel Resumes", New York Times, March 31, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-03-28. "Imagine the discovery of a previously unknown Gospel of Mark, a secret text suppressed by church authorities that pictured Jesus initiating his disciples with a hallucinatory, nocturnal and quite possibly homosexual rite. Imagine the headlines, the four-alarm book promotion and the cable network special." 
  2. ^ "Morton Smith, Columbia Professor And Ancient-Religion Scholar, 76", New York Times, July 13, 1991. Retrieved on 2008-03-28. "Morton Smith, a professor of history at Columbia University for nearly three decades and an authority on religions and magic in the ancient world, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 76 years old. He died of heart failure, university officials said. Professor Smith was best known for his report in 1960 of what he said was a secret Gospel of the Apostle Mark, from which he theorized that Jesus might have been a magician rather than a Hebrew rabbi and that magic rituals played an important role in fledgling Christianity." 
  3. ^ Hypotyposeis: The Mystery of Mar Saba
  4. ^ Professors David Flusser and Shlomo Pines, both of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Archimandrite Meliton of the Patriarchate, and G.A.G. Stroumsa, at the time a Harvard graduate student.
  5. ^ What happened to the copy of Clement's letter?
  6. ^ Review of Palestinian Parties, JBL, 1972
  • Stephen C. Carlson, The Gospel Hoax, Baylor University Press, 2005.
  • Scott G. Brown, Mark's Other Gospel, Wilfrid Laurier, 2005.
  • Scott G. Brown, Factualizing the Folklore: Stephen Carlson's case against Morton Smith, Harvard Theological Review, July 1, 2006. Available on-line (see below).
  • Peter Jeffery, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, Yale University Press, 2006.
  • Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa,Comments on Charles Hedrick’s Article: A Testimony, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11:2 (Summer 2003): 147–53. Tells about the four scholars who saw the manuscript in the Mar Saba library.
  • Charles W. Hedrick and Nikolaos Olympiou, Secret Mark, in The Fourth R 13:5 (2000): 3–11, 14–16. Contains color plates of the manuscript. Available on-line (see below).

[edit] External links

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