The Secret Gospel of Mark (also called “Secret Mark”) has been controversial for some time (click here for an overview). Aside from purporting to be another gospel, the controversy is primarily about a passage in it that has dialogue between Jesus and an unnamed disciple that is interpreted by some as having homosexual undertones.
At the conferences I attended last week, an entire session was devoted to Secret Mark. Recent work by Stephen Carlson has called the text’s authenticity into serious question. Carlson believes the discoverer, Morton Smith, forged the document. (Incredibly, Bart Ehrman is on his side – let’s give Bart points where they’re due). Others, however, think it’s genuine, at least in terms of the text. Since Secret Mark actually never says anything sexual happened between Jesus and this disciple, and the language used is not euphemistic for sexual activity, real scholars who accept Secret Mark as genuine don’t support the “archaeo-porn” crowd’s1 “interpretation” of that passage. I thought readers might be interested in a couple summaries of the Secret Mark session to get an idea where the debate is at the moment. Here’s one and a second.
- I speak here of pseudo-researchers like Simcha Jacobovici, Michael Baigent, and Dan Brown who, for sake of material gain, rape ancient texts and manipulate archaeological work by titillating readers with bogus data and wacky interpretations of data. ↩
Genuine. For a review of the evidence, the academic quackery of Jeffery, Carlson’s Hoax, see magicinthenewtestament.com.
@Robert: This doesn’t appear to be a scholarly source. The reality is that this issue is still under debate in the academy, as witnessed by last year’s session on it at the Society of Biblical Literature.
The scholarly source you’re looking for was published by Morton Smith. It’s contents have been ignored and/or trivialized by detractors:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/36964375/A-Letter-to-Theodore-The-Secret-Gospel-of-Mark
right – it’s Smith’s work that has received heavy attention recently — it has not been ignored or trivialized. I’ve been at academic conferences that devoted whole sessions to it. Very few are buying what he’s selling.
This so called gospel was dismissed as far back as 1999 by Glenn Miller. – http://christianthinktank.com/qbadmark.html
I found the Nag Hamadi Library (linked here) more interesting, its rejoice somewhat to the divine
council theorized by MHS.. among other, the Gospel of Thomas whom it is belived precede the NT.
the library was declared heretic by the Church. I would like to know, if possible his opinion
on this..
No one argues that the Gospel of Thomas precedes the NT. The text as it exists is Coptic, dating to the late 2nd century. It is no doubt based on a Greek original, though, which might (no one knows) put it into the 1st century with the other NT books). But we don’t have the Greek text (there are some fragments of it in Greek, but no one knows if that is an earlier item or contemporary item). The Gospel of Thomas (and actually none of the Gnostic gospels) never appear in any list of canonical books. Even in the Eastern Roman Empire, where there are factors that one would think would favor it. But it never happens. Here is a link to an article on the issue:
http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2009/07/the-gospel-of-thomas-is-it-really-earlier-than-the-canonical-gospels/