09 — Historical Questions
The honest inventory of the contested questions surrounding Mark: the authorship and dating of the Second Gospel and the identification of the several New Testament “Marks” with one another and with the bishop of Alexandria; and the “Secret Gospel of Mark” — the letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria, reporting an expanded secret Gospel, that Morton Smith claimed to have discovered at the Mar Saba monastery and published in 1973, and which a large body of scholarship now suspects to be a modern forgery. These files treat both questions as structured disputes, naming the positions and their sources.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)
A reference guide owes its readers candor about what is firm and what is contested. The New Testament evidence for John Mark and the canonical Gospel of Mark are secure; the date and place of the Gospel’s composition, the unity of the New Testament “Marks,” and the identification of John Mark with the founder of Alexandria are matters where the early evidence is partial and the scholarship divided. More sharply contested still is the “Secret Gospel of Mark,” which since 1973 has occupied a strange place between sensational discovery and suspected hoax. Following METHODOLOGY §4, these files present the disputes with sourcing on the several sides and without resolving them by assertion; the “Secret Mark” letter in particular is never treated as an authentic witness to Mark or to Clement.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Authorship and Dating | The composition of the Gospel: the case for and against authorship by John Mark; the date (before or after 70, the Temple’s fall) and place (Rome on the dominant view); the identification of the New Testament “Marks” and of John Mark with the bishop of Alexandria — presented as a structured dispute. |
| Reception and the Secret Mark Question | The reception of Mark through history; and the “Secret Gospel of Mark”: the Mar Saba letter attributed to Clement, published by Morton Smith (1973), the case for forgery (Carlson, Jeffery) against the defenders, and why it is not treated as authentic. |
See Also
- John Mark of Jerusalem — the New Testament evidence the identification rests on
- Markan Priority — how priority bears on dating
- Peter and the Gospel — the Papias tradition and the question of authorship
- The Church Fathers — Clement of Alexandria, to whom the disputed letter is attributed
References
- Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History 2.16, 3.39.15, 6.14. Trans. McGiffert, NPNF II/1.
- Smith, Morton. Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
- Carlson, Stephen C. The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2005.
- Jeffery, Peter. The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.