Apocryphicity
A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha
Scott Brown and Peter Jeffery weigh in once again on the results of the handwriting analyses commissioned by Biblical Archaeology Review. See also Stephan Huller's interview with Agamemnon Tselikas, the paleographer who was also commissioned by BAR but whose report has yet to see publication.
Stephan Huller has posted an interview on his blog (HERE) with paleographer Agamemnon Tselikas conducted earlier in the year by Charlie Hedrick. Tselikas is one of two experts commissioned by Biblical Archeology Review to examine the images of the Secret Mark manuscript for signs of forgery. His report should see publication very soon.
Some time ago Peter Jeffery (author of The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled) and I discussed on Apocryphicity (see HERE) the idea of assembling scholars of Secret Mark for some kind of fruitful debate–more fruitful, at least, than previous attempts which featured little more than a presentation of papers. Phil Harland and I (in consultation with Jeffery and Allan Pantuck) have since put together a proposal for such an event, which, if all goes well, will take place at York University in May of 2011.
The biggest challenge in planning this symposium thus far has been in securing the participation of scholars who argue that the text is a modern hoax or a forgery. Certainly many hold that opinion, but of the few scholars in North America (and we are trying to focus only on North American scholars) who have published significant works arguing that position, only Peter Jeffery and Bruce Chilton have accepted our invitation to attend. Is the argument in jeopardy, particularly with BAR's publication of the report of a handwriting expert? Or have efforts by Allan Pantuck, Scott Brown, and others to dismantle the argument for Morton Smith's creation of the text succeeded in silencing some of the proponents for the theory?
Allan Pantuck passed along to me a few links to the BAR website with recent articles on the handwriting analyses of the Secret Mark manuscript (or better, photographs of the manuscript) commissioned by BAR. The first is Peter Jeffery's response to the results (from April). The second is an editorial by Hershel Shanks comparing the conflict over the text to debate on who wrote Shakespeare's plays.
Just a few things recently noted in other people's blogs:
Timo Panaanen at Salainan evankelista offers a critique of Francis Watson's article"Beyond Suspicion: On the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark" from JTS. Read also the extensive critiqueat Synoptic Solutions.
April DeConick a The Forbidden Gospels reports on the restoration of images of Peter, Paul, John and Andrew in the Thecla catacomb in Rome.
Mark Goodacre at NTBlog reports Prince Charles' odd use of the Gospel of Mary in a recent speech.
Scott Brown and Allan Pantuck, now well-known as critics of Stephen Carlson's book The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark, have composed a guest-post on Timo Paananen's Salainan evankelista blog. It is an excellent piece that confronts Carlson's argument that the manuscript of Secret Mark betrays signs of a forger's tremor. (And if you read to the end you'll see a little comment from me).
Timo S. Paananen at the Salainen Evankelista blog has posted on a recent article by David Landry on the Secret Mark debate. Landry is rather positive about Stephen Carlson’s achievements, but strangely negative about the rebuttals of Scott Brown and Allan Pantuck. For my part, I am still interested in mounting a real debate on the text in a public forum and will be pursuing the idea when the time comes for us Canadian scholars to beg for government funding. Stay tuned.
Roger Viklund has posted this excellent response to a discussion between Craig Evans and lee Strobel about Secret Mark (from Strobel's The Case For the Real Jesus). The comments Evans makes are similar (and thus similarly erroneous) to those he makes in his own book, Fabricating Jesus, which I discussed back in 2007 in this post. Viklund has written now several compelling on-line articles about Secret Mark. They can be found on his web site HERE.
There is an interesting article on the Friends of CSNTM (Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts) page on the recent uncovering of a forged NT manuscript (HERE). I don't know, though–let's see, it was written on one side of a page, the page had paragraph divisions, capitalized names, and no nomina sacra. What was their first clue? Thankfully, Morton Smith knew well enough not to make these blunders 😉
Peter Jeffery, author of The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, added a comment to my post from a few weeks ago on the Secret Mark articles in Biblical Archeological Review. He wrote:
I did not write for BAR because I was never asked to. I didn't know there would be a special issue on the Secret Gospel until it was actually out. If I had been asked and given a reasonable deadline I would have written something. Koester was not on the 2008 SBL panel but spoke from the floor. I was not on that panel either because I wasn't asked to be. Nor was I permitted to publish a response to Brown's RBL review. "When is a real scholarly debate about Secret Mark going to happen?" you ask. When people start including me.
First, my mistake, Koester was not on the panel; he’s just such a big presence, I guess, that my memory elevated him to featured speaker (heh). More to the point, Jeffery’s comment has led me to thinking about what would be an appropriate forum for a full debate on the text. One of the problems with the SBL panel is that the panelists did not adequately respond to one another’s evidence for forgery/hoax—Brown and Pantuck did respond to points previously made by Carlson, but Carlson and the other panelists did not respond to Brown and Pantuck. But to be fair, Carlson et al should be granted opportunity to prepare a cogent rebuttal. Another problem …
The latest issue of Biblical Archeological Review (Nov/Dec 2009) features a series of articles on Secret Mark. This is the second time in recent memory (Scott Brown contributed a piece back in 2005) that BAR has looked at the text. Presumably the topic is attractive to BAR editor Hershel Shanks, who is a vociferous supporter of the authenticity of certain artifacts such as the James Ossuary. Several other bloggers have commented on the articles (including James Tabor at Taborblog, and Timo Paananen at Salainen evankelista; note also Mark Goodacre at NTblog has recently posted a clip of an interview by Morton Smith from 1984); I’d like to offer a few comments on them also.
The first article, available for free on the BAR web site, is an overview written by Charles Hedrick of the discovery of the manuscript. Hedrick has been one of the most vocal supporters of the manuscript’s authenticity but his task here was to provide a neutral discussion of the basic facts of the discovery, Smith’s early work on the text, the scholarly reaction to this work, and the three recent monographs on Secret Mark written by Scott Brown, Stephen Carlson, and Peter Jeffery.
The second article presents the case for the forgery of the text. It is written not by Carlson nor by Jeffery nor by any other supporter of the forgery hypothesis (such as Birger Pearson or Bart Ehrman) but by Hershel Shanks. Shanks’ requests to such scholars were turned down for …
Timo S. Paananen, a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, recently began a blog, Salainen evankelista, dedicated to the Secret Gospel of Mark. Over the summer he posted excerpts from his Master’s thesis (also focusing on Secret Mark) and has a new post summarizing recent blog activity about the text.
I was a rather bad boy at this year’s SBL, attending only one day of the conference, the day that comprised my own paper on the Syriac tradition of Infancy Thomas and the afternoon session on Secret Mark (“Secret Mark after Fifty Years”). I decided to compose a post on the session because of the text’s importance for those who study the Christian Apocrypha and because of the session’s relation to my recent article and postings on conservative scholars’ approaches to the CA (Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium). My apologies in advance for any infelicities in recording and summarizing the event.
The session was chaired by Mark Goodacre and featured two pairs of scholars: Stephen Carlson (known for his book The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark) and Birger Pearson, who deny the text’s authenticity, and Scott Brown (known for his own monograph on Secret Mark, Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s Controversial Discovery, and for his responses to Carlson’s book) and Allan Pantuck, who believe it to be an authentic ancient text. There were also two respondents: Charles Hedrick who supported Brown’s and Pantuck’s position, and Bart Ehrman who sided with Carlson and Pearson.
Pearson’s presentation, “The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Twentieth-Century Fake,” offered a selective overview of research on the text—selective, that is, in that it focused on the scholarship that convinced Pearson to go from a supporter of its authenticity to a critic. He cited particularly Per Beskow’s Strange …
An “Activists for Atheism” club at a community college in Ohio has caused offense by using Secret Mark to suggest that Jesus was homosexual. A critique of their behaviour can be found in the Jewish Journal. One noteworthy excerpt: “The Secret Gospel of Mark is a joke, along the lines of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, which dismissed women as undeserving of life.” (sigh).
Ahh…more scholarly thrust and parry over Secret Mark. This week, Peter Jeffery (author of The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled) responds to the lengthy review of his book by Scott Brown (available HERE). You can access Jeffery's response HERE and for Jeffery's own running compilation of discussions of Secret Mark, go HERE.