Subject: Hobbs et al. on Smith & Secret Mark, I

From: "GLENN WOODEN" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 10:59:13 AST4ADT

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-masked]" "Paul Moser" 5-MAY-1995 15:31:26.14
To: "[email-masked]"
Subj: 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-masked]" 5-MAY-1995 23:05:04.04
To: "[email-masked]"
Subj: 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, Oregon 
  
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 14-MAY-1995 18:46:02.72
To: "[email-masked]"
Subj: 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), focussing 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   

Glenn Wooden
Acadia Divinity College
Wolfville N.S.
Canada

[email-masked]