Subject: Addendum on Secret Mark

From: Bart Ehrman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 21:54:10 -0400 (EDT)

An addendum to my posting on a sixth=century ms of Mark.  I also asked
Charlesworth if he had ever thought about trying to track down the 18th
century copy of the letter of Clement of Alexandria found in an edition of
the letters of Ignatius in the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem which 
allegedly preserves Clement's discussion of the Secret Gospel of Mark
(Morton Smith published his own photographs of the letter, but no one else
has actually seen the thing itself).  Charlesworth told me that he has in
fact made some inquiries, but that the book in which the letter is found
has been moved to Jerusalem, and no one, evidently, knows exactly where. 

   Does anyone else have additional information on this?

-- Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

---

From: [email-masked] (William L. Petersen)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1996 13:17:44 -0400

Just a quick bibliographic note:  P.W. van der Horst, of Utrecht, published
an article in Dutch in 1979 in _Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift_ 33, pp.
27-51, titled "Het 'geheime Markusevangelie'.  Over een nieuwe vondst" ("The
'Secret Gospel of Mark.'  Concerning a new find").  It is a survey of the
first 5 years' scholarly reaction to Smith's publication of the text(which
appeared in 1973), and deserves study.  He has, with typical thoroughness,
examined every position;  therefore, even if you don't read Dutch, the
bibliography in the notes is valuable.

The article is reprinted in v.d. Horst's collected essays, _De onbekende
god_, Utrechtse Theologische Reeks 2 (Utrecht 1988), pp. 37-64.

Petersen--Penn State University

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1996 20:33:20 -0400

In a message dated 96-04-26 11:55:38 EDT, you write:

>  The long and short of it is: scholars 
>concluded that it was a forgery; and Smith was not amused!

It was a 16th century text incorporating the Secret Mark text, wasn't it?
 Was it supposed to have been a 16th century forgery?  If so, it was an
hidden one, used as the back of another text as I remember, or was it?  Who
was trying to fool whom?  Smith had so many questions, himself, that I
thought he rather ran through most of the possibilities of fraud.