Apocryphicity

[With apologies for taking so long; a short vacation and a nasty cold kept me from work].

The afternoon session began with Marvin Meyer’s paper, “The Young Streaker in Secret and Canonical Mark.” Meyer holds a position on Secret Mark similar to that of Helmut Koester—that canonical Mark is an abridgement of a longer version of Mark that included the two Secret Mark passages. This longer Mark helps to clear up the confusion over the neaniskos (young man) who shows up at the end of canonical Mark, a character so mysterious that Matthew and Luke ignore him when composing their texts. In the course of his paper, Meyer echoes the views of some of the scholars from the morning session regarding indicting Smith: “I myself find it rather distasteful to see in these exposés what seem to be inappropriate attacks upon one of our late colleagues, Morton Smith, and my perception that some scholars are inclined to ‘pile on’ concerns me…Some of the charges seem almost libelous.” Meyer provides several examples of other neaniskoi in ancient literature, some of whom flee and abandon their robes, just as in canonical Mark. One example in particular, the fresco from the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii, provides the closest parallel to Mark’s figure: “As his expression indicates, the youth is excited and surprised by what he is discovering from the women. Like the youth in Mark, he is discovering the mysteries, and he is amazed.” Meyer finishes the paper by looking at …

As I said in my previous post, much of the contents of the symposium (i.e., the presentations and discussions) are a bit of blur to me. But I can, and wish to, make some comments about the papers and attempt some reflections on their contributions to the study of the text.

First, I should state that, going into the symposium, I had no firm view about Secret Mark’s authenticity. I was conversant with the scholarship but had not been forced to come to a decision on the issue. My only contribution to discussions of its origins prior to this event had been on my frustrations over conservative scholars’ rush to embrace the arguments advanced by Stephen Carlson (The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark, 2005). It seemed to me that they were motivated by a distaste for the text’s contents—perceiving something homoerotic in the relationship between Jesus and the “young man”—and this was interfering with their obligations as scholars to consider carefully the evidence. Now that the symposium has concluded, I am convinced Smith did not create the text; rather, he found it at Mar Saba exactly as he claimed. I do not yet know whether it is an authentic letter of Clement, an ancient forgery, or a medieval forgery. But scholars should move to determining which of these options is correct rather than continuing to spin their wheels attempting to prove it was forged by Smith.

The first of the papers was “Secret …

Now that a week or so has gone by since the Secret Mark Symposium, I think I’m ready to gather my thoughts about the event. Admittedly, much of it is a blur as I had to focus so much on the mechanics of the symposium, that I found it difficult to concentrate on the presentations and discussions. But I will begin with some comments on the planning and execution of the event.

The process began over a year ago with a series of e-mail exchanges between me and scholars Peter Jeffery and Allan Pantuck. We worked together to determine who would be the best scholars to contribute papers to the event. We tried to achieve a balance of perspectives, with a morning session aimed at presenting arguments for and against Secret Mark’s authenticity, and an afternoon session with other perspectives on the text (e.g., where it fits in, or not, with the works of Clement of Alexandria). The plan also was to invite only North American scholars—both due to budgetary restraints and to my long-term goal to support North American CA scholarship—and, ideally, those who had published a monograph or substantial article on the text. We had some prospective participants decline our invitations, some simply because of scheduling conflicts, some for no stated reason. In the end, we were happy with the group we assembled, and pleased that they had faith in us to accept our invitations to participate. Nevertheless, people have noted particularly the glaring absence of Stephen Carlson …

I have been holding off on writing my own assessment of the Secret Mark Symposium because I thought a participant's view would be more valuable. Calogero A. Miceli, a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University in Montreal, offered a report of the event at a forum a few days ago and graciously offered to pass along this summary for Apocryphicity.

On April 29^th, 2011 a symposium was held at York University (Toronto, Ontario) where scholars from across North America gathered to present their opinions and understandings of the Secret Gospel of Mark (as found in the Mar Saba Letter) and of Morton Smith. The event was organized by Tony Burke (York University) and Phil Harland (York University) and since I recently presented a report of the symposium at the following: GRECAT Université Laval-Concordia University 2^nd Annual Workshop on May 4^th, 2011 held at Laval University (Quebec City, Quebec), I was kindly asked by Tony Burke to offer my account of the symposium as a guest-post on his blog ‘Apocryphicity’. I was present for the entire day of the symposium and here I offer a short overview of what happened and what came out of the conference. I will focus very little …

The first York Christian Apocrypha Symposium (featuring the Secret Gospel of Mark) takes place in just a few days. Everything is in place for the event and we hope for it to go off without a hitch. We should have an audience of about 60 people, which is respectable for our first event in the series. I will blog fairly regularly (for a change) over the next few days to let everyone who could not attend know how it is going (or went). To whet your appetites for Friday's papers, visit Timo Paananen's Salainan evankelista blog for a discussion of the symposium and an update on recent on-line scholarship on the text.

Also, we have created a facebook page for the series (search for "York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Series"). I hope you will "like" it.