Were the Alexandrians Denying that they Had a 'Secret' Version of Mark or was Clement Denying that the Carpocratian Gospel was by Mark?

I have always read the text in the manner that Morton Smith translated the text but I received an email yesterday to drawing my attention to Jeff Jay's article which, among other things, notes that:

Under the sway of Smith's emphasis on guarded secrecy some interpret this oath [mentioned in the text] to mean that Theodore is to deny the existence of the "secret Gospel" and thereby commit perjury, which is nevertheless justified by the need to reserve such truth for the wise alone (2.12 - 19). But Brown has argued that Theodore cannot deny the existence of Mark's second gospel altogether because the Carpocratians themselves told him about it. Theodore should deny rather that the interpolated text is the same as Mark's more spiritual gospel. Brown revises Smith's translation accordingly:

To them [the Carpocratians], therefore, as I said above, one must never give way; nor, when they put forward their falsifications, should one concede that it is Mark's mystic gospel, but should even deny it on oath. For 'not all true things are to be said to all men' (2:10 - 13).

The original email I received continues as follows:

Here is Browns footnote 6 on page XX in his book concerning his translation:

Smith: “that the secret Gospel is by Mark” Adapting C. Mondésert’s translation (CA, 52: “c’est là l’ ‘Evangile mystique’ de Marc”).

You can take the quote from Jay’s article. Also I want to translate the greek this way. It is not "should one concede that the secret Gospel is by Mark" but "should one concede that it is the secret Gospel by Mark", accordingly refering to the Carpocratian version.

Further I give you the relevant passages from Brown:

Murgia’s last point concerning the implied author’s recommendation of a false oath (II.11– 12) deserves special attention. According to Murgia, the forger’s need to explain why this gospel is otherwise unheard-of has resulted in a highly implausible scenario that conflicts with Clement’s position that a true Christian would not use oaths: “The rhetoric of urging someone to commit perjury to preserve the secrecy of something which you are in the process of disclosing is ludicrous.” Murgia made an error in supposing that Theodore is being asked to keep this gospel a secret from the people who informed him about it. But Theodore is being enjoined to use an oath to bolster the half-truth that Mark did not write the adulterated Carpocratian text, and Murgia is not alone in supposing that this contradicts what Clement said about oaths in Strom. VII.8. 26 It would be helpful, then, to review this passage. In VII.8, Clement reasoned that oaths are sworn by people whose way of life does not instill sufficient confidence in others. An honest life is itself “a sure and decisive oath.” A Christian “ought, I think, to maintain a life calculated to inspire confidence towards those without, so that an oath may not even be asked; and towards himself and with those with whom he associates, good feeling, which is voluntary righteousness.” Clement went on to say that “The Gnostic swears truly, but is not apt to swear, having rarely recourse to an oath, just as we have said.” As this comment demonstrates, Clement acknowledged that there are times when a Christian would swear an oath. Presumably, he had in mind situations in which the other party has had insufficient opportunity to appreciate the Christian’s truthfulness through witness of prior conduct. Theodore’s dealings with Carpocratians would probably be so limited as to qualify as such a circumstance. These opponents, moreover, are not potential converts who might be impressed with a Christian’s day-to-day truthfulness but a despised sect whose practices threatened to discredit Christianity. The implied author’s strategy for dealing with Carpocratians was to inform them with a solemn oath that their principles are not founded on an authentic apostolic writing. The letter writer attempts to characterize this assertion as essentially the truth, reasoning that the longer gospel that the Carpocratians possess has been adulterated to the point that it is not really the gospel Mark wrote (I.11– 15; II.6– 12). The telling of a half truth is not at all devious for Clement. In the chapter of the Stromateis that follows the discussion of oaths, Clement went on to note that sometimes the gnostic will, “medicinally, as a physician for the safety of the sick,…deceive or tell an untruth” (VII.9.53.2). If lying to Christians for their own good was acceptable to Clement, it is hard to doubt that telling half-truths to heretics for the good of the church would not be. We can agree with Judith L. Kovacs that the letter sounds very much like Clement in this respect.

Murgia’s proposed seal of authenticity does not hold up under examination. We may agree that the gospel was known mainly in Alexandria, and, among the orthodox, was read only to the true gnostics. We can infer that the officials in the church were more circumspect than the Carpocratians about divulging its contents to outsiders and did not distribute it outside Alexandria. But we need not suppose that most Alexandrian Christians of Clement’s day knew nothing about it. The stated and implied restrictions on its use do not amount to a sufficient explanation for why modern (or ancient) readers had never heard of the text, though they do help explain why no copies now exist. This silence is not too surprising in view of the prophets that the Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that things which were said with regard to Christ were marvelous tales, like the things which were said by the poets. (First Apology 54.1– 2; see also 56, 62, 64, and 66; ANF trans.) Clement’s adaptation of the demonic conspiracy theory demonstrates that the Carpocratian parody of the longer text had severely tarnished the reputation of the version used in Clement’s church. As an apologetic tale, it can prove little else. The story of Carpocrates’ theft owes more to theological inference than to knowledge of the facts, at least where it speaks of demonic planning and magical enslavement. Thus the magical elements in this tale cannot be pressed to prove that in Carpocrates’ time the text was a physically guarded secret, or even carefully regulated, though undoubtedly the scandal of the Carpocratian parody proved how necessary it was to keep this text away from persons of unproven character. Smith’s inference that the longer gospel was a closely guarded secret was also based upon a particular reading of II.10– 12, Clement’s direction to Theodore to offer a firm denial to the Carpocratians backed with an oath. The standard paraphrase of this section is as old as Smith’s public announcement of his discovery to the Society of Biblical Literature in 1960: “Clement apparently made an unusual concession in revealing the ‘secret gospel.’ Clement emphatically lectured Theodore on the necessity of keeping knowledge of the gospel a secret— he ‘should even deny it on oath,’ Clement wrote.” 45 We encountered this understanding earlier, when reviewing Charles Murgia’s essay. As a paraphrase of Clement’s directive to Theodore, it makes little sense. Theodore cannot keep the Carpocratians ignorant about the existence of a gospel that they told him about. The denial backed with an oath concerns, rather, the authorship, hence the authority, of the longer gospel used by the Carpocratians. Theodore knew nothing of this text before the Carpocratians told him about it, so an oath from him could only be effective if he appealed to a knowledgeable third party. Presumably, the Carpocratians suggested that he write to Alexandria for verification that Mark wrote this gospel; the Carpocratians expected that someone in the Alexandrian church would confirm Mark’s authorship of the passages they described to Theodore. Taking advantage of the situation, Clement told Theodore to tell his Carpocratian opponents that they do not possess Mark’s mystic gospel. There is no secrecy here, only a half-truth intended to undermine the legitimacy of one particular libertine sect. Clement’s reference to Mark bequeathing this gospel to the church in Alexandria could also be taken as an indication that the longer text was.

Brown, Scott G. Mark's Other Gospel : Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery.
Waterloo, ON, CAN: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005. p 30-31.

Smith’s inference that the longer gospel was a closely guarded secret was also based upon a particular reading of II.10– 12, Clement’s direction to Theodore to offer a firm denial to the Carpocratians backed with an oath. The standard paraphrase of this section is as old as Smith’s public announcement of his discovery to the Society of Biblical Literature in 1960: “Clement apparently made an unusual concession in revealing the ‘secret gospel.’ Clement emphatically lectured Theodore on the necessity of keeping knowledge of the gospel a secret— he ‘should even deny it on oath,’ Clement wrote.” 45 We encountered this understanding earlier, when reviewing Charles Murgia’s essay. As a paraphrase of Clement’s directive to Theodore, it makes little sense. Theodore cannot keep the Carpocratians ignorant about the existence of a gospel that they told him about. The denial backed with an oath concerns, rather, the authorship, hence the authority, of the longer gospel used by the Carpocratians. Theodore knew nothing of this text before the Carpocratians told him about it, so an oath from him could only be effective if he appealed to a knowledgeable third party. Presumably, the Carpocratians suggested that he write to Alexandria for verification that Mark wrote this gospel; the Carpocratians expected that someone in the Alexandrian church would confirm Mark’s authorship of the passages they described to Theodore. Taking advantage of the situation, Clement told Theodore to tell his Carpocratian opponents that they do not possess Mark’s mystic gospel. There is no secrecy here, only a half-truth intended to undermine the legitimacy of one particular libertine sect. Clement’s reference to Mark bequeathing this gospel to the church in Alexandria could also be taken as an indication that the longer text was meant to be secret, since it implies that Mark controlled the only copy and refrained from publishing this work himself. The absence of any references to this text by other authors and the absence of preserved copies likewise indicate that it did not circulate outside Alexandria, except in its unauthorized, Carpocratian form. The letter certainly gives every indication that the longer text was used only in Alexandria. But the restriction of this text to one church need not indicate that the existence of this text was a secret. After all, Clement wrote that Mark bequeathed his gospel “to the church in Alexandria” rather than to some secret society within that church. And longer Mark would not have been the only “spiritual” gospel that was not published by its original author. The Gospel of John appears to have been composed in two or more stages, 46 but we have no evidence that any of its earlier incarnations ever circulated (e.g., all manuscripts include the final chapter, which was apparently added after the death of the original author, whose unanticipated demise is recounted obliquely in John 21:20– 24). The lack of external evidence for any earlier editions raises the suspicion that the Gospel of John did not circulate outside the Johannine community for many years, perhaps more than a decade (the author of John 21 may have been the person responsible for introducing this gospel to a broader audience). For whatever reason, it appears that the authors of the spiritual gospels did not publish those gospels themselves.

Brown, Scott G. Mark's Other Gospel : Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery.
Waterloo, ON, CAN: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005. p 139-140.

I am going to send out this question to a number of prominent scholars with a much better knowledge of Greek than me to decide which version of the translation better renders the Greek. From my perspective I still can't explain why Clement would reference 'denying the Carpocratian gospel on oath' if the Carpocratians were just some insignificant - or non-existent - sect in the world.

I have not come to a decision about which translation is correct. Some cynical observers might suspect that those arguing for the authenticity of Mark would like nothing better than to prove that Smith's inability to properly translate the Greek proves again that he was not the original author (unless of course he did it again on purpose!).

What do you out there think?