The book was published in 1973 of course and I found an entry for the book in the Library of Congress's Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series: 1973: Title Index. The entry I believe on page 3916 for July - December assigns it the number A446560 (the print is unclear). The copyright would have come up on 2001. When I go to the copyright website of the Library of Congress, I see a number of books of Morton Smith listed but not Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark:
I tried to search for this book a hundred different ways in the catalog all of which gave me hope that the book might now be in the public domain. My hopes were ultimately dashed by noticing this at another page at copyright.gov:
Any work published or registered before January 1, 1964, must have been renewed by an application for registration in the 28th year following the original date of publication or
registration to continue its term of protection for another 28 years. However, copyrights in works registered or published between January 1, 1964, and December 31, 1977, have an automatic renewal for a full 95-year term of protection. Although the period of protection is automatically renewed, a renewal application may be submitted anyway. If the work in question is more than 27 years old and less than 95 years old, a renewal registration consists of all the following:
• the title and author(s) of the original work
• the renewal claimant or claimants
• the date on which the second term of protection commenced, and
• the renewal registration number, which is the letter R or the letters RE followed by from one to six digits
That would seem to close the door on the possibility of transcribing large portions of Morton Smith's book at my blog. And so we finally see the real reason why Morton Smith's research will ultimately fade from the world - preserved in the wrong format!
Stephan Huller has had a life long interest in religion and spirituality dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."