The Blind Spots in Morton Smith's Analysis Make it Impossible to Believe He Forged the Mar Saba Document

My mother says that she got tired of reading about Jacob Neusner.  So here I am switching gears going back to talk about why it is that Morton Smith couldn't have forged the Mar Saba letter.  Quesnell wrote that the same skills that were demonstrated in Morton Smith's exhaustive analysis of the Letter to Theodore could have been used to forge the text.  Many people have been convinced by that argument.  It seems to make sense when you first hear it save for one important consideration.  When you really go through Morton Smith's analysis with a fine tooth comb, you start to see an unmistakable pattern which makes it quite clear he isn't the forger.  His 1973 always goes back to the idea that one can use the Mar Saba document to uphold his theory about 'Jesus the magician.'

Many people, including Jacob Neusner (sorry Mom) are still so much under Morton Smith's spell that they accept the idea that the Letter to Theodore is really about 'Jesus the magician' just because Smith hammers the idea home on every page of his book.  The reality is however quite different.  When you really get to the bottom line, the Letter to Theodore has nothing to do with magic.  Yes, the Carpocratians were said to be involved in the magical arts by Irenaeus.  But at the end of the day, the Letter to Theodore was written by Clement of Alexandria rather than Carpocrates (or Irenaeus for that matter) and Clement has no interest in magic or magical practices.

It is almost embarrassing to follow any of Morton Smith's arguments.  They inevitably end up going in the direction of magic even if the original subject matter was a ham and cheese sandwich.  Indeed it is almost shocking how in almost twenty years of research Smith could have missed some of the things we have found in three years of blogging - but then again Smith didn't have the Google search engine working for him.  Google makes anyone seem smarter than they are.  I could probably beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy if I had access to Google.  We can certainly trump Morton Smith's understanding of the Mar Saba document.  Let me give you only one more example.

We have been showing readers that the Johannine account of the raising of Lazarus does indeed make reference to the idea of Lazarus naked.  We noted in previous posts that the NIV translators render:

λύσατε αὐτὸν καὶ ἄφετε αὐτὸν

as Jesus saying in English:

"Take off the grave clothes and let him go!"

This is absolutely significant to the discussion of Secret Mark because, after all, Theodore's original question was something like 'what about this 'naked with naked'?"

You'd think that Smith would have mentioned the parallel during all the time that he spent studying the document.  This especially given the fact that a large portion of Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark is devoted to parallels between John chapter 11 and LGM 1 (= the first addition to the longer gospel of Mark mentioned in the Letter to Theodore). Indeed there are only four references to the section of text John 11.41 - 54 in the 1973 book - p. 152, 154f, 222, and 224. None of Smith's use of these references have anything to do with nakedness. Indeed the last two - absurdly - bringing in endless discussions of 'magic' for no explainable reason.

Helmut Koester by contrast makes reference to the parallel in almost every book he has ever written.

The story continues by telling that this young man then came to Jesus, dressed only with a linen cloth, in order to be initiated into the mystery of the kingdom. This may be a later expansion of the original story, which is evidently a variant of the story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11, however in a more original form free of all typical Johannine elements. [Helmut Koester Introduction to the New Testament: History and literature of Early Christianity p. 172, 173]

Craig Evans has difficulty attacking Koester's claims but both men miss the bigger point. How it is possible that Morton Smith could have been the forger of the document when he can't even see the connection between the aforementioned account of 'nakedness' and John 11:44. He simply didn't have the skills to be a forger. He wasn't anything close to being an authority on textual criticism of the canonical gospels. How then could he have 'forged' an obvious parallel of John chapter 11 without recognizing the obvious parallel of the young man dressed only in a linen cloth and the original 'naked with naked' question and John 11:44? It shut be an open and shut case - Morton Smith did not forge the Mar Saba document.

UPDATE - Mark J. Edwards 2004 commentary on the Gospel of John entitled John (p 119) has a very useful entry here for John 11:44 - "A Secret Gospel of Mark, attested in Alexandria c.200, contains a picturesque variant of this episode (Koester 1990: 296). Contrasting the vocabulary with that of chapter 20, Kersten and Gruber plausibly conclude that the Evangelist does not wish even the grave-clothes of the friend to resemble those of his Redeemer (1992: 228-36). Origen sees the gradual unbinding as an allegory of our slow release from sin by obedience to the words of Christ (Commentary 28.8). Radulphus explains that after Christ has summoned us, the Church must strip us of sin as the disciples now relieved Lazarus of his clothes (p. 1868 Migne)."