Description
Book SynopsisSecret Mark first became known to modern scholarship in 1958 when a newly hired assistant professor at Columbia University in New York by the name of Morton Smith visited the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem and photographed its fragments. Secret Mark was announced on the heels of many spectacular discoveries of ancient manuscripts in the Near East, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi gnostic corpus in the late 1940s, and promised to be just as revolutionary. Secret Mark presents what appears to be a valuable, albeit fragmentary, witness to early Christian traditions, traditions that might shed light on Jesus's most intimate behavior. In this book, Stephen C. Carlson uses state of the art science to demonstrate that Secret Mark was an elaborate hoax created by Morton Smith. Carlson's discussion places Smith's trick alongside many other hoaxes before probing the reasons why so many scholars have been taken in by it.
Trade ReviewA real-life "Da Vinci Code" detective story set in academia. -- Publishers Weekly
A scholarly bombshell. Built on pains-taking research, without any shrillness in tone, Carlson's argument is clear and compelling. Scholars in the field of Christian Origins will have to reckon with it, and many will have to re-think some important matters about the Gospels and the historical Jesus. A wider public will find this a fascinating detective story. --Larry W. Hurtado, Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology, School of Divinity, New College, University of Edinburgh
The Gospel Hoax uncovers the clues and unmasks the perpetrator of a remarkable feat of deception. Fascinating, compelling and utterly convincing. --Mark Goodacre, Associate Professor of New Testament, Department of Religion, Duke University.
Table of ContentsForeword by Larry W. Hurtado Preface Introduction 1. The Revelation of Secret Mark 2. Uncovering Literary Fakes 3. The Modernity of the Mar Saba Manuscript 4. The Modernity of Theodore 5. The Modernity of Secret Mark 6. Morton Smith's Secret Uncovered 7. The Anatomy of an Academic Hoax Appendix: Extracts from Smith's 1960 Catalog Notes Works Cited Index
