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mous proto-orthodox church father of the early third century, many of whose other writings we still possess. In this newly discovered letter, Clement indi­

cates that the church in Alexandria had several versions of the Gospel accord­

ing to Mark. One was for regular Christians, and another was for the spiritually advanced. But this one for the spiritually advanced had been pilfered by a group of heretics, who corrupted its teachings to make it conform with their own lawless and licentious religious practices. Clement writes this letter to explain the situation and to indicate what the second version of Mark’s Gospel (for the spiritually elite) contained. In doing so, he quotes two of the passages from this other version, passages not known from the New Testament. If au­

thentic, this letter would raise significant questions for the study of the New Testament and the history of early Christianity. It would make us rethink our interpretations of the earliest surviving accounts of Jesus. It would drive us to reconsider our reconstruction of the historical Jesus. It would be one of the most significant discoveries of the twentieth century. If it were authentic.

The Discovery

We need to begin with the tale of the discovery, as recounted by Morton Smith in his sundry publications on the Secret Gospel of Mark, especially the two books published fifteen years after the discovery—one for a general audience, a

beautifully written piece that reads like a detective novel, and one for scholars, a detailed linguistic and philological analysis of the text and its significance.⁶

In 1941, as a twenty-six-year-old graduate student, Smith had gone to the Holy Land on a traveling fellowship from Harvard Divinity School. Unfortu­

nately, the Mediterranean was closed by the war, and he was stuck in Jerusa­

lem. While there he became acquainted with a leader of the Greek Orthodox Church, who invited him to services at the famous Church of the Holy Sepul­

chre and, eventually, to visit the famous Orthodox monastery of Mar Saba, some twelve miles southeast of Jerusalem. Mar Saba was established in the fifth century of the Christian era and had been the scene of ongoing monastic activity virtually nonstop ever since.

While Smith was there on his visit, he absorbed the fascinating worship life of the monks, who devoted their lives to the adoration of God, beginning their communal daily services of worship six hours before sunrise. During the day he was shown around the place. He saw, among other things, the monastery libraries, not much used by the monks, who had matters other than study on their minds. After two months, Smith returned to Jerusalem and his work, writ­

ing a doctoral dissertation in modern Hebrew, later translated into English as Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels, a work of real erudition.⁷

When the war ended, Smith returned to Harvard, and there did a second Ph.D. on ancient Palestine. During that time, he became interested in Greek manuscripts, their discovery and decipherment, working under a well-known scholar of classics. Eventually he landed a teaching position, then another, and eventually became professor of ancient history at Columbia.

In 1958, Smith was awarded a sabbatical and decided to return to Mar Saba, now not as a young graduate student but as an established scholar. His interests had evolved over the years; now he was far less intrigued by the monastic patterns of worship and far more interested in the monastic library. Everyone connected with the monastery knew that its literary treasures had been removed long ago to the library of the Greek Patriarchate in Jerusalem. But Smith re­

called that the monastic library was a disordered shambles and that its collec­

tion had never even been cataloged. He decided to spend his sabbatical making a catalog, partially in hopes of finding something of significance among either the ancient printed editions or the few manuscripts (i.e., handwritten docu­

ments) still there.

He worked daily, going through a few volumes at a time. It is not easy producing a catalog like this; the books are in Greek and Latin, some are miss­

ing their covers and title pages, and it is only by reading around in them a bit that one can learn what they are. But Smith was unusually gifted in languages and was able to make progress, one volume at a time, determining what each book was and preparing cards for a full catalog. And he found some interesting and valuable items, for example, fragments of a fifteenth-century manuscript of an otherwise lost work of the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, frag­

ments that had been used to strengthen the binding of an eighteenth-century

prayer book.⁸ Nothing that he found, however, prepared him for what was to become the major discovery of his life and arguably one of the most significant finds of the twentieth century.

Leafing through a volume that was missing its cover and title page, but which he recognized as an early edition of the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, a proto-orthodox bishop of the early second century, Smith found, scrawled on the blank pages at the end, a handwritten copy of a letter. It was in Greek, in what appeared to be an eighteenth-century style of handwriting.⁹ The hand­

written text began with the words, “From the letters of the most holy Clement, the author of the Stromateis. To Theodore . . .”

After deciphering that much, Smith realized he was on to something. Schol­

ars of ancient Christianity know a great deal about “Clement, author of the Stromateis.” This is Clement of Alexandria, a famous theologian and ethicist who lived and wrote around 200 CE. A number of his writings still survive, including a book of ethical instructions concerning how Christians should live their daily lives and a book that is called the Stromateis, which means some­

thing like “the miscellanies,” a collection of somewhat random theological and moral reflections. Smith already knew that among all the writings of Clement that survive, none is a personal correspondence, a letter. This, then, was a new discovery of a lost document from early Christianity. How often does that hap­

pen? For most scholars, never.

On the spot, Smith decided to photograph the three pages that contained the handwritten copy of Clement’s letter, but chose to hold off translating the en­

tire text until later, reasoning that if some such treasure had turned up, there might be more where that came from; given his limited time, he did not want to miss a thing. Using a handheld camera, he took three sets of photos, just to be sure. And then he went about his business hunting for other significant finds and cataloging the results.

Nothing else of comparable significance turned up. And Smith did not real­

ize the full significance of this handwritten letter until later, when he translated it and saw what it actually contained. The letter is addressed to an otherwise unknown person named Theodore, written in response to some of his queries about a particularly notorious sect of early Christians known as the Carpo­

cratians, named after the founder of their sect, Carpocrates.

We know about Carpocrates and his followers from the other writings of Clement and from those of his older contemporary, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, and some years later, Hippolytus of Rome.¹⁰ The Carpocratians were particu­

larly vilified by such proto-orthodox authors because they were believed to engage in wild licentious activities as part of their liturgical services of wor­

ship, which were reputed to be nothing short of sexual orgies conducted under the guise of religion. In one place Clement indicates that the Carpocratians had invented a theology to justify their lecherous activities, proclaiming that since God had made all things, all things were to be held in common among God’s people. Thus no one was to own any property or to keep anything to himself or

herself. This included one’s spouse. To celebrate the sovereignty of God over all things, therefore, the Carpocratians urged a kind of liturgical spouse-swapping, in which each person would have sex with someone else’s spouse as part of the worship service (Miscellanies 3.2).

Irenaeus also indicates that the Carpocratians taught a peculiar doctrine of reincarnation, which said that the soul must be progressively trapped in human bodies until it had experienced everything that a body could experience, after which it could be released. The way to ensure a quick release, then, was to allow the body to engage in every kind of profligate activity. And so, on reli­

gious grounds, claims Irenaeus, the Carpocratians urged every bodily experi­

ence imaginable, including every sexual experience imaginable, all as part of their plan of salvation (see Against Heresies 1.25). The Carpocratians, in short, were not looked upon as a moral lot.

And that is the Christian sect Clement takes on in this letter. He begins by congratulating Theodore, who was evidently some kind of church leader, for

“silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians.” He goes on to in­

dicate that they are the heretics prophesied in Scripture, dwellers in darkness, filled with falsity, slaves of their own servile desires. He then notes that the Carpocratians claim sacred authority for their teachings in the Gospel of Mark, but that they have falsified some of what Mark said and misinterpreted other things. Clement proceeds, then, to clarify some important aspects of Mark’s Gospel and to show how the Carpocratians had falsified it.

Clement indicates that Mark wrote an account of Jesus’ public ministry based on his acquaintance with the apostle Peter in Rome; in his Gospel, however, Mark did not divulge the secret teachings of Jesus to his disciples. But after Peter was martyred, Mark moved to Alexandria and there composed a second

“more spiritual Gospel” for those who were more spiritually advanced. Even though he still did not divulge the greatest secrets of Jesus’ teachings, he did add stories to his Gospel to assist the Christian elite in progressing in their knowledge of the truth.

After Mark died, Carpocrates managed to persuade an elder of the church in Alexandria to provide him with a copy of this Secret Gospel, which he inter­

preted according to his own nefarious doctrines and, what is worse, modified by adding some of his own teachings to it. According to this letter, in other words, there were three versions of Mark’s Gospel available in Alexandria: the original Mark (presumably the Mark we are familiar with in the canon); a Se­

cret Mark, which he issued for the spiritually elite; and a Carpocratian Mark, filled with the false teachings of the licentious heretic.

And now comes the most significant part. Clement goes on to quote two passages from Mark’s second, secret edition. Here, presumably, we have ac­

cess to two very ancient accounts of Jesus, known from no other source, until this lost letter reappeared. The first passage, Clement indicates, occurs imme­

diately after what is now Mark 10:34, and reads as follows:

They came to Bethany, and a woman was there whose brother had died. She came and prostrated herself before Jesus, saying to him, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” But his disciples rebuked her. Jesus became angry and went off with her to the garden where the tomb was.

Immediately a loud voice was heard from the tomb. Jesus approached and rolled the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. Immediately he went in where the young man was, stretched out his hand, and raised him by seizing his hand.

The young man looked at him intently and loved him; and he began pleading with him that he might be with him. When they came out of the tomb they went to the young man’s house, for he was wealthy.

And after six days Jesus gave him a command. And when it was evening the young man came to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. He stayed with him that night, for Jesus was teaching him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. When he got up from there, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.

It is this newly recovered story which has caused the greatest stir in connec­

tion with Smith’s discovery. For even though it is similar to stories in the ca­

nonical Gospels, such as the raising of Lazarus in John 11 and the story of the rich young man in Mark 10, there are significant differences. And some of the differences, especially near the end, have appeared to some interpreters, nota­

bly Smith himself, to have clear homoerotic overtones. Jesus becomes ac­

quainted with a young man who loves him and who comes to him wearing nothing but a linen cloth over his naked body. Jesus then spends the night with him, teaching him about the mystery of the Kingdom. What is that all about?

Before discussing Smith’s own interpretation, which is what led to the ini­

tial furor over the discovery, we should consider what else Clement says about the text. He next quotes several words that Theodore had asked about, words that clearly advance the homoerotic hints already noticed. But Clement insists strongly these were not to be found in the Secret Gospel itself but were, there­

fore, a Carpocratian corruption. The words were: “Naked man with naked man.”

After all that, the final passage quoted from the Secret Gospel comes as a bit of an anticlimax. Clement indicates that after Mark 10:46 came another addi­

tion, which simply said, “And the sister of the young man Jesus loved was there, along with his mother and Salome. And Jesus did not receive them.”

The letter goes on to say that the other passages Theodore had asked about (but which are not cited) are falsifications of the text. It concludes, “Now the true interpretation and that which is in accordance with the true philosophy. . . .” And here the text breaks off. We do not know what Clement said next.