The Secret Gospel of Mark, also called the Mystic Gospel of Mark or the Longer Gospel of Mark, is a longer and secret version of the Gospel of Mark that some believe exists. This gospel is only mentioned in the Mar Saba letter, a document whose authenticity is questioned. The letter is said to have been written by Clement of Alexandria, a scholar who lived around AD 150–215. The letter is preserved only in photographs of a Greek handwritten copy that appears to have been written in the 18th century on the endpapers of a 17th-century book about Ignatius of Antioch. Some scholars believe the letter suggests Jesus was involved in homosexual activity, but this idea is not widely accepted.
In 1958, Morton Smith, a professor at Columbia University, discovered a previously unknown letter by Clement of Alexandria in the monastery of Mar Saba, located 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Jerusalem. Smith announced the discovery in 1960 and published his research in 1973. The original manuscript was later moved to the library of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem but was lost after 1990. Since then, researchers have relied on photographs and copies, including those made by Smith.
In the letter, Clement wrote to a man named Theodore that after Peter died as a martyr, Mark the Evangelist brought notes from Peter and his own writings to Alexandria. From these, Mark created a longer version of the Gospel of Mark, which he left to the church in Alexandria. Clement said this version was kept secret and only shared with people being taught about religious mysteries. Clement quoted two passages from this longer gospel. One describes Jesus raising a rich young man from the dead in Bethany, a story similar to the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John.
The discovery of the letter caused excitement but was soon criticized as a forgery. Scholars disagree about whether the letter is real. The text includes two parts, and some believe both are real, both are fake, or one is real and the other is fake. Many who think the letter is fake believe it was created in modern times, with Smith often blamed for the forgery. If the letter is fake, the excerpts from the Secret Gospel of Mark would also be fake. Some accept the letter as real but argue the gospel is a 2nd-century Gnostic work, not written by Mark. Others believe Clement’s account is true and that the Secret Gospel of Mark is an expanded version of the Gospel of Mark. Still others think the Secret Gospel of Mark is the original gospel, with the canonical Gospel of Mark being a later version.
Scholars continue to debate the authenticity of the Mar Saba letter. There is no agreement among experts, and the discussion about the Secret Gospel of Mark remains unresolved.
Discovery
In the summer of 1958, during a trip to Jordan, Israel, Turkey, and Greece, Morton Smith traveled to the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Saba, located between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. He had received permission from Patriarch Benedict I of Jerusalem to stay there for three weeks to study manuscripts. While organizing documents in the tower library of Mar Saba, Smith discovered a letter written by Clement of Alexandria. This letter included two passages from a previously unknown longer version of the Gospel of Mark, which Smith later called the "Secret Gospel of Mark." The letter was handwritten in the endpapers of Isaac Vossius’s 1646 printed edition of Ignatius of Antioch’s works. This letter is also known by other names, such as the Mar Saba letter, the Clement letter, the Letter to Theodore, and Clement’s letter to Theodore.
Because the book belonged to the Greek Patriarchate, Smith only took black-and-white photographs of the letter and left the book in the tower library. He realized that to confirm the letter’s authenticity, he needed to share its contents with other scholars. In December 1958, he submitted a transcription and preliminary translation of the letter to the Library of Congress to keep its details private until further study.
After two years of comparing the letter’s style, vocabulary, and ideas to Clement’s known writings and consulting experts who dated the handwriting to the 18th century, Smith felt confident in its authenticity. He announced his discovery at the Society of Biblical Literature’s annual meeting in December 1960. Over the next few years, Smith studied Mark, Clement, and the letter’s connection to early Christianity, consulting experts in related fields. By 1966, his research was nearly complete, but his book, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, was not published until 1973 due to delays in production. In the book, Smith included black-and-white photographs of the text. That same year, he also published a second book for a general audience.
For many years, it was believed that only Smith had seen the manuscript. However, in 2003, Guy Stroumsa reported that he and other scholars saw the letter in 1976. Stroumsa, along with professors David Flusser and Shlomo Pines and Greek Orthodox Archimandrite Meliton, visited Mar Saba to locate the book. With help from a monk, they found it in the same place Smith had left it 18 years earlier, where the letter was written on the book’s blank pages. They believed the manuscript might be safer in Jerusalem than in Mar Saba and took it to the Patriarchate library. They attempted to test the ink but could not because the only facility with the necessary technology was the Jerusalem police. Meliton did not want to leave the manuscript with the police, so no test was conducted. Stroumsa later shared his account after learning he was the "last [known] living Western scholar" to have seen the letter.
Later research revealed more about the manuscript. Around 1977, librarian Father Kallistos Dourvas removed the pages containing the letter for photographing and re-cataloguing. However, the re-cataloguing never happened. Dourvas later told scholars that the pages were kept separately with the book until his retirement in 1990. After that, the pages went missing, and efforts to find them have been unsuccessful. Olympiou suggested that the Patriarchate Library may be hiding the pages due to Morton Smith’s interpretation of the text, or the pages may have been destroyed or misplaced. Dourvas provided color photographs of the manuscript to Olympiou, which were published in The Fourth R in 2000.
These color photographs were taken in 1983 by Dourvas at a photo studio. Quentin Quesnell arranged and paid for the photographs. In June 1983, Quesnell was allowed to study the manuscript at the library under Dourvas’s supervision for several days. Quesnell claimed the Mar Saba document might be a forgery and criticized Smith for not sharing the manuscript with other scholars and for providing low-quality photographs. However, Quesnell did not inform others that he had already taken high-quality color photographs of the letter. Hedrick and Olympiou published copies of these photographs in 2000 without knowing Quesnell had them. The scholarly community learned of Quesnell’s visit in 2007 when Adela Yarbro Collins briefly mentioned it. After Quesnell’s death in 2012, his notes revealed that he initially believed the document was a forgery but later gave up after finding similar 18th-century handwriting.
As of 2019, the manuscript’s location is unknown, and it is only documented in two sets of photographs: Smith’s black-and-white images from 1958 and the color images from 1983. No tests have been conducted on the ink or paper.
Content according to Clement's letter
The Mar Saba letter is written to a man named Theodore (Biblical Greek: Θεόδωρος, romanized: Theodoros), who asked if the Gospel of Mark includes the words "naked man with naked man" (Biblical Greek: γυμνὸς γυμνῷ, romanized: gymnos gymnō) and "other things." Clement, the writer of the letter, says that Mark wrote a second, longer, and more spiritual version of his gospel. This version was "very securely kept" in the church in Alexandria, but it did not include those words. Clement claims that a teacher named Carpocrates, who did not follow accepted beliefs, obtained a copy of the gospel dishonestly and added "extremely inappropriate lies" to it. To oppose the teachings of Carpocrates and his followers, who were known for their unusual views about relationships, Clement quoted parts of the true Secret Gospel of Mark.
Clement knew of three versions of Mark’s gospel: Original Mark, Secret Mark, and Carpocratian Mark. The Secret Gospel of Mark is described as a second, "more spiritual" version written by Mark himself. The name "Secret Gospel" comes from a translation of the phrase "mystikon euangelion." Clement referred to the gospel simply as "written by Mark." To show the difference between the longer and shorter versions, he called the non-canonical gospel a "secret gospel" or a "mystic gospel." To Clement, both versions were still the Gospel of Mark. The purpose of the Secret Gospel was to teach advanced Christians about knowledge (gnosis) and it was used in religious services in Alexandria.
The letter includes two parts from the Secret Gospel. The first part was placed between Mark 10:34 and 35, after Jesus predicts his death for the third time and before the part where James and John ask Jesus for honor. This passage is similar to the story in the Gospel of John where Jesus brings Lazarus back to life. Clement says the passage reads exactly as written (Biblical Greek: κατὰ λέξιν, romanized: kata lexin):
The second part is very short and was placed in Mark 10:46. Clement says that "after the words, 'And he comes into Jericho' [and before 'and as he went out of Jericho'], the secret Gospel adds only":
Clement writes, "But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are falsifications." Just as Clement is about to explain the passages further, the letter ends.
These two parts are all that remain of the Secret Gospel. No other copy of the Secret Gospel is known to exist, and it is not mentioned in any other ancient writings. Some scholars have questioned why an authentic Christian text would be preserved only in one late manuscript. However, this is not unusual in history.
Debate on authenticity and authorship
Scholars do not agree on whether the letter is real, partly because the ink used in the manuscript has never been tested. At first, people believed the letter was genuine, and early readers of Smith's books mostly agreed with this view. However, later doubts arose, and the letter became famous because it was connected to Smith's own ideas. Through careful study of language, Smith argued that the letter was likely written by Clement. He claimed that two quotes in the letter come from an older Aramaic version of Mark, which was used to create both the official Mark and the Gospel of John. Smith also believed that the early Christian movement began as a secret religious group with special baptism rituals, and that the historical Jesus was a wise person who was guided by a spiritual force. Many of Smith's critics were troubled by his suggestion that Jesus might have performed a physical union during baptism.
At first, the letter was thought to be real, while Secret Mark was often seen as a fake gospel from the second century that copied ideas from the official gospels. F. F. Bruce (1974) believed the story of the young man from Bethany in Secret Mark was based on the story of Lazarus in the Gospel of John, suggesting Secret Mark was not original. Raymond E. Brown (1974) thought the author of Secret Mark may have used the Gospel of John from memory. Patrick W. Skehan (1974) said the use of John's text was clear. Robert M. Grant (1974) believed Smith proved the letter was written by Clement but thought Secret Mark included ideas from all four official gospels and was written after the first century. Helmut Merkel (1974) also said Secret Mark relied on the four official gospels and that even if the letter was real, it only showed that an expanded version of Mark existed in Alexandria around 170 AD. Frans Neirynck (1979) argued that Secret Mark was written using a detailed comparison of the official gospels. N. T. Wright (1996) noted that most scholars who believe the text is real see Secret Mark as a later version of Mark with Gnostic ideas.
However, about 25 to 32 scholars did not think Secret Mark was a fake but saw it as a healing story similar to other miracle stories in the Synoptic Gospels. These scholars believed the story was based on oral tradition, though they disagreed with Smith's claim that it came from an Aramaic version of Mark.
The first person to question the letter's authenticity was Quentin Quesnell (1975). He argued that the real manuscript needed to be examined before its authenticity could be confirmed and suggested it might be a modern forgery. He noted that a 1936 book about Clement's writings made it easier to copy his style, meaning any forgery would have to be made after 1936. Smith found a 1910 catalog listing 191 books but not the Vossius book, which Quesnell and others used as evidence that the book was not originally in the monastery's collection but brought there by Smith. Smith countered that he found nearly 500 books during his stay, so the catalog was incomplete and could not prove the book did not exist at the time.
Although Quesnell did not accuse Smith of forging the letter, some readers and Smith himself interpreted his arguments as an accusation. Since no one else had seen the manuscript, some scholars questioned whether it even existed.
Charles E. Murgia supported Quesnell's claims by pointing out that the manuscript had no serious errors, which is unusual for an ancient text copied many times. He also argued that Clement's letter may have been written to explain why Secret Mark was not known before, but later scholars like Jonathan Klawans and Scott Brown debated this idea. Smith dismissed Murgia's arguments as based on misunderstandings and believed the letter could have survived a fire at the monastery in the 18th century, with a monk copying it to preserve it. Smith suggested the simplest explanation was that the letter was copied from an old manuscript that had never left the monastery.
Murgia believed Smith could not have forged the letter because of his limited knowledge of Greek and found no evidence of fraud in Smith's work. He thought the letter was created in the 18th century.
Morton Smith disagreed with claims that he forged the letter, calling Quesnell's 1975 article an attack. When the Swedish historian Per Beskow wrote in 1983 that there were reasons to doubt the letter's authenticity, Smith became upset and responded.
Interpretation
Morton Smith believed that a scene in which Jesus taught a young man about "the mystery of the kingdom of God" at night described a religious ritual called baptism. In this ritual, the person being baptized experienced a spiritual connection with Jesus, followed by a vision of rising to the heavens. This ritual was meant to free the disciple from the rules of the Mosaic Law, allowing them to live without those restrictions. However, this idea of Jesus being associated with freethinking in religious matters, rather than sexual freedom, was later challenged by others, including James and Paul. Smith acknowledged that there is no proof that this practice began with Jesus himself.
In his later work, Smith suggested that the historical Jesus might have used magical or hypnotic methods to explain the healing of people possessed by demons, as described in the gospels. He searched for evidence of a "libertine tradition" in early Christian writings but found little support for this in the Mar Saba manuscript. In his book Jesus the Magician, Smith devoted only a small amount of space to discussing the manuscript and never claimed that Jesus engaged in sexual freedom.
Two parts of Secret Mark may help explain confusing details in the canonical Gospel of Mark. In Mark 14:51–52, a young man wearing a linen cloth is caught during Jesus' arrest but escapes, leaving his clothing behind. This passage has puzzled scholars, as it seems unrelated to the rest of the story. Some believe the young man might be the author Mark himself, while others think Secret Mark was based on similar passages in the canonical gospel. Other scholars argue that the canonical Mark was created by editing Secret Mark. For example, some believe that parts of Secret Mark were removed and rearranged to form the story in the canonical gospel.
Marvin Meyer suggests that the young man in Secret Mark represents an ideal disciple, not a real person. This young man wears only a linen cloth, similar to the young man in Mark 14:51–52, who flees naked during Jesus' arrest. The same word for linen cloth appears in Mark 15:46, where it describes Jesus' burial wrapping, and in Mark 16:5, where a young man in a white robe appears in the empty tomb.
Some scholars, like Miles Fowler, believe that the young man in Secret Mark is the same person as the rich man in Mark 10:17–22, who Jesus tells to give up his wealth and follow him. Others think this young man might be Lazarus or the beloved disciple. Hans-Martin Schenke interprets the young man in Gethsemane as a symbolic figure, representing an ideal disciple.
Marvin Meyer also points out that Secret Mark contains a story about a young man who follows Jesus throughout the gospel, which is only partially present in the canonical Mark. This story includes the rich man in Mark 10:17–22, the young man raised from the dead in Secret Mark, the rejection of Salome and the young man's mother in Mark 10:46, the fleeing young man in Gethsemane, and the young man in the tomb in Mark 16:5. These elements, when removed from Secret Mark, may explain why the canonical Mark seems incomplete.
The second part of Secret Mark fills a gap in Mark 10:46, where the story of Jesus and Bartimaeus, a blind man, begins. Morton Smith noted that Mark often describes Jesus arriving in a place and then doing something there. However, in Mark 10:46, no event is described after Jesus arrives in Jericho. Some scholars believe the story about Bartimaeus being healed by Jesus was omitted, and Secret Mark may provide the missing details.