Through fortuitious happenstance, I was granted a peek at an advance manuscript copy of Stephen C. Carlson's upcoming book, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark, to be published by Baylor University Press.

Stephen C. Carlson mentions his work on his blog, Hypotyposeis. Mark Goodacre has mentioned the book here and here. Michael Turton mentions Stephen's upcoming SBL paper, which is primarily based on a chapter of the book. Heck, I even mentioned the book a few weeks back after reading a blurb about it in an email from Publisher's Weekly.

This is cool stuff. I haven't read too much about Secret Mark apart from knowing the basics of the scandalous content and a very little about the posited source (a heretofore unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria). I could barely put Carlson's MS down once I started reading.

It kept my interest from the foreword to the conclusion, so much so that I spent my Saturday evening sitting in a Starbucks reading the last half of the book (started it on Friday) when I should've been working on my own SBL paper.

Oh well. It was definitely worth it -- Carlson's book is good. Congratulations, Stephen. I'm looking forward to seeing it in print!