Thursday, January 05, 2006
So, Is "Secret Mark" Pseudepigraphal?

I was thinking about this earlier this evening.

Since Stephen C. Carlson (in his recent book) has seriously called into question the authenticity of Secret Mark (see Carlson's Hypotyposeis blog both here and here) does this mean that we should begin to include Secret Mark in lists of falsely-attributed writings? It is surely a late example (from the mid-20th century) but Carlson's case is strong. That is, Clement of Alexandria likely didn't write it. Morton Smith likely did. It is therefore a "falsely attributed writing". Right?

If not, then what are the formal criteria for considering something "pseudepigraphal"? Is there a particular era in which it must have been produced? a particular religious perspective (Jewish and/or Christian)?

Just curious. Don't mind me. Move along, there's nothing to see here ...

 

Post Author: rico
Thursday, January 05, 2006 10:38:42 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) 

#     |  Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]
Friday, January 06, 2006 7:27:56 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Interesting post, Rick.

I think that even before I published my book few scholars (with a couple of important exceptions) thought that Mark wrote Secret Mark. So it was pretty much already considered pseudepigraphical.

The 20th cen. origin of Secret Mark is what makes it interesting. Goodspeed wrote a book called "Modern Apocrypha" which included several bogus gospels, such as the one with Jesus in Tibet. None of these are ever show up on the lists of pseudepigrapha, so the modernity of Secret Mark would mean that it should belong to the list of Modern Apocrypha instead. Perhaps the dividing line should the age of printing.

Stephen C. Carlson
Comments are closed.