The Secret Gospel of Mark

A letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria (~200 AD), quoted in a manuscript discovered by Morton Smith in 1958, describing a longer version of Mark’s Gospel used by an advanced initiatory group in Alexandria. The letter describes a resurrection scene not in canonical Mark, and an intimate night-time initiation. The document may be genuine, may be a modern forgery (the Morton Smith controversy), or may be an ancient forgery. The debate is unresolved.

Aspect	Detail
Written	Disputed. If genuine: the letter is from Clement of Alexandria (~190-210 AD), the gospel he quotes is from somewhere between 70 AD (when canonical Mark was composed) and Clement’s time. If a forgery: the document was created some time between 1936 and 1958
Language	The Mar Saba manuscript: Greek, written in an 18th-century hand on the endpapers of a 1646 printed edition of the letters of Ignatius
Discovered	1958. Morton Smith, a Columbia University historian, was cataloging the library of the Mar Saba Monastery in the Judean desert. He photographed three pages of Greek manuscript text on the back endpapers of a printed book. He published the discovery in 1973 (Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark)
Attributed to	The letter is attributed to Clement of Alexandria, head of the catechetical school in Alexandria around 200 AD. The gospel quotations within it are attributed to Mark himself — a longer, secret version of his Gospel
Canon status	Not canonical anywhere. Even if the letter is genuine, Clement himself describes Secret Mark as restricted to initiates — never intended for public canon

Clement (allegedly) writes to a certain Theodore to refute the Carpocratian Gnostics, who were using a corrupted version of Secret Mark for their own purposes. Clement explains:

1. Mark wrote his canonical Gospel for catechumens (basic instruction)
2. Mark also wrote a second, more spiritual gospel for those being perfected (advanced initiates) — the Secret Gospel
3. This Secret Gospel is preserved at the Alexandrian church and read only to those being initiated into “the great mysteries”
4. The Carpocratians stole a copy and added obscene additions

Clement then quotes two passages from Secret Mark:

The raising of the young man (a longer version of the Lazarus story):

“And they came into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me.’ But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb, they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do, and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God.”

The encounter at Jericho:

“And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.”

The status of the Secret Gospel of Mark is one of the most contested questions in modern New Testament scholarship. Three positions:

Possibility	Argument	Defenders
Genuine	The letter is authentically Clement’s, and Secret Mark is an early variant of canonical Mark from the late 1st or early 2nd century. The “linen cloth” detail echoes the strange figure who flees naked at Jesus’ arrest in canonical Mark 14:51-52, suggesting both versions share a common source	Morton Smith, Helmut Koester, Hans-Martin Schenke, Scott Brown
Modern forgery (by Morton Smith)	Smith fabricated the manuscript himself, planted it in the Mar Saba library, then “discovered” it. Motives proposed: career advancement, personal expression of homosexuality through a queer Jesus, scholarly hoax to expose academic gullibility. The 18th-century hand has been disputed; the manuscript has not been seen by anyone other than Smith and a few who briefly examined it before it disappeared	Stephen Carlson, Peter Jeffery, Craig A. Evans
Ancient forgery	The letter is genuinely old (perhaps 4th-8th century) but is not by Clement; some ancient writer fabricated it for theological or sectarian reasons. The Secret Gospel quoted within is itself a 2nd-century or later composition	Charles Hedrick, Bruce Chilton (variants of this view)

The manuscript itself has disappeared. After Smith’s photographs in 1958, the book was moved to the patriarchal library in Jerusalem. No subsequent scholar has been allowed to examine it directly with modern forensic techniques. The case cannot be resolved with current evidence.

1. Restricted by design — Even if genuine, Clement says Secret Mark was intentionally kept from public reading. It was a text for initiates only — by definition not canonical
2. The “homoerotic” overtones — The “naked youth in a linen cloth” who spends the night learning “the mystery of the kingdom of God” was scandalous in the 2nd century and remains so. Clement’s letter explicitly denies that the original text said “naked man with naked man” — meaning early readers were already drawing that inference
3. Provenance problems — A single 18th-century manuscript copy of a 2nd-century letter is weak documentation. No earlier manuscript witness exists
4. The Morton Smith controversy — Even mainstream scholars who think the document might be genuine acknowledge that the discovery circumstances are uniquely suspicious

Tradition	Significance
Christian (Protestant)	Largely rejected. Most evangelical and conservative Protestant scholars regard it as a Morton Smith hoax. Mainline Protestant scholarship is more divided
Catholic	Rejected. The Catholic Church has not engaged extensively with the document. Some Catholic scholars (Charles Hedrick, John Meier) have studied it; the official position is that it is not canonical and not authoritative regardless of its origin
Jewish	Not directly relevant, but the document features in discussions of how 2nd-century Christianity transformed Jewish initiatory practices
LGBTQ+ Christian / theological	Significant. If genuine, the text is one of the few early Christian documents that suggests Jesus had intimate — possibly erotic — relationships with male disciples. Has been used in revisionist constructions of a “queer Jesus”
Masonic	The theme of a public gospel and a secret initiatory gospel reserved for advanced initiates parallels Masonic concepts of degrees of revelation. Some Masonic writers have cited Secret Mark as evidence for an esoteric layer within early Christianity
Esoteric	Major text in modern esoteric Christianity. The “mystery of the kingdom of God” taught in a night-time initiation echoes the structure of the Eleusinian and Mithraic mysteries. Cited in arguments that Jesus founded an esoteric school within his public ministry
Ethiopian Orthodox	Not relevant — the text is not part of the Eastern or African manuscript tradition

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