The Secret Gospel Of Mark Unveiled

In 1958, Bible scholar Morton Smith announced the discovery of a sensational manuscript-a second-century letter written by St. Clement of Alexandria, who quotes an unknown, longer version of the Gospel of Mark. When Smith published the letter in 1973, he set off a firestorm of controversy that has raged ever since. Is the text authentic, or a hoax? Is Smith’s interpretation correct? Did Jesus really practice magic, or homosexuality? And if the letter is a forgery . . . why? Through close examination of the "discovered” manuscript’s text, Peter Jeffery unravels the answers to the mystery and tells the tragic tale of an estranged Episcopalian priest who forged an ancient gospel and fooled many of the best biblical scholars of his time. Jeffery shows convincingly that Smith’s Secret Gospel is steeped in anachronisms and that its construction was influenced by Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, twentieth-century misunderstandings of early Christian liturgy, and Smith’s personal struggles with Christian sexual morality.

In this needed and highly anticipated new translation of the Theban plays of Sophocles, David Slavitt presents a fluid, accessible, and modern version for both newcomers to the plays and established admirers. Unpretentious and direct, Slavitt's translation preserves the innate verve and energy of the dramas, engaging the reader or audience member directly with Sophocles' great texts. Slavitt chooses to present the plays not in narrative sequence but in the order in which they were composed: Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannos, Oedipus at Colonus; he thereby underscores the fact that the story of Oedipus is one to which Sophocles returned over the course of his lifetime. This arrangement also lays bare the record of Sophocles' intellectual and artistic development. Renowned as a poet and translator, Slavitt has translated Ovid, Virgil, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Ausonius, Prudentius, Valerius Flaccus, and Bacchylides as well as works in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew. In this volume, he avoids personal intrusion on the texts and relies upon the theatrical machinery of the plays themselves. The result is a major contribution to the art of translation and a version of the Oedipus plays that will appeal enormously to readers, theatre directors, and actors.

A groundbreaking account of the Secret Gospel of Mark, one of the most hotly debated documents in Christian history In 1958, at the ancient Christian monastery of Mar Saba just outside Jerusalem, Columbia University scholar Morton Smith claimed to have unearthed a letter written by the Christian philosopher Clement of Alexandria and containing an excerpt from a previously unknown version of the canonical Gospel of Mark. This excerpt recounts a story of Jesus’s apparent sexual encounter with a young, resurrected disciple. In recent years, an influential group of researchers has alleged that no Secret Gospel or letter of Clement existed in antiquity, and that the manuscript that Morton Smith “found” was a modern forgery—created by none other than Smith himself. In this book, Geoffrey S. Smith and Brent C. Landau enter into the controversy surrounding this document and argue that the Secret Gospel of Mark is neither a first-century alternative gospel nor a twentieth-century forgery by the scholar who announced its discovery. Instead, this account is intimately bound up with the history of Mar Saba, one of the oldest monasteries in the Christian world. In this fascinating work, Smith and Landau present the realities and misconceptions surrounding not only the now-lost manuscript but also its brilliant, enigmatic, and acerbic discoverer, Morton Smith.

In 1958, Morton Smith Traveled to Jerusalem to do research in the monastery library of Mar Saba, in the Judean Desert. What he found was no routine corroboration of New Testament history, but a precious fragment of a second-century document that would change our understanding of the work and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

In 1958, American historian of religion Morton Smith made an astounding discovery in the Mar Saba monastery in Jerusalem. Copied into the back of a seventeenth-century book was a lost letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215 CE) that contained excerpts from a longer version of the Gospel of Mark written by Mark himself and circulating in Alexandria, Egypt. More than fifty years after its discovery, the origins of this Secret Gospel of Mark remain contentious. Some consider it an authentic witness to an early form of Mark, perhaps even predating canonical Mark. Some claim it is a medieval or premodern forgery created by a monastic scribe. And others argue it is a forgery created by Morton Smith himself. All these positions are addressed in the papers contained in this volume. Nine North American scholars, internationally recognized for their contributions to the study of Secret Mark, met at York University in Toronto, Canada, in April 2011 to examine recent developments in scholarship on the gospel and the letter in which it is found. Their results represent a substantial step forward in determining the origins of this mysterious and controversial text. List of Contributors: Scott G. Brown Tony Burke Stephen C. Carlson Bruce Chilton Craig A. Evans Paul Foster Charles W. Hedrick Peter Jeffery Allan J. Pantuck Marvin Meyer Hershel Shanks

The great urgency that gave birth to this work is in fact the lack of a single accurate translation of the Greek book of Mark in the English-speaking world, though by far, plenty of new translations had been made but the same mistakes of the older ones were repeated. Based upon the Authorized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate Version of the New Testament Greek Text (1904, 1912), which is an extremely important scholarly achievement being drawn from Byzantium and one of the most authoritative forms of the Greek New Testament text, for it is based entirely upon Byzantine lectionaries' manuscripts, that been used in the Greek-speaking churches through the centuries, this accurate translation of Mark's Gospel, as presenting the most accurate English translation of the Greek Mark's Gospel, intends to provide the reader with a comprehensible reading of the earliest scripture narrative account of Jesus's life and teachings truly meaningful, unveiling what is believed to be secrets in Mark's Gospel and, simultaneously, bridging the gap between scholar and layperson.

Who wrote the Gospel of John? The author identifies himself only as "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and Christian tradition tells us that this disciple was the apostle John. However, during the past century, scholars have increasingly come to doubt that attribution. In 1902, Rudolf Steiner wrote that the author of the Gospel of John was in fact Lazarus. Steiner's position stemmed from his insight that Lazarus's encounter with death involved far more than people realized --an initiation into higher spiritual realities that uniquely qualified him to write this gospel. Edward Smith takes up this argument and shows that subsequent research has tended to favor Lazarus for reasons grounded in John's Gospel itself. More important, Smith shows that subsequent discoveries at Nag Hammadi and Mar Saba corroborate Steiner's reasoning about the nature of the raising of Lazarus, pointing to Lazarus as "the rich young ruler" of Mark's Gospel.

This book brings together a collection of chapter length treatments on the most significant of the non-canonical gospels. A particular strength of the volume is that it draws upon the research of leading experts in the field and clearly and concisely communicates the most hotly contested issues surrounding each text. While a key function of each chapter is to make the current academic debates accessible to a wider audience, these treatments are not simply overviews or survey articles. They also present fresh perspectives on a number of points, and critically assess the most recent trends in scholarship. As such, they will provide an ideal entry point for advanced undergraduate courses and taught Masters programmes. The structure of the book is divided up in an easily useable format. There is an introduction which underscores the significance of the non-canonical texts both for the original readers and for contemporary audiences. This chapter by Keith Elliott also traces important moments in the reception of a number of these texts both in art and literature. Next follows the main sequence of chapters dealing with individual texts. Texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Mary are treated first due to the impact they have had to varying degrees on Historical Jesus research. Other texts are grouped in various subgroups: the two infancy gospels follow each other, and the more fragmentary texts are also closely linked in the arrangement. The book presents one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date discussions of a range of texts that continue to be of interest to scholars and wider readers. The discussions should clarify a number of popular misconceptions and allow for a more informed debate. The scholars who contribute to this collection represent an eclectic range of views and theological outlooks. No attempt has been made to impose a prescribed perspective. Rather, the leading experts have been consulted to produce fresh and stimulating treatments. The book will include contributions from Andrew Gregory (Oxford), Christopher Tuckett (Cambridge), April DeConick (Rice), and Simon Gathercole (Aberdeen), among others.