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Was a ‘Secret’ Version of the Gospel of Mark Found in 1958?
Morton Smith made an announcement
On December 29, 1960, at a meeting in New York of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, an assistant professor of history at Columbia University named Morton Smith announced an exciting manuscript discovery. Two years prior, he said, he’d been looking over some old Latin books in the top room of the tower library at the Mar Saba monastery, which is outside of Jerusalem.
At the end of a book printed in 1646, he’d noticed two and a half pages of handwriting. It was a text, in Greek, identified as a letter by Clement of Alexandria, the second-century Christian, addressed to a person named Theodore. The letter discusses, and quotes from, a “secret” version of the gospel of Mark.
One would have to appreciate, at least, a good story? A scholar, well-regarded in his field, had found in an old book a copy of a secret teaching of a sacred text, kept hidden since the origins of the faith. He wasn’t allowed to remove the book, so it remained locked up in the monastery.
But he had taken photos.
