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Abstract
This prologue provides an overview of the debates surrounding Morton Smith's discovery of a Secret Gospel of Mark in 1960. Smith claimed to have found an unknown letter written by the Christian philosopher Clement of Alexandria in the ancient monastery of Mar Saba, located on the edge of the desert outside Jerusalem. In this letter, Clement quotes a portion of this Secret Gospel of Mark in which Jesus raises a young man from the dead. Clement reports that a notoriously licentious band of heretics had gotten hold of this Secret Gospel and had added passages to the story to sexualize the relationship between Jesus and the young man. In the years following Smith's announcement, some scholars have come to see the Secret Gospel as an earlier version of the New Testament Gospel according to Mark. Since Mark is thought to be the earliest of the four New Testament gospels, an early version of Mark could challenge our basic understanding of who Jesus was, how he interacted privately with his disciples, and whether he had a companion or even a love interest. Smith's discovery has the potential to rewrite the history of early Christianity. However, the “conventional wisdom” within biblical studies circles today is that the letter of Clement is a twentieth-century forgery crafted by Smith himself. The chapter explains that the book offers a new theory about the origins and historical significance of the Secret Gospel of Mark.
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