The secret Gospel of Mark unveiled : imagined rituals of sex, death, and madness in a biblical forgery / Peter Jeffery.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jeffery, Peter, 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Secret Gospel according to Mark.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource (xi, 340 p.))

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In 1958, Bible scholar Morton Smith announced the discovery of a sensational manuscript-a second-century letter written by St. Clement of Alexandria, who "es 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.

Contents:

"A discovery of extraordinary importance"

Questions

The secret gospel and the origins of Christian liturgy

The secret gospel and the Alexandrian lectionaries

A gospel in fragments

Hypnotic hymns

The happiness of the dead: Morton Smith on Christian morality

Hellenistic homosexualities

Uranian Venus: a homoerotic subculture in English universities

The wisdom of Salome

The one who knows

Appendix: Morton Smith's translation of the Mar Saba letter of Clement.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-326) and indexes.

ISBN:

1-281-73459-4

9786611734596

0-300-13508-4

OCLC:

1024018195