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

By: Material type: TextTextLanguage: English Publication details: New Haven : Yale University Press, c2007.Description: 1 online resource (xi, 340 p.)ISBN:
  • 9780300135084 (electronic bk.)
  • 0300135084 (electronic bk.)
  • 0300117604 (cloth : alk. paper)
  • 9780300117608 (cloth : alk. paper)
  • 1281734594
  • 9781281734594
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: Secret Gospel of Mark unveiled.DDC classification:
  • 229/.8 22
LOC classification:
  • BS2860.S42 J44 2007eb
Online resources:
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.
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 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 "Salome", twentieth-century misunderstandings of early Christian liturgy, and Smith's personal struggles with Christian sexual morality.
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-326) and indexes.

"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.

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 "Salome", twentieth-century misunderstandings of early Christian liturgy, and Smith's personal struggles with Christian sexual morality.

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