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Secret Mark, Part 3

August 4th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Secret Gospel of Mark. 1 Comment.

In the summer of 2003, the Journal of Early Christian Studies published a special issue entitled, “The Secret Gospel of Mark: Discussion.” One of the three articles included was:

Stroumsa, Guy G. “Comments on Charles Hedrick’s Article: A Testimony.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11, no. 2 (2003): 147-53.

For those who remained suspicious that a physical manuscript containing a copy of a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria had ever been housed at the Greek Orthodox monastery at Mar Saba, it turned out that there was another corroborating witness. As Guy Stroumsa reported in his article, he himself had viewed the manuscript at Mar Saba during a visit to the monastery in 1976. With the assistance of Archimandrite Melito, Stroumsa and the late David Flusser and Shlomo Pines (professors from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem) had obtained access to the manuscript.

After examining the Voss edition of Ignatius’ letters with the Clement letter scrawled in the back, Stroumsa recalled:

It was obvious to all of us that the precious book should not be left in place, but rather be deposited in the library of the Patriarchate. So we took the book back to Jerusalem, and Father Meliton brought it to the library. We hoped to analyze the manuscript seriously and contemplated an ink analysis. At the National and University Library, however, we were told that only at the police headquarters were people equipped with the necessary knowledge and tools for such an analysis. Father Meliton made it clear that he had no intention of putting the Vossius book in the hands of Israeli police. We gave up, I went back to Harvard, and when I came back to Jerusalem to teach, more than two years later, I had other commitments.

Thus, the book was transferred from Mar Saba to Jerusalem.

“It was only recently,” Stroumsa continued, “more than a quarter-century later, in talking to American colleagues, that I realized that I am the ‘last living Western scholar’ to have seen the Clement manuscript, and that I had a duty to testify in front of a skeptical scholarly world.”

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One of the America scholars with whom Stroumsa evidently discussed the manuscript was Bart Ehrman, who recounts the following epsiode in his book Lost Christianities,

I was at my colleague Elizabeth Clark’s house for a social event. Also there was a scholar named Guy Stroumsa, a professor of comparative religions at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a respected expert in early Christianity. Stroumsa happened to be in town to visit his daughter, who was just starting her Ph.D. program in classics at Duke University. The event was organized around Stroumsa’s visit. He gave a brief talk – about Clement of Alexandria, as it turned out – and then we had a light dinner and social, academic conversation. He and I had never met before, but we knew each other’s work. I told him I was writing a book on lost Christianities, and told him I had just completed a draft of my chapter on the Secret Gospel of Mark. To my astonishment – and everyone else’s – Stroumsa told me that years ago he had tracked down the book and seen it with his own eyes. He could confirm that the letter was in the final pages (which, of course, no one doubted). But he suspects that no one will ever see the letter again. I immediately stopped drinking and started listening . . .