The Anatomy of an "Academic Hoax": Morton Smith's "Secret" Uncovered

Scholars have been creating a Jesus in their own image since the quest for the historical Jesus began more than two hundred years ago. For example, Albert Schweitzer once noted that the nineteenth-century quest produced one liberal, Protestant Jesus after another, much like the liberal, Protestant Germans who were engaged in the quest. Even today, some conceptions of the historical Jesus, such as the traveling Cynic philosopher that is popular among some North American professors, are suspected of being more reflective of today’s anxieties in academia than first-century conditions. Accordingly, it should not be surprising, perhaps even inevitable, that Morton Smith came up with a Jesus that was very much like him. Smith would neither be the first nor the last to do so, but the key to understanding Secret Mark lies in understanding the Jesus that Smith created in his own image.

Smith’s Jesus, of course, was Jesus the Magician. Although Smith’s 1976 contribution to the quest for the historical Jesus explored how magicians were viewed in antiquity, Smith’s hoaxing is best understood by an analogy to modern-day magicians—as masters of misdirection. Like the stage magician, the hoaxer depends on the ability to induce the audience to suspend its disbelief and accept the illusion for reality. Thus, one of the keys to understanding Secret Mark is to understand the role of misdirection.

Misdirection in Secret Mark

Misdirection is the technique of causing the audience’s attention to be distracted from the anomalies that would defeat the illusion. The first requirement is that the illusion must be plausible to the audience, and in the biblical studies field this means that a supposedly ancient text must be found in an ancient language in pre-modern handwriting. This requirement is sufficient by itself to filter out the vast majority of attempted biblical hoaxes, for example, the nineteenth-century Unknown Life of Jesus, which was supposedly written in Tibetan but only known through Nicholas Notovitch’s Russian notes. Likewise, the 1970s Talmud Jmmanuel known to UFOlogists can never be taken seriously by biblical scholars—its archetype is a German-language version claimed to have been translated from a destroyed Aramaic text. Secret Mark, by contrast, is a rare example of a modern biblical hoax written in ancient Greek. It has a plausibility lacking almost every other hoax attempt.

One of the central principles of misdirection is that the audience looks where the magician looks, and this applies to Secret Mark as well. For example, a magician will stare at the right hand to direct attention away from what the left hand is doing. This principle explains the large amount of irrelevant material in Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, including the nocturnal baptism, ascent into the heavens, and the exhaustive compilation of late and historically worthless testimonia on the Carpocratians. None of this information is directly relevant to the authenticity of Secret Mark but all of this information is useful for diverting scholars to focus their attention on matters unrelated to the authenticity of Secret Mark. This principle also explains why Smith dispersed the little information that was relevant to assessing Secret Mark’s authenticity into such hard-to-reach places as an obscure periodical published in Jerusalem translated into modern Greek. Smith understood the psychology of his peers well and was able to conceal some important information even in the non-scholarly, “popular” edition, The Secret Gospel.

Sometimes, however, an anomaly may be so glaring that distracting the audience’s attention away from it can be impossible. The best way to hide such an anomaly is to make it appear ordinary. For example, if a magician cannot conceal a trapdoor on the floor of the stage, then the trapdoor could be hidden in plain sight by putting a lot of fake trapdoors on the stage floor. Smith used this technique for Secret Mark by asking his colleagues to find as many problems with the Clement letter as possible and compiling them in his commentary. Thus, the serious problems with the letter were indiscriminately mixed in with a large number of insignificant issues.

Nevertheless, misdirection is not a foolproof technique. It does not generally work on people unwilling to suspend disbelief who are alerted to the possibility of deception. Smith’s original success with his colleagues in authenticating the paleography and style of the Clement letter may thus be due to their not realizing that a colleague they personally knew would try to hoax them in that way. Accordingly, Secret Mark exposes the role of faith in academia. Philosophers have argued for centuries to what extent faith and reason are means to understanding reality. Since the Enlightenment, reason has generally won out in the academy, at least explicitly. But the very success of reason in generating knowledge has increased the role of faith, if only in the form of trusting other humans.

Trust and Expertise in Academia

A specialist in one field has to trust experts from other fields. Smith was able to exploit this faith in others by having paleographers give on-the-spot opinions on the appearance of Greek handwriting. Neither Smith nor the contents of Theodore alerted them to the possibility of forgery because (except for Arthur Darby Nock) Smith’s experts for identifying eighteenth-century Greek handwriting were not experts about either Clement of Alexandria, who was rarely copied in that era, or pre-Markan gospel traditions. When it came time for the Clement scholars to look at the contents of Theodore, they were not considering the possibility of a recent forgery because of the conclusions of Smith’s handwriting experts, and they rightly decided that the Clementine style exceeded the capabilities of eighteenth-century and earlier forgers. It is telling that, of all those Smith consulted, Nock was the one who voiced the strongest suspicions about the authenticity of Theodore—he was knowledgeable in all of the fields on which the Secret Mark compositions touched.

The Role of Ideology

More difficult to explain, however, is the acceptance of Secret Mark by many in the academy even after Quentin Quesnell pointed out much of the misdirection in Smith’s books. When the warning signs of deception are present, the effectiveness of misdirection then depends to a large extent on the complicity of the target audience. For example, the people attending a magic show expect there to be misdirection, but the audience is willing to suspend some measure of disbelief in order to be entertained in a context where it is safe to be deceived. In hoaxing the academy, however, scholars and scientists are not so willing to suspend their skepticism in their professional roles and especially not for amusement. Nevertheless, there are other vulnerabilities, as Harold Love explained:

The first aid to spotting a fake is that it is usually a little too good to be true. What is provided has to be something so desirable to the victim, or the public, that normal skepticism is suspended: something either long desired or that provides support for a passionately held theory. Qui vult decepi decipiatur. It is for this reason that many shamelessly inept fakes have had long and successful lives. . . . When the ideological moment that brought forth the fake has passed it should be easier to see it as the product of contrivance. (Harold Love, Attributing Authorship: An Introduction, 2002)

Thus, the success of an academic hoax crucially depends on its ability to tap into a deep-seated need among society’s experts for assessing authenticity. The more unaware the experts are of their deep desires, the more effective the deception will be. The Piltdown Man hoax, arguably the most successful academic hoax of modern times, is a good illustration of this, showing that scientists can be hoaxed as well as scholars in the humanities.

The Piltdown Man Parallel

Prior to WWI, England competed with France and Germany on everything, including paleoanthropology, the study of early human ancestors. France had her cave paintings and Germany had the Neanderthals. Even though England had the first recognized dinosaur fossil, no early human remains were found in England. England’s position changed dramatically, starting in 1908 when Charles Dawson, an amateur fossil hunter, found a fossil with an ape-like jaw and a human-like skull, having an age that made it the oldest human-like ancestor. This discovery not only put England on the map in anthropology but it provided stunning confirmation of Charles Darwin’s theories at a time in which they were still racked with controversy in learned society. Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward, the scientist at the British Museum who validated the remains, became famous. Some scientists, however, were initially skeptical, but they had difficulty explaining their skepticism and, in any case, they were denied access to the Piltdown remains on the grounds of their immense value. Eventually, a second Piltdown discovery closed off the early debate.

The passage of time and the discovery of other early human remains, however, steadily marginalized Piltdown Man because, unlike the Piltdown Man, they had a human-like jaw and an ape-like skull. Piltdown Man was almost completely ignored in the early 1950s when a young scientist decided to take another look at the physical remains with a new fluorine-dating technique. Not only did the new technique prove Dawson and Woodward wrong, but the scientist also discovered obvious signs of forgery (such as artificial abrasion on its teeth) that should never have been missed in the first place.

There are differences between the Piltdown Man hoax and Secret Mark. The former involved the forgery of an artifact, not a text, and the Piltdown hoaxer never actually confessed. Nevertheless, the reception of the Piltdown Man bears many resemblances to that of Secret Mark. The initial enthusiasm over Piltdown Man led to controversy, then to increasing marginalization as newer discoveries show how poorly the fake fits with developing theories, and finally to very belated looks at the physical evidence. The psychological factors driving the Piltdown Man hoax were strong: the desire to settle the contemporary quarrel between science and religion, the frustration over lack of early human fossils, pre-World War I nationalism, and even personal ambition. When the hoax was uncovered, most of these factors had abated. By the 1950s, evolution had won over creationism in the universities; the subsequent discoveries of Peking Man and Australopithecus provided a useful quantity and quality of real fossil evidence; the failures of World War I and II repudiated nationalism; and many of the people involved in the Piltdown excavations had died. Without the psychological forces to keep propping it up, Piltdown Man was doomed.

Conclusion: The Role of Faith in Academia

Scholars and scientists are sometimes so used to looking at ancient evidence that they can too easily forget to be as skeptical of their contemporaries. This is one advantage that biographers and journalists tend to have over those studying the distant past, and skepticism over contemporary sources is the first defense against being hoaxed. Even this skepticism can break down under the right combination of powerful forces.

In the end, the story of Secret Mark is a lesson in the complexities of academic trust, the vulnerabilities of scholarly expertise, and the enduring impact of misdirection. Stephen Carlson's The Gospel Hoax provides a detailed and convincing analysis of how Morton Smith's Secret Mark fits into the long history of academic hoaxes. For those interested in a deeper dive into this intriguing case, Carlson's work is essential reading. You can explore more about this topic in his book The Gospel Hoax.