Is it Really “the Secret Gospel of Mark”?

 If you only know Clement’s letter to Theodore through English books and articles, you’d be forgiven for thinking “The Secret Gospel of Mark” was its ancient, official title. The phrase is everywhere. It’s on Morton Smith’s 1973 popular book, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark, which is what really launched the label into the scholarly bloodstream.

But if you go back to the Greek of the letter itself, Clement’s own language is quite a bit more nuanced—and that matters both for how we talk about the text and for how we imagine its history.

Let’s walk through what Clement actually says.

Clement clearly distinguishes several things in the letter:

First, he mentions “the divinely-inspired Gospel according to Mark” – τὸ θεόπνευστον κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγέλιον. That’s the standard title formula you’d expect: the gospel, according to Mark, with the full κατὰ Μάρκον title form.

Second, he describes a longer, Alexandrian version. After Mark comes to Alexandria, Clement says, he “composed a more spiritual gospel” – πνευματικώτερον εὐαγγέλιον – “for the use of those being perfected,” i.e., for the advanced, initiated believers. Same Mark, same basic gospel, but expanded and “more spiritual” in content and audience.

Third, in the part of the story where Carpocrates enters, Clement says that the heretic “obtained from [a presbyter] a copy of the mystic gospel” – ἀπόγραφον τοῦ μυστικοῦ εὐαγγελίου – and then twisted it, “interpreting it according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine” and polluting the holy words with shameless additions.

Fourth, when Clement coaches Theodore on how to respond, he explicitly tells him not to concede “that the mystic gospel is by Mark,” but even “to deny it on oath” – τοῦ Μάρκου εἶναι τὸ μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ μεθ’ ὅρκου ἀρνητέον.

So yes, Clement does use the phrase μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον (“mystic” or “mystery” gospel) and even “the mystic gospel of Mark.” The word μυστικός lives in that semantic field of “belonging to the mysteries”: secret in the sense of reserved for the initiated, not public in the sense of a modern trade book. That lines up perfectly with Clement’s broader theology, where he loves to speak of Christian “mysteries,” a higher “gnosis,” and teaching for the τέλειοι, the “perfected,” beyond elementary catechesis.

But notice what Clement doesn’t do.

When he uses a proper gospel title, he sticks to the familiar “the gospel according to Mark.” When he talks about the longer version, he doesn’t suddenly christen it “τὸ κατὰ Μάρκον μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον” as a formal book-title. He instead describes it as “more spiritual” and “mystic,” still treating it as Mark’s gospel in an Alexandrian, esoteric edition—not as a separate, independently titled literary work.

In other words, “μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον” in the letter looks like a descriptive label rather than a fixed, canonical title formula. That’s exactly why Scott Brown, for example, prefers to talk about Mark’s “mystic gospel” or “longer Mark” and is careful to note that “Secret Gospel of Mark” is a modern convenience name, not an ancient cover-page title.

Morton Smith’s “Secret Gospel”

So where does “The Secret Gospel of Mark” come from?

Historically, it comes from Morton Smith’s English book-title. In 1973 he publishes The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark, and that catchy phrase—“Secret Gospel of Mark”—sticks. Smith is clearly picking up on Clement’s μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον and translating it with a bit of marketing flair. There’s nothing illegitimate about that as a title choice, but it is his choice. No ancient colophon, no catalogue entry, no patristic reference calls the book “The Secret Gospel of Mark.”

That matters when later writers talk as if Clement “tells us that the longer Markan text was called the Secret Gospel of Mark.” He doesn’t say that. He gives us:

– a standard title (“the divinely inspired gospel according to Mark”),
– a characterization (“more spiritual gospel”),
– a description of its reserved function (“for those being perfected”),
– and a descriptor (“mystic gospel”).

Everything else is us.

The “Deny it on Oath” Puzzle

Now put all that alongside the tricky line near the end of the letter. Clement, having just explained that Mark did compose a more spiritual form in Alexandria, tells Theodore that when the Carpocratians “put forward their falsifications,” he must not concede “τοῦ Μάρκου εἶναι τὸ μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ μεθ’ ὅρκου ἀρνητέον” – that “the mystic gospel is by Mark, but should even deny it on oath.”

On a flat reading, that sounds self-contradictory. Clement has just said Mark wrote such a thing, then he tells Theodore to deny—on oath!—that the mystic gospel is Mark’s. That apparent paradox is one of the reasons modern scholars like Brown and Peter Jeffery get into fine-grained syntactical debates: whose book is Clement telling Theodore to disown? The Alexandrian church’s longer Mark, or the Carpocratian “edition” of it?

A very plausible way through is to recognize that Clement is responding to a Carpocratian slogan.

Imagine the situation on the ground in Alexandria. Carpocrates and his followers are exactly the kind of group who like to boast of a higher gnosis and secret mysteries. Irenaeus famously paints them as libertine antinomians who claim to possess superior knowledge and engage in “unlawful and unspeakable [ἄρρητα]” practices. They are precisely the sort of people who would advertise, “We have the mystery gospel of Mark,” with a wink and a promise of deeper revelations of Jesus.

Read Clement’s story with that in mind. Carpocrates “obtains from [a presbyter] a copy of the mystic gospel,” corrupts it with his interpretations, and then his followers trumpet this doctored text as “Mark’s mystic gospel.” In Greek, “a copy of the mystic gospel” – ἀπόγραφον τοῦ μυστικοῦ εὐαγγελίου – makes good sense as a reference to the book everyone in that circle is already buzzing about: “the” mystic gospel they claim to have.

Then Clement, writing to Theodore, both grants and restricts the label. On the one hand, he acknowledges that there is a truly mystic, more spiritual Markan gospel, kept and read in Alexandria for the perfected. On the other hand, when Theodore is confronted with Carpocratian proof-texts from their version, Clement instructs him not to concede their equation: don’t agree that their polluted text is “Mark’s mystic gospel,” even if they press you hard enough to demand an oath. The phrase “the mystic gospel of Mark” in that sentence is almost functioning as a quasi-quotation of the Carpocratian sales-pitch, not as Clement’s own neutral title.

Clement’s Rhetorical Pattern

If that sounds like a stretch, consider Clement’s standard polemical move with another loaded term: “gnostic.” He is quite aware of “the knowledge falsely so-called” (ψευδώνυμος γνῶσις) that Irenaeus rails against in the heretics. Yet in Stromata he reclaims the word and happily fills it with his own content, calling the mature Christian “the true gnostic.” He does this by sharply distinguishing between false “gnostics” and true ones, keeping the opponent’s key term in play while redefining it.

On that analogy, the pattern in the letter to Theodore looks very familiar. The Carpocratians brag: “We have Mark’s mystic gospel!” Clement replies:

Yes, there is a genuinely mystic, more spiritual gospel of Mark, preserved at Alexandria and read only to those being perfected. But Carpocrates stole a copy and polluted it. So when they wave their book and insist that it is “Mark’s mystic gospel,” you are not to ratify that claim—not even under oath.

Once we see the situation that way, the “deny it on oath” instruction stops being an embarrassment and becomes a straightforward piece of pastoral coaching. Clement is not renouncing the existence of an Alexandrian mystic Mark; he is telling Theodore how to navigate a loaded slogan and a corrupted edition in a live heresiological fight.

So… is it really “The Secret Gospel of Mark”?

In strict historical terms, no. Clement doesn’t hand us a book with that as its formal title. He speaks of one gospel “according to Mark,” then of a “more spiritual” version for the perfected, and he describes that longer version as μυστικόν, mystic or mystery-gospel, in contrast to an abused Carpocratian copy.

“Secret Gospel of Mark” is our label—Morton Smith’s, to be precise—built on Clement’s μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον but framed for a modern readership. That doesn’t make it evil or unusable; the name is probably here to stay in popular discourse. But if we care about Clement’s own categories, it’s worth remembering that:

He talks about Mark’s gospel, in two “levels,” ordinary and more spiritual.
He uses μυστικός as a theological adjective for the higher level, not as a crisp, formal title.
The exact phrase “the mystic gospel of Mark” likely echoes Carpocratian propaganda that he is teaching Theodore to reject, not a canonical title on an Alexandrian library shelf.

For that reason, there’s a strong case for preferring terms like “longer Mark,” “Alexandrian Mark,” or simply “Mark’s mystic gospel” when we’re trying to speak in ways closer to Clement’s own usage—and for keeping a mental asterisk next to “Secret Gospel of Mark” as the catchy, twentieth-century nickname that it is.