One Response By Carlson to his Critics

To be fair, I should note that Carlson has tried to respond to some of his critics, and I'd like to highlight one of those responses here.

Carlson attempts a partial rebuttal to Scott Brown's treatment of The Gospel Hoax in his own book, Mark's Other Gospel, in the following article:

http://ext.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/117/5/185

but it is a somewhat flimsy rebuttal, focusing on only three minor issues: 1) the abandonment by Smith of SGM as evidence for his scholarship 2) the question of Smith's talents as a scholar, and 3) the question of Smith's reading of SGM1 and SGM2 as an intercalation.



1) While Carlson is correct that sometimes scholars dig in and defend their theories against all evidence to the contrary, it is equally true to note that scholars sometimes change their minds. Carlson suggests Tischendorf as an example; I present the counter-example of Streeter, who moved from viewing Q as a source for Mark to an independent two-source solution, and eventually to a four-source solution. Indeed, we should notice that Smith took 15 years in preparing his thesis about SGM, implying that it was a case only made with great difficulty; facing criticism of his efforts, and facing the inherent difficulties in his rather absurd model (SGM as a record of erotic baptismal rituals in the early church), Smith unsurprisingly abandoned his project.

2) Carlson criticizes Brown for on the one hand insisting on the scholarly talents of Smith, and on the other hand stating that SGM was beyond his abilities to interpret. However, this is simply silly. Countless talented individuals make mistakes all the time, even great mistakes. Smith may have been "brilliant and erudite" within certain areas of scholarship, but this does not place everything within his ability (contrary to the critics of SGM, who in accusing Smith of conspiracy and hoax, place absolutely everything within his ability). If Brown's criticism of Smith's Greek ability is not supported by the evidence (I make no claims about this one way or the other), we can certainly say that Smith failed completely in placing SGM within the relevant early Christian context. The relevant early Christian texts clearly show that nakedness beneath sindons, anti-feminine language, and semi-gnostic initiation rites are to be found elsewhere in early Christian writings, including some canonical and orthodox texts. Smith was not a superhero; he was indeed a brilliant scholar, who nevertheless, in this instance at least, performed a poor and inaccurate analysis. This is common to the human condition, for the simple reason that human judgement is flawed.

3) One obvious solution to the question of the relationship between SGM1 and SGM2 ("LGM" 1 and 2, in Brown's terminology) is to give up the idea that they form an intercalation at all. Indeed, they need not; GMk was not composed entirely out of intercalated stories, even if we can detect portions of it that were. Carlson would not be persuaded by this, for he claims "Today’s scholars would expect the second fragment of Secret Mark to continue either of the narratives begun in the first Secret Mark fragment, but it does not." But he does not explain who "today's scholars" consist of, nor why they would be unanimous in reading SGM1 and SGM2 as a connected, intercalated story. I find his expectations implausible. Why should we expect SGM1 and SGM2 to form a complete narrative unit? There is simply no reason for such an expectation, nor do I see why we should expect "today's scholars" to make a case for this. Furthermore, even if SGM1 and 2 were elements in larger A-B-A structures, or chiasms, in SGM, we do not have access to the remaining text of SGM (which surely included much, much more than these two fragmens), and so we really have no idea what textual brackets the author of SGM was trying to build with these two particular pericopes.


I should make mention of one other response to Brown that Carlson makes. In comments to a post made on the Thoughts on Antiquity blog, Carlson says he sees nothing remarkable in Pantuck and Brown's article on Smith's mistaken reading of "Madiotes" in one of the manuscripts in Mar Saba. (I'll be mentioning this article again in a subsequent post.) Carlson says the relevant question is, why did Smith write down "Madiotes", regardless of what the orginal text read? My response would be to argue that the onus is on Carlson to prove that Smith meant anything by "Madiotes/Madeotas" other than an attempt at transcribing and transliterating the name written in the text. To argue that it is a pseudonym meaning "baldy/swindler" is in no way obvious, and must be supported by the kind of arguments that Carlson supplies regarding the origin of the name "Madiotes" in the manuscripts examined by Smith. But Pantuck and Brown undermine all of these supporting arguments. Carlson has not yet adequately responded to their efforts.