Putting the Smoke Back In the Gun (Sort of), pt. 1

Francis Watson, in his article "Beyond Suspicion: on the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark", tries--among other arguments--to link Morton Smith's work The Secret Gospel to James Hunter's novel The Mystery of Mar Saba by finding two or three similar phrases shared by both works, and used in similar contexts in each (in addition to other attempts at linking the two which we won't discuss here).  This can be found in section III.2 of Watson's article.  Watson claims this helps show that "Smith is dependent on the novel" (Suspicion, p. 170).

However, there is an intervening work that shows the same sort of similarity to The Mystery of Mar Saba, and a much closer similarity to The Secret Gospel, and which Morton Smith is more likely to have read: John Allegro's 1964 book Search in the Desert.   



Watson cites this passage from Hunter's novel:

[Mar Saba is] one of the oldest religious institutions of its kind in the world, and at one time housed many manuscripts. Most of these were removed, but I have always had the feeling that some might have been overlooked and hidden away. My supposition proved correct. (Mystery, p. 279)

For comparison with the following passage in Smith's work:

I had not expected much from the Mar Saba manuscripts, since I knew that almost all of them had been carried off to Jerusalem in the past century and were listed in the catalogue of the Patriarchal library. But there was always the chance that something had been missed, or that other manuscripts had been brought in by monks coming from other monasteries. (Secret Gospel, p. 11)

Watson's first point of comparison is the link between the phrase in Hunter

"[B]ut I have always had the feeling that some might have been overlooked"

and the phrase in Smith

"But there was always the chance that something had been missed". 

To be sure, they convey similar meanings, and notably, the word "always" falls in both, and each begins with the word "but".  There is also the similar use of "that some/something" and "have/had been", and the resemblance of "overlooked" and "missed" in meaning.  There are legitimate grounds for comparison.

However, in Search in the Desert, Allegro himself writes:

The Mar Saba monastery has no untapped treasure house of literary gems like the St. Catherine library of Mount Sinai.  All its manuscripts have long since been removed from the monastery itself.  Yet there is always the possibility that the caves round about might contain some relic of their Byzantine occupation in the form of a book or scroll left by a recluse from the fifth century onward. (Search, p. 159)

Here we have a similar discussion about the library at Mar Saba, after publication of The Mystery of Mar Saba but before publication of The Secret Gospel.  Under Watson's criteria, Allegro's phrase

"Yet there is always the possibility that the caves round about might contain some relic"

is interchangable with Hunter's phrase

"[B]ut I have always had the feeling that some might have been overlooked and hidden away".

Allegro conveys exactly the same meaning here as both Hunter and Smith.  And the following words are shared between Hunter and Allegro:

--"always"
--"might"
--"some"
--and "yet" and "but" are very close in meaning

If the similarity between Hunter and Smith is evidence that Smith was dependent on Hunter, then there is equal evidence that John Allegro was dependent on James Hunter for the composition of Search in the Desert.  Indeed, the above passage in Allegro occurs in the context of a retelling of the story of the discovery of Sinaiticus by Tischendorf--just as, in Hunter's novel, the character of Sir William explicitly draws a comparison between his discovery and that of Tischendorf.  It would seem, then, that using Watson's standards, there is strong evidence that Allegro relied on Hunter to write his tale of the search for the Dead Sea Scrolls.  But Search in the Desert is not a hoax; it is a true story, the details of which no one doubts.  So why should we doubt Smith's story, just because he displays the same similarity with Hunter's novel?

And there is also an equally close link between Allegro and Smith.  Compare again Allegro's phrase

"Yet there is always the possibility that the caves round about might contain some relic"

with Smith's phrase

"But there was always the chance that something had been missed". 

The grammar of each phrase runs parallel:

--again, "yet" and "but" are practically identical
--"there is" and "there was" only differ in tense
--"always" is shared by both
--"the possibility that" and "the chance that" are likewise practically identical
--and "some relic" is close to "something" 

What's more, each element above occurs in the same order in each sentence, and the first four comprise the entire first clause of each sentence, without interruption.  Indeed, there is little in this sentence that Smith needs from Hunter that he couldn't find in Allegro (I see only the "yet/but" similarity, and the "have/had been" similarity), and much from Allegro that he couldn't have gotten from Hunter.  It would seem, then, that according to Watson's standards, in this instance, Smith is just as likely to depend on Allegro than on Hunter.

The only remaining similarities between Hunter and Smith that are not found in Allegro are the use of "but" and the similarity between the progressive present tense "have been" (Hunter) and the progressive past tense "had been" (Smith).  However, Smith could easily have just substituted "but" in place of Allegro's "yet" (just as Allegro could have substituted "yet" in place of Hunter's "but").  And Smith is consistent in using the progressive aspect in describing the fate of the Mar Saba library in general, something Hunter doesn't do, but Allegro does.  We read in Hunter that Mar Saba

"at one time housed many manuscripts. Most of these were removed"

but we read in Allegro that

"All its manuscripts have long since been removed"

Now compare to Smith's statement

"I had not expected much from the Mar Saba manuscripts, since I knew that almost all of them had been carried off"

The meaning is admittedly shared between Hunter and Smith.  But it is also shared among Hunter, Smith, and Allegro.  And Allegro shares "manuscripts" with Hunter, just like Smith, and also shares "removed" with Hunter, whereas Smith does not.  This implies that it was Allegro who knew Hunter, not Smith.  Meanwhile, Smith can derive "carried off" from Allegro's "removed", just as well as he can from Hunter's "removed".  And he can get "manuscripts" from Allegro rather than Hunter.  It's true that Hunter's phrase "most of these" is comparable with Smith's "almost all of them", but Allegro shares "all" with Smith, something Hunter does not, and the weak similarity between the pronouns "these" and "them" seems somewhat trivial.

So Smith may just have been following Allegro's use of the progressive present in describing the fate of the  library; this got carried over into Smith's next sentence regarding the possibility that a manuscript was overlooked.  And that's how Smith ended up using the progressive present in a manner similar to Hunter.  No use of Hunter by Smith is needed; Allegro is a nearly perfect intermediary.

Smith's meaning is admittedly a little closer to Hunter than to Allegro; Allegro is making the claim that the monastery's manuscripts are now gone, and only the caves offer any hope of new discoveries.  Smith is leaving open the possibility that the monastery may yet hold new discoveries, just like Sir William.  Yet this sole remaining parallel between Smith and Hunter is somewhat flimsy; both are in fact correct that most of the Mar Saba manuscripts were removed to Jerusalem.  So how else would Smith explain this, other than by writing "Almost all of them had been carried off"?  Particularly if he is trying to correct Allegro's inaccurate statement that "all...had long long since been removed". Allegro is in the wrong, but Smith just knows better, because he's been not only to Mar Saba but also to the Patriarchal library.  He doesn't need Hunter for this information.


Only one remaining similarity between Hunter and Smith remains, that cannot be found in Allegro: the somewhat flimsy similarity between "most" in Hunter, and "almost" in Smith.

Note that p. 11 is not the only place in The Secret Gospel where Smith describes the fate of the library.  He also describes it on p. 5:

"Most of the remaining manuscripts had been carried off to Jerusalem"

Here we find "most" shared with Hunter, even closer than "almost".  But the same questions apply here as before: isn't this just the easiest way to describe the fate of the Mar Saba library?  And anyway, Smith also mentions the Mar Saba library in his 1960 Archaeology article "Monasteries and their Manuscripts":

Almost all the material is of the seventeenth century and later.  the earlier manuscripts were carried to Jerusalem in the mid-nineteenth century, by order of the Patriarch, and now form the well known Mar Saba collection in the central library of the Patriarchate. ("Monasteries", p. 177)

Here we see him again using "almost all", but in a different context: he is describing the date of the material, not its fate.  It's still possible that the "-most" in "almost" finds its source in Hunter's novel, but it would more likely seem that the phrase "almost all" is just a particular reflex of Smith's personal syntax.  To be fair, Watson himself does not draw a comparison with this phrase.  And the remainder of this sentence does not indicate any similarity with Hunter's novel, so there is no evidence of influence here.

Finally, compare Allegro's words

"a book or scroll left by a recluse from the fifth century onward"

with Smith's phrase

"or that other manuscripts had been brought in by monks coming from other monasteries" 

Here, both describe specifically how a manuscript (i.e. a book or scroll) could have been deposited at the library by a visiting monastic.  There is no parallel to this in Hunter at all.


Of course, there is a second remaining parallel that Watson mentions: the use of "reconciled/reconciling to" in both Hunter and Smith, but not in Allegro ("Suspicion", p. 166).  I'll grant this is an intriguing parallel, and I have not been able to locate a source for it other than Hunter (and believe me, I have searched far and wide).  But if Smith more likely resembles John Allegro in the case above, why assume Hunter must have been the source for "reconciling to"?  And, even if he did take it from Hunter, so what?  We have seen that Allegro is as likely, if not more so, to have used Hunter than Smith was.  Yet Allegro was writing a true account of the search for a real manuscript in the Levant, i.e. the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It is therefore egregious to conclude that just because Smith drew a phrase from Hunter's novel that he must have been deliberately forging his account of the discovery of To Theodore.

Therefore, at least in the example of verbal parallels between the accounts of discovery in Hunter and Smith, the existence of The Mystery of Mar Saba does not add to the case for forgery by Smith.