It's been stated by several participants in the "Secret Mark Conference" (really the first event in the York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium Series) that there was seemingly no consensus emerging from the discussion. Having reflected on it for the past few weeks, I would actually disagree with that: I think we do see a partial consensus emerging.
This partial, or perhaps provisional, consensus is that the "hoax hypothesis" regarding Secret Mark has not in fact been established, despite the best efforts of Carlson, Jeffery, and their supporters to make their case. This is not the same thing as saying we supporters of its authenticity have won the day; we haven't, or at least not yet. Now, I myself am still firmly convinced that so-called "Secret Mark" was a very real and very ancient document, and that Morton Smith's discovery of it was entirely honest. I recognize, however, that it may take some time to convince the scholarly establishment of this fact. Nevertheless, after a decade of new arguments since 2001, Smith's critics have failed to make their case, or to set scholarly consensus on any sort of trajectory. The best they have been able to manage is to suggest some reasonable doubts.
While all of these critics who attended the symposium seemed to walk away from it convinced of SGM's inauthenticity, only two that I know of still tried to state unequivocally that it was a hoax: Jefferey and Piovanelli, and even Piovanelli seemed to concede that the case couldn't really be established one way or the other, without physical testing of the manuscript. Evans and Chilton, on the other hand, essentially stated that while they personally believed it was inauthentic, all that could be established without a doubt was that the question of authenticity remained open.
In fact, I'm leaning towards the notion that there really is no a priori reason for anyone to doubt Smith's claims. I see nothing that a neutral scholar might find dubious in his behavior. He found an unusual text written in a larger volume, and quite properly left it the way he found it in the place he found it with the organization it belonged to. He began discussing it with colleagues immediately, and made public his discovery within two years. True that he did not then work to retrieve or secure the materials, but this is perfectly understandable in light of his struggles to produce a published book on the subject. Like many scholars, he had no desire for his efforts to be preempted by someone else's. Allan Pantuck has produced just the literary evidence needed to show that Smith was in fact struggling during the 1960s to understand (or actually to misunderstand) the document--there is no evidence in his personal papers whatsoever of forgery (though we are somehow to believe there is all the evidence we need in his public papers!) Indeed, his seemingly aloof attitude towards the fate of the manuscript was entirely vindicated when the volume was discovered in 1976 just where he left it in the monastery, entirely unharmed.
At that time it was moved to the Patriarchal Library in Jerusalem, exactly as one might wish, only three years after publication of Clement of Alexandria and The Secret Gospel. It could have been examined or sequestered by anyone among the visiting party in 1976, but it was not (though some of them wished to). Efforts to examine or sequester it in the ensuing years were made, but were unsuccessful due to interference not by Smith, but by the very library whom it was supposedly entrusted. It is the Patriarchal Library who treated it carelessly by literally ripping the pages out of the volume, by (according to reports) spraying it with insecticide (!), and ultimately by misplacing it. This comedy (or tragedy) of errors is entirely the doing of the Patriarchate--without their interference, it would have been duly examined and tested by now, and the issue would have been settled one way or the other. But Smith simply has nothing to do with this.
If there are any lingering questions about where the Voss volume came from, or to whom the handwriting belongs, that's fine. But there is no evidence (despite Tselikas' claims) to indicate Smith was responsible for the production of the manuscript in any way. It seems to me that Morton Smith has been entirely exonerated. And the efforts to uncover the provenance of the Mar Saba manuscript have been misdirected for a long time.
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