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.

Critiquing Carlson, part 1

Carlson's arguments are presented, essentially, on pp. 23-72 of The Gospel Hoax, though pp. 73-86 present a secondary argument that may be worthwhile taking up. For now, we'll focus primarily on the case presented on pp. 23-72, beginning with Chapter 3, pp. 23-48 in this post.


On the pages just prior to that, there are some introductory arguments that we'll also address. We'll introduce each point Carlson makes by page:

Another Defense of Smith and Secret Mark

The independent scholar Robert Connor has posted a very interesting article in support of the authenticity of SGM, and has somewhat strenuously (but entirely fairly IMO) met the arguments of Smith's recent critics:

http://magicinthenewtestament.com/MaginNT/A%20Letter%20to%20Theodore.pdf

I have to say I sympathize almost entirely with Connor's article; he and I are very much of the same mind, at least when it comes to supporting an authentic SGM and speaking out against Smith's recent critics.  I strongly encourage you to read Connor's article, regardless of which side of the debate you find yourself on.  I know nothing of Connor's other scholarship, but on SGM I can at least say that we are in the same camp.

A Challenge to Carlson

I was hoping to continue developing my explanatory source-critical diagram, but I realized there was an important detail I hadn't yet dealt with.  Untangling it is taking some time, and I need a few more days to think it through.  I'm very encouraged, however, by the way things are progressing--at first I worried it was an insurmountable difficulty with my hypothesis, but it turns out that my earlier suspicions are confirmed even more so than ever before.  There are still a couple of dilemmas that need careful untangling, but just a few more days and I feel I will probably arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.  Indeed, I've made some very surprising discoveries--discoveries that are entirely congruent with the principles that have guided me so far.  So that's encouraging.

In the meantime, therefore, I'd like to finish up some work on the Secret Gospel of Mark (henceforward SGM, in line with the usage of most critics).  Here I'd like to finally take on Stephen Carlson's The Gospel Hoax.

Summarizing My Methods

 I did promise a summary :)  So here it is:

Guiding Principles, Part 4: Authorial Methodology

We now move from the why of textual causes (i.e. the authors' motivations, namely story and theology) to the how of textual causes.  The "how" (methodology) runs parallel to the "why" (motivation), and will explain most of the phenomena that the authors' motivations cannot.  I argue that almost every gospel author, whether canonical or apocryphal, was trying to combine at least two textual sources into one.  This results in two primary mechanisms for the influence of those sources on the new text:

Guiding Principles, Part 3: Story and Theology

The next set of principles deal with how the authors themselves handled the texts they had.  In other words, what caused them to write what they wrote?  What were their motivations?  What caused them to make their textual decisions?  When looking for explanations, often one is looking for causes, and since textual history is what we are studying, the causes of that history are exactly what we are looking for.

I propose that the NT authors were motivated by two primary factors: story, and theology. 

Guiding Principles, Part 2: Parsimony, and Textual Parsimony

Two principles will be guiding our theorizing about gospel sources: parsimony in general, and a specific kind of parsimony appropriate to NT studies, namely what I will call "textual parsimony".

Guiding Principles, Part 1: Evidence-Based Reasoning

Before getting underway, I thought it might be helpful to write up a statement of principles, to show how we should approach a solution to the synoptic problem.  The next few posts will state these principles, with a summary at the end.  The principles themselves are fairly simple, but a slightly detailed explanation of them could prove illuminating.  Hopefully it won't prove too boring :) and at any rate it will be over with soon enough.  I won't be going in to too much detail; just enough to explain where I'm coming from, and why I think my solution is the best.

Sneak Preview

Oh, I can't help it--here's a preview of my new hypothesis:

Boring, right?  It's just the 2SH!  Well...note that I think that Q was a full-fledged gospel--with a beginning, middle, and an end (the PN).

What's more, I think we have fragments of this gospel--both in the Gospel of Peter fragment, and in our Gospel of the Hebrews fragments. ETA: I now regard this diagram as schematic, distinguish between GEbi and GNaz, and equate Q with GEbi, not GPet.

But wait--there's more.  I think I have a hyper-Synoptic solution--in other words, a relationship between the synoptic gospels and the Gospel of John:

(Here I use the "SGM" nomenclature for "Secret Gospel of Mark", though I prefer "SecMk" or even just "sMk".  SGM, however, is the common usage, so I'll be using that for these purposes.)

I can't decide what to call this hypothesis.  Its closest affinity is with the theories of Koester, though it goes even beyond his claims.  The "Hyper-Synoptic Hypothesis" is one candidate.  The "Apocryphal Source Hypothesis" is another.  The "Mystery Source Hypothesis" is a third.

I have so far, however, favored the label "Multi-Source Hypothesis" because, in fact, the hypothesis is even larger than this.  I think lying behind SGM (and GJn, and possibly also GLk and even GPet) is a proto-gospel, quite different from the gospels with which we are familiar (but structurally most similar to GJn).  Furthermore...I think that this proto-gospel, and possibly also both GPet and GLk, use another source that is not usually included in synoptic solution diagrams, but which I think must now be taken seriously as a gospel source.  Can you guess what I'm talking about?

Even if you can guess, I bet you can't guess one of my final sources, though it is closely related.  Hint: if you're a regular reader of my posts on IIDB, you may have read me make mention of it once or twice...

More to follow as the week progresses, I hope.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gospel of the Egyptians

I was going to write a post (or series) about the relationship (and perhaps identity) of Secret Mark with the Gospel of the Egyptians.  In fact, I'd been planning it for a while--I thought I was just getting some of the preliminaries out of the way.

However, I've been having much grander thoughts about SecMk and...my next series of posts will be on that subject.  In fact, it will occupy this blog for the forseeable future--without sounding too grand, I think it should prove to be quite intriguing.  For one thing, I no longer think SecMk is the same thing as GEgy at all, though if I have time I'd like to discuss the theology of GEgy in more detail, and point out some relationships with the canonical gospels.  They themselves are very interesting--I think GEgy is related to the canonical gospels one way or another, probably via SecMk, though not necessarily.

But the bulk of my work here will now be taken up by a much, much larger project--what I think may be a new solution to the synoptic problem.  I'm looking forward to it, so I hope you will have as much fun reading as I will writing!  It will be slow-going; I'm very busy these days, and when it comes to this new hypothesis I have to proceed very, very carefully.  The gospels are incredibly complicated texts in terms of composition and stemmatics, and solutions are not easy to come by.  But I think I've found a stable structure that has withstood several important tests, and is finally ready for its unveiling.  Challenges will be welcome; my hypothesis will need as much testing as possible.