Critiquing Carlson: A Summary

To summarize my criticism of The Gospel Hoax:

Critiquing Carlson, part 7: Inventing the Data?

Carlson tries to show that Smith tied the gospel of Mark with secret sexual practices for years prior to his discovery of SGM, so the discovery by Smith of a text proving this link is highly suspicious. However, at this point Carlson finally ignores the distinction between the text of SGM and Smith's interpretation of it. Carlson writes "The climax of the nocturnal initiation of Secret Mark contains a juxtaposition of Mark 4:11 and a sexual practice forbidden in Jewish law" (Carlson, p. 71). But this is totally false. Only in Smith's reading is this true--but Smith's reading is, I think, obviously far-fetched and badly mistaken. It's Smith who eventually tries links to link Mk 4:11 with sexual practices, not SGM.

Critiquing Carlson, part 6: Anachronistic?

p.58ff.
Here Carlson makes his argument that To Theodore 1.14-15 uses the adulteration of salt as a metaphor for the Carpocratian adulteration of the text of Mark. But as Brown points out in his 2006 Factualizing the Folklore article, this is not what the author is saying (Brown 2006, p. 307). He is saying that the truth, when mixed with inventions, becomes falsified--falsified, like salt that has lost its savor. To extend the metaphor from adulterating the truth to adulterating the salt might seem natural to us, but is in fact an overextension. And, we don't need the extended metaphor to perceive what the author is saying--that the salt of truth becomes savorless when falsified. The fact that the truth is falsified via adulteration is not inherent to the metaphor. In this case, it so happens that it's textual adulteration that falsifies the truth--but this is incidental to the metaphor. I refer to the remainder of the argument that Brown presents (from pp. 306-309) for a detailed discussion of the meaning of the salt metaphor. As for Brown's discussion of Pliny that Carlson chooses to focus on in his published responses, it is a red herring. Carlson has so far ignored Brown's explication of the actual operation of the salt metaphor.

We now turn to Carlson's claim that Smith has hidden his own name in the text of Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark. First, we note that without any supporting reference to "Morton Salt", Carlson's argument that Morton Smith has symbolically concealed his name within his own text loses a great deal of force.

Critiquing Carlson, part 5: Unlikely Details?

p. 54ff.
Carlson is convinced by Murgia's analysis of sphragis in the Mar Saba letter that its original author was deliberately engaging in forgery. Again, even if this is true, it fails to lead to the conclusion Carlson wants. Carlson uses some sleight of hand in casting the choice between a third-century authentic author (Clement) and a twentieth-century hoaxer (Smith). But this, of course, is a false choice. Other options are available to us, and it is much more likely that the letter is a third-century forgery than a twentieth-century one, if it is not authentic Clement.

Critiquing Carlson, part 4: Too Clementine to be True?

I largely though only provisionally accept the bulk of Andrew Criddle's vocabulary work on To Theodore. Please see here

http://pubs.amstat.org/doi/pdf/10.1198/tast.2009.08163?cookieSet=1

[Solow & Smith, 2009]

for a partial vindication of Criddle's work, but also a partial critique of the methods he uses, in section 2 and section 6 of the Solow & Smith article. Perhaps I will be able to address these concerns in more detail at a later time.

In any case, even if Criddle's statistics are in any way valid, an early third-century imitator (or even simply a student of Clement's) is a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. For that matter, Carlson tries to argue (p. 53) that because the manuscript tradition for Clement was so fragmentary, there is no way a forger could have lived prior to the printing era; but of course, this also pushes the timeframe for a forger closer to the time of Clement himself--precisely the time that the Origenist school flourished.

Critiquing Carlson, part 3: A Letter from Clement?

p. 49ff.
Andrew Criddle's vocabulary analysis is perhaps the best evidence that the Mar Saba manuscript is not genuine Clement. Some have cast doubt on the logic of Criddle's argument. I agree that no analysis of the sort that Criddle performed is an airtight case, while at the same time noting that Criddle's results are just the sort of results we might expect if the letter were indeed an imitation of Clement by another author. A case for real information about Secret Mark can still be made if the letter were an ancient forgery, rather than a modern one.

Critiquing Carlson, part 2: A New Hypothesis

In Part 1, I cast doubt on Carlson’s handwriting analysis, pointing to Roger Viklund’s subsequent analysis and criticism of Carlson’s work, using color photographs that Carlson did not use.

While I do think Viklund’s work weakens Carlson’s conclusions, I don’t go so far as to say they refute them. Based on my own inexpert examination of the photographs, both in black-and-white and in color, and following Carlson’s and Viklund’s criteria, I admit there is some room for questions about the hand that wrote the Mar Saba manuscript. Was it really the hand of someone well-versed in writing Greek? Are there really no signs of hesitation or tremor present in the script? Despite Viklund’s excellent attempt at answering these questions, I can’t quite say they’ve been resolved.

Carlson concludes from his analysis that the author was a forger, and that forger was Morton Smith. But even if we admit Carlson’s analysis, this is not a necessary conclusion. There are alternative scenarios to consider.

Critiquing Carlson, parts 2-7: Prelude

I’ve finally finished my full critique of Carlson, and will be posting it over the next couple of days. A few words first:

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:

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.