Some Comments on Francis Watson's Latest Reply

Back in April, Francis Watson published a brief reply to Allan Pantuck's "Beyond Suspicion" article in JTS.  I thought I'd just add my own two cents to the discussion.

Watson's reply relates to only two points:

1) the coincidence of Smith's scholarly interests prior to the manuscript's discovery, and
2) the coincidence of the plot points in James T. Hunter's novel The Mystery of Mar Saba to Smith's discovery.

Putting the Smoke Back in the Gun (Sort Of), pt. 3

As mentioned previously, there does remain one intriguing parallel between The Secret Gospel and The Mystery of Mar Saba: the resemblance of the clause in Smith "I was gradually reconciling myself to my worst expectations" with that in Hunter "I was prepared to leave Mar Saba, reconciled to the negative results of my search".  The parallels are:

--"I was"
--"reconciling/-ed"
--"my"
--and the fact that both accounts happened at Mar Saba.

These resemblances are real, though somewhat slim.  Nevertheless, the use of "reconciling/-ed" is a little striking, and may deserve attention.  However, I would like to present an alternative account of how both Hunter and Smith could have used the same phrase in similar contexts.

Putting the Smoke Back in the Gun (Sort of), pt. 2

Trying to prove that one work influenced another can be a tricky business.

In his 1960 Archaeology article "Monasteries and their Manuscripts", Morton Smith does use an interesting phrase that resembles Hunter’s words in the novel The Mystery of Mar Saba. We read that

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 Smith 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.


However, earlier in the article, there is an interesting phrase which does resemble Hunter’s words. We read that

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.   

A Critique of Watson: Hunter's Novel Redux

III. 2. Watson, like others, is impressed with the supposed connection between James H. Hunter's novel The Mystery of Mar Saba and Smith's discovery. I have dealt with the subject of Hunter's book here and here. Watson's new observations bring nothing very new to the discussion, save for an intriguing twist: his discovery of the two one-sentence parallels between Hunter's The Mystery of Mar Saba and Smith's Clement of Alexandria are admittedly intriguing, but do not make a case for forgery. At best, they raise the suspicion that Smith could have read Hunter's novel. But suspicions and insinuations do not make a case for forgery; further evidence is required, and Watson, Carlson, Jeffery, et al, have not adequately provided this evidence. For example, it's quite conceivable that Smith had read Hunter's work, and nevertheless made an authentic discovery at Mar Saba. The plot of Hunter's novel actually has very little resemblance to the events of Smith's life, save only for the claim of the discovery of a manuscript at the monastery of Mar Saba. Neither Watson nor anyone else have plausibly shown any other parallels.

The Hunter hypothesis

Sorry it's been so long; my busy life has intervened. Let's get back to our discussion of the James H. Hunter novel The Mystery of Mar Saba and whether or not it tells us anything about the likelihood of a forgery by Morton Smith.

Let's try to think about what one might term the "Hunter hypothesis", or the idea that because James H. Hunter wrote about a fictional discovery of a piece of bogus early Christian literature at Mar Saba, any subsequent discovery of early Christian literature at Mar Saba must also be bogus.

But does this apply to, say, any discovery of early Christian literatre at an eastern monastery? Probably not, since much of Hippolytus' Philosophumena was discovered at Mt. Athos in 1842! Think also of Tischendorf's discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus. Indeed, one should not be surprised if discoveries such as these were an inspiration for Hunter (along with the real forgeries of apocrypha in the decades preceding Hunter's novel).

So, it can't be impossible in principle for lost early Christian writings to be discovered in eastern monasteries, in any given year. The only suspicion introduced by Hunter's gospel is the involvement of Mar Saba specifically, as the location of some bogus early Christian literature. But why should we be surprised if some early Christian literature were discovered at Mar Saba? Does the writing of Hunter's novel somehow preclude this possibility? The idea is absurd.

We should only be surprised if any discovery at Mar Saba, after the publication of Hunter's novel, closely resembled the manuscript described in that novel. But the letter to Theodore in no way resembles this (fictional) manuscript--not even remotely.

So we see that the only connection between Hunter's novel and Smith's discovery is the fact that the Mar Saba monastery is the location for both.

The other connection that Smith's critics make is the connection between the forgery of the fragment in Hunter's gospel, and the purported forgery of To Theodore. But the forgery of To Theodore cannot be proved in this manner, because that would be taking the conclusion as a premise. The forgery in Hunter's novel does not resemble the discovery of To Theodore, unless the forgery of To Theodore can be independently demonstrated!

So Hunter's novel is of no help at all in proving that To Theodore is a forgery. Only after a probable case has been made for the forgery of To Theodore, can Hunter's novel be proposed as any supporting evidence at all.

Indeed, Hunter's novel relies on the plausibility that a fragment of early Christian literature could in principle be discovered at Mar Saba! Hunter's plot requires the reader to believe that the forgery of the Shard of Nicodemus is a plausible scenario. (Hunter himself also obviously found it plausible, otherwise he wouldn't have written a novel in which the world uncritically accepts the "Shard of Nicodemus" as authentic. Furthermore, his publisher obviously thought it would be plausible to the general readership. Hunter's novel is not presented as a work of fantasy; instead, it is presented as a thriller, set in the real world, however contrived its characters and plot.)

So, Hunter's novel can in some ways be seen as a small piece of evidence supporting the authenticity of To Theodore.

And at this point, I think we can leave the Hunter hypothesis aside, and instead consider only the real arguments for and against the authenticity of To Theodore.

What are the chances?

What do Green Arrow, the Titanic, and The West Wing have in common?


They're all examples of life imitating art, without a causal mechanism.

The superhero Green Arrow, in the comic book miniseries "The Longbow Hunters", discovers a CIA plot to use money from an arms deal with Iranians to fund the Contra rebels of Nicauragua.

The miniseries was published in 1987. However, the author, Mike Grell, has stated that he created the plotline years earlier.

I can concede that we don't know for certain whether Grell is embellishing or not, though we have no real reason to believe that he is engaging in fabrication. He has stated that he simply tried to think of something the CIA was capable of. And he turned out to be right.

Similarly, the 1898 novel "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan" uncannily evokes the real sinking of the Titanic--fourteen years later, that is:

How did he do it? Probably he simply observed the ocean liner economy of his time, and wrote a novel about what was capable of happening. And he was right.

And finally, Aaron Sorkin seems to have scripted the events of the 2008 US presidential election in 2006.

"But," you might protest, "couldn't it be the case that The West Wing did, in fact, cause certain events of the 2008 campaign, like early media support for the Santos-like candidate, or the somewhat remarkable popularity of Palin among US conservatives, and McCain's somewhat unusual choice of her as his running mate?"

Maybe, but...it turns out it's the other way around--it's the West Wing writers who modeled their characters from life!

Obama, McCain, et al. were not trying to live out a TV series. They were just trying to live out their real ambitions (which they held long before The West Wing came along) in their real lives. The writers just took certain elements from those real lives, took a look at the contemprary electorate, and wrote a plausible story. And they were right--in the sense that they correctly read the character of those real people, and successfully predicted the real consequences of their real ambitions.

So we have three examples of art prefiguring life, simply based on the fact that authors are students of life, whose job it is to tell stories that, under other circumstances, would be true. And sometimes, those circumstances come about.

What does this have to do with Secret Mark?

Well, what if James H. Hunter simply managed to pull off the same feat?

James H. Hunter is the author of The Mystery of Mar Saba, a 1940 thriller that some claim is so similar to Smith's story of discovery, that it must be the cause of his announcement--meaning, that Smith forged Secret Mark.

But we see above that it's not impossible that Hunter simply got lucky, so to speak; sometimes, art accidentally prefigures life.

We'll spend the next couple of posts examining this. But for now, one must concede it's not unprecedented for a work of fiction to prefigure history.