Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark

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In 1958 in the Monastery of Mar Saba, southeast of Jerusalem, the author discovered a fragment of a letter which necessitates a reappraisal of theories about the practice and teaching of Jesus, the origins of the gospels, and the character and early history of the Christian Church. Attributed to Clement of Alexandria, and apparently copied by an eighteenth-century monk, the letter quotes from what it claims is a fuller and original Gospel of Mark—a secret Gospel used by the Alexandrian Church for initiation into the “great mysteries.” Morton Smith here presents an impressive body of evidence that the letter and the Gospel it quotes from are genuine, including photographs of the fragment.