Who Wrote the Secret Gospel of Mark?

Abstract

This chapter begins with a brief introduction to New Testament studies. It explains how the four Gospels of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have an intertwined textual relationship to each other. It tries to analyze where the writers of Matthew and Luke got the in-common verses if they did not get them from Mark or from one another book. The chapter looks into the Church father Clement's opinion that Mark did not write down all the things that Jesus taught but only those teachings of Jesus that he thought would be helpful for the initiates into the “forbidden sanctuary.” It also mentions Morton Smith, a professor of ancient history at Columbia University, who pointed out that the location in the narrative of Mark coincides with the location of the Lazarus story in John in relation to the itinerary of Jesus's ministry.