AIDS and People with Severe Mental Illness: A Handbook for Mental Health Professionals / Edition 1

by Francine Cournos M.D., Nicholas Bakalar

Overview

In 1958, Bible scholar Morton Smith announced the discovery of a sensational manuscript-a second-century letter written by St. Clement of Alexandria, who quotes an unknown, longer version of the Gospel of Mark. When Smith published the letter in 1973, he set off a firestorm of controversy that has raged ever since. Is the text authentic, or a hoax? Is Smith's interpretation correct? Did Jesus really practice magic, or homosexuality? And if the letter is a forgery . . . why?
Through close examination of the "discovered" manuscript's text, Peter Jeffery unravels the answers to the mystery and tells the tragic tale of an estranged Episcopalian priest who forged an ancient gospel and fooled many of the best biblical scholars of his time. Jeffery shows convincingly that Smith's Secret Gospel is steeped in anachronisms and that its construction was influenced by Oscar Wilde's "Salome," twentieth-century misunderstandings of early Christian liturgy, and Smith's personal struggles with Christian sexual morality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300067576
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	09/25/1996
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Francine Cournos, M.D., is professor of clinical psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She runs a program for people with severe mental illness, and her research in the area of HIV infection among this population has been widely published. Nicholas Bakalar is a New York writer and editor.