Darrell, Thanks for your comment. It's good to have an opportunity to chat.

There are two issues here: (1) is the fragmentary Secret Mark a modern forgery by Morton Smith or an ancient text (whether 1st century or 3rd/4th century is irrelevant at this point)? (2) If (and it is a big "if") Secret Mark is authentic, what is its original provenance?

With respect to the first issue (authenticity), I do think the matter is still open to discussion. Yes, there have been the two volumes put forth by Stephen Carlson and Peter Jeffery, but others are now beginning to examine their arguments (the wheels of scholarship do turn slowly, in contrast sometimes to the media) and argue for authenticity (thus the JSHJ article I announced). Please note, I think the matter of authenticity is still open to discussion; I personally have not been convinced either way.

With respect to the second issue (provenance), I think you are right, in that there is a scholarly tendency by some to seek early texts that could augment the other early sources we already have (esp. the canonical Gospels). But there is also another scholarly tendency by others to want to push those texts to be "later" in an attempt to defend the canonical Gospels. Both tendencies reveal a perspectival bias that arises as much from presuppositions and predispositions as from the evidence itself. But we must let people argue their cases, and ultimately we will be convinced one way or the other by the evidence they produce as well as the influence of our own presuppositions and predispositions.

Concerning Secret Mark, I am a firm fence-sitter with respect to authenticity (ouch!). But as editor of JSHJ, the decision to publish the Pantuck/Brown article was based upon positive recommendations by editorial board members that this was a good essay that brought forth genuine new evidence. Thus, we published it. With respect to provenance, if authentic (big if), I do think a whole other case needs to be mounted to argue it is early. My own sense would tend to see it as later.

Concerning Gospel of Peter and Thomas: Well, you know how I've wrestled with these! And since this will be coming out in print in a while, I think I'll leave it there. (It is bad when a response to a comment is three-times longer than the original comment!)