Secret Mark: Part 1
48 hours ago, maybe a little more, I stumbled upon something I once read at University which was “Secret Mark” a 1958 discovery of a letter written by Clement. This article is meant for education purposes only, I’m only deep-diving this as almost a cryptid text of early Christianity.
Out of pure interest alone, let’s continue.
The gospel is mentioned exclusively in the Mar Saba letter, a document of disputed authenticity, which is said to have been written by Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150–215). This letter, in turn, is preserved only in photographs of a Greek handwritten copy seemingly transcribed in the 18th century into the endpapers of a 17th-century printed edition of the works of Ignatius of Antioch.[b][1][2][3]
Excerpt: In 1958, Morton Smith found a letter of Clement of Alexandria at the Mar Saba monastary near the city of Jerusalem. The Secret Gospel of Mark is known only from the references in this letter.
Although there has been some controversy over the letter, today it is generally agreed that the letter is authentic correspondence written by Clement. In his introduction in The Complete Gospels, Stephen Patterson notes: "The handwriting can be dated to around 1750. Smith published the letter in 1973. Early discussion of it was marred by accusations of forgery and fraud, no doubt owing in part to its controversial comments. Today, however, there is almost unanimous agreement among Clementine scholars that the letter is authentic."
Stephen Patterson gives this account of the passages noted by Clement:
The first passage is a story of how Jesus miraculously raises a young man (neaniskos) who has recently died, at the behest of his bereaved sister. According to Clement, the story was added to Mark between verses 10:34 and 10:35. The story bears a striking resemblance to the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John (John 11:1-44). However, since it shows none of the typical marks of Johannine redaction which so strongly color the story about Lazarus, it is unlikely that the Secret Mark story is directly dependent upon its Johannine parallel. For its part, the version of the story from Secret Mark has its own peculiarities not found in John, such as the initiation of the young man into the "mystery of God's domain." The basic story, however, probably derives from the common stock of miracle stories available to both Mark and John, or their sources.
The second fragment is extremely brief, but nonetheless interesting. First, it mentions Salome, who appears in the New Testament elsewhere only in Mark (see 15:40; 16:1). Secondly, when placed in the slot where Clement indicates it occurs in Secret Mark (between 10:46a: "Then they came to Jericho," and 10:46b: "As he was leaving Jericho...") it fills a well-known hole in the Markan narrative. The stop in Jericho now seems, in light of the Secret Gospel, at least a little less futile.
There is debate over the relationship between Secret Mark and canonical Mark: was Clement correct to regard Secret Mark as an expansion of canonical Mark? F. F. Bruce writes, "The 'secret' character of the additional sayings is the most obvious Gnosticizing feature. . . . [Clement and contemporaries] were willing to treat acceptable expansions as belonging to a second edition produced by Mark after his alleged coming from Rome to Alexandria, but those expansions which were manifestly Gnostic were ascribed to the school of Carpocrates." (Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, p. 165-166) Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz state (The Historical Jesus, p. 47): "the majority of exegetes regard the Secret Gospel as a Gnostic revision of the canonical Mark composed in the second century. This is supported by an emphasis on its 'secret' character and its use in Carpocratian circles, which evidently employed it to legitimate particular liturgical customs. Merkel explains the linguistic form of the pericope as a retelling of John 11 which borrows language from all four Gospels."
On the other hand, Helmut Koester and J.D. Crossan think that canonical Mark is derived from Secret Mark by elimination of these passages. Helmut Koester writes: "It is immediately evident that this story shows many similarities with the story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11. That it is, in fact, the same story is evident in the emphasis upon the love between Jesus and the man who was raised by him (cf. John 11:3, 5, 35-36), expressed twice in the additions of Secret Mark. Both stories are also located in Bethany. But it is impossible that Secret Mark is dependent upon John 11. In its version of the story, there are no traces of the rather extensive Johannine redaction (proper names, motif of the delay of Jesus' travel, measurement of space and time, discourses of Jesus with his disciples and with Martha and Mary). As to its form, Secret Mark represents a stage of development of the story that corresponds to the source used by John. The author evidently still had access to the free tradition of stories about Jesus, or perhaps to some older written collection of miracle stories." (Ancient Christian Gospels, p. 296) Another interesting point is that Salome is named without explanation in canonical Mark 15:40, 16:1. Clement of Alexandria quotes a reference from the Secret Gospel of Mark to "his mother and Salome," which may indicate the existence of stories including Salome in pre-canonical Mark.
Then there is the question of the relationship of Secret Mark to the original Gospel of Mark: was Secret Mark the original gospel, or was Secret Mark an expansion of the original gospel of Mark? Koester believes that Secret Mark is an expansion of the original Mark, and this makes for at least three different editions of Mark: original Mark, Secret Mark, and canonical Mark. In The Other Gospels, Ron Cameron takes a position similar to the one held by Koester:
Most of all, the discovery of the Secret Gospel of Mark has made us privy to new and unparalleled information about the various editions of the Gospel of Mark, and has brought to our attention the widespread esoteric tradition among the earliest believers in Jesus. . . the canonical (or "public") Gospel of Mark appears to be an abridgment of the Secret Gospel of Mark. The first edition of Mark, which was written ca. 70 C.E., is no longer extant. The Secret Gospel of Mark was probably composed around the beginning of the second century, most likely in Syria. Sometime thereafter our present edition of Mark, with only vestiges of the secret tradition still visible (Mark 4:11; 9:25-27; 10:21, 32, 38-39; 12:32-34; 14:51-52), took shape.
Above we noted that Salome is mentioned in Secret Mark, and it is noteworthy that Salome is absent in the lists of women who went to the tomb in Matthew and Luke; it is possible that Matthew and Luke relied on a version of Mark without any mention of Salome. Thus, Secret Mark may be an important witness to the textual history of the Gospel of Mark.
As the text is made up of two texts, a handful of possibilities exist: both may be authentic or inauthentic, or one may be authentic and the other inauthentic.[4]
The Mar Saba letter is directed to a person named Theodore, who inquired about the existence of a gospel of Mark containing specific content. Theodore appears to have asked about passages involving a "naked man with naked man" and "other things." Clement confirms that Mark indeed composed a second, longer, more mystical, and spiritually inclined version of his gospel. He notes that this gospel was diligently preserved in the Alexandrian church but asserts that it does not contain the mentioned passages. Clement accuses the heterodox teacher Carpocrates of acquiring a copy through deceit and then distorting it with false claims. In order to refute the teachings of the libertine Carpocratians, a gnostic sect known for their sexual practices, and to demonstrate the absence of these passages in the authentic Secret Gospel of Mark, Clement cites two excerpts from it.
According to Clement, the passage reads word for word (Biblical Greek: κατὰ λέξιν, romanized: kata lexin):
And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me." But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.
The second excerpt is very brief and was inserted in Mark 10:46. Clement says that "after the words, 'And he comes into Jericho' [and before 'and as he went out of Jericho'] the secret Gospel adds only":[19]
And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.[19]
Clement continues: "But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are falsifications."[19] Just as Clement is about to give the true explanation of the passages, the letter breaks off.
These two excerpts comprise the entirety of the Secret Gospel material. No separate text of the secret gospel is known to survive, and it is not referred to in any other ancient source. Some scholars have found it suspicious that an authentic ancient Christian text would be preserved only in a single, late manuscript. However, this is not unprecedented.
Here is what we have…
Identities of Figures 1) through 5) in the Gospels
Some scholars, like FF Bruce, think it’s a messy retelling of Lazarus, but there is something in this that gives it credence, which we will talk about in the next article.
Morton Smith saw the longer Secret Mark passage as a story of baptism.[g][393] According to Smith "the mystery of the kingdom of God" that Jesus taught the young man, was, in fact, a magical rite that "involved a purificatory baptism".[394][327] That this story depicts a baptism was in turn accepted by most scholars, also those otherwise critical to Smith's reconstructions.[393][395][396] And with the idea of the linen sheet as a baptismal garment followed the idea of nakedness and sex.[397]
But there has been some debate about this matter. For example, Scott G. Brown (while defending the authenticity of Secret Mark) disagrees with Smith that the scene is a reference to baptism. He thinks this is to profoundly misinterpret the text,[395] and he argues that if the story really had been about baptism, it would not have mentioned only teaching, but also water or disrobing and immersion.[393][398] He adds that "the young man's linen sheet has baptismal connotations, but the text discourages every attempt to perceive Jesus literally baptizing him."[399] Stephen Carlson agrees that Brown's reading is more plausible than Smith's.[400] The idea that Jesus practiced baptism is absent from the Synoptic Gospels, though it is introduced in the Gospel of John.[aj][367]
But there is a commonality in this…which we are about talk about in the next article and I promise you this, it will take a turn you did not expect.