I had a very busy day today. I went to the library with a whole bunch of photocopies which will form the basis to this week's posts. I want to finally PROVE that To Theodore is authentic so that I can move to connect the Alexandrian tradition of Mark to the Samaritan tradition of Mark. And I want to do this by Saturday when my Samaritan friend Benny Tsedaka is coming to visit.
In any event, let me start by saying that I spent about five hours at the University of Washington library and four of those hours were spent GOING THROUGH EVERY BOOK THEY HAD ON THE SUBJECT OF (A) THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS (B) Q OR (C) IRENAEUS. As a good scholar I wanted to find SOMETHING ELSE WRITTEN on the subject of Irenaeus' reference in Against the Heresies Book vi Chapter 6 to the saying in Luke 10:22/Matt 11:27 having once been found in the Gospel of Mark.
I can't believe it.
All those books, written on the subject of how Mark influenced the creation of Matthew and Luke, and no one bothered to mention that Irenaeus said that THIS passage was once in the Gospel of Mark.
I also noticed that almost none of these books had any reference to the Marcionite gospel text but that's a whole other issue ...
I can't believe all these great minds and no one even mentioned Irenaeus' testimony. You know, it's not like these guys DIDN'T READ what Irenaeus wrote.
It's there in black and white.
Yet in every edition of Irenaeus' writings there's a little footnote beside Irenaeus' mention of Mark originally having this saying which 'explains to us' how we should interpret the evidence. We're told that Irenaeus 'must have been mistaken.'
Yeah like he was holding down three part-time jobs and was too tired he made a 'mental error.'
Of course this is utterly impossible. Irenaeus is so precise in describing which gospels have and don't have this one saying that this excuse simply doesn't work. It's just a way to push this anomaly 'out of the way' for everyone to get back to the comfort of thinking all our inherited presuppositions were right all along.
Yet it's not just one mistake we are really dealing with here. Irenaeus witnesses more than one passage that was in HIS Gospel of Mark but has subsequently disappeared. Scholars don't want to 'get distracted' by what Irenaeus is telling us so they simply ignore what he says. It really is that simple.
The same thing happened to Morton Smith's discovery the Letter to Theodore. While he was alive those same scholars who loved the absolute certainty of believing that NOTHING had been altered from the original New Testament canon of the apostles had to bite their tongue.
He was that intimidating a figure.
Then when Morton Smith died it became possible to ignore his discovery. A series of essentially stupid papers allowed a 'consensus' to be developed that it is a forgery. It doesn't matter that there is no smoking gun. It doesn't matter that there is no sunstantial evidence that really was forged or that no one can explain how Morton Smith pulled off this amazing feat.
They just want it to go away and so they agreed to make it go away.
The idea that Irenaeus testimony actually supports the main contention of To Theodore insofar as it proves that indeed 'things were taken out of Mark' since the late second century has never once been referenced by anyone in the debate about the authenticity of the text.
Yet someone SHOULD HAVE NOTICED IT WAS THERE because it isn't the only time that Irenaeus references that he says are in Mark that are no longer there. Just look at Irenaeus' discussion of what the so-called 'longer ending of Mark':
Wherefore also Mark, the interpreter and follower of Peter, does thus commence his Gospel narrative: "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; as it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send My messenger before Thy face, which shall prepare Thy way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make the paths straight before our God" ... [a]lso, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: "So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God; " confirming what had been spoken by the prophet: "The LORD said to my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thy foes Thy footstool." [AH iii.10.5]
It is common knowledge that this ending is no longer accepted to be 'the true ending of Mark.' It is deliberately left out of the great uncial codices of the fourth century. Something happened between the end of the second century and the beginning of the fourth century which changed its status.
Yet what I have begun to piece together is that IT WASN'T JUST THE ENDING of the Gospel of Mark which got changed in the hundred and fifty years between Irenaeus and Nicaea. EVEN THE BEGINNING OF THE GOSPEL was been altered.
Where Irenaeus reads in his late second century Roman text "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; as it is written in the prophets ..." the vast majority of our surviving texts of the same Gospel of Mark read "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in the prophet Isaiah ..."
The vast majority of manuscripts DON'T READ 'in the prophets' but 'in Isaiah the prophet' (even though it is clearly wrong). Only the Alexandrian MS, the curious Washington MS, the Ferrar MS and the Koine MS retain Irenaeus' original reading.
As I noted, these differences between OUR Gospel of Mark and Irenaeus' Gospel of Mark are well known. Almost no one I know has ever argued that BECAUSE Irenaeus cites a textual variant at the beginning of Mark and an ending which is now missing from the end of Mark that this somehow SUPPORTS the claim of Clement's To Theodore.
Yet when you add the fact that Irenaeus cites YET ANOTHER PASSAGE from his late second century Gospel of Mark which has eventually disappeared from our narrative, I think it does provide the beginnings of a justification for the claims of that disputed discovery.
Irenaeus says now in Book Four of Against the Heresies that:
the Lord, revealing Himself to His disciples, that He Himself is the Word, who imparts knowledge of the Father, and reproving the Jews, who imagined that they, had [the knowledge of] God, while they nevertheless rejected His Word, through whom God is made known, declared, "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son has willed to reveal [Him]."Thus hath Matthew set it down, and Luke in like manner, and Mark the very same; for John omits this passage. [AH iv.6.1]
These are Irenaeus' ONLY explicit references to the contents of the Gospel of Mark and the fact that they ALL inevitably testify to sections of the narrative that were subsequently removed you can begin to see a certain commonality with what is said in To Theodore.
For there Clement ALSO effectively testifies to the fact that 'things were taken away' from the true text of Mark. Yet notice how tentatively Clement puts forward HIS argument. First he makes clear that there a certain sect - the Carpocratians - were making wild claims about a variant Gospel of Mark. Then Clement rushes to explain how the Alexandrian text of Mark - Secret Mark - could represent such a variation from the 'received text.
Now I don't think anyone should take ANY of Clement's explanation of how Secret Mark was developed seriously. He's desperately trying to justify why so many differences exist between his communities text and that of Irenaeus' Roman community.
It really is all about Rome, folks. The Roman See apparently did have the ability to mandate what orthodoxy was in the period - if they didn't Irenaeus certainly sounds like a crazy person in Against the Heresies THINKING THAT HE DID HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO DO JUST THIS.
In any event, it is important to take note of what it is Clement is trying to 'explain away' - i.e. an interest in what we might loosely call 'gnosticism' in the Alexandrian 'additions' to Mark.
Clement argues that "Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book [written in Rome] the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected ... [where] to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils."
I don't want to get too deeply into things which others have analyzed far better than I but it is worth merely acknowledging the 'gnostic character' of the additions.
Clement is emphasizing throughout his explanation of the Alexandrian Gospel of Mark that it is something revealed to the initiates after their baptism. The idea of 'those being perfected' is repeatedly identified as a reference to the catechumen in his other writings. Similarly the line which follows that the Secret Gospel "is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries" is yet another confirmation of this too.
Now once we get to this point in our discussion I should remind my readers that in the course of disproving Peter Jeffrey's insipid book on the Secret Gospel, I proved that other scholars have already determined that the Alexandrian community of Clement's successor Origen organized the baptism of their catechumen not on Easter Sunday but on the eighth day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the traditional day that the ancient Israelites were 'baptized in the sea' [1 Cor 10:2]
Why is this significant?
It might just be me but I see Clement's understanding of the relationship of 'Secret Mark' to Mark as being developed in relation to matzah. Let me explain what I mean.
Clement says that Mark effectively developed an 'unspiritual gospel' in Rome but then when he came to Alexandria he wrote this more 'spiritual text' used by the catechumen of Egypt when they were baptized. Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the Alexandrian Church was different from its Roman counterpart in that it immersed its initiates not only after Easter Sunday but on a day which had deep significance for Judaism.
It was well established in Israel that there were seven days of Passover where Jews could only eat unleavened bread. On the eighth day the Jews could once again use 'leaven' which signified the 'spirit' in the writings of various early writers.
With me so far?
Morton Smith didn't know that the Alexandrian Church baptized its catechumen on the eighth day of Passover. He was an idiot in this regard. Yet Clement's distinction that Secret Mark was given to the baptized as a 'spiritual gospel' which was to be distinguished from the 'unspiritual' Gospel of Mark written at Rome owing to the presence of 'spiritual things' added to the text sounds to me like an allusion to leaven being added on the eighth day.
Call me crazy ...
Indeed in what follows Clement makes an allusion to 1 Corinthians 5:6 - 8 (the Marcionite reading) when he says that Carpocrates "so enslaved a certain presbyter of the church in Alexandria that he got from him a copy of the secret Gospel, which he both interpreted according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine and, moreover, polluted, mixing with the spotless and holy words utterly shameless lies. From this mixture is drawn off the teaching of the Carpocratians."
This again is an allusion to the specifically Marcionite reading of 1 Cor 5:6 - 8
Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast corrupts the whole lump?
A variant that was used by other Church Fathers including Tertullian:
he [the Apostle] subjoins: "Know ye not, that a little leaven spoileth the savour of the whole lump? [On Modesty]
And as I have shown in another post - a passage which fit into an argument that fit into the text as follows:
Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast corrupts the whole lump? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Let us keep the feast not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Clement's point then is that the Carpocratians added 'corruption' to the interpretation of the gospel using the very metaphor which he earlier used to explain how Secret Mark was different from the Roman Gospel of Mark known to Irenaeus. Again, I want to emphasize that ONLY BECOMES REVEALED TO US once we realize that the Alexandrian's baptized on the eighth day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread (i.e. Passover).
It demonstrates - my friends - that Secret Mark might well be authentic. It doesn't just say 'there isn't a case AGAINST SECRET MARK.' That's what the wimpy scholars who tried to defend Secret Mark always attempted - i.e. they TIMIDLY put forward that there was nothing to the arguments of those who attacked Morton Smith's discovery.
I have gone WAY BEYOND THIS. I have in effect PROVED that Clement's words fit within a liturgical context that no one has even recognized before me. As Jeffrey's amply documents, Morton Smith put forward a STUPID argument that To Theodore fit within a fourth century liturgical tradition. If he FORGED the letter he would have known that Clement is actually referring to a native Alexandrian practice of celebrating the baptism of the catechumen AFTER the Easter Sunday, at the end of the Jewish festival of Unleavened Bread.
The metaphors in To Theodore prove this and the fact that it was beyond the comprehension of Morton Smith proves that Smith couldn't have written the text.
The only one who recognized the connection with the Chag Hamatzot is me and it was because THESE ARE MY TRADITIONS. I wasn't predisposed toward thinking in terms of useless European paradigms THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH CLEMENT'S NATIVE ALEXANDRIAN CHURCH.
Indeed if you just look at the baptism narrative in Secret Mark you can see that it unfolds over seven days just like the Feast of the Unleavened Bread - viz '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.'
I am not the first to argue for the whole initiation unfolding over seven days. A number of scholars have puzzled over this. I am the only one to figure it out - it prefigures the seven day Festival of Unleavened Bread IN ISRAEL. Outside of Israel the festival was eight days and Alexandria - the place where I believe Christianity was started was outside of Israel the last I checked.
This isn't even what I wanted to write today. It just all fell into place.
More to follow ...
