I Think I Have Found the Proof for the Mar Saba Document's Authenticity

I have been very busy today and this week. All of this explains the deteriorating quality of the posts. I have a big presentation at the end of the week but strangely I think it was in this very same week that came up with the ultimate proof for the authenticity of To Theodore.

I think other scholars have projected their own presuppositions into the text. They are not actually seeing what the text says but what they think the text implies.

That is why the previous post is so important. I further refined the argument about the Gospel of Peter in my latest blog post. I suggest that if you look at what is actually written in To Theodore regarding the text that Mark wrote for Peter the

account of the Lord's doings ... for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed

there is no explicit mention of the word gospel. It might have been thought of being a gospel because it was a narrative about Jesus but because kerygma and catechesis naturally go together in early Christian theology, the idea that this Petrine text was identified as a 'kerygma' is more natural.

The point of course is that if we are looking for proof that Clement accepted the idea that there were two gospel of Mark in Clement's other writings we know the answer - there is no evidence. One could argue that the point of To Theodore is to say that only the Alexandrian text is the true Gospel of Mark. Even when attacking the Carpocratian text, if Clement believed there was another Gospel of Mark he would have explicitly said so - i.e. 'the only other text we accept with the name Gospel of Mark' is the canonical text.'

But he doesn't say that.

The point is that if we look for whether Clement accepted a Petrine kerygma which was an 'account of the Lord's doings ... for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed' we already know that Clement mentions this text - the text he calls the kerygma Petrou on more than one occasion.

I could argue that this text was also the Gospel of Peter as a side argument but on its own the idea that Clement associated a Petrine kerygma with catechesis (the most natural reading of what is described in To Theodore) is present in his other writings.

I think this is checkmate to the hoaxers because this is not how Smith framed the understanding of the text but it is LITERALLY what is expressed. Most of us were blinded by what we ASSUMED Clement was talking about