Secret Mark and the Marcionite Gospel Revisted

We have been demonstrating to our readership that Clement can be clearly and unmistakably demonstrated to favor a 'secret non-canonical gospel' related to the Diatessaron.  This certainly makes the ideas in the Letter to Theodore have some precedence in the writings of Clement.  As we have noted many times here, Clement even uses the canonical gospel of Mark to 'explain' the secret gospel in Quis Dives Salvetur. 

Now I would like to take things one step further.  I want to show that 'secret Mark' was certainly the Marcionite gospel.  I won't get into all the other arguments I have developed for this assertion - i.e. that Marcionites seem to acknowledge that (a) the gospel of Mark is the 'gospel of Marcion' and (b) 'Marcion' like Mark in to Theodore is understood to have 'cut' the original gospel and thus also to have manufactured a 'curtailed' text.  What I would like to do for this post is just demonstrate that we can piece together what the Clementine 'secret gospel' looked like at the equivalent of Mark 10:17 - 31 in its narrative. 

The place to start - as always is Origen's citation of the Gospel According to the Hebrews - not only because Clement and Origen are related as heirs to the so-called 'catechetical school' (I quicker believe that they were viewed by natives as the true heads of the Church with Demetrius being someone pointed from without).  I want to hold off on citing this material again from Origen's Commentary on Matthew Book 15 so I will provide a link here to Klijn's Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition for those who want a jump on studying the particulars of the text.

As I want to make the case that Clement is consistently citing the material from 'Secret Mark' (and thus cannot name the text as witnessed by what he says in to Theod. II.12).  This is not the Gospel According to the Hebrews but a text related to it.  The place to begin is to identify the material which connects us to the Carpocratians - and thus 'Secret Mark' - in Stromata Book Three.

In the first reference to the 'new commandment' of Jesus - i.e. 'thou shalt not lust' - in the Third Book of the Stromateis Clement makes clear that the saying comes from a non-canonical gospel shared by the Carpocratians and his Alexandrian Church.  So we read in the course of his rejection of the Carpocratians interpretation of this saying (i.e. that Jesus introduced something hostile the Law):

If the adulteress and her paramour are both punished with death, it is surely clear that the commandment "You shall not lust for your neighbor’s wife" applies to the gentiles, so that anyone who follows the Law in keeping his hands off his neighbor’s wife and his sister may hear directly from the Lord: "But I say to you, you shall not lust." The addition of the pronoun "I" shows that the application of the commandment is more rigidly binding, and that Carpocrates and Epiphanes are battling against God. [Stromata 3.1,2]

Once again, let us note that the Carpocratians hold that this new commandment is out of character with the commandments of the Law, Clement argues the other way - i.e. the ideas here are already a part of the Law given to Moses. 

The same idea is reworked in two subsequent references to this same saying (indeed the whole of Book Three of the Stromateis develops from the dispute between Clement and the Carpocratian interpretation of the passage from the 'secret' or unknown gospel.  We read in what follows that Clement asks:

How can the man who has given himself over to every lust be a citizen according to the Law of God when the Lord has declared, "I say, you shall not lust"? Is a person to take a decision to sin deliberately, and to lay it down as a principle to commit adultery, to waste his substance in high living, and to break up other people’s marriages [as the Carpocratians encouraged], when we actually pity the rest who fall involuntarily into sin?  Even if they have arrived in an alien world, if they prove unfaithful in what belongs to another, they will have no hold on the truth.[Stromata 3.33.1 - 3]

And then a fuller citation of the same passage a little later again:

The person of understanding will think out the passage of Scripture that is appropriate to challenge each of the heresies and use it at the apposite moment to refute those who set their dogmas against the commandments. From the very beginning, as I have already said, the Law laid down the injunction "You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife" in anticipation of the Lord’s closely connected dictum in accordance with the New Covenant with the same meaning from his own lips: "You have heard the injunction of the Law. ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ I say, ‘You shall not lust.’" The Law wished males to have responsible sexual relations with their marriage partners, solely for the production of children. [Stromata 3.71.2 - 4]

Clement's point is clearly that (a) the Law tolerates 'lust' as a means to material fruitfulness but not in terms of sensual pleasure and (b) Jesus's 'new commandment' was in keeping with the old which he - as the Logos - helped introduce to Moses. 

I happen to think that Clement designated the Carpocratians as the 'lusty heretics' as a means of distancing its members from the Alexandrian Church.  The gospel in question is clearly the Marcionite gospel.  There are several signs that point to it, none more so that the Marcionite paradigm of the Apostle already having the gospel in his possession when he wrote the Epistle to the Romans:

At this point, I think that I ought not to leave on one side without comment the fact that the Apostle preaches the same God whether through the Law, the prophets, or the gospel. For in his letter to the Romans he attributes to the Law the words "You shall not lust" which in fact appear in the text of the gospel. He does so in the knowledge that it is one single person who makes his decrees through the Law and the prophets, and is the subject of the gospel’s proclamation. He says, "What shall we say? Is the Law sin? Of course not. But I did not know sin except through the Law. I did not know lust, except that the Law said, ‘You shall not lust.' [Stromata 3.76.1,2]

I have long argued that the Alexandrian Church of the late second/early third century was really only a 'reformed Marcionite tradition' - i.e. a church desparately trying to hide its associations with 'heresy' and figuring out some way to be reconciled with the Roman establishment. 

The Marcionite connection helps explain the scriptural reference which Clement claims a group called 'the Carpocratians' misinterprets.  For if we look at the saying once again:

Jesus said "You have heard the injunction of the Law. ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ I say, ‘You shall not lust.’"

It is obvious that most of the scholars who try to pass this off as a variant reading of Matthew 5:28 are ignoring the fact that Clement cites the familiar version of Matthew as a compliment to this otherwise unknown saying:

The former (i.e. the Law) says, "You shall not commit adultery," the latter (i.e. the gospel), "Everyone who looks with lust has already committed adultery."  The words found in the Law, "You shall not lust," show that it is one single God who makes his proclamations through the Law, prophets and Gospels. He says, "You shall not lust for your neighbor’s wife." [Stromata 3.8.4 - 6]

The saying clearly belongs as part of the heretical narrative of the Question of the Rich Youth and a number of clues in the writings of Clement will actually help us reconstruct the Marcionite narrative.

Let's start with something that anyone who has studied the Marcionite tradition must have noticed a number of times - the Marcionite text seems to have integrated Luke 10:24 - 37 (the Question about the Greatest Commandment) with Luke 18:18 - 29 (the Question of the Rich Youth).  In the Marcionite gospel the first question is 'what must I do to inherit life?' and the second question 'what must I do to inherit eternal life?'  The two seem to naturally follow one another and then we see in Clement that in fact the two questions were connected with the same individual:

Again when he says, "If you want to be perfect, sell your property and give the proceeds to the poor," he is showing up the man who boasts of "having kept all the commandments from his youth." He had not fulfilled "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." [Strom 3.55.2]

It is utterly amazing that no scholars before me has ever noticed this parallel.  Matthew certainly cites Lev 19:18:

Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself. “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

But it is only in the non-canonical gospel traditions that Jesus actually demonstrates that the youth 'had not fulfilled' this commandment.  The Gospel According to the Hebrews cited by Origen says again:

The second of the rich men (it saith) said unto him: Master, what good thing can I do and live? He said unto him: O man, fulfil (do) the law and the prophets. He answered him: I have kept them. He said unto him: Go, sell al that thou ownest, and distribute it unto the poor, and come, follow me. But the rich man began to scratch his head, and it pleased him not. And the Lord said unto him: How sayest though: I have kept the law and the prophets? For it is written in the law: Though shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, and lo, many of thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are clad in filth, dying for hunger, and thine house is full of many good things, and nought at all goeth out of it unto them.

So here in the Gospel According to the Hebrews we have both the confirmation of the original question by the rich man (i.e. how do I inherit life? as in the Marcionite gospel) and Clement's witness that the person who is asking the questions is reproved for not fulfilling the commandment about love thy neighbor.

The point then is that we have what appears to be three non-canonical gospels at first glance (a) an Alexandrian text shared by the Carpocratians and the Alexandrian Church (b) the Marcionite gospel and (c) the Gospel According to the Hebrews.  All these texts are related to one another.  I happen to think that (a) and (b) are one and the same and that they in turn are related to (c).  Yet let's look at another manner in which they are all related.

Indeed before we return to the new commandment that Jesus introduced - viz. 'thou shalt not lust' - let's look at another agreement between all of the texts - the specific phrasing of Jesus to sell everything that the youth owns.  Aphrahat's citation of the earliest Diatessaron is particularly useful.  We read:

The Lord said unto him : Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, and honour thy father and thy mother and love thy neighbour as thyself : The young man said unto him : Thus have I done, since I was a boy. But what lack I? Then Jesus looked upon him lovingly and said, One other thing is lacking to thee: If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and take up thy cross and follow me. And that man, when he heard, became very sorrowful and went away gloomy to his house, because he was very rich in possessions. And Jesus said : See how hard it is for those who trust in their possessions to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

All of these early non-canonical texts drop the 'treasure in heaven' phrase in the highlighted sentence.  While Aphrahat's gospel has 'go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and take up your cross and follow me.'  Clement twice cites the passage as:

Sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow Me [Strom. 4.6, Quis Dives 13]

Πώλησόν σου τὰ ὑπάρχοντα καὶ δὸς πτωχοῖς, καὶ δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι

While the Latin translation of Origen's Commentary on Matthew has the text as vade, vende omnia quae possides et divide pauperibus, et veni, sequere me.

The contents of the Marcionite gospel are a little more difficult to piece together as our only source for this section is Tertullian's polemical attack against the Marcionite text.  Most scholars mistake Tertullian's initial citation of his own 'gospel of truth' (i.e. the canonical gospel of the Catholic Church) against the Marcionite text for the contents of the Marcionite gospel which immediately follow.  We read:

So then when he is asked by that certain man, Good Teacher, what shall I do to obtain possession of eternal life?, he inquired whether he knew—which means, was keeping—the Creator's commandments, in such form as to testify that by the Creator's commandments eternal life is obtained: and when that man replied, in respect of the chief of them, that he had kept them from his youth up, he got the answer, One thing thou lackest; sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou wilt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. Come now, Marcion, and all your companions in the misery and sharers in the offensiveness of that heretic, what will you be bold enough to say?  Did Christ here rescind those former commandments, not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, to love father and mother? Or is it that he both retained these and added what was lacking? And yet, even this commandment of distributing to the poor is spread about everywhere in the law and the prophets, so that that boastful keeper of the commandments was convicted of having money in much higher esteem.  So then this also in the gospel remains valid, I am not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil. At the same time also he relieved of doubt those other questions, by making it clear that the name of God, and of supremely good, belongs to one only, and that eternal life and treasure in heaven, and himself besides, pertain to that one, whose commandments, by adding what was lacking, he both conserved and enriched. So he is to be recognized as in agreement with Micah, in this passage where he says, Hath he then shewed thee, O man, what is good? Or what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justice, to love mercy, and to be prepared to follow the Lord thy God? For Christ is that Man, declaring what is good: the knowledge of the law, Thou knowest the commandments: to do justice, Sell the things thou hast: to love mercy, and give to the poor: to be prepared to go with the Lord, and come, follow me.

It is sometimes difficult to tell whether Tertullian is actually citing the Marcionite text or his own text against them.  We can be very confident that the second citation of the material - the one without 'you will have a treasure in heaven' - is the original Marcionite reading which is in agreement with the citations from (a) Clement of Alexandria's 'secret gospel' (b) the Diatessaron and the Gospel According to the Hebrews. 

Once this is out of the way we can finally address the reference in the text to the Marcionites thinking that Jesus introduced a new commandment in the passage:

Did Christ here rescind those former commandments, not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, to love father and mother?  Or is it that he both retained these and added what was lacking? And yet, even this commandment of distributing to the poor is spread about everywhere in the law and the prophets, so that that boastful keeper of the commandments was convicted of having money in much higher esteem

Yet the Marcionites could not have held that "sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow Me" is the 'new commandment' of Jesus.  It doesn't sound at all like a general rule and indeed we see Clement see it as an application of the new commandment - 'thou shalt not lust.' (Οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις) This certainly sounds like a Marcionite precept and we should remember in fact that ἐπιθυμήσεις applies as much to the desire for material things as it does for sexual relations.

The point then is that Clement's lost gospel passage - "You have heard the injunction of the Law. ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ I say, ‘You shall not lust.’" - perfectly fits the rest of what we know about the Marcionite gospel with the rich youth declaring:

"I know the commandments - Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother. All these have I have observed from my youth up." But Jesus said "You have heard that the law commanded, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say, Thou shalt not lust.

Indeed the fact that Matthew 5:28 so resembles the passage cited by Clement actually helps confirm that the passage originally formed a part of the Marcionite gospel. 

Irenaeus interestingly reports that something resembling Matthew 5:28 appeared in the Marcionite gospel in Book Four of Against Heresies:

And that the Lord did not abrogate the natural [precepts] of the law, by which man is justified, which also those who were justified by faith, and who pleased God, did observe previous to the giving of the law, but that He extended and fulfilled them, is shown from His words. "For," He remarks, "it has been said to them of old time, Do not commit adultery. But I say unto you, That every one who hath looked upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." And again: "It has been said, Thou shalt not kill. But I say unto you, Every one who is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment." And, "It hath been said, Thou shalt not forswear thyself. But I say unto you, Swear not at all; but let your conversation be, Yea, yea, and Nay, nay." And other statements of a like nature. For all these do not contain or imply an opposition to and an overturning of the [precepts] of the past, as Marcion's followers do strenuously maintain; but [they exhibit] a fulfilling and an extension of them ... He did not teach us these things as being opposed to the law, but as fulfilling the law, and implanting in us the varied righteousness of the law. That would have been contrary to the law, if He had commanded His disciples to do anything which the law had prohibited. But this which He did command--namely, not only to abstain from things forbidden by the law, but even from longing after them--is not contrary to [the law], as I have remarked, neither is it the utterance of one destroying the law, but of one fulfilling, extending, and affording greater scope to it.

For the law, since it was laid down for those in bondage, used to instruct the soul by means of those corporeal objects which were of an external nature, drawing it, as by a bond, to obey its commandments, that man might learn to serve God. But the Word set free the soul, and taught that through it the body should be willingly purified. Which having been accomplished, it followed as of course, that the bonds of slavery should be removed, to which man had now become accustomed, and that he should follow God without fetters: moreover, that the laws of liberty should be extended, and subjection to the king increased, so that no one who is convened should appear unworthy to Him who set him free, but that the piety and obedience due to the Master of the household should be equally rendered both by servants and children; while the children possess greater confidence [than the servants], inasmuch as the working of liberty is greater and more glorious than that obedience which is rendered in [a state of] slavery.

And for this reason did the Lord, instead of that commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," forbid even lust; and instead of that which runs thus, "Thou shalt not kill," He prohibited anger; and instead of the law enjoining the giving of tithes, [He told us] to share all our possessions with the poor; and not to love our neighbours only, but even our enemies; and not merely to be liberal givers and bestowers, but even that we should present a gratuitous gift to those who take away our goods.[Irenaeus AH 4.13.1 - 3]

I strongly suspect that the antitheses in Matthew chapter 5 actually appeared in the Question of the Rich Youth section.  The manner in which the various statements 'line up' with the commandments that the youth claims he 'knows' is simply uncanny. 

All of this again would argue for the authenticity of 'secret Mark' because the initiation ultimately follows a long section which confirmed - without question - that Jesus replaced his one commandment 'thou shalt not lust' with all the old commandments of the Law.  The redemption baptism of LGM 1 is clearly a 'purchasing from the Law,' and an end to the enslavement to the old system of righteousness.