Lift up your head from earth to sky, look up to heaven and marvel; cease to watch anxiously for the heel of the just and to hinder "the way of truth". Become wise and yet harmless; perchance the Lord will grant you wings of simplicity (for it is His purpose to supply earth-born creatures with wings) in order that, forsaking the holes of the earth, you may dwell in the heavens. [Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation, 10]
"the fourth (gospel, 'according to Mark') was like a flying eagle," pointing out the gift of the Spirit hovering with His wings over the Church ... Mark commences with [a reference to] the prophetical spirit coming down from on high to men, saying, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Esaias the prophet," pointing to the winged aspect of the Gospel ... i.e. the fourth, that which renovates man, and sums up all things in itself by means of the Gospel, raising and bearing men upon its wings into the heavenly kingdom [Irenaeus Against Heresies 3.11.8]
The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, rises and falls plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true being, go away, and feed upon opinion. The reason why the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that pasturage is found there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is a law of Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of truth in company with a god is preserved from harm until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man; and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature ... [list of nine other ranks follows] all these are states of probation, in which he who does righteously improves, and he who does unrighteously, deteriorates his lot. Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul of each one can return to the place from whence she came, for she cannot probation grow her wings in less; only the man who has lived the philosophical life without guile or who has united his love for a boy with philosophy, may acquire wings in the third of the recurring periods of a thousand years; he is distinguished from the ordinary good man who gains wings in three thousand years: -- and they who choose this life three times in succession have wings given them, and go away at the end of three thousand years. But the others receive judgment when they have completed their first life, and after the judgment they go, some of them to the houses of correction which are under the earth, and are punished; others intermediate process to some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by justice, and there they live in a manner worthy of the life which they led here when in the form of men [Plato, Phaedrus 2473 - 249b]
To you, therefore, I shall not hesitate to answer the questions you have asked, refuting the falsifications by the very words of the [Secret Gospel of Mark]. For example, after "And they were in the road going up to Jerusalem" and what follows, until "After three days he shall arise", the secret Gospel brings the following material word for word:
"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 straightaway, 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."
After these words follows the text, "And James and John come to him", and all that section. But "naked man with naked man," and the other things about which you wrote, are not found.[Clement, the Letter to Theodore 2.21 - 3.14]
Email
stephan.h.huller@gmail.com with comments or questions.
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."