The fact is that for whatever reason, all the other people who think the Letter to Theodore is authentic want to run away from the homoerotic 'vibe' of the text. If you want to be a 'team player' here you just have to deny what is obvious to any reader. I don't know why this is. I think the fact that so many Canadians are involved on the 'team' is part of the problem. Too many Canadians have inoffensiveness grafted into their DNA. I only happened to have been a first generation Canadian. When my family got out of the concentration camps, Toronto seemed to be an improvement, I guess.
The point however is that I think its a bad idea to have so many Canadians involved in the defence of the document. I mean, why do we have to do everything the 'Canadian way'? Why do we have to be so uptight? Why care so much about 'what religious people' are 'going to think' about the text? Why do we have to pretend that there isn't a 'gay vibe' to the text? Only Canadians would think that sheepishness is the best tactic in the debate over the authenticity of the document.
I mean, it would be startling to have never read the New Testament before and to find this passage still part of the gospel:
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 [Clement, the Letter to Theodore]
Yes, I agree - there is no sex described in the text. That's what all the Canadians defending the text will tell you (and they will say it with such disinterest that you will wonder if they have ever had sex before). Yet it is foolish to simply ignore the obvious sense of the passage. The Letter to Theodore does indeed make reference to 'misinterpretations' of the text where homosexuality was certainly implied.
I know I am asking great things of my readership, but I think we can envision a scenario where the Letter to Theodore is an authentic writing of Clement and the passage he cites from the 'secret gospel' of Mark is 'tainted' with a Platonic acceptance of homosexual desire. I know that isn't the argument that is going to help you win the Miss America Pagent, but the bottom line is that the two ideas are very compatible with one another. Clement after all was a 'Platonizing Christian' and accepts and takes for granted the underlying assumptions of that philosophical culture with respect to taking for granted homosexual and pederastic impulses as 'natural.'
I have noted over the last few days that I am certain I have uncovered an allusion to the aforementioned citation of Secret Mark in Book Five of the Stromata. Not surprisingly Clement begins by citing Plato's idealizing of pederastic love and then moves on to explain how the Christianity is like-minded. So we read Clement write at one point in the introduction of that book:
Also in the Phaedrus he [Plato] says, "That only when in a separate state can the soul become partaker of the wisdom which is true, and surpasses human power; and when, having reached the end of hope by philosophic love, desire shall waft it to heaven, then," says he, "does it receive the commencement of another, an immortal life." And in the Symposium he says, "That there is instilled into all the natural love of generating what is like, and in men of generating men alone, and in the good man of the generation of the counterpart of himself. But it is impossible for the good man to do this without possessing the perfect virtues, in which he will train the youth who have recourse to him." And as he says in the Theaetetus, "He will beget and finish men. For some procreate by the body, others by the soul;" since also with the barbarian philosophers to teach and enlighten is called to regenerate; and "I have begotten you in Jesus Christ," says the good apostle somewhere.As we have noted many times here, the parallel between the 'secret Gospel of Mark' and Plato's Alcibiades 109e is that rich youth - like Alcibiades begins by arguing with his teacher because of preconceived notions of what is right. In the Alexandrian gospel narrative, he descends into Hades, realizes he is ignorant and then starts back on the path to a true education.
The image here is clearly that of man creating by another man ('like with like'). Yes, of course there are many ways of pretending all of what we know Plato said was not understood or accepted by Clement but notice how he can quickly change gears and use the love conception at the heart of the Phaedrus to describe 'true Christian love':
In the Phaedrus also, Plato, speaking of the truth, shows it as an idea. Now an idea is a conception of God; and this the barbarians have termed the Word of God. The words are as follow: "For one must then dare to speak the truth, especially in speaking of the truth. For the essence of the soul, being colourless, formless, and intangible, is visible only to God, its guide." Now the Word issuing forth was the cause of creation; then also he generated himself, "when the Word had become flesh," that He might be seen. The righteous man will seek the discovery that flows from love, to which if he haste he prospers. For it is said, "To him that knocketh, it shall be opened: ask, and it shall be given to you." "For the violent that storm the kingdom " are not so in disputations speeches; but by continuance in a right life and unceasing prayers, are said "to take it by force," wiping away the blots left by their previous sins. "You may obtain wickedness, even in great abundance? And him who toils God helps; For the gifts of the Muses, hard to win, Lie not before you, for any one to bear away."
The knowledge of ignorance is, then, the first lesson in walking according to the Word. An ignorant man has sought, and having sought, he finds the teacher; and finding has believed, and believing has hoped; and henceforward having loved, is assimilated to what was loved -- endeavouring to be what he first loved. Such is the method Socrates shows Alcibiades, who thus questions: "Do you not think that I shall know about what is right otherwise?" "Yes, if you have found out." "But you don't think I have found out?" "Certainly, if you have sought." "Then you don't think that I have sought?" "Yes, if you think you do not know." [Stromata 5.3]
The point here is that the Alexandrian gospel is clearly developed around very Greek ideas of what a proper education is, what a true teacher or paedagogue is and I see the same thing being reflected in Clement's accpeted writings. It is thus a very useful parallel to point out that in the classics, scholars had a difficult time wrestling with the letters of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius because of their obvious homoerotic content. It seems no one wants to admit how different the ancient were from most of us.
I continue with the next section of our reproduction of Amy Richlin's article on the (suppressed) love letters of Marcus Aurelius:
Reading the Phaedrus
The most dazzling of the letters comes from early on in the correspondence and seems to have served explicitly as a move of seduction: this is the erotikos logos written by Fronto for Marcus. Although there are signs of romance in one seemingly earlier letter, Fronto's bravura performance here opens the floodgates.
As an introductory gambit, Fronto evidently sent Marcus three pieces written in Greek, ostensibly examples of a standard rhetorical exercise in which the orator riffs on themes set by famous speeches. The first was a version of the speech of Lysias recounted in Plato's Phaedrus, known today by the name Plato gave it in that dialogue: erotikos logos, "the speech about love." The second was a version of Socrates' improvement on that speech in the dialogue, and the third, which is the only one extant, was Fronto's own effort. The brilliance of this move is hard to overstate. Addressing a young man famous for his delight in philosophy, the eminent rhetorician, assigned to teach this young man rhetoric, chose to engage him with a Platonic dialogue that is, in a way, about rhetoric. What could be more blameless, more appropriate, than a discussion of Plato's Phaedrus? Indeed the part of it about rhetoric is relatively dull.
The first part of Plato's dialogue, however, is not dull at all, and it is from this section that the purported speech of Lysias comes. This speech is an argument that beautiful young men (kaloi) should bestow their sexual favors on men who claim not to love them rather than on men who claim to love them (erastai), and within the dialogue it is several things at once: the written words that say this argument; a gift given by Lysias to Phaedrus as a means of seduction; and a book-roll carried by Phaedrus under his clothing, which Socrates manages to make him bring out and read. The setting of the dialogue is flirtatious: Socrates meets Phaedrus going for a walk outside the city walls, and they wander off down by the Ilissus. Their surroundings suggest myths to them: the rape of Orithyia by winged Boreas (Phaedrus 229b), and, less explicitly, the rape of Perimele by the river Achelous (230b).
During this initial conversation, rhetoric and sexuality are repeatedly conflated (eg, 236d-e, where rhetoric is what brings the boy and his admirer together, the equivalent of wrestling). And the speech of Socrates that so memorably completes the first half of the dialogue is amazingly sexy: the soul like a charioteer with two horses, of which the bad (akolastos) horse keeps wanting to go have sex with beautiful boys, more and more explicitly (250e-252b; 253c; 254a-e; 255b-c; 255d-256a; 256b-d); the boys' beauty causes feathers to grow on the soul's wings, feathers that itch and tickle, grow, and threaten to burst out of their sockets, in cascades of erectile and ejaculatory imagery. The dialogue /speech is implicitly itself a form of flirtation, since the interlocutor /addressee, Phaedrus, is himself one of the kaloi who play such an important role in the first part of the dialogue; the analogy between Socrates and Phaedrus and the gazing soul and the gazed-at boy is underlined by the frequent statements that Phaedrus is kalos. Occasionally there are role-switches in the dialogue, and Socrates says that Lysias is Phaedrus's paidika (236b) or that Phaedrus is the erastes of Lysias (257b; rather than being his eromenos, "beloved"), or Phaedrus threatens to force to force Socrates to do his bidding (236d), saying that they are alone in a lonely place (en eremiai) and that he is stronger and younger than Socrates.
This idea of role reversal is one key to what Fronto is doing here. One of the main things boys were taught in the ancient rhetorical schools was to play roles. They had to make speeches, suasoriae, while taking on various personae: Agamemnon, Alexander the Great, Cicero. The erotikos logos attributed to Lysias by Socrates in Plato's Phaedrus is a typically Plato-ish role-playing game: people are still arguing over who wrote it.11 Is it really by Lysias,and just quoted by Plato? Is it a parody? Or something in between,not really by Lysias but written by Plato in Lysias's style, like a Roman suasoria? Words, as Plato says later in the dialogue, are so enigmatic. Plato, in a way, produces three versions of an erotikos logos in the Phaedrus; so Fronto sends three to Marcus. As in tap dancing, or (more pertinently) as in many kinds of traditional Roman performance, an antiphonal response is expected: "now it's your turn." Much as in letter-writing.
This extremely elaborate frame, or mask, allows Fronto to say the most startling things to his young charge. Of course he is in a way pretending to be Lysias addressing Phaedrus, but by means of this fiction he directly addresses Marcus,and in fact at the beginning of the letter the “dear boy” (phile pai) has to be Marcus, and the speaker is explicitly Fronto, calling himself “this foreign man,” simultaneously inside and outside the frame.
After this metatextual preamble, the letter makes the following points: if the boy wants to know how the speaker can want the same thing lovers want, it is because he can see the boy's beauty as well as they can; the speaker can want the same thing lovers want, it is because he can see the boy's beauty as well as they can; the speaker, a non-lover, can benefit the boy more than a lover can; the boy has bewitched another man by means of charms; everybody is talking about how this man is the boy's lover, and this is disgraceful; non-lovers have more credibility in praising the beauty of boys; what the lover has written about the boy is disgraceful and arises from bestial lust,in which the boy should not participate—sex should take place in privacy (eremia); the flower that loved the sun gets no benefit from this love; the flower that loved the sun gets no benefit from this love; we can see this flower if we take a walk outside the city, down by the Ilissus.
And here is a selection from what is evidently Marcus's reply:
Go ahead, as much as you like, threaten me, accuse me, with whole clumps of arguments: but you will never put off your erastes — I mean me. Nor will I announce that I love Fronto any less, or will I love him less, because you by such varied and vehement and elegant expressions have proved that those who love less are more to be helped out and lavishly endowed. No, by God, I am dying so for love of you, nor am I scared off by this dogma of yours, and if you will be more quick and ready for others,who don't love you, I still will love you while I live and breathe. . . . For I love you, and I think that this at last ought to be granted to true lovers, that they take more pleasure in the victories of their eromenoi. We have won, then, we have won, I say. . . . (2) And indeed I will swear this with every confidence: If that Phaedrus guy of yours ever really existed, if he was ever away from Socrates, Socrates didn't burn more with desire for Phaedrus than I've burned during these days — did I say days? I mean months — for the sight of you Your letter fixed it so a person wouldn't have to be Dion to love you so much9—if he isn't immediately seized with love of you. Goodbye, my biggest thing under heaven, my pride and joy. It's enough for me to have had such a teacher.
It is conventional to refer, if at all, to Fronto's erotikos logos as a literary exercise that he has composed for the edification of his new student. Van den Hout, for example, says ad loc., "When in 138 Pius decided to appoint Fronto as a mentor and teacher to Marcus, ... the forty-five-year-old Fronto had to present himself to his eighteen-year-old pupil. As ... a pedagogue [he did so] here in his Erotikos, be it in jest. As in Plato's Phaedrus . . , not Eros is the point at issue but education, the education of a future emperor." And further: "This trivial work should not be taken seriously, contrary to [Christopher] Wordsworth [1807–85], . . . who thinks that Fronto here tries to deter Marcus from unchaste love and that Marcus mended his ways thanks to Fronto's Erotikos (see Medit. 1:16 - 17). The reference here is to a passage in his Meditations where Marcus, late in life, says that Antoninus Pius taught him to give up sex with boys (to pausai ta peri tous erotas ton meirakion, 1 .16.2), and (separately) that the gods taught him to “save his youthful flower and not play the man too early” (to ten horan diasosai kai to me pro horas androsthenai, 1.17.2). The confusion of 1.16.2 and 1.17.2 I pass over for now, along with the question of what Marcus was talking about in his Meditations; the main thing is that I do not see how Fronto's erotikos logos can be described either as primarily about education, trivial, or as an attempt to deter Marcus from unchaste love. Nor does its effect seem to have been deterrent.
Among the thousands of things that could be said about Fronto's letter, these: that this frame enables him to call Marcus beautiful (repeated many times); and to talk about Marcus carrying on with another man, sometimes in graphic terms; and to joke about keeping Marcus's name “inviolate” (ie “everyone says you're a slut, but I'd never repeat that"); and to talk about his own desire for Marcus; and to warn Marcus of the need for secrecy and the value of coded speech; and to end with an elegantly Platonic proposition: let's go down by the Ilissus (ie let's be like Socrates and Phaedrus, or, let's read the Phaedrus, or, let's go where there's eremia—cf. Phaedrus 236d). He gets to say all these things, and it's educational.
And Marcus gets to reply in kind. Moreover, he switches the roles around, so that he now becomes the erastes and Fronto the eromenos; he becomes Socrates, and Fronto becomes Phaedrus. And by saying “if that Phaedrus guy of yours ever really existed,” Marcus reminds his reader of the lively literary discussion about the reality of the interlocutors in Plato's dialogues; Diogenes Laertius includes Phaedrus among those rumored to have been Plato's eromenoi (Plato 3.29, 31).
This interchange of letters sets up a rule for a game that Fronto and Marcus begin to play: the interchange of letters, of books, is like sex. There's a wonderful moment in the Phaedrus, when Phaedrus is about to tell Socrates what Lysias said from memory, and Socrates says (228d), "First show me, my love, what you've got in your left hand under your cloak. For I'm guessing that you have the discourse itself [ton logon auton]." In other words, are you just glad to see me, or is that a scroll in your pocket? The joke, common in antiquity, in which a book-roll is likened to a phallus, suggests perhaps that in the Phaedrus the connection is not metaphorical but metonymic. In other words, the Phaedrus does not seem to be about sex when really it is about rhetoric; it is both about sex and about rhetoric. The long time that is spent by Socrates and Phaedrus in flirting at the beginning of the dialogue suggests that this kind of speech be taken seriously, as being a kind of saying without telling, a speech that both is and is not what it seems to be; much as the speech Lysias gives to Phaedrus claims that Lysias is not Phaedrus's erastes, while both the gist of the speech and the the gift of the speech itself are cast as a ploy to seduce Phaedrus (and Socrates says as much at Phaedrus 237b). This seems to be underscored by the elaborate argument made at the end of the Phaedrus that the written word is inferior to the spoken word; if that is so, why does Socrates want to see what Phaedrus has under his cloak? It is ton logon auton, but maybe it is not the scroll.
The language or conceit of the erotikos logos well exemplifies the epistemology of the closet in its adroit exploitation of plausible deniability. As in the structure of jokes which armors the speaker against a hearer who would take the joke-content seriously, the use of the intertext allows Fronto to get away with a lot here, in fact even more than he puts on paper. That is, just as a person might tell a dirty joke, and then, if someone takes offense, he can say "Hey! It's just a joke!" because it's marked as a "joke" by its structure; so Fronto can say whatever he wants to, if he dresses it up as a Platonic dialogue. And by bringing up the dialogue, he can remind his reader of what it says that he is omitting. This structure permeates the letters, and may in part account for the silence about their amatory content.
All of this in turn raises new questions about Clement's choice of terminology in his accepted writings. Why does he call Jesus a 'paedagogue' if the contemporary culture basically assumed that these instructors routinely had sexual relations with those whom they instructed? No, it is of course not a 'proof' that the Letter to Theodore is authentic. Yet why does Clement use this terminology when nothing in our canonical gospels demonstrates Jesus to be in anything resembling the role of a paedagogue - anything that is save for 'secret Mark' ...
