Let's make a head-to-head comparison of Clement's agreements with the flagship witnesses of the Byzantine and Alexandrian text-types in the Gospel of Mark. This comparison has some special limitations, since Cosaert reckons that Clement makes only one verifiable quotation (at 8:38) from outside chapter 10, and since Clement's extensive quotation from chapter 10 is notoriously loose.
In terms of its inherent ability to reveal the character of Clement's text of Mark, the available evidence does not appear very promising at all at the outset. In Cosaert's analysis of Matthew, he more or less excluded Codex A from consideration because it is so lacunose; yet Codex A covers more of Matthew than Clement's citations, adaptations, and allusions cover in Mark. With such limited data, whatever conclusions are drawn about Clement's text of Mark as a whole should be considered tentative. Nevertheless, here are the comparisons.
LIST ONE - Places in Mark Where Clement Agrees With Byz and Disagrees With B
(1) 10:19 - Clem and TR have MH MOIXEUSHS MH FONEUSHS; B transposes
(2) 10:20 - Clem and TR have APOKRIQEIS; B does not
(3) 10:21 - Clem and TR have EN SOI; B has EN SE
(4) 10:24 - Clem and RP-2005 (but not TR) have TOUS PEPOIQOTAS EPI CRHMASIN (the TR and D have TOIS between EPI and CRHMASIN); B does not have any of this.
(5) 10:27 - Clem and TR have DE; B does not [This could be considered a three-way disagreement in which Clement has O DE, TR has DE, and B omits, but I have separated the inclusion of O as a reading supported by neither TR nor B.]
(6) 10:28 - Clem and TR have O PETROS LEGEIN AUTW; B transposes
(7) 10:28 - Clem and TR have HKOKOUQHSAMEN; B has HKOLOUQHKAMEN
(8) 10:29 - Clem and TR have APOKRIQEIS [Cosaert erroneously does not include TR in the list of witnesses agreeing with Clement in this reading.]
(9) 10:29 - Clem and RP-2005 (text) has ENEKEN after ENEKEN EMOU KAI; B (and the TR as represented by Steph. 1550) does not.
That's a total of nine agreements in Mark between Clement and Byz against B (or eight, if one does not include #5, where Clem reads O DE and TR reads DE and B has neither). If Cosaert had just taken RP-2005 in hand, he would have noticed agreements #4 and 9; unfortunately he did not.
LIST TWO: Places in Mark Where Clement Agrees With B and Disagrees With Byz
(1) 10:19 - Clem and B do not have (after PSEUDOMARTURHSHS) MH APOSTERHSHS; TR has MH APOSTERHSHS
(2) 10:21 - At the end of the verse, after MOI, Clem and B do not have ARAS TON STAURON; TR has ARAS TON STAURON
(3) 10:29 - Clem and B do not have EIPEN; TR has EIPEN
(4) 10:31 - Clem and B have OI before ESCATOI; RP-2005 (text) does not [RP-2005 and TR have OI before ESCATOI in the margin] [A and Pi also do not have OI before ESCATOI]
That's a total of four agreements in Mark between Clem and B against Byz -- one of which is a reading for which Byz is divided.
LIST THREE: Places in Mark Where Clement Agrees With Byz and Disagrees With Aleph
(1) 10:19 - Clem and TR have MH MOICEUSHS MH FONEUSHS; Aleph has MH FONEUSHS (without MH MOICEUSHS)
(2) 10:19 - Clem and TR have MHTERA without SOU; Aleph adds SOU
(3) 10:20 - Clem and TR have APOKRIQEIS; Aleph does not have APOKRIQEIS
(4) 10:21 - Clem and TR have EN SOI; Aleph has ETI EN SE
(5) 10:23 - Clem and TR have LEGEI; Aleph has ELEGEN
(6) 10:25 - Clem and TR have THS TRUMALIAS; Aleph has TRHMATOS
(7) 10:27 - Clem and TR have DE; Aleph does not have DE [but this may be considered a three-way disagreement, since Clem's full reading is O DE]
(8) 10:28 - Clem and TR have O PETROS LEGEIN AUTW; Aleph transposes
(9) 10:28 - Clem and TR have SOI; Aleph adds TI ARA ESTAI HMIN
(10) 10:29 - Clem and RP-2005 have APOKROQEIS (TR: APOKROQEIS DE); Aleph has EFH AUTW
(11) 10:29 - Clem and RP-2005 (text) have EMOU KAI ENEKEN; Aleph omits
[For 10:31, Cosaert lists TR in support of OI before ESCATOI, and this is true of Steph. 1550; however, RP-2005 (text) does not include OI. Byz is divided at this point.]
That's a total of 11 agreements in Mark between Clem and TR against Aleph.
LIST FOUR: Places in Mark Where Clement Agrees with Aleph and Disagrees with Byz
(1) 10:21 - At the end of the verse, after MOI, Clem and Aleph do not have ARAS TON STAURON; TR has ARAS TON STAURON
(2) 10:27 - Clem and Aleph have EIPEN; TR has LEGEI
(3) 10:29 - Clem and Aleph do not have EIPEN; TR has EIPEN
That's a total of three agreements in Mark between Clem and Aleph against Byz.
If we combine List and List 4, we see the following points at which Clem agrees with a reading of B and/or Aleph against Byz:
(1) 10:19 - Clem does not support the Byz reading MH APOSTERHSHS (after PSEUDOMARTURHSHS)
(2) 10:21 - Clem does not support the Byz reading (after MOI) ARAS TON STAURON
(3) 10:27 - Clem does not support the Byz reading LEGEI
(4) 10:29 - Clem does not support the Byz reading EIPEN
(5) 10:19 - Clem does not support the Byz reading MH APOSTERHSHS (after PSEUDOMARTURHSHS)
(6) 10:27 - Clem does not support the Byz reading LEGEI
(7) 10:29 - Clem does not support the Byz reading EIPEN
(8) 10:31 - Clem does not support the omission of OI before ESCATOI [Byz is divided at this point]
So, if all non-Byzantine readings in either Aleph or B or both are regarded as Alexandrian readings, Clement supports a total of eight Alexandrian readings in Mark.
If B is taken as the definitive representative of the Alexandrian Text, then Clement and Byz agree against the Alexandrian Text nine times. If Aleph is taken as the definitive representative of the Alexandrian Text, then Clement and Byz agree against the Alexandrian Text 11 times. Either way, Clement's text of Mark agrees with Byz about twice as often as it agrees with the Alexandrian Text. Also, regarding the eight readings where Clement agrees with either Aleph or B or with Aleph and B, the compilers of NA27 made the following assessments:
(1) 10:19 - NA27 agrees with TR and Aleph, disagreeing with B
(2) 10:21 - NA27 agrees with Aleph and B, disagreeing with Byz
(3) 10:27 - NA27 agrees with TR and B, disagreeing with Aleph
(4) 10:29 - NA27 agrees with Aleph and B, disagreeing with TR
(5) 10:19 (after PSEUDOMARTURHSHS) - NA agrees with TR and Aleph, disagreeing with B
(6) 10:27 - NA27 agrees with TR and B, disagreeing with Aleph
(7) 10:29 - NA27 agrees with Aleph and B, disagreeing with TR
(8) 10:31 - NA27 agrees with B, disagreeing with RP-2005 (text) and Aleph
So, in four of these eight instances where Clement agrees with one of the two definitive Alexandrian MSS, Clement and the Alexandrian witness are in error. Only four times, if the judgment of the compilers of NA27 is correct, do Clement and Alex agree together about a correct reading that is not supported by Byz.
I am actually developing a similar line of argument with James Kelhoffer (or perhaps better - trying to get him to agree with my line of thought). My point here is that Morton Smith discovered the Mar Saba document almost fifty years before Cosaert developed his thesis about Clement's gospel citations. If Morton Smith was the forger of this document (as some claim) why pick the Gospel of Mark which Clement cites so rarely and how did he know to pick chapter 10 of the Gospel of Mark? Had Smith picked another chapter it would clearly have seemed to be out of character.
Sure Smith could have carefully gone through all of Clement's references to the Gospel of Mark in all of his works and then determined that chapter 10 was the right place to 'invent' an addition. Yet you also have to figure that he could have only known that additions to Mark like the long ending take the form of a pastiche of material from other gospels from another 'do it yourself' study of Mark chapter 16. Similarly Mark's technique of 'sandwiching' stories within stories had not been generally recognized at this point in scholarship. So you have Smith literally working from scratch to concoct a truly Markan pastiche addition because of the intercalation technique and then developing another layer of research to determine that this addition could only have been cited by Clement as being a part of chapter 10 because Clement only cites from Mark chapter 10.
Of course these people will reassure us that all of this complexity is plausible and even likely because Morton Smith was superman. Yet can someone please tell me why he would have went through all this effort and then - even more implausibly - have had to then sit down with obviously inferior scholars like Helmut Koester and have to pretend that they were smarter than him and he was clueless when they discussed for months and years on end about 'Markan characteristics' of his find (and of course act clueless the whole time). Not only this but Smith also commissioned students like Stanley Isser to carry out research tables and spread sheets regarding the Gospel of Mark and Clement of Alexandria all of which Smith himself had supposedly carried out secretly before developing his forgery.
Can you imagine the monotony and the fatigue of going through all of this a second time? This is supposed to be plausible and even possible?
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."