Let's start from the beginning.
Scott Brown and Timo Paananen (everyone should go to his site to read him go through his master's thesis on Secret Mark) have done an admirable job debunking all of Stephen C Carlson's attacks against the authenticity of the Letter. Yet the questions still remain - what is Secret Mark's relationship to the canonical gospel of Mark? What is the historical context behind Clement's writing of To Theodore?
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
I have a long conversation with L Michael White who thinks that the Letter to Theodore is authentic but that Secret Mark is a hoax (a gospel which falsely claimed to be 'the real Gospel of Mark').
I have talked to a number of scholars who support the authenticity of To Theodore but don't know what to make of Secret Mark and I have come across more crazy ideas which really only prove one thing - these scholars never took enough time studying the traditions associated with the heresies.
Let's get to the bottom line folks.
Secret Mark is necessarily a heretical gospel. Anything associated with Alexandria eventually becomes 'heretical.' Clement was a gnostic and was run out of town. Origen was anathematized so many times while living and dead it is difficult to count them all. Arius was the head of yet another Alexandrian heresy. The list goes on and on.
The problem is that academics don't think. When I mean is that they don't simply take off for a year or a several years and just spend time contemplating the stuff that gets marginalized in most studies of Christianity.
You know, like the Alexandrian tradition.
They began their studies with the assumptions inherited from the existing orthodoxy, you know - four gospels as one, the Acts of the Apostles as 'the history of the Church,' a guy named 'Paul' as the author of the apostolic writings, Peter, John and the rest the disciples of Jesus, Jesus claiming to be Christ etc.
All I am asking these guys is to ask themselves a series of questions -
(a) with which group does Secret Mark fit - with the heresies or with the orthodox?
I think the answer is obvious. Clement while classified as a 'Church Father' openly acknowledges himself as a 'gnostic.' While the term 'gnostikos' does not necessarily imply heresy (it is a Platonic technical term) after Irenaeus Against the Gnostics Falsely So-Called the term was avoided by Patristic writers.
(b) how do we explain the limited influence of Secret Mark on early Christian writers?
The truth is that I don't think that Secret Mark had a limited influence. Again I think that people haven't thought through the implications of LGM 1. This has to be the baptismal paradigm for the Marcionite tradition (or something closely related to it). Tertullian makes absolutely clear that there was no Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist narrative in the Marcionite text.
I have also been developing a related theory that the so-called apolytrosis (redemption) ritual associated with the 'Marcosians' (i.e. 'those of Mark') (Irenaeus AH 1.13f). I think that LGM 1 is the original context for the 'redemption' ritual. A few scholars have suspected this might be true. The problem is that they think that the Gospel of Mark that surrounded LGM 1 and LGM 2 HAVE TO BE EXACTLY THE SAME AS OUR CANONICAL TEXT simply because Clement keeps saying things like 'everything else is the same.' Yet these people have under estimated the historical context of the period.
I have written extensively about Irenaeus' close relationship with the royal court of the wicked Emperor Commodus here. I have noted how many times Irenaeus threatens physical violence against those who oppose his reforms here.
My basic point is that the claim that Clement's witness is overvalued to prove that Secret Mark HAD TO BE identical with the canonical Gospel of Mark in the sections which surrounded LGM 1 and LGM 2.
Let's look at his language for a moment in to Theodore:
I shall not hesitate to answer the questions you have asked, refuting the falsifications by the very words of the Gospel. 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:
In this case Clement takes great pains to say something like 'whatever you have heard from these Carpocratians what I am about to cite you is all there is found in this other gospel of Mark.'
Then after citing LGM 1 Clement writes again:
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.
Again Clement is reassuring Theodore that the Carpocratian claims are simply not present in the text. The same is true in the last reference by Clement to the contents of Secret Mark:
And after the words, "And he comes into Jericho," the secret Gospel adds only, "And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them." But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be, and are, falsifications.
The point is that I think that it would be foolish to think that Secret Mark was just 'canonical Mark' with a bunch of additions. These people are underestimating the historical context of the period. Irenaeus was a threat to the Alexandrian Church. A seemingly endless persecution against Alexandrian Christianity developed out of Irenaeus' efforts to Nicaea.
Indeed not only does Clement leave open the possibility that he might lie in defense of the Secret Gospel (which is strange enough). You have to think about how weak it would make Clement's argument look if he had to admit something like 'well this is a little different than your Mark ... and this isn't the same either ... and that too.'
Clement is clearly trying to present an argument that the Alexandrian autograph of the gospel of Mark is not a threat or challenge to the authority of the 'accepted version' of the gospel of Mark at Rome.
So let me get to something I have come to suspect about Secret Mark. I think it is related to the Diatessaron. It was LGM 2 that started me on this path. Just as Clement says that Secret Mark inserted material at Mark 10:
And he comes into Jericho, and the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them ...
We don't know what followed these words. We have no more information about what Clement originally wrote from this point in the original text. Our canonical text of Mark reads:
Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"
Yet what are the odds that the Diatessaron would have an insertion IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE AS SECRET MARK? The Diatessaron reads:
And when Jesus entered and passed through Jericho, there was a man named Zacchaeus, rich, and chief of the publicans. And he desired to see Jesus who he was; and he was not able for the pressure of the crowd, because Zacchaeus was little of stature. And he hastened, and went before Jesus, and went up into an unripe fig tree to see Jesus: for he was to pass thus. And when Jesus came to that place, he saw him, and said unto him, Make haste, and come down, Zacchaeus: today I must be in thy house. And he hastened, and came down, and received him joyfully. And when they all saw, they murmured, and said, He hath gone in and lodged with a man that is a sinner. So Zacchaeus stood, and said unto Jesus, My Lord, now half of my possessions I give to the poor, and what I have unjustly taken from every man I give him fourfold. Jesus said unto him, Today is salvation come to this house, because this man also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and save the thing that was lost.
And when Jesus went out of Jericho, he and his disciples, there came after him a great multitude. And there was a blind man sitting by the way side begging. And his name was Timaeus, the son of Timaeus. And he heard the sound of the multitude passing, and asked, Who is this?
Yes, there is no proof here that LGM 2 was ever part of the Diatessaron but that's not the point. There are undoubtedly thousands of words in the Gospel of Mark. What are the chances that two wholly unrelated texts would add material AT THE EXACT SAME PLACE IN THE GOSPEL.
More on this relationship in the next post ...
If you are interested in reading how this observation fits within my greater understanding of the workings of Secret Mark WITHIN the contemporary Alexandrian Church please go here
If you want to read more about how Alexandrian Christianity was rooted in the Jewish traditions of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria and more feel free to purchase my new book here
