Can We Follow Irenaeus' Citation of a Missing Verse From Mark Back to Secret Mark?

Let's start again (because I don't like to take for granted that people have been following all my posts).

(1) In Book Four of Against the Heresies, Irenaeus informs the reader that (a) the gospel associated with unnamed 'heretics' read "no one KNEW the Father but the Son" instead of "no man knows the Father but the Son, nor the Son, but the Father, and he to whom the Son has willed to reveal."

(2) Irenaeus himself witnesses that the 'correct' reading was found in THREE of the four canonical gospels - Matthew, Mark and Luke. He explicitly says that the saying was absent only in the Gospel of John.

(3) Irenaeus testimony elsewhere in Against the Heresies makes clear that Irenaeus himself introduced the fourfold canon around the time of Book Three of the five volume work (c. 189 CE). Irenaeus does not cite the witness of 'elders' before him - i.e. Polycarp - to support the use of a fourfold gospel.

(4) When Irenaeus reports the variant reading he attributes it to "they who would be wiser than the apostles ... and they explain it as if the true God were known to none prior to our Lord's advent; and that God who was announced by the prophets, they allege not to be the Father of Christ." [ibid]

(5) The language that Irenaeus uses here suggests one of two groups being his intended target - i.e. either the Marcosians or the Carpocratians. The Marcosians are described in the ORIGINAL Book One of Against the Heresies as " they proclaim themselves as being 'perfect,' so that no one can be compared to them with respect to the immensity of their knowledge, nor even were you to mention Paul or Peter, or any other of the apostles." The Carpocratians appear in a later section of Book One that was introduced SOMETIME AFTER the original edition of Against the Heresies (i.e. as Robert McQueen Grant notes, the five volumes of the work were develop book by book over a generation). The Carpocratians are described as those who "declare themselves similar to Jesus; while others, still more mighty, maintain that they are superior to his disciples, such as Peter and Paul, and the rest of the apostles, whom they consider to be in no respect inferior to Jesus. For their souls, descending from the same sphere as his, and therefore despising in like manner the creators of the world, are deemed worthy of the same power, and again depart to the same place. But if any one shall have despised the things in this world more than he did, he thus proves himself superior to him." [AH i.25.2]

According to my reading of the original material it seems to resemble the description of the Marcosians. The emphasis in the description of the followers of Marcus is regarding a superior WISDOM - i.e. that the gnostics are 'wiser' - as with the heretics who have this reading. The superiority of the Carpocratians has to do with the possession of a 'superior SOUL.'

Of course the complicating factor is that when the existing manuscripts of Ireneaus do indeed cite the reading of the Marcosian gospel it happens to appear - strangely - in the manner of the received text. So we read in Irenaeus:

But they adduce the following passage as the highest testimony, and, as it were, the very crown of their system:-- "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Even so, my Father; for so it seemed good in Thy sight. All things have been delivered to Me by My Father; and no one knoweth the Father but the Son, or the Son but the Father, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him." In these words they affirm that He clearly showed that the Father of truth, conjured into existence by them, was known to no one before His advent. And they desire to construe the passage as if teaching that the Maker and Framer [of the world] was always known by all, while the Lord spoke these words concerning the Father unknown to all, whom they now proclaim.[Irenaeus AH i.20.3]

It should not be a major difficulty for people to accept the idea that either (a) the surviving manuscripts of Irenaeus are corrupt or (b) Irenaeus originally cited the passage with an absurd reading to make the heretical understanding seem - well - utterly absurd.

We can see a reflection of this methodology in the writings of Tertullian against the Marcionites. In his treatment of the reading of this passage Marcionite gospel, Tertullian DOES NOT TELL US that the Marcionite gospel read 'no man KNEW the father.' He cites the received text to essentially demonstrate how idiotic the Marcionite understanding was.

Of course, the million dollar question here is - did Tertullian develop this clever tactic for disproving the heretics (i.e. the misrepresentation of the contents of their gospel) himself or did he merely recycle Irenaeus' original methodology?

I think that the passage itself demonstrates that in some way the second proposition must have been at work here:

But, No man knoweth who the Father is, but the Son, and who the Son is, but the Father, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal him. And thus it was an unknown god whom Christ preached. From this sentence other heretics too take for themselves support, objecting that the Creator was known to all men, to Israel because they were his particular friends, to the gentiles by the law of nature.

There can be no doubt that Tertullian is here summarizing the contents of the material from Book Four just cited which begins with (i) the 'sentence' in question viz. 'no man knows the Father' (ii) proceeds to list not only the Marcosians but a number of other heretics who had the same reading (iii) that they object to the idea that the Creator was known to all - or in the original language of Irenaeus:

For by means of the creation itself, the Word reveals God the Creator; and by means of the world [does He declare] the Lord the Maker of the world; and by means of the formation [of man] the Artificer who formed him; and by the Son that Father who begat the Son: and these things do indeed address all men in the same manner, but all do not in the same way believe them [ibid]

The rest of Tertullian's discussion is laid out in what follows in Irenaeus.

We have come to an important discovery - Tertullian's refutation of the Marcionite reading closely followed Irenaeus' refutation of the Marcosian gospel WHICH HAD THE EXACT SAME READING i.e. 'no man knew the Father ...'

Tertullian DOES NOT cite the exact phrase in his attack against the Marcionites, in the same way that Irenaeus does not originally cite the word 'knew' in his refutation of the Marcosians. Nevertheless Tertullian was very conscious that the two groups were somehow related to one another OTHERWISE IT WOULD MAKE NO SENSE TO REFERENCE THESE TWO DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF IRENAEUS' WORK.

Of course there are other possibilities to consider. Later copyists could have 'corrected' the heretical reading present in the original manuscripts to reflect the received text. One might also consider that Tertullian based Book Four and Five on Irenaeus' lost work against Marcion which in turn might have put forward the received text in place of the actual reading of the Marcionite gospel.

Yet the bottom line is clearly that there is an uncanny nexus developing which in some manner suggests an underlying connection between (a) the gospel of the Mark (b) the gospel of the Marcosians (c) the gospel of the Marcionites and (d) Secret Mark. Indeed one may take all of this one step further by arguing for an Alexandrian origin for ALL four of these variants (or possibly different names being attributed to one and the same phenomena) for the Marcionite canon had an epistle to the Alexandrians and as we have noted repeatedly here - there is repeatedly mention of the Gospel of the Marcionites as the original Gospel of Mark.

This 'completes the circle' with (a) traditional identification of Mark being written in Alexandria (b) our demonstrated connection between Clement and the Marcosians and (d) To Theodore's explicit confirmation again that Mark left his gospel to the Alexandrian Church.

Once again, the Marcosians and the Marcionites were just Greek and Aramaic names attributed to the original heretical Alexandrian tradition associated with St. Mark.

Yet all of this makes Irenaeus' citation that the 'received text' was present in the canonical gospel of Mark of his day. It suggests to me at least that the Gospel of Mark developed away from a heretical, fuller gospel attributed to the same evangelist.

But that's just me ...

written hurriedly ...