Our suggestion from this evidence was that Clement must have been using a non-canonical gospel related to the Diatessaron.
Now here is our second intimation that Clement was using such a non-canonical gospel. We have argued many times that the arguments of Quis Dives Salvetur resemble debates that Clement has with the Carpocratians over Mark 10:17 - 31 in other of his works (cf. Stromata 3). While his opponents are unnamed in Quis Dives Salvetur he interestingly begins with work acknowledging that they cite Mark 10:24/Matt 19:24 in a peculiar variant. Clement begins:
Perhaps the reason of salvation appearing more difficult to the rich than to poor men, is not single but manifold. For some, merely hearing, and that in an off-hand way, the utterance of the Saviour, "that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven," despair of themselves as not destined to live, surrender all to the world, cling to the present life as if it alone was left to them, and so diverge more from the way to the life to come, no longer inquiring either whom the Lord and Master calls rich, or how that which is impossible to man becomes possible to God. [Quis Dives Salvetur 3]
All of the best manuscripts of Matthew agree with canonical Mark's "kingdom of God" reading in Matt. 19:24. Those witnesses which now read "kingdom of heaven" have interestingly been influenced Origen's citation of the Gospel according to the Hebrews via Jerome (cf. his Commentary on Matthew). The original passage in Origen's Commentary on Matthew as we have noted many times was used by C W Phillips to argue for the existence of an early Diatessaron gospel which influenced all later harmonies with its seemless blending of (1) the Rich Fool (Luke 12), (2) the Question of the Rich Youth and (3) the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16). We have demonstrated from three other sections of Clement's existing works that he employed the same gospel or one closely related to it.
I would argue that Clement's witness of the variant reading of Mark 10:24/Matthew 9:24 associated with those who argue for a radical ascetic interpretation of the Rich Youth's Question is a decisive development in the study of the Letter to Theodore. It confirms once and for all that Clement employed a non-canonical gospel related to the text witnessed by Origen as the "a certain Gospel which is called according to the Hebrews." We read:
The second of the rich men (it saith) said unto him: Master, what good thing can I do and live? He said unto him: O man, fulfil (do) the law and the prophets. He answered him: I have kept them. He said unto him: Go, sell al that thou ownest, and distribute it unto the poor, and come, follow me. But the rich man began to scratch his head, and it pleased him not. And the Lord said unto him: How sayest though: I have kept the law and the prophets? For it is written in the law: Though shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, and lo, many of thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are clad in filth, dying for hunger, and thine house is full of many good things, and nought at all goeth out of it unto them. And he turned and said unto Simon his disciple who was sitting by him: Simon, son of Joanna, it is easier for a camel to enter in by a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.[Origen Commentary on Matthew 15)
There can be no doubt that it is a gospel either identical or related to the Gospel according to the Hebrews' that Clement cites the words "that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven."
While this doesn't prove the existence of a text called 'secret Mark' (or indeed that the Gospel according to the Hebrews' was indeed 'secret Mark') it hammers a final nail into the coffin of the idea that the basic paradigm of to Theodore (i.e. that Clement knew of a non-canonical gospel related to Mark shared by his Alexandrian Church and the heretics) is not attested in the Church Father's surviving works. The problem - as always - is that scholars lack the imagination to see the parallels.
For in the section that immediately follows in Quis Dives Salvetur Clement decides to use canonical Mark as the basis for the correct understanding of the shared Gospel with the community Stromateis 3 identifies as the Carpocratians. He actually goes so far as to cite line by line the canonical text of Mark 10:17 - 31 used in Alexandria. But before he does he makes a number of statements against his opponents which sound remarkably similar to what we find in to Theodore:
Those then who are actuated by a love of the truth and love of their brethren, and neither are rudely insolent towards such rich as are called, nor, on the other hand, cringe to them for their own avaricious ends, must first by the word relieve them of their groundless despair, and show with the requisite explanation of the oracles of the Lord that the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven is not quite cut off from them if they obey the commandments [ibid 3]
Compare this to the introductory statement in to Theodore with regards to the Carpocratians:
For these are the "wandering stars" referred to in the prophecy, who wander from the narrow road of the commandments into a boundless abyss of the carnal and bodily sins. [to Theod. I.4]
The point of course which has escaped all previous generations of scholars on the question of to Theodore is that Clement is addressing the same Carpocratians here in Quis Dives Salvetur, albeit not by name.
Indeed the methodology of Quis Dives Salvetur is strikingly similar to the Letter to Theodore - Clement goes on to cite canonical Mark to explain the true meaning of the 'secret gospel.' I will only cite the latter half of the citation in Quis Dives Salvetur as I am more interesting in the manner in which Clement explains the significance of canonical Mark in what immediately follows. We read:
... And he [the rich youth] was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he was rich, having great possessions. And Jesus looked round about, and saith to His disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And the disciples were astonished at His words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! More easily shall a camel enter through the eye of a needle than a rich man into the kingdom of God. And they were astonished out of measure, and said, Who then can be saved? bend He, looking upon them, said, What is impossible with men is possible with God. For with God all things are possible. Peter began to say to Him, Lo, we have left all and followed Thee. And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall leave what is his own, parents, and brethren, and possessions, for My sake and the Gospel's, shall receive an hundred-fold now in this world, lands, and possessions, and house, and brethren, with persecutions; and in the world to come is life everlasting. But many that are first shall be last, and the last first."
These things are written in the Gospel according to Mark; and in all the rest correspondingly; although perchance the expressions vary slightly in each, yet all show identical agreement in meaning. But well knowing that the Saviour teaches nothing in a merely human way, but teaches all things to His own with divine and mystic wisdom, we must not listen to His utterances carnally; but with due investigation and intelligence must search out and learn the meaning hidden in them. For even those things which seem to have been simplified to the disciples by the Lord Himself are found to require not less, even more, attention than what is expressed enigmatically, from the surpassing superabundance of wisdom in them. And whereas the things which are thought to have been explained by Him to those within -- those called by Him the children of the kingdom -- require still more consideration than the things which seemed to have been expressed simply, and respecting which therefore no questions were asked by those who heard them, but which, pertaining to the entire design of salvation, and to be contemplated with admirable and supercelestial depth of mind, we must not receive superficially with our ears, but with application of the mind to the very spirit of the Saviour, and the unuttered meaning of the declaration [ibid 4,5]
It is difficult to overstate how bad the scholarship on the Letter to Theodore is. The problem - aside from the lack of imagination of scholars - is the fact that no expert on Clement of Alexandria has ever weighed in on the proper understanding of the terminology or the context of the ideas in the newly discovered work. If those people had walked people through the line by line, section by section comparison with the closing words of the Stromateis (as I will do shortly) they would teach that Clement's complaint in the Letter to Theodore is that Carpocratians have rejected the canonical gospel according to Mark as an inferior 'mixed' composition, preferring instead to develop their dogma from his 'mystic gospel.'
Clement's argument in to Theodore is that the only way one can understand the 'mystic gospel' is if one anchors it in Mark's canonical text. This is why Clement demonstrates that the raising of the neaniskos occurs immediately following Jesus's prediction of his death in Jerusalem. Clement's point (presumably developed in the lost section which immediately follows the reference to 'the true philosophy' in to Theodore) was that Jesus was preparing the youth to follow him and carry his cross (cf. the juxtaposition in Strom 7.18 'following (ἀκολουθοῦντες) the Word speaking (λόγῳ ποιοῦνται), take up for themselves trust (τὰς πίστεις); while others, giving themselves up to pleasures, wrest, in accordance with their lusts, the Scriptures.')
In any event, if anyone had bothered to read Clement's conclusion to the Stromateis it would have become patently obvious what the CONTEXT of the argument against the Carpocratians was in the Letter to Theodore and that its methodology was identical with what develops in Quis Dives Salvetur albeit with respect to a now unnamed non-canonical gospel (which only becomes identified as related to the Diatessaron by means of Origen's reference in his Commentary on Matthew Book 15).
It is unfortunate however that so many people misread Quis Dives Salvetur and Clement's citation of 'the gospel according to Mark.' In order to put things in the right context you have to remember that the original citation that Clement is anchoring in the gospel according to Mark is in fact one which references 'the kingdom of heaven' - a phrase which never appears in canonical Mark. If you look carefully at the lengthy citation of Mark 10:17 - 31 Clement actually references the heretical group's original interest in the 'kingdom of heaven' with the cryptic allusion to:
the things which are thought to have been explained by Him to those within -- those called by Him the children of the kingdom -- require still more consideration than the things which seemed to have been expressed simply
While Clement deliberately avoids referencing the specific terms 'kingdom of God' or 'kingdom of heaven' here, there can be no doubt to which passage Clement is refering here - Mark 4:11/Matthew 13:10. In some ways the passage resembles what appears in Mark (i.e. the distinction between 'those outside' and by inference 'those within). Yet there is a deliberate ambiguity as to what the original reference was. My guess is that 'Secret Mark' agreed with Matthew and had 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is noteworthy that Epiphanius's citation of the Diatessaron used by the Manichaeans has 'kingdom of heaven' in the place of 'kingdom of God' in the canonical gospels including Matthew (Panarion 69.7)
If we have the time, I would like to demonstrate that despite the citation of the 'kingdom of God' references from canonical Mark, Clement continues to go back and take up the heretics interest in 'the kingdom of heaven.' My guess is that 'secret Mark' - being a composite text as Clement acknowledges in to Theodore - had references to both the 'kingdom of heaven' and the 'kingdom of God.' Indeed they may well have represented different places in the heavenly household as Irenaeus notes of the contemporary heretical doctrines:
that there is this distinction between the habitation of those who produce an hundred-fold, and that of those who produce sixty-fold, and that of those who produce thirty-fold: for the first will be taken up into the heavens, the second will dwell in paradise, the last will inhabit the city; and that was on this account the Lord declared, "In My Father's house are many mansions." [Irenaeus AH 5.36.2]
Anyway, back to my vacation. I will have a lot more to say about this in coming posts but the basic idea here is that Secret Mark is related to the Diatessaron and the Gospel according to the Hebrews. That the Diatessaron and the Gospel according to the Hebrews were one and the same text (or closely related) is confirmed in a famous statement in Epiphanius's Panarion.
