Read Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark

Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark

Morton Smith

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Description:The extracanonical Secret Gospel of Mark is the subject of the Mar Saba letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria which Smith found transcribed in endpapers of a 17th century edition of Ignatius of Antioch. Authenticity of the letter & the Secret Gospel are disputed. The Mar Saba letter describes the Secret Gospel of Mark as a 2nd "more spiritual" version of Mark composed by the evangelist. Its purposes were to encourage gnosis among advanced Xians & to be used in Alexandrian liturgies. The letter has two excerpts from the Secret Gospel. Clement claims the 1st is belongs in Mk 10:34f: "& they come into Bethany & a certain woman whose brother had died was there. &, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus & says to him, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.' But the disciples rebuked her. & Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was & straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. & going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. & straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand & raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him & began to beseech him that he might be with him. & going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. & after 6 days Jesus told him what to do & in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. & he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of god. & thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan." The 2nd excerpt is to be inserted in Mk 10:46: "& the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved & his mother & Salome were there, & Jesus did not receive them." Clement claims the passages authentic, but he rejects "naked man with naked man" as a Carpocratian addition. As Clement begins explaining the passages, having said, "But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be & are falsifications", the letter breaks off. These two excerpts comprise the entire Secret Gospel material. No separate text of the secret gospel is known tho its existence is attested by patristic sources. The two excerpts suggest resolutions to some puzzling passages in the canonical Mark: 1) The young man in the linen cloth: In Mk 14:51-52, a young man in a linen cloth is seized during Jesus' arrest, escaping at the cost of his clothing. This passage has little to do with the rest of the narrative. It's given various interpretations. Some suggest he's Mark himself. Some believe the boy was a stranger who lived near the garden &, after being awakened, ran out, half-dressed, to see what the noise was about (46ff). W.L. Lane thinks that Mark mentioned this episode in order to make it clear that "all (not only the disciples) fled, leaving Jesus alone in the custody of the police." These explanations aren't very satisfactory. The same Greek word neaniskos/young man is used both in Secret Mark & in Mk 14:51. If we accept Helmut Koester's theory that canonical Mark is a revision of Secret Mark, another explanation is possible, namely, that the ancient editor who deleted an earlier encounter of Jesus with such a young man in a cloth, then added this incident also involving a young man during Jesus' arrest. There's one more occurrence of neaniskos in Mark, this time as a youth dressed in white at Jesus' tomb (16:5). For this particular passage, there are parallel passages in both Matthew & Luke, but they don't use neaniskos. (In Mt 28:2, it is "an angel of the Lord" dressed in white that appears. In Lk 24:4, there are two andres/men. Thus, it's possible that all three of these occurrences of neaniskos in Mark & in Secret Mark are related somehow. Perhaps one editor was at work on all three. The proponents of Secret Mark as a forgery, however, suggest that Secret Mark was created based on Mk 14:51 & 16:5. 2) The lacuna in the trip to Jericho: The 2nd excerpt fills in a lacuna in Mk 10:46: "They came to Jericho. As he & his disciples & a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside." The lack of any action in Jericho is interpreted by some as meaning that text has been lost & the 2nd excerpt gives a brief encounter at this point. Helmut Koester & Ron Cameron argue that Secret Mark preceded Mark & that Mark is an abbreviation of Secret Mark. This would explain the narrative discontinuity above. John Dominic Crossan has also been supportive of these views of Koester: "I consider that canonical Mark is a very deliberate revision of Secret Mark." As the Secret Gospel is known from the Mar Saba letter, itself only known from Smith's copy, three important questions arise: 1) whether or not Mar Saba MS really contains a genuine letter of Clement. 2) whether Clement's quotations from Secret Mark are accurate. 3) whether these quotations reflect a genuine Marcan tradition. In 1982 Smith summarized the situation as follows: 1)Attribution to Clement was ...We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark. To get started finding Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
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Pages: 462

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA)

Release: 1973

ISBN: 0674134907

Description: The extracanonical Secret Gospel of Mark is the subject of the Mar Saba letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria which Smith found transcribed in endpapers of a 17th century edition of Ignatius of Antioch. Authenticity of the letter & the Secret Gospel are disputed. The Mar Saba letter describes the Secret Gospel of Mark as a 2nd "more spiritual" version of Mark composed by the evangelist. Its purposes were to encourage gnosis among advanced Xians & to be used in Alexandrian liturgies. The letter has two excerpts from the Secret Gospel. Clement claims the 1st is belongs in Mk 10:34f: "& they come into Bethany & a certain woman whose brother had died was there. &, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus & says to him, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.' But the disciples rebuked her. & Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was & straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. & going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. & straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand & raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him & began to beseech him that he might be with him. & going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. & after 6 days Jesus told him what to do & in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. & he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of god. & thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan." The 2nd excerpt is to be inserted in Mk 10:46: "& the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved & his mother & Salome were there, & Jesus did not receive them." Clement claims the passages authentic, but he rejects "naked man with naked man" as a Carpocratian addition. As Clement begins explaining the passages, having said, "But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be & are falsifications", the letter breaks off. These two excerpts comprise the entire Secret Gospel material. No separate text of the secret gospel is known tho its existence is attested by patristic sources. The two excerpts suggest resolutions to some puzzling passages in the canonical Mark: 1) The young man in the linen cloth: In Mk 14:51-52, a young man in a linen cloth is seized during Jesus' arrest, escaping at the cost of his clothing. This passage has little to do with the rest of the narrative. It's given various interpretations. Some suggest he's Mark himself. Some believe the boy was a stranger who lived near the garden &, after being awakened, ran out, half-dressed, to see what the noise was about (46ff). W.L. Lane thinks that Mark mentioned this episode in order to make it clear that "all (not only the disciples) fled, leaving Jesus alone in the custody of the police." These explanations aren't very satisfactory. The same Greek word neaniskos/young man is used both in Secret Mark & in Mk 14:51. If we accept Helmut Koester's theory that canonical Mark is a revision of Secret Mark, another explanation is possible, namely, that the ancient editor who deleted an earlier encounter of Jesus with such a young man in a cloth, then added this incident also involving a young man during Jesus' arrest. There's one more occurrence of neaniskos in Mark, this time as a youth dressed in white at Jesus' tomb (16:5). For this particular passage, there are parallel passages in both Matthew & Luke, but they don't use neaniskos. (In Mt 28:2, it is "an angel of the Lord" dressed in white that appears. In Lk 24:4, there are two andres/men. Thus, it's possible that all three of these occurrences of neaniskos in Mark & in Secret Mark are related somehow. Perhaps one editor was at work on all three. The proponents of Secret Mark as a forgery, however, suggest that Secret Mark was created based on Mk 14:51 & 16:5. 2) The lacuna in the trip to Jericho: The 2nd excerpt fills in a lacuna in Mk 10:46: "They came to Jericho. As he & his disciples & a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside." The lack of any action in Jericho is interpreted by some as meaning that text has been lost & the 2nd excerpt gives a brief encounter at this point. Helmut Koester & Ron Cameron argue that Secret Mark preceded Mark & that Mark is an abbreviation of Secret Mark. This would explain the narrative discontinuity above. John Dominic Crossan has also been supportive of these views of Koester: "I consider that canonical Mark is a very deliberate revision of Secret Mark." As the Secret Gospel is known from the Mar Saba letter, itself only known from Smith's copy, three important questions arise: 1) whether or not Mar Saba MS really contains a genuine letter of Clement. 2) whether Clement's quotations from Secret Mark are accurate. 3) whether these quotations reflect a genuine Marcan tradition. In 1982 Smith summarized the situation as follows: 1)Attribution to Clement was ...We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark. To get started finding Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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