Secret Gospel of Mark

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The Secret Gospel of Mark refers to a non-canonical gospel which is the subject of the Mar Saba letter, a previously unknown letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria which Morton Smith claimed to have found transcribed into the endpapers of a 17th century printed edition of Ignatius. The authenticity of this letter remains in dispute.

Contents

[edit] The framing letter and the Secret Gospel

Main article: Mar Saba letter

The letter is addressed to a follower named Theodore. Clement begins with a condemnation of the Carpocratians, who he says were misusing the Gospel of Mark to further their arguments. But then he speaks of a secret gospel of Mark, which the Carpocratians have obtained. Clement says that Theodore should not "concede that the secret Gospel is by Mark, but should even deny it on oath." But he then goes on to explain how the secret gospel is to be interpreted, using two excerpts.

The first excerpt Clement quotes is to be inserted, according to him, between what are verses 34 and 35 of Mark 10:

And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.' But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.

The second excerpt is very brief and is to be inserted, according to Clement, in Mark 10:46:

And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.

Very shortly after the second excerpt, as Clement begins to explain the passages, the letter breaks off. Just before that, Clement says, "But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are falsifications."

These two excerpts comprise the entirety of the secret gospel material; no separate text of the secret gospel is known to survive, if indeed such a text ever existed. Knowledge of the secret gospel is therefore in very much the same state as the Gospel of Thomas was before the Oxyrhynchus and Nag Hammadi finds: it is known only through reference in another work.

[edit] Secret Gospels and Gospel Variants

Secret gospels are not unknown. The Apocryphon of James, for example, contains expansions upon canonical gospel sayings, though it lacks narrative structure. It refers to secret books in circulation among a select group of the faithful.

The canonical text of Mark, perhaps more so than that of the other canonical gospels, shows internal evidence of undergoing significant textual revision in the early centuries of the church, principally in the ending. At least four main endings of this gospel are preserved. One, from the Codex Washingtonianus, exists as a single Greek manuscript copy. The last twelve verses were additions which are not present in the oldest Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, nor in numerous other copies of this gospel. Clement of Alexandria and Origen do not seem to be acquainted with these verses, and both Jerome and Eusebius stated that the verses were not in the oldest copies of the gospel that they were acquainted with. Many modern mainstream Biblical scholars indicate that these verses are the work of a later individual.

[edit] The theme of secrecy in the canonic Gospel of Mark

The canonic Gospel of Mark reveals that secret teachings were a feature of the message Jesus imparted to his inner circle. This sort of "layered revelation" was a common feature of the mystery religions of the period, and was prevalent in Gnostic Christianity.

The motif of secrecy in Mark is a rather complex one, as was recognized long before the Mar Saba letter was revealed. Robert M. Grant(Grant 1963) identifies both a theme of silence and one of secret or private teachings in Mark. The silence may be that of exorcised demons (1:25, 34; 3:12) or enjoined on men who have been cured (1:43-5; 5:43; 7:36, 8:26), as well as on the disciples themselves: they are to keep private the identification of Jesus as Messiah (8:30), the transfiguration (9:9) or even his whereabouts, whether in Tyre (7:24) or travelling through Galilee (9:30). There is a secret knowledge imparted by Jesus, "the secret of the kingdom of God" (4:10-12). Grant notes that "To a considerable extent the full revelation is given only to the four disciples who were the first to be called (1:16-20, 29; 5:37; 9:2; 13:3; 14:33). Teaching about the passion and resurrection is given only ‘on the road’ apart from the multitudes (8:27; 9:33; 10:32)." (Grant 1963)

On the other hand, the other canonical gospels all portray the period after the resurrection as a time when the remaining mysteries were explained to the disciples. And the theme of teachings hidden in one text but not another is more characteristic of gnostic texts. The Gospel of Judas, for example, recounts teachings supposedly given to Judas but concealed from the other disciples.

[edit] Lacunae and continuity

The two excerpts suggest resolutions to some puzzling passages in the canonical Mark.

[edit] The Young Man in the Linen Cloth

In Mark 14:51-52, a young man in a linen cloth is seized during Jesus' arrest, but he escapes at the cost of his clothing. This passage seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the narrative, and it has been suggested that the young man is Mark himself. The first excerpt, however, recounts an earlier encounter of Jesus with such a young man in a cloth.

[edit] The Lacuna in the Trip to Jericho

The second excerpt fills in an apparent lacuna in Mark 10:46:

They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and 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 suggests that something has been lost from the text, and the second excerpt gives a brief encounter at this point. Helmut Koester and J. D. Crossan have argued, because of the narrative discontinuity, that Secret Mark preceded the canonical Mark, leaving open the question of whether the canonical Mark is an abbreviated Secret Mark, with an original "Mark for the uninitiated" having been lost.

[edit] Issues of authenticity

The Mar Saba letter itself has been the subject of doubt as to its authenticity, with Stephen C. Carlson and others claiming that it is a modern forgery. Even if it is accepted as a genuine document, however, there still remains the question of its authorship and its testimony to the text of this secret Mark. There are three distinct questions of authenticity:

  1. that of Clement's authorship
  2. that of the citation of the passages
  3. that of the excerpts as reflecting a genuine Marcan tradition

In 1982 Morton Smith summarized the state of the question as follows:

  1. Attribution to Clement was accepted.
  2. Clement's attribution of the excerpts to "Mark" was rejected.
  3. The source of the excerpts was various ascribed to a separate apocryphal gospel, a pastiche of canonical material, or an expansion of the canonical text using early material of unknown provenance.

[edit] Interpretation of Secret Mark

The statement "Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God" has been interpreted as a reference to the rites of baptism. The idea that Jesus practised baptism is absent from the synoptic gospels, though it is introduced in the Gospel of John. Several further echoes of Secret Mark are identifiable in the canonic Mark, according to textual analysts.

Further interpretation of Secret Mark in a context within canonical Mark, suggests a correspondence between the youth in Secret Mark, and the mysterious almost-naked figure who is in the company of Jesus but flees when he is arrested at Mark 14:51, and also with the figure present in the empty tomb at Mark 16:5. By understanding the earlier incident in Secret Mark as an initiation, the figure may be symbolic of an individual's progress through Christianity, or as a gnostic esoteric twin of Jesus (compare the name of Didymus Judas Thomas).

[edit] The theory of a homosexual Jesus in Secret Mark

An alternative and more controversial understanding, first implied by Morton Smith, one that also considers these mysterious figures to be the same individual, is that this figure is Jesus' beloved, whom Jesus loves and thus desires to bring back to life. The presence both at the tomb, and the arrest, being indications of the strength of the romance, and an implicit sexual undertone is sometimes taken to be implied by taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. Such a theory also implies that the beloved disciple, mentioned in the Gospel of John (and whom the other disciples wonder if he may ever subsequently die), is in fact this individual (who is usually taken to be John), and may in fact be Lazarus (who, after escaping death, one may wonder whether he may die again).

Clement specifically chooses these passages to counter the Carpocratians' claim that their copy of the text even contains the phrase gymnon gymnō, which means naked man with naked man, indicating an explicitly sexual relationship. While Clement's purpose is to contest such a claim, it is clear, from the fact that he feels he needs to, that the passages were even then, not long after having been written for the first time, being interpreted as indicating a romantic or erotic connection between Jesus and the youth. It is significant, therefore, that Clement does not attempt to contest the implied relation, merely objecting to claims of a lack of chastity, i.e. rejecting the idea they had sex in favour of they fell in love.

These different interpretations provide a neat explanation of many of the more mysterious isolated parts of the gospels as part of a single thread, either one of homosexual romance, or alternately of mystic esoteric initiation. The vast majority of Christians categorically reject the Gnostic nature of the teachings of Jesus as presented in Secret Mark; additionally, the idea that Jesus expresses a sexuality or homosexual nature is upsetting to many Christians.

[edit] The theory of a "secret initiation"

Another theory was presented in the May 9, 2005 Issue of the Canadian Magazine Macleans by Brian Bethune:

'One of these techniques is known as intercalation: the evangelist frames one story within another, leading readers to understand the first in light of the second.'

In Mark 10:35, James and John ask Christ for positions of higher honour once Jesus is an earthly ruler. Jesus responds 'Ye know not what ye ask. Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? And be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?'

This baptism is, of course, Jesus' crucifixion. The boy whom Jesus raised from the dead in the Secret Gospel of Mark was taken privately to learn the secret that was available only to those who had died and were 'reborn', through knowing Jesus. This is, by speculation, the true price one has to pay to enter the kingdom of God.

Morton Smith did not see this encounter as sexual in nature but saw it as evidence that Jesus gave a secret initiation to certain people into the kingdom of heaven within, this being what was transpiring in the garden with the young man. This, he says, would have been considered sorcery, which was punishable by death in Roman law, and Morton Smith speculated that this might have been the real reason for Christ's death sentence, the reasons normally given being controversial because they do not fit in with the strict execution of Roman law at the time.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Stephen C. Carlson, Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark, Baylor University Press, 2005.
  • Robert M. Grant, A Historical Introduction to the New Testament Harper and Row, 1963: Chapter 8: The Gospel of Mark
  • Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark Harvard University Press, 1973 [the scholarly version].
  • Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark [updated version 2005 with foreword from Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels]
  • Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and Secret Mark: The Score at the End of the First Decade. in series Studies in Homosexuality, Vol XII: Homosexuality and Religion and Philosophy. Ed. Wayne Dynes & Stephen Donaldson. New York and London: Garland, 1992. pp. 295-307.
  • Morton Smith, Jesus, the Magician, (New York: Harper & Row) 1978.
  • The Apocryphon of James, or, "The Secret Book of James" http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/secretjames.html
  • Catholic Encyclopedia, "Clement of Alexandria," http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04045a.htm
  • Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1971. pp. 122-126.
  • Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament, Pilgrim Press, 2003.
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