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The discovery in 1958 of a fragment of an unknown Secret Gospel of Mark provoked a storm of recrimination, denial and abuse. The Secret Gospel of Mark was quoted in a previously unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria, which had been transcribed into the endpapers of a 17th century printed book in the monastery of Mar Saba, twelve miles south of Jerusalem. The letter is consequently often called the "Mar Saba letter".
One should mention that while the authenticity of the Mar Saba letter is accepted by the majority of scholars, it is regarded by some as an 18th or 20th century forgery.
Defenders of authenticity claim:
a) Analysis of the handwriting shows that the manuscript dates from before the 18th century; it is in the flyleaves of a book printed in the 17th century giving it a terminus post quem.
b) This sort of material is entirely plausible in an Early Christian context.
c) The strong Markan features of the style and vocabulary of the Secret Gospel and the strong Clementine features of the style and vocabulary of the rest of the Mar Saba letter show that the document is authentic.
Opponents of authenticity claim:
a) In the absence of forensic evidence a 20th century date is entirely possible.
b) We have no ancient evidence of such a Secret Gospel or of such a letter by Clement, and despite similarities, there are also disagreements between the letter and what Clement says elsewhere.
c) The similarities in style and vocabulary to Mark and Clement are certainly striking. However in both cases statistical evidence has been presented that the similarities are too good to be true and suggest a deliberate imitation rather than an authentic work.
The controversy is currently unresolved, but the rest of this article presents the majority position, i.e. that the Mar Saba letter is an authentic ancient document.
Starting with the recovery of the Didache, the papyri from Oxyrhyncus the Nag Hammadi library and the Dead Sea Scrolls, textual discoveries through the 20th century revealed a new understanding of the broadly divergent oral traditions and parallel texts of the Hebrew Bible, and the variety of interpretations that could be drawn from the sayings and life of Jesus of Nazareth. New texts revealed the extent of editing, suppression, omissions, additions and interpolations that went into the process of reaching the canonic New Testament that has survived into the published versions known today.
The letter was written by Clement to a follower named Theodore. According to the letter, the Secret Gospel of Mark was "a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected" in Egypt. Because of the contents of the Secret Gospel, described below, it has been heavily controversial. On one hand, it clears up some inconsistencies in Mark which are all too mysterious, such as the scantily clad man in Mark 14:51-52, and the abrupt transition in Mark 10:46. On the other hand, it has some elements of a fiction: the back story which explains the existence of the Secret Gospel, the convenient abrupt ending right before the Secret Gospel is explained, and the sole interjection from the Carpocratians that seems to bring the subtext of the Secret Gospel into the clear.
The letter, for instance, shed light on Clement's views on justifiable means of opposing error (in this case of a minor sect, followers of a certain Carpocrates):
- "Such men are to be opposed in all ways and altogether. For, even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not, even so, agree with them. For not all true things are the truth, nor should that truth which merely seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faith."
A justification for an ad hominem argument, for not all true things are the truth. But such techniques of achieving orthodoxy were familiar and raised no hackles in the 20th century readers who were seeing this letter for the first time.
The leader of this sect, however, had procured a copy of a work by Mark the Evangelist that was being very carefully guarded in Alexandria. It is significant that Clement attributes the uses being made of Secret Mark to Carpocrates, who was born a century earlier. Clement must have believed that Secret Mark existed before ca 125 CE. How it got to Alexandria, Clement reports to his correspondent, referring to the Secret Gospel:
- "As for Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord's doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils. Thus, in sum, he prepared matters, neither grudgingly nor incautiously, in my opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries"
In response to his correspondent, Theodore, Clement quotes two sections which he claims have been distorted by the heretics. The brief excerpt from the Secret Gospel of Mark quoted by Clement raised a storm of controversy:
- "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."
According to Clement, this episode would have been found between Mark 10:34 and 35.
A second fragment of Secret Mark was occurred at Mark 10:46. Helmut Koester and J. D. Crossan argued, because of a narrative discontinuity here in Mark's Gospel ("Then they come to Jericho. As he was leaving Jericho with his disciples...") that Secret Mark was in fact prior to the canonical Mark.
Secret Mark reads:
- "Then he came into Jericho. And the sister of the young man whom Jesus loved was there with his mother and Salome, but Jesus would not receive them. As he was leaving Jericho with his disciples..."
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.
The canonic Gospel of Mark exists in manuscripts with nine different endings. A discussion of these endings and the canonically preferred short ending at Mark 16:8 can be found at the entry Gospel of Mark Apologists claim the abbreviated ending also to be the earliest one from the lack of references in Patristic writers and by analysing surviving texts.
Those who wish to find a late date for Secret Mark sometimes even suggest that the shortest version of a story is usually the earliest. They offer examples such as the Book of Enoch, which retells Genesis in an elaborately detailed and expanded later rewriting. The reader will quickly comprehend the difference between a story and its expanded retelling, and a manuscript which suffers losses or gains interpolations.
Rather than dismiss this newly-attested miracle as mythology, Smith asked to what degree the miracle stories of the gospels might in fact be based upon actions of Jesus. Smith, himself, concluded Jesus was a magician, meaning a magus or sorcerer. This is not a conjurer who performs magic effects. The earliest Christian art (late 3rd century) portrays Jesus two different ways; as a bare-faced youth holding a wand when performing the miracles of changing water to wine, the multiplication of loaves and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. When healing is the miracle, Jesus lays on hands and appears bearded and robed. This art has never been kept in secret.
External links
References
- 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, 1981 (the popular version)
- Robin M. Jensen The Two Faces of Jesus, Bible Review, Oct 2002, p. 42
- Morton Smith, Jesus, the Magician, Harper & Row Publishers, 1978
- E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, University of California Press, 1951
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