andrewcriddle

The most impressive part of Peter Jeffery's case IMO is that if the Secret Gospel is meant to be used in baptism then the idea of baptism involved is the Pauline one of dying and rising with Christ. See for example Romans 6. However it has become clear in recent scholarship say post 1980 that the early church in general and the Egyptian church in particular avoided thinking about baptism in this way. Origen does so to a limited extent, these ideas are later taken up by Cyril of Jerusalem and rapidly become mainstream. If the author of the Mar Saba letter regarded Secret Mark as having baptismal allusions then he is post-Clementine. I suspect that awareness of this is one of the reasons Scott Brown denies any baptismal allusions in Secret Mark.

On the other hand, I agree that the supposed allusions to baptism are not unambiguous. My problem is that if the Secret Gospel is not prima-facie in any way homoerotic and not involved in initiation ceremonies in the Alexandrian church then what on earth makes it both so special and so secret ? What makes it different from other stories about Jesus ?

Andrew Criddle

the_cave

I don't think there's anything in the Mar Saba fragment that suggests he thought that about the Secret Mark passages that he discusses.

But it could have been involved in initiation ceremonies. "Clement" (purportedly) doesn't say that the passages he discusses with Theodore are involved in any ceremonies! He just says Secret Mark in general was. That doesn't mean these particular passages have anything to do with baptism. (And, again, I still don't see how we are to know what symbolism was being invoked. It seems totally ambiguous to me.)

andrewcriddle

I am uneasy with the idea that innocuous pericope A must be kept secret because it occurs in a text containing somewhere else pericope B which is genuinely esoteric. 2nd century Christians saw the Gospels as being as much a loose collection of pericopes as integrated works. If pericope A was seen as entirely innocuous I would have expected it to be mentioned by those who knew about it, get inserted in non-esoteric apocryphal texts etc.

Also I think the letter implies that the pericopes Clement quotes have, like Secret Mark in general, some esoteric significance which Clement is about to divulge when the letter breaks off. I agree that there is no unambiguous evidence that this esoteric meaning relates to baptism but, if not, it remains unclear not only what the esoteric significance is, but why the passage is regarded as being particularly esoteric at all.

Andrew Criddle

Yuri Kuchinsky

I think the central question in all this is, Did Jesus, himself, baptise? (I have no doubt that he did.) And if he did baptise, then SecMk may well be a reflection of that.

All this other stuff, such as, What Paul thought about baptism, what recent scholarship on the early church in general and the Egyptian church in particular thought about it, what previous scholarship thought, what Origen thought, what the author of the Mar Saba letter thought, what Morton Smith thought, what Andrew Criddle or Scott Brown thinks -- all this sort of thing would be rather secondary (or maybe even tertiary), and subject to any number of interpretations...

All the best,

Yuri.

the_cave

Some pericopes were no doubt used in ceremonies. Others were not. None of them were "innocuous" though, in the sense that none of the non-canonical passages were intended for those not truly belonging to the church.

I agree--or rather, Clement believes they have esoteric significance. Whether their author also believed this is unclear.

[shrug] It's esotericism! It could mean anything. Christianity was about more than baptism, after all.

Solo

I am also persuaded that Jesus baptized, and that the baptist practice was continued by the Palestinian Jesus following after his death. Because the practice was inherently controversial, the later church suppressed it, or so I believe.

It was because of this I accepted initially the Markan version of the Lazarus story that Morton Smith uncovered as genuinely ancient. I did not delve into the Secret Mark controversis too far but with Koester and Crossan on board I felt the Mar Saba document could be defended as genuinely authentic Mark.

FWIW, I no longer believe that. The story in SecMk disturbs the Markan plan, as I understand it, in that it credits the Palestinian "baptist" tradition (associated with Peter and Co.), as means to "obtaining" the spirit. But Mark was a staunch Paulinist (although he moved towards the Palestinian Jesus traditions, in e.g. believing the eartly Jesus legally blameless and agreeing with the adoptionist position). His gospel advocates access to Jesus through the Spirit, which he considers a "gift", not a result of baptismal initiation. This access is exclusive and proclaimed throughout Mark.

I disagree with Andrew, if he meant to imply that Paul left behind a baptist tradition of his own. Paul states that he was sent to teach the gospel and not to baptize, despite isolated instances where he baptized himself. I interpret 1 Cor 15:29 as Paul speaking of baptism by other missionaries, not his own. He may not have known, at the point if writing, what exactly the baptism "for the dead" ("over the dead" ?) signified and how it was practiced. Later in Rom 6, Paul evidently knows what it meant (Jewish catacombs in Rome used baptismally by the seekers of the Jesus experience), so he uses the image to assert his own formula of initiation into the mystery: He speaks of "us" who were "baptized" into Jesus Christ. But clearly this allusion was meant metaphorically, as the sudden "overwhelming" (Gr. "baptizo"= overwhelm) appearance of the Spirit, followed by excuciating ordeals of depressive psychosis. By Acts accounting, Paul received baptism by Ananias after he was overwhelmed by Jesus on the road to Damascus. But aul does not know anything about that. He says God was "pleased" to reveal his Son in him.

In contrast to Paul and canonical Mark, the SecMk asserts something completely different. Whether or not one accepts Smith's argument that the procedures after the young man's extraction were baptismal in nature, Jesus "teaches" the mysteries of the kingdom. That I do not accept as genuine Mark.

Mk 4:10 But when He was alone, those around him with the twelve asked Him about the parable.

Mk 4:11 And he said to them, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables"

To the Paulines and Mark, and later to the Johanines, Christ's kingdom was not "of this world", and therefore could not be taught - it is known experientially and intuited. You know Jesus through the Spirit, not the Spirit (and the kingdom) through Jesus. Only those who had the "gift" could "see" Jesus and be received by him. In the Markan paradigm, for Jesus to teach a man about the kingdom (except by parables) would be self-contradictory.

But, as I said, there most probably was a second baptism in the Jesus traditions (which would have been initiated by Jesus himself). It is alluded strongly in Acts 8, in the Simon Magus story: Peter and John come to Samaria to "lay hands" on converts who previously received water baptism from Philip. As a result of the apostles' action, the Spirit descends on the converts. Simon Magus seeks to obtain the secret of the trick which tells us he believed that it could be "taught". Peter in rebuking Magus does not deny that; he just would not sell it for money.
I also believe that the Lazarus story in John was transparently built over an older text, illustrating the travail of either Jesus himself, or an early Jesus baptist.

Cheers,

Jiri

the_cave

Yes, but--gMk has clearly undergone at least one major redaction, possibly (probably, I would say) more than one. It's unclear which author/redactor is most appropriately called "Mark".

But which "Mark" is this? The original author, or a later redactor? (FWIW, I agree that the Secret Mark quotations are out of character with other parts of the gospel. But it's hard to sort out just which.)

Sure--and in fact I wonder if Secret Mark was read at precisely this sort of ceremony in the Alexandrian church. We would call it a "confirmation" nowadays, though that as I understand it is anachronistic.

I agree with this as well. Without Secret Mark, the biggest kernel of the source that we can find is the widow of Nain in Luke, which does not go very far. With Secret Mark, we can piece together the story's evolution more clearly (IMO).

Yuri Kuchinsky

The practice was not inherently controversial, Jiri.

Baptism is a fundamental Christian tradition, thus noncontroversial. It's only the idea that Jesus, himself, was a baptist that was/is somewhat controversial.

The idea of multiple baptisms for Christians is also somewhat controversial. Nevertheless, this probably also took place.

The Lazarus story in John was probably built over the Secret Mk story.

Best,

Yuri.

Solo

I am not talking about the "water baptism", Yuri. But if Jesus and after him Peter and buried people ritually in "spirit" baptism as Lazarus, the Gadarene demoniac and the Simon Magus stories suggest, then you can bet the later church would have distanced itself from it to the point of explicitly denying Jesus baptized. Ever wondered why it was necessary to deny it in writing (Jn 4:2) ? Did someone spread rumours that Jesus did baptize ?.

Paul Tillich believed that the Rom 6 reference was inspired by mystery religions, in which "intoxication" (leading to ecstasy) was brought about "by a change of light and darkness" among other things. Pagels quotes Irenaeus complaining about the practice of baptismal "redemption" or "release" (apolytrosis) among taught by heretics like Ptolemy. Rev 2:10-11 transparently references the negative effects of the baptismal rite. In case you wonder what happened to those who did "not overcome" consult Hbr 11:35-39.


I don't think so. What John 11 sits on looks like a folk tale -not theology or mysticism.

Cheers,
Jiri

Solo

I am ok with you having doubts about this.

Mk 4:10 is self contradictory: Jesus speaks to people who are not physically present. 4:11 Jesus tells "them" they "know" the mystery whereas to those who don't have a clue, "everything" is given in parable (presumably the meaning is recursive - i.e. includes the parabolic setting of the statement itself.)

Does this feel like a later redactor ? I would say not.

...which story's evolution ? I think the original group around Jesus was 'raising people from dead' figuratively, burying their old selves and preparing them for the coming kingdom here on earth. After Jesus death, this original cultic meaning of 'rising from dead' gave way to the Pauline concept of resurrection (which Mark promoted) and the 'dead' came to be believed to be actually, physically dead. Jesus baptismal raising the of the 'dead' morphed into stories of him reviving the sick who were almost dead (as in Jairus duaghter or the the son of the widow of Nain) and then more ambitiously, into retrofitting a stinking corpse (John's Lazarus).

Jiri.