stephan huller

As many of you know I am fairly friendly with all the people who have any connection to the Mar Saba monastery. I happened to have received some interesting information from one of my contacts that I thought I might share with everyone.

The manuscripts in which “Quis dives salvetur” is preserved are rare, and it has generally been thought that they are only two in number, one of the eleventh century preserved in the Escurial Library in Spain (Class-mark H, III. 19), and a copy of it made in the sixteenth century, and preserved in the Vatican Library at Rome (Vat. Gr. 623).

In fact, there was another copy, a ninth century copy of Quis dives salvetur which was at Mar Saba until the mid-19th century (now listed as ms 23 of the collection of the Monastery of the Holy Cross). Interestingly, someone in Jerusalem was interested in the manuscript at the end of the 17th century, and it was copied into a manuscript now numbered as ms No. 414 of the collection of the Holy Sepulchre.

Then many of the Mar Saba manuscripts were damaged in a fire in the early years of the 18th century. If the paleographers that Smith consulted were correct, it was only about 50 years later that the letter of Theodore was copied into the Voss edition,

Since the issue of the rich young man seems relevant to Secret Gospel of Mark , that one of few manuscripts of QDS should be at the same place and be copied at around the same time is significant.

It is also interesting that the manuscript trail follows what most people assume is Clement's path after fleeing the persecutions of 202 CE in Alexandria. He sought refuge with Alexander, then bishop in Cappadocia, afterward of Jerusalem, from whom he brought a letter to Antioch in 211. There is an important story in Eusebius HE 6.11.6 and cited in a slightly different form in Severus al'Ashmunein which suggests that Clement also ended up in Jerusalem.

It is interesting then that all of the earliest manuscripts of Clement come from these two environs - i.e. Cappadocia and Jerusalem. I just detailed the presence of the oldest manuscript of Quis Dives Salvetur and the Letter to Theodore in the Mar Saba monastery. The oldest surviving manuscript is the tenth century Arethas Codex located in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris (Parisinus gr. 451 = P). The manuscript claims to be copied for the Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia between September 913 and August 914. The codex originally contained all of the Protrepticus as well as the three volumes of Clement's Paedagogus.

The text of the Stromateis, Excerpta ex Theodoto, and the Eclogae propheticae is also primarily dependent upon one late manuscript. In the case of these writings, the manuscript is the eleventh-century Laurentianus V 3 (= L) located in Florence, Italy. It has been thought that this manuscript might also have belonged to Arethas, Archbishop of Caesarea. (Stahlin, Stromata Buch I— VI, vii; Ferguson, Introduction to Stromateis, 15. 37).

The evidence would seem to suggest that manuscripts associated with Clement ended up in places near where he lived.

Littlejohn

"..Since the issue of the rich young man seems relevant to Secret Gospel of Mark.."


I do not know what the precise relationship between the rich young man and the Secret Gospel of Mark. However, for those interested, I would add that there is a high probability that the episode of the rich young man recounted in the Gospels, is a sort of 'parody' to disguise a real event, in which the protagonist was the same Jesus of Nazareth!. ..

It must not be forgotten, in fact, that the maternal grandparents of Jesus, improperly called Joachim and Anna, were very rich. Probably Jesus, being forced to leave Palestine, he left his inheritance to stepbrothers and his disciples. Although it may seem incredible, we have the resonance of this episode in a pagan author of the second century


Greetings


Littlejohn

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