Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, cave,

The simple fact is that the stories of the raising of the young man in SecMk and in Jn are obviously the same story, told twice. Koester has done detailed analysis of this matter, using form criticism. Now, I do believe in the validity of form criticism, and I find Koester's arguments persuasive.

There's no evidence that this miracle story was present in the Marcan tradition before the SecMk stage, so we must assume that the raising of Lazarus in Jn was based on SecMk.

It makes perfect sense to me that the SecMk story, upon being deleted from the Marcan tradition, was re-utilised in Jn as the raising of Lazarus. This story is obviously very important for the whole Christian tradition, and it was so from very early on, I'm sure. Also we should consider the evidence of both Mk and Jn having originated in Alexandria.

5 layers to Mark (or of _anything_ found in NT) is really nothing extraordinary if you studied Loisy. Just about on every page of his ORIGINS OF THE NT he comments on this or other story or sentence being added or changed by a later editor. The whole NT text is like a complex quilt-work, based on what Loisy says. There may be ten layers of Mark, for all I know!

The real radical NT scholarship is all in the past... :Cheeky:

Cheers,

Yuri.

Ben C Smith

Or in the future....

Ben.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Roger,

I think it's self-evident that the 4 gospels all started with 1 gospel. The mainstream view is that all 3 Synoptics started with 1 gospel, Mark (although there's still a bit of a debate about this). Also it's widely admitted that Jn is not entirely independent of the Synoptics.

All I'm saying is that, realistically, the canonical Mk couldn't have been the earliest gospel. So it was some proto-gospel that was the earliest gospel. The concept, itself, is very simple and logical, but the mainstream scholars are running from it like it's King Kong. Perhaps it's the Children's Hour in NT studies nowadays, after all the great scholars of the past had their say.

Especially the latter part of Jn has plenty of links with a Mark-type gospel, as Morton Smith demonstrated in some detail.

IMO the only thing that's really early about the canonical Mk is its shortness.

All the best,

Yuri.

the_cave

Just to revisit this briefly--sorry for the delay in getting back to it:

I disagree--what he is doing is telling Theodoros what is in the secret gospel. When he addresses the passages, he doesn't refer to canonical Mark at all. He only refers to the secret gospel and to the Carpocratian passages that Theodoros has sent him.

No, I disagree here--he does not refer to canonical Mark at all. He refers only to the text of secret Mark. He is distinguishing between secret Mark and Carpocratian Mark. That's all.

No, there he is refering to secret Mark (which happens to coincide there with the text of canonical Mark).

No, this is just what is in question. Your translation:

I would insted read this as

Clement (or whoever the author was) doesn't have secret Mark in front of him, nor does he have it memorized. All he has in front of him is some passages from Carpocratian Mark. He is telling Theodore what from the Carpocratian passages can be found in secret Mark. But he does not divulge any more material from secret Mark than that.

Clement confirms that in secret Mark, Jesus met the women in Jericho and did not receive them. But did more happen in Jericho in secret Mark? Clement remains silent on that question. All he says is that the rest of the Carpocratian passage does not appear in secret Mark.

Roger Viklund

Hello ”The Cave”!

I will try to follow your line of thought. What you are suggesting is that Clement actually did not have access to SecMk, but only access to part of the Carpocratian version which Theodoros had sent him. This raises some difficult questions. Why would Theodoros in the first place ask Clement about the part of “the naked with the naked” if in fact it was he who supplied Clement with the actual text? He could just have read the text himself and seen that no such thing occurred. Why would Clement quote a text which Theodoros already had access to? How come that the Carpocratian text which Theodoros sent to Clement did not contain the part with the naked man together with another naked man, as Theodoros had heard? And how come that Clement claimed that Carpocrates had added heretical material to SecMk when the passage Clement quoted did not include this material?

Am I missing something in you logic?

Kindly, Roger

the_cave

Hi Roger--

I'm suggesting that he did not have access at the time. (This actually isn't absolutely necessary for my argument, but it helps makes sense out of the letter as a whole.)

Because, he is confused about whether this is gospel material or not. I suspect that the Carpocratians were running around saying that they had a secret gospel of Mark. Theodoros wants to know whether this is true or not.

No--Theodoros only had access to canonical Mark. As Clement says, the secret gospel was not in widespread circulation.

No, that's not what I'm saying. Theodoros has indeed sent Clement passages from Carpocratian Mark. That's what Clement is reading from.

Everything that Clement is talking about is taken from what Theodoros has sent him. He can recall what is in secret Mark when he sees it, but I don't think he's comparing directly to it. I think he's just going through what Theodore sent him, and confirming (from recollection) a) what secret Mark adds to canonical Mark that is included in the passages Theodoros sent him and b) rejecting the Carpocratian alterations.

Does that help clarify things?

Roger Viklund

Hi again “The Cave”!

It does not really help to clarify things for me. What do you mean by “Carpocratian Mark”? You say:

If Theodoros only had access to canonical Mark, how come he could send passages from Carpocratian Mark to Clement?

Kindly, Roger

the_cave

I meant simply, he did not have access to secret Mark. He may have had access to a copy of the entire Carpocratian gospel, i.e. Carpocratian Mark. We know he had some quotations from it at least. But it doesn't matter if he had the rest of it or not. He had access to at least the portions he sent to Clement, and that's all that matters.

Roger Viklund

Ok! I will then try again …

Clement knew SecMk, but did not have access to it at the time he was responding to Theodoros, nor did “he have it memorized”. Theodoros had previously sent him a letter in which he had quoted a part from the Carpocratian version of SecMk. Since Theodoros “is confused about whether this is gospel material or not” he asks Clement about the part of “the naked with the naked”. This part actually existed in the version which Theodoros sent to Clement. Clement quotes the part of the text sent to him by Theodoros and which was in SecMk, and simply omits the rest, including “naked with naked”, which was what Carpocrates had added. This is what Clement writes, reproduced as literal as I have been able to do.

And thereafter follows the long story from SecMk about the raising of the young man. From this, one can see that Theodoros have asked Clement at least two questions concerning SecMk. Clements intent is to refute the “falsifications” in the version of SecMk which the Carpocratians used. He shall refute these “falsifications” by quoting “the very words of the Gospel”, reasonably the words from the Secret Gospel of Mark, “word for word”. According to you we are to believe that Clement instead reproduces the same text as Theodoros previously sent him, only modified by omitting the troublesome parts.

But then Clement hasn’t refuted what is in the Carpocratian version at all; he has then simply reproduced it and omitted everything which he and Theodoros found troublesome. Besides, he then must have memorized it so well that he was able to distinguish between the forged and the genuine parts. I find no place where “naked with naked" could have occurred in the text unless it is modified.

Should we accept something like this?

The way the text is reproduced by Clement it really leaves no room for an interpolation of a naked man with naked man, unless the text was modified. It seems more likely that the Carpocratian version was not only expanded with new and heretical material, but in fact recomposed so that the context was altered. Also for that reason I do not think Clement quoted the Carpocratian version, and prefer the more straightforward interpretation, that he was quoting, or nearly quoting, the genuine version.

I am not sure what your reasons are for choosing the far more remote interpretation from what the text says. I suppose it could be due to the fact that Clement says that Mark, dying, “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.” Perhaps you think that he would have written that “he left it here”, if he was staying in Alexandria and Theodoros had sent his letter to Alexandria. But this presupposes that the letter was meant for only personal use, for which there is no proof. In fact, apart from a few places, the letter is not addressed to a certain individual, but more generally held in expressions such as “one who loves the truth.” But above all, Clement could hardly have expressed himself in any other way. This is what the letter says.

If Clement instead would have written that Mark had “left his composition here” one of course would realize that he left it in Alexandria, but the reason for Clement to name Alexandria was probably not the name of the city but the name of the Church, This Gospel was the property of the Alexandrian church.

Kindly, Roger

the_cave

Hi Roger--excellent points--now that we understand each other, we can get to the heart of the matter

Yes--the problem is just that I don't trust Clement here. But maybe I'm being too suspicious.

But this is not so remarkable--I couldn't even recite a single verse from the parable of the prodigal son from memory. But if I saw an interpolated version of it, I could do a pretty good job of picking out the bits that had been interpolated.

He's just referring to the Carpocratian insertion by way of a phrase--I'm imagining it had some sort of extended addition that included the phrase "naked with naked". The proposal you offer is one conjecture, I suppose.

But the Carpocratian version, I am guessing, also contained "genuine" secret Mark material--Theodore doesn't realize this, and is confused. Clement is trying to straighten it out by saying "This part is genuinely in secret Mark--but this is not."

Clement frames the story of the raising of the young man with quotations from canonical Mark. It seems to me that what he's doing is establishing where the "genuine" secret material starts and ends. The implication is that Carpocratian Mark added more material--but more as an insertion somewhere, rather than a rewrite.

I admit that it is unclear which reading is better--yours or mine. Though I do think that either reading is compatible with a secret Mark derived from a proto-Mark.

Yes, that is an important reason why. Another reason is that I think the Jericho episode is too brief to derive from a Markan author, so it seemed to me unlikely that Clement could be quoting it in full. But, again, if secret Mark itself is a rewriting of a proto-Mark, then I think your reading could be viable.

That is a possible interpretation, yes. (I also think it's not impossible that Clement could have meant the city, even when writing from it. It's a common way of speaking--when relating an anecdote from the past, you can sometimes describe it in terms of the events in the past, without reference to the world of the narrator.)

If I may add a question, isn't Smith's translation of the last line faulty as well? He translates "Now the true explanation, and that which accords with the true philosophy..." But isn't the Greek simply "Now the truth, and that which accords with the true philosophy..."?