Roger Viklund

Hi again ”The Cave”!

I agree with you that we shouldn’t automatically trust Clement, and we shouldn’t take his words for granted. I don’t think Clement is lying, but he could still be wrong. If he is not lying, then there of course are stronger reasons for suspecting that he doesn’t know about things which happened a hundred years ago, than that he would be misinformed about things which happen at the time he is writing. It could of course be that he knows about the passage about the raising of the young man, although he doesn’t know it by heart. But when he says he shall refute the false gospel by giving the passage from the genuine gospel word by word, there would really be no reason to distrust that he actually has access to what that gospel says. There is no reason to suspect this … unless one would suspect that he is not in Alexandria at the time he’s responding to Theodoros and therefore probably did not have access to the gospel.

But the letter was probably intended to be shown to other officials, so that also they would be able to refute the Carpocratians. It was for sure not meant to be shown to the Carpocratians and not to the ordinary people, but probably to a few selected apart from Theodoros. And they couldn’t know that Clement was in Alexandria at the time he was writing. Since Clement probably also wants to stress the fact that this Gospel was the property of the Alexandrian church, there was every reason for him to say so in the letter even though he was at Alexandria and Theodoros had sent his letter there.

Further I agree with you that the Carpocratian version, also contained “genuine” secret Mark material. But I don’t think Theodoros had read any of it. He had just heard what the Carpocratians said, and they were known for preaching sexual liberty, and were probably using SecMk as part of their argumentation. It might be that the Carpocratian gospel didn’t even say anything about a naked man with a naked man; that could be an interpretation which the Carpocratians made from what SecMk says, in a similar way as many who are promoting homosexuality today, and also orthodox Christians today, seem to interpret the passage. But if it had said that, and Theodoros had quoted that part and sent it to Clement, he would reasonably have replied differently and said that the part with the naked and the naked was interpolated between this passage and this passage. But Theodoros never gave Clement any actual text, so Clement could only quote the entire genuine passage and thereby showing Theodoros what it actually said.

As I’ve said before, my Greek is bad. But as far as I can tell, Smith’s translation follows the Greek text closely. “Now the true explanation, and that which accords with the true philosophy...” is a correct translation.

Kindly, Roger

andrewcriddle

The Greek is hH MEN OUN ALHThHS KAI KATA THN ALHThH PhILOSOPhIAN EXHGHSIS...

An over-literal translation would be something like Now therefore, the true (and in accord with the true philosophy) explanation ...

Morton Smith's translation preserves the sense while sounding like English.

Andrew Criddle