Yuri Kuchinsky

Greetings, friends,

Now I will continue to present the new textual evidence that I've discovered. More support in Western/Peripheral texts is now found for the Secret Gospel of Mark fragments that Morton Smith had discovered in 1958 in Mar Saba monastery.


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CASE #5
Similarly to the Secret Mark, in the Magdalene Gospel there's also a closer relationship between Jesus and Lazarus.

Just like in the previous case, this particular variant feature of the Magdalene Gospel also appears to be quite systemic and thoroughgoing, i.e. it is expressed in a whole range of passages within this episode. And, moreover, as we shall soon see, this particular feature of the MG also finds multiple support in some other versions of the Diatessaron -- the fact that has never been noted before specifically by any Diatessaronic scholar!

Now, of course, in his writings, Morton Smith tried to make a great deal out of this particular feature of the SMk. He really liked this idea that Jesus may have enjoyed some sort of special relationships with his chosen disciples.

And yet, even in the SMk, it's not really all that clear what sort of a special relationship it might really be. Much can be read into this SMk account, no doubt, if one so desired, but any explicitness is lacking there, on the whole.

So one can even say that this "special friendship" between Jesus and Lazarus is left largely undefined both in the SMk and in MG. And also, let us not forget that, even in the canonical Johannine account, some sort of special relationship with Lazarus is there as well... The differences that are there between all these accounts -- both canonical and non-canonical -- are often quite subtle, so this also needs to be taken into account.

And yet, still and all, it's clear that, compared to the canonical version of this narrative, both SMk and the MG put a lot more stress on this general theme of a special relationship between Jesus and Lazarus. Such a closer relationship is definitely there, in both SMk and the MG.

So let us first comb the canonical Johannine account for any indications of an intimate personal friendship between Jesus and Lazarus. The relevant phrases are underlined below.

(JOHN 11:3 canonical RSV) So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, _he whom you love is ill_."
(JOHN 11:5) Now Jesus _loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus_.
(JOHN 11:11) Thus he spoke, and then he said to them, "_Our friend Lazarus_ has fallen asleep..."
(JOHN 11:36) So the Jews said, "See _how he loved him_!"

Thus, we have 4 such items here altogether -- that's quite a few...

And now, I will quote all such passages from the Magdalene Gospel, Chapter 80. Some of these seem exactly in parallel with the canonical text, but others are not, or only partially so.

The passages that touch upon this theme come in 3 large blocks of the Magdalene text. So here's the first block.

(THE MAGDALENE GOSPEL 80:1) Now, as Jesus was across the river Jordan in hiding, it came to pass that _one of his friends_, by the name of Lazarus, who was the brother of Martha, and of Mary Magdalene, _beloved especially by Jesus_, was lying sick and anguishing in Bethany, a mile from Jerusalem.
(2) And Lazarus' sisters sent to Jesus, and begged that he would come and comfort _his friend_.

-- So there are 3 items already in the above block; the first two of these are generally in parallel to the canonical John 11:3 and 11:5, while the third one, the reference to Lazarus as a "friend of Jesus" in MG 80:2 is unique to MG.

We can also take a note here, in the Magdalene text, of the unusual phrase "beloved _especially_ by Jesus", which seems to accentuate this special relationship that we're now analysing. There's no parallel in the canonical John for this word "especially".

And here's the second block.

(THE MAGDALENE GOSPEL 80:7) And then he told them that _his friend Lazarus_ was asleep, and that he will go and awake him.
(8) And they said that, if he was asleep, this was a sign of recovery.
(9) And then Jesus told them plainly that he was dead. And he told them that it was [even] better that he was not there [at the time], lest they would have been tempted, and shaken in their faith, [as may have happened] had they seen _his friend_ die in his presence.
(10) "But let us go to him now," he said
(11) And then, St. Thomas said to his fellows, "Let us go now, and die with our master. Because he will be _his friend_ [indeed], who will volunteer to go with him readily against his enemies."

-- Thus, we have 3 more relevant items above, only the first of which is paralleled in the canonical Jn 11:11.

And here is the last block, that contains two more such items.

(THE MAGDALENE GOSPEL 80:27) And then some of them said, It sure appeared like _he loved him a lot_
(28) But others there said that it was odd that he could not protect _his friend's life_, while being able to give eyesight to a stranger.

-- Thus, we have 2 more items above, the first of which is parallel to the canonical Jn 11:36, while the last remaining one is unique to MG.

And so, we find that, altogether, there is the total of 8 such items in the MG! The canonical text, on the other hand, features only 4.

Of course there's still a lot more that can be done to analyse each of these 8 passages in detail, and to compare them with their canonical parallels, but this would be a separate long essay in its own right. For now, it's enough to say that this special friendship between Jesus and Lazarus is definitely far more accented in the MG and in the SMk, compared to the canonical text of John.

And now, we will see that this unusual feature of the Magdalene Gospel also happens to be supported elsewhere in the Diatessarons, as well as in some other Western/Peripheral gospel MSS -- which makes it quite clear that this was not some sort of an accidental or quixotic feature of the Magdalene manuscript alone.

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CASE #5 (APPENDIX): Additional supporting evidence for this same feature in other Western/Peripheral MSS

It sure seems like Morton Smith, even with such a pronounced interest as he had in investigating this particular theme in the SMk, still remained unaware on any of this additional relevant evidence that has been available in a variety of Western/Peripheral MSS.

Indeed, it turns out that some Diatessarons, as well as some other Western/Peripheral gospel MSS also support this feature of both the Secret Gospel of Mark, and of the Magdalene Gospel -- the theme of a specially close relationship between Jesus and his disciple Lazarus.

Most of the evidence that follows has already been itemised by D. Plooij in his textual commentary on the Dutch Diatessaron -- a work of immense learning and scope. Yet, unfortunately, so far, hardly anybody has studied this nearly 800 page volume in detail, or appreciated its true significance, or at least that's how it seems to me... With his _many thousands_ of detailed comparisons, Plooij had thoroughly demonstrated that it is the ancient Aramaic gospels that happen to be the closest surviving relatives of these very unusual medieval MSS, the Dutch Diatessaron, and the Magdalene Gospel. While the exact historical explanation for these extraordinary textual connections may still remain unclear, the hard evidence for them is right there, as laid out by Plooij, for all the world to see... If only the NT scholarship world at large was paying attention...

So here's the list of 5 such items -- the passages that, on the whole, tend to indicate a stronger and closer relationship between Jesus and Lazarus, compared to how their relationship is portrayed in the canonical John. (These items will now be numbered consecutively from 1 to 5.)

1. (JOHN 11:3 canonical RSV) So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, _he whom you love is ill_."

(THE MAGDALENE GOSPEL 80:2) And Lazarus' sisters sent to Jesus, and begged that he would come and comfort _his friend_.

Now, in this case, on the surface of it, it may look like the canonical version here isn't really all that different in meaning from the Magdalene version. They both say more or less the same thing, although in different words.

But it's this difference in wording that is especially important now, from my perspective, because it is this specific wording in the Magdalene text -- namely, the words "his friend" -- that also finds textual support in some other Diatessarons.

And so, the main value of this particular comparison, then, is to demonstrate the antiquity of this specific divergent passage in the Magdalene Gospel. The words "his friend", that are found here in the MG, were not really something that an immediate author or translator of the MG might have just added on his own volition. Because it now turns out that the following 2 Diatessarons also feature the word "friend" in this passage.

(DUTCH DT, pp. 540-541 in Plooij) These [the sisters] sent to Jesus and summoned him thus, "Lord, _thy friend_ Lazarus is sick."

(PERSIAN DT, p. 235 in Messina, ed.) "O, Lord, _your friend_ is ill."
("O Signore, il tuo amico e infermo.")

(Taking into consideration, as was already mentioned before, that the MG typically prefers to use the third person narrative, rather than direct narrative, "his friend" in the MG can be seen as an exact equivalent of "thy friend" in the Dutch DT, and "your friend" in the Persian DT.)

Plooij didn't comment on this unusual similarity between the Dutch DT and MG. But, of course, he didn't as yet have access to the Persian DT, so, without any further backing, he may have thought that such a similarity might have just been accidental.

_____________


Next, let us consider the following two unusual Western/Peripheral parallels to the canonical Jn 11:5.

(JOHN 11:5 canonical RSV) Now Jesus _loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus_.

It turns out that Plooij discovered, and listed in his Commentary the following two features among various Western/Peripheral MSS that are relevant to our theme.

2. Plooij notes that some Old Latin MSS of Jn 11:5 (e a d) read /amabat/ instead of the canonical /diligebat/. The word /amabat/, of course, is generally thought to express a more intense form of love, as compared to /diligebat/. And, along the same lines, the Greek Codex Bezae -- this very important Greek WP text -- also uses the word /efilei/ in this passage, instead of the canonical /egapa/.

3. Also, Plooij notes that in certain Old Latin MSS of Jn 11:5 (e a c ff2), the canonical order of "Martha, her sister, Lazarus" has been reversed, and Lazarus is listed first, rather than last. This certainly tends to imply that Jesus' affection for Lazarus was stronger than for his sisters.

_____________


Now, the following divergent feature is found only in the Venetian Diatessaron.

4. (JOHN 11:11 canonical RSV) Thus he spoke, and then he said to them, "_Our friend_ Lazarus has fallen asleep...

And this is what the Venetian Diatessaron has in this passage.

(VENETIAN DIATESSARON, p. 117) "Our _dear_ friend sleeps..."
(Le nostro _caro_ amigo dorme...)

Thus, once again, a closer relationship between Jesus and Lazarus is indicated in yet another important Diatessaronic version, the Venetian Diatessaron. (Plooij didn't note this interesting variant in his Commentary.)

_____________


5. (JOHN 11:14 canonical RSV) Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead..."

But, also, according to Plooij, the following very important Western/Peripheral witnesses happen to add the words /amicus noster/ = "our friend" to this passage,

Ephrem the Syrian
Codex Bezae (both Greek and Latin sides of it)
Old Latin MS p

Thus, once again, we see that the Western/Peripheral versions of the Raising of Lazarus tend to indicate a closer relationship between Jesus and Lazarus. And, in this last comparison, we have the support from Ephrem the Syrian, which indicates that this feature was very ancient indeed.

This concludes our textual analysis of the Raising of Lazarus episode in the Secret Mark, and in various Western/Peripheral texts.

What will follow next will be some additional analysis of the Secret Gospel of Mark fragments, as supplied in Clement's letter. There are actually some more connections there between SMk and a variety of Western/Peripheral texts of the gospels.

[End of Part 3]

Part 4 is coming up shortly.

Best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

[This is the concluding Part 4 of my long article.]

ONE MORE CLEAR CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SECRET MARK, AND THE WESTERN/PERIPHERAL TEXT OF MARK

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CASE #6
and _he comes_ to Jericho

This is an agreement between the Secret Mark and the Old Syriac Mark. Smith was aware of it, but he didn't make any big deal out of it. As we shall see further, Koester and Crossan were both ignorant about this connection between the SMk and Western/Peripheral text.

(Canonical Mk 10:46) kai _ercontai_ eis iericw
(and _they come_ to Jericho)

(SecMk) kai _ercetai_ eis iericw
(and _he comes_ to Jericho)

(OS Aramaic MARK 10:46) And _he came_ to Jericho
(OLD SYRIAC) w'atu laYerykho

And also, there's lots of additional support here in other Western/Peripheral texts. For example, in A. Merk's edition of the NT, he lists the following WP witnesses that also have this reading,

D 788 a b ff i r sys Origen

This means that this reading supported by,

Greek Codex Bezae (but, interestingly, not by its Latin side)
Greek minuscule MS 788 (10th/11th century).
Old Latin MSS a b ff i r (5 manuscripts)
Old Syriac Sinaiticus MS (as already cited above)
citation(s) by the Greek father Origen.

This is quite a long list of support, which indicates that this reading probably stood in the original text of Mark. (And yet, this WP variant is omitted by the mainstream Aland's editions of the gospels.)


KOESTER AND CROSSAN FALL FLAT

In connection with the above reading in the SMk, it will now be instructive to see how some of our leading NT scholars, namely H. Koester and D. Crossan, missed entirely on this important WP variant. (It sure does look to me like they haven't really read _Smith's own book_ carefully enough, in the first place, to get themselves informed that a divergent WP version of this passage does exist...) And if even _they_ missed it -- both of them being among the leading supporters of Smith and of SMk -- how can we expect any of their less illustrious colleagues to have picked up on any of this?

Of course, this just goes still further to demonstrate to what extent Western/Peripheral text is now unknown even to the most competent of today's NT scholars. They are all completely ignorant about it, even the best of them like Koester and Crossan!

So this is what J. D. Crossan writes in his FOUR OTHER GOSPELS, Winston, 1985, p. 109,

"Clement's quotation in SMk, 'And he comes into Jericho', is the only time his citations differ in any way from our text of canonical Mark. ... His quotation here is in the singular, 'he comes', but Mk 10:46 has, 'And they came to Jericho...' That reads as if Mark took a singular ('he') and pluralized it..."

Oh, well, now that we are aware of the fact that "he comes" in this verse is really a solidly attested WP reading -- the reading that probably represents the original text of Mk -- it sure seems like "Mark" didn't really pluralize anything. (It was probably a late editor of Mk, on the other hand, who pluralized this reading at some later point.)

Thus, Crossan's evident ignorance about the Western/Peripheral text made him think that the variant "he comes" was a pre-Markan reading, whereas it was much more likely to have been the _original_ Markan reading, also shared by the SMk.

Also, Helmut Koester, a friend and colleague of Crossan, writes as follows in his ANCIENT CHRISTIAN GOSPELS, SCM/Trinity, 1990, p. 300, footnote 2,

"Crossan (FOUR OTHER GOSPELS, 109-110) rightly calls attention to the fact that the Secret Gospel, as quoted by Clement, read the singular, while the manuscripts of Mark have the plural. But this does not necessarily imply that Clement's copy of the canonical Markan text also read the singular."

So, based on the above, it sure seems like Koester is inclined to think that Clement may have _corrupted_ the text of Mk in his quote! Well, the opposite seems to be the case...

Thus, it's clear that Koester was likewise ignorant of an important Western/Peripheral variant for this verse. Just like Crossan, he failed to read Smith's book carefully enough!

In fact, both of these scholars should have been well aware that Clement of Alexandria _typically_ cites his gospels according to Western/Peripheral text! (As was already established by F. G. Kenyon, and others long time ago.) So, by all rights, this particular item should have already been seen as a powerful argument for the authenticity of the SMk, and yet both Crossan and Koester missed entirely on any of this...

And, as for Smith, he, for his own part, _was_ definitely aware that, in general, Clement's quotations do "show points of contact with the western text" (p. 78 in Smith's CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA)... And yet he never attempted to use this evidence to support the authenticity of the Mar Saba MS. Why not? The answer is simple, because of his prior preconceptions about the supposed "superiority of Alexandrian text", Smith had no interest in Western/Peripheral text at all. It sure seems like, by and large, Smith looked at all these links between SMk and WP text that he did identify as a bit of an embarrassment... He really wanted SMk to be seen as a very early text, but since all his mainstream NT colleagues "knew" the earliest texts to be Alexandrian, it was sort of embarrassing for Smith that SMk didn't seem so Alexandrian after all... With all due respect to Smith and his colleagues, this here does look like one of those cases of the blind leading the blind...

Yes, very unfortunately, all this crew, including Smith, were quite blind about what Western/Peripheral texts really are -- and this is how the general situation in the field still remains to this day. In my own view, there can be little doubt that Western/Peripheral texts are the earliest gospel texts that we now possess.


OTHER LINKS BETWEEN SECRET MARK AND WESTERN/PERIPHERAL TEXTS, THAT SMITH WAS AWARE OF

Yes, Smith certainly was aware that the SMk has at least some links to Western/Peripheral texts. After all, he studied this rather short MS, and its background very intensely for well over 10 years, and he constantly consulted with many of his top colleagues about it.

Thus, in addition to our Case #6, that we have just explored in detail, Smith also names 4 other passages in SMk that seem to have some similarities to WP texts.

These 4 parallels, as given by Smith, are a mixed bag. To begin with, none of them are direct parallels, since they are all parallels to the passages in Mk or in the other Synoptics (as preserved in a variety of WP gospel MSS only) that are not directly relevant. And besides, 2 of the 4 are rather inconclusive by Smith's own admission.

Here are the 2 that are indeed quite interesting.

-- kai _orgisqeis_ o ihsous (and Jesus, _being angered_)

The parallel here is with a variant WP text of Mk 1:41 (CA, pp. 104, 128, 360).

-- kai hrxato _parakalein_ auton ina met autou h (began _to beseech_ him that he might be with him)

There are some parallels here with assorted WP MSS (CA, pp. 112, 364).

And here are the 2 that Smith himself admits are quite weak.

-- exeteinen thn ceira kai hgeirenauton (he stretched forth his hand and raised him)
-- epetaxen autw o ihsous (Jesus taught him)

Thus, none of these 4 items is really a conventional parallel, i.e. a direct one between two parallel texts. Rather, they represent some grammatical and vocabulary peculiarities of SMk that also seem to be shared by some other Greek texts of WP type, such as the Greek Codex Bezae.

Obviously, Smith looked far and wide for any Markan or Synoptic parallels to SMk that he could find (and just about scraped the bottom of the barrel while doing it). And yet, for some odd reason, he completely neglected the possibility that there might be some Johannine parallels to SMk out there!


SMITH'S OBSESSIONS

Even a brief perusal of Smith's two books on the subject of SMk makes it obvious that he was genuinely obsessed by his discovery. The sheer amount of work that he put into his CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA is astounding -- these had clearly been many years of hard work that he put into it. (The book also spent many years at the publishers while even more revisions were being made.) What came out as a result often appears to be extremely odd; the relevance of much of the material that was included in this volume seems marginal at best.

More like totally irrelevant! What are all these claimed similarities to Homer's Iliad doing there, for example? What is this supposed to do with anything?

And what is all this "clausulae" business there all about, one wonders? "Quantitative rhythms" in Clement's sentence endings???

Indeed, we learn on p. 75 of his CA that Smith had compiled a detailed study of "the quantitative rhythms at the ends of the sentences" in Clement's STROMATEIS, and compared these, very painstakingly, to how the rhythms of the sentence endings come across in the Mar Saba MS... Sure enough, it's all there in the Appendix C, looking like complete abracadabra, to be sure... Is Smith analysing poetry here, or something? I'm sure that if one were to ask Clement, himself, about what "quantitative rhythms" he favoured in his prose, he would have been extremely surprised to hear that he favoured any...

So is this guy being serious here? No wonder that so many of his colleagues were accusing him (usually behind his back, of course) of setting out to perpetrate some sort of a prank... It sure does seem like many critics misinterpreted Smith's genuine obsession with his Mar Saba discovery, and his rather peculiar and often aimless studies around this subject as evidence that there _might_ be something wrong with his discovery...


FURTHER CONCLUSIONS THAT CAN BE DRAWN FROM THIS EVIDENCE

And so, the main purpose of this study has been to demonstrate that Smith couldn't have been a forger of this MS. Since he obviously knew very little about all the complications that are associated with the Western/Peripheral text of the gospels -- about the great many intricacies in this very challenging field of study -- it would have been impossible for him to forge such a text as SMk.

He clearly lacked both the motivation and ability to create such a text himself. How could he include into SMk all those 5 new WP readings that I've identified, if he didn't even know they existed? And, more importantly, why would he even try to do so, in the first place?

Furthermore, these same basic arguments, as outlined in this long article, can also be used to demonstrate that Secret Mark could hardly have been a medieval forgery -- since a medieval forger certainly could not be expected to be familiar with Western/Peripheral text. As it's well known, WP text pretty well disappeared from circulation during the early middle ages, to be replaced by the Byzantine text type. Hence, chances are that any medieval forger would have used the Byzantine-type gospels, were he to try to forge anything like this. Seeing that Secret Mark belongs to WP text type, this alone provides the best argument for dating it prior to 400 CE, i.e. before the ascendance of the Byzantine text.

On the other hand, as already mentioned before, it's well established in Textual Criticism that, based on his undisputed writings that we still possess, Clement of Alexandria mostly used Western/Peripheral text of the gospels, since this is what he typically cited in his writings. Thus, Secret Mark belonging to WP text is fully consistent with this MS coming originally from Clement's own pen.

To sum up, the above considerations make it very likely that what Morton Smith discovered in the Mar Saba monastery is indeed an authentic letter of Clement of Alexandria. After all, it's very difficult to see why anyone would have wanted to forge such a letter between Clement's own lifetime (he died early in the 3rd century), and the end of the 4th century, when Western/Peripheral text already started to go out of circulation. The style of the letter is clearly Clementine, and it basically says what Clement could be expected to say. Therefore, it may be assumed a priori that it was none other than Clement himself who wrote this letter.

_____________________


This concludes my article.

All comments and questions are welcome.

Best wishes,

Yuri.

Peter Kirby

Really good work, Yuri. It persuades me, and makes me want to buy some old books I noticed on the Western text. Just one thing though:

Indeed, we learn on p. 75 of his CA that Smith had compiled a detailed study of "the quantitative rhythms at the ends of the sentences" in Clement's STROMATEIS, and compared these, very painstakingly, to how the rhythms of the sentence endings come across in the Mar Saba MS... Sure enough, it's all there in the Appendix C, looking like complete abracadabra, to be sure... Is Smith analysing poetry here, or something? I'm sure that if one were to ask Clement, himself, about what "quantitative rhythms" he favoured in his prose, he would have been extremely surprised to hear that he favoured any...

Well, ya! Most of us are unaware of our compositional habits. I often find myself revising the cadence of my prose without any definite notion of why I'm doing it or what the patterns might be. The strongest stylistic indications of authorship are those of which the author is unaware--what is easily identifiable is easily modifiable and easily imitable. And, by analogy, text-critical patterns of which a forger would be unaware--following either a Byzantine or Alexandrian textus receptus--are strong evidence against forgery.

best,
Peter Kirby

Volker.Doormann

Hi Yuri,

- Great - Thank you.

(I have started some investigations in translation to German).

Best

Volker

Yuri Kuchinsky

Thanks, Peter!

Quote:

It persuades me, and makes me want to buy some old books I noticed on the Western text. Just one thing though: Indeed, we learn on p. 75 of his CA that Smith had compiled a detailed study of "the quantitative rhythms at the ends of the sentences" in Clement's STROMATEIS, and compared these, very painstakingly, to how the rhythms of the sentence endings come across in the Mar Saba MS... Sure enough, it's all there in the Appendix C, looking like complete abracadabra, to be sure... Is Smith analysing poetry here, or something? I'm sure that if one were to ask Clement, himself, about what "quantitative rhythms" he favoured in his prose, he would have been extremely surprised to hear that he favoured any... Well, ya! Most of us are unaware of our compositional habits. I often find myself revising the cadence of my prose without any definite notion of why I'm doing it or what the patterns might be. The strongest stylistic indications of authorship are those of which the author is unaware--what is easily identifiable is easily modifiable and easily imitable. And, by analogy, text-critical patterns of which a forger would be unaware--following either a Byzantine or Alexandrian textus receptus--are strong evidence against forgery.

In general, I'd have to agree with you. Yes, indeed, those indications of authorship of which the author, himself, is unaware may well be some of the strongest ones. But in this particular case, ISTM the situation was such that Smith's efforts (i.e. his research about the "clausulae") were probably on the whole counter-productive...

Why? Because, you know, the critics of Smith were probably thinking, "So, if he was the forger of the SMk, then this must be one of those clever things that he would have deliberately incorporated into his forgery!"

If OTOH _someone else_ would have done this research about the "clausulae", and this happened to have supported Smith at some later point, then indeed this may have been seen as a persuasive argument for SMk authenticity. But since Smith, himself, did this research, it proved to be mostly a waste of time.

Best,

Yuri.

Peter Kirby

Smith must not have anticipated the accusations against him.

If Smith did all this research into the life of Clement and the stylometry of his work and the possible versions of Mark before forging the Mar Saba fragment, what the hell was he doing all those years working on the discovery? And why wouldn't he try to let other scholars find out about some of the nice touches he put into the effort? Forgers want their work appraised--by someone else.

best,
Peter Kirby

Bede

Thank you Yuri. While much surrounding SGM remains extremely fishy, it does seem likely to be Clementine.

One point: do the W/P varients in SGM appear elsewhere in the Clementine corpus? If so, Smith could have just copied them out without realising he was further legitimating his work.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Yuri Kuchinsky

Bede,

I'm glad that you agree!

Quote:

One point: do the W/P varients in SGM appear elsewhere in the Clementine corpus?

I'm pretty sure that they don't. If they did, then either Smith or someone else would have already pointed this out. After all, we've had many Clementine specialists investigating this matter in some detail.

Quote:

If so, Smith could have just copied them out without realising he was further legitimating his work.

Regards,

Yuri.

the_cave

Hi Yuri--just out of curiosity, what do you think is the solution to the presence of the young man wearing the linen cloth in canonical Mark, considering the apparent similarity of this figure to the youth in Secret Mark? Is there a relationship?

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, the_cave,

This one is a notoriously difficult problem in the canonical Mk (Mk 14:51-52, the arrest scene). Lots of solutions have been offered by various parties, but none of them all that persuasive.

Here are a couple of possibilities.

-- I think it was Crossan who suggested that Mk 14:51-52 was a reflection of something that originally belonged to the Secret Mark. Not impossible IMHO.

-- That linen cloth, that was left in the hands of those who tried to arrest "the young man" may have referred originally to some sort of a holy relic, that was kept in the Church of Alexandria. So the pericope may have been written because they already had the holy relic (the linen cloth), and they added this detail to provide an ex post facto justification for the holy relic... I've read about this somewhere before, and it seems to make some sense...

All speculation, of course.

Cheers,

Yuri.