the_cave

Was that Crossan? Been a long time since I read him...personally I don't like this solution, b/c it either means that Secret Mark is the original (is there anyone who argues this?), or it means that Secret Mark was both inserted and then later partially removed from Mark. That just seems like an overcomplicated solution to me.

Quote:

-- 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...

Fascinating. Lazarus' burial shroud? This sounds incredible to me, but I suppose it's possible...

I still prefer some other textual solution that I haven't figured out yet

the_cave

Well, alright, I do have a solution, which I can't properly defend right now. I think that there were some Lazarus traditions (=pericopes) floating around, and Mark got a hold of one of them and put it in his gospel. (Some of these same traditions later wound up in John, independent of Mark.)

Later, someone else rewrote Mark (=Secret Mark), and put more of them in.

Nice, simple solution. Personally I like it.