Secret Mark
Home > New Testament > Secret Mark Secret Mark At a Glance Treatise Genre: (1/5) * Reliability of Dating: (1/5) * Length of Text: Greek Original Language: Ancient Translations: Modern Translations: English Estimated Range of Dating: 70-255 A.D. Chronological List of Early Christian Writings Discuss this text on the Early Writings forum. Text English Translation by Morton Smith English Translation from Sam Gibson Greek Text and Morton Smith's Photos Offsite Links The Secret Gospel of Mark Homepage Geoff Trowbridge's Introduction Identification of the Bethany Youth in the Secret Gospel of Mark with other Figures Found in Mark and John The Strange Case of the Secret Gospel according to Mark The Bethany Youth in the Secret Gospel of Mark Verses Missing from the Gospel of Mark Andrew Bernhard on Secret Mark Jack Kilmon on Secret Mark Glenn Miller on Secret Mark Secret Mark is Authentic from Yuri Kuchinsky Two Recent Discussions of Secret Mark Books Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press 1990), pp.
293-303. John Dominic Crossan, Four Other Gospels (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press 1985), pp. 91-124. Ron Cameron, ed., The Other Gospels: Non-Canonical Gospel Texts (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press 1982), pp. 67-71. Robert J. Miller, ed., The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press 1992), pp. 402-405. Recommended Books for the Study of Early Christian Writings Information on Secret Mark In 1958, Morton Smith found a letter of Clement of Alexandria at the Mar Saba monastary near the city of Jerusalem. The Secret Gospel of Mark is known only from the references in this letter. Although there has been some controversy over the letter, today it is generally agreed that the letter is authentic correspondence written by Clement.
In his introduction in The Complete Gospels, Stephen Patterson notes: "The handwriting can be dated to around 1750. Smith published the letter in 1973. Early discussion of it was marred by accusations of forgery and fraud, no doubt owing in part to its controversial comments. Today, however, there is almost unanimous agreement among Clementine scholars that the letter is authentic." Stephen Patterson gives this account of the passages noted by Clement: The first passage is a story of how Jesus miraculously raises a young man (neaniskos) who has recently died, at the behest of his bereaved sister. According to Clement, the story was added to Mark between verses 10:34 and 10:35. The story bears a striking resemblance to the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John (John 11:1-44).
However, since it shows none of the typical marks of Johannine redaction which so strongly color the story about Lazarus, it is unlikely that the Secret Mark story is directly dependent upon its Johannine parallel. For its part, the version of the story from Secret Mark has its own peculiarities not found in John, such as the initiation of the young man into the "mystery of God's domain." The basic story, however, probably derives from the common stock of miracle stories available to both Mark and John, or their sources. The second fragment is extremely brief, but nonetheless interesting. First, it mentions Salome, who appears in the New Testament elsewhere only in Mark (see 15:40; 16:1).
Secondly, when placed in the slot where Clement indicates it occurs in Secret Mark (between 10:46a: "Then they came to Jericho," and 10:46b: "As he was leaving Jericho...") it fills a well-known hole in the Markan narrative. The stop in Jericho now seems, in light of the Secret Gospel, at least a little less futile. There is debate over the relationship between Secret Mark and canonical Mark: was Clement correct to regard Secret Mark as an expansion of canonical Mark? F. F. Bruce writes, "The 'secret' character of the additional sayings is the most obvious Gnosticizing feature. . . . [Clement and contemporaries] were willing to treat acceptable expansions as belonging to a second edition produced by Mark after his alleged coming from Rome to Alexandria, but those expansions which were manifestly Gnostic were ascribed to the school of Carpocrates." (Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, p.