Decoding Mark revealed Secret Mark

[MrMacSon]

Decoding Mark by John Dart, Bloomsbury Academic, March 2006

John Dart "decodes" the Gospel of Mark with explosive results that will shake the foundation of New Testament studies. Dart uses "chiasms" found throughout G.Mark to reconstruct the original Gospel. By the presence or absence of these chiasms, he identifies sections of the Gospel that were added by a later editor, and he recovers passages from the "Secret Gospel of Mark" (discovered in 1958) [which] the pattern of chiasms indicates had been deleted from canonical Mark. https://books.google.com.au/books/about ... edir_esc=y

eta: readable https://www.google.com.au/books/edition ... frontcover

[rgprice]

Sounds like David Oliver Smith's book: Unlocking the Puzzle: The Keys to the Christology and Structure of the Original Gospel of Mark

I'm not (fully) sold.

[DCHindley]

I see this re-organization of Mark on the basis of chiasms as similar to those who have organized Paul's letter to the Galatians so it conforms to some standard of Rhetoric of the time.

You pretty much get what you wanted, not necessarily what is there (use 100% magnification in your browser to see it all):

Betz	Brinsmead	Kennedy	Standaert	Hall	Smit	Longenecker	Hester	Russell
1.1-5: epistolary prescript	1.1-5: epistolary prescript	1.1-5: salutation	1.1-5: introduction épistolaire	1.1-15: salutation/exordium	1.1-5: epistolary prescript	1.1-5: salutation	1.1-5: epistolary prescript	1.1-5: prescript/salutation
1.6-11: exordium	1.6-10: prooemium	1.6-10: proem	1.6-12: annonce du thème	1.6-9: proposition	1.6-12: exordium	1.6-10: exordium	1.6 -10: exordium	1.6-10: prologue/proem/exordium
1.12-2.14: narratio	1. 12-2.14: propositio	1.11-5.1: proofs	1.13-2.14: narratio	1.10-6.10: proof			1.11-12: stasis	1.11-6.10: proof/probatio/confirmatio
		1.11 —2.21: first heading		1.10-2.21: narration		1.11-2.14: narratio	1.13-2.21: narratio	1.11-2.21: historical argument
		1.11 -12: topic				1.11-12: thesis statement
		1.13-2.14: narrative			1.13-2.21: narratio	1.13-2.14: autobiographical material	2.11-14: chreia
2.15-21: propositio	2.15-21: propositio	2.15-21: epicheireme	2.15-21: peroratio			2.15-21: propositio	2.15-21: elaboration of chreia
3.1-4.31: probatio	3.1-4.31: probatio	3.1-5.1: second heading	3.1-4.31: refutatio	3.1-6.10: further headings	3.1-14.11: confirmatio	3.1-4.11: probatio	3.1-4.31: probatio	3.1-4.31: experiential argument
					4.12-5.12: conclusio	4.12-6.10: exhortatio	5.1-6.10: exhortatio	5.1-6.10: causal argument
5.1-6.10: exhortatio	5.1-6.10: refutatio	5.1-6.10: injunctions	5.1-6.10: probatio-exhortatio		5.13-6.10: interpolation
6.11-18: epistolary postscript (peroratio)	6.11-18: epistolary postscript	6.11-18: epilogue/postscript	6.11-18: épilogue	6.11-18: epilogue	6.11-18: amplificatio	6.11-18: subscription	6.11 18: epistolary postscript (peroratio)	6.11-18: postscript/epilogue/conclusio

Note that these scholars analyzed this letter, written in Greek by a guy who barely ever used a Latin term, as if he were accomplished at Roman rhetoric in Latin. They can't even agree which rhetorical techniques were employed, as rhetorical manuals of the time varied considerably.

Greeks had their own form of rhetoric, which was simpler and addressed the facts, while Romans loved to add all sorts of persuasive Jedi mind-tricks to jazz up their speeches.

In Roman style rhetoric, the winner was often NOT the one who addressed the facts of a case in law or politics most accurately, but the one whose speech was the most entertaining or self satisfying to the hearers.

What these rhetorical analyses were intended to do is make the letter, as a whole, a work of a rhetorical genius, who had purposely employed a rare technique where you build up something, then tear it down, leaving the listener befuddled, in order to point to a different, better, interpretation.

So, these scholars IMHO were hoping to "save" Paul's letters *as is* (as handed down) rather than allow for wholesale editing or interpolations. Paul's letters are befuddling, for sure, but I do not think this was due to employment of Roman style rhetoric.

I believe that scholars who use chiasms as a means of analyzing Mark (or any other Gospel) are selecting, rearranging, and ignoring things somewhat arbitrarily to get what they want to think is "there."

My 2 centavos.

DCH

[Ben C. Smith]

I believe that scholars who use chiasms as a means of analyzing Mark (or any other Gospel) are selecting, rearranging, and ignoring things somewhat arbitrarily to get what they want to think is "there."

Exactly so.

[MrMacSon]

Sounds like David Oliver Smith's book: Unlocking the Puzzle: The Keys to the Christology and Structure of the Original Gospel of Mark

That was my initial thought, though I didn't post it for that reason. I posted it b/c some people on this forum are interested in Secret Mark (and couldn't find a thread that it might have fitted easily on).

I'm not (fully) sold.

• [not (fully) sold] On ... ?

[gryan]

Re: Secret Gospel of Mark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Gospel_of_Mark

The jury is still out on this one.

If anyone had what it would take to create such a forgery, it would have been Morton Smith! What are the odds that he, of all people, would be the one to find an authentic one-of-a-kind document such as "The Secret Gospel of Mark"? On the face of it, forgery seems likely.

Years ago, after reading SC Carlsons book attempting to debunk it, I decided it was probably fake. But as time goes on, I'm not so sure.

My mind is more open now to unlikely things happening in meaningfully unlikely ways. Jung called it synchroicity. I have experienced it with texts. Sometimes I am drawn to texts in ways that defy logic. For that reason, I enjoy used bookstores. It was in a used bookstore that I found "my" copy of Alan Segal's book on Paul's "Third Heaven" ascent where he interprets it as a real event, and as first century Jewish mysticism. Even better than a used bookstore: When I lived in Baltimore, "The Book Thing" sprung up within easy walking distance of where we lived.
https://bookthing.org/

Coincidence? Well maybe. Anyway, in "The Book Thing", all books are donated and all are free. So I would go there every Saturday and look around with an openness to such book-telepathy. I did it weekly and consciously for years. I cannot prove it to a skeptic, but I think that there is a kind of telepathy between texts and readers. The results are non-random, are synchronisticly (often annoyingly) meaningful.

In his book Flipped, Jeffery Kripal addresses such events with an open mind https://kripal.rice.edu/
He notes that it seems to happen around texts, often with underlying sexual meaning.

On a personal note, before I had heard about Kripal, I read books by his colleague at Rice, April Deconick. The first time I learned about her, it was when I found her book on GJohn and GThomas parallels in a used bookstore:
https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Mystics-A ... 0567081281

[Charles Wilson]

Note that these scholars analyzed this letter, written in Greek by a guy who barely ever used a Latin term, as if he were accomplished at Roman rhetoric in Latin. They can't even agree which rhetorical techniques were employed, as rhetorical manuals of the time varied considerably.

In my continuing effort to irritate everyone with stuff about "Mucianus", I NOTE the following:

William Smith, ed., Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, p. 1118:

"Mucianus was not only a general and statesman, but an orator and an historian. His powers of oratory are greatly praised by Tacitus, who tells us that Mucianus could address an oratory even in Greek with great effect..."

Doesn't really mean much but many of the markers are there...

[perseusomega9]

I just never understand how you get from A to C, your posts remind me of the underwear gnomes from South Park

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts

[Aleph One]

Scott G. Brown's Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery (2005) (along with other articles) convinced me that a 20th century forgery (especially by Smith) shouldn't even be on the table, at this point. That's not to say the letter definitely originates from Clement in the second century, or really describes an alternative, or more complete, version of Mark (etc.), but that doesn't stop it from being sadly under-appreciated thanks to a scandal that (imho) has been largely discredited.

[MrMacSon]

Behind the Seven Veils, I: The Gnostic Life Setting of the Mystic Gospel of Mark

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in an essay review of [Peter] Jeffery’s book [Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled]...I endeavoured to show that “the great mysteries” do not refer to baptism and the gospel pericope does not depict baptism. Since then I have come to realize that the Letter to Theodore contains another, less direct and entirely overlooked indication of the life setting of the mystic gospel. This is found in the detail that Mark created it by adding “certain traditions (λόγια) of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of the sevenfold veiled truth” (I.24—26).

When we examine what the imagery of entering the innermost sanctuary denotes in Clement’s writings we realize that this “space” was inaccessible to catechumens and ordinary believers; like the great mysteries that it contains, this sanctuary was accessible only to the Christian equivalent of the Jewish high priest, which Clement called the true gnostic. This overlooked evidence from Clement’s writings verifies the gnostic life setting of the mystic gospel and the letter’s concordance with Clement’s program of Christian education. [p.249]

. . . < . . omit . . >

[p.258f] ... the Christian great mysteries are inextricably related to the exegesis of scripture. A Jewish form of this idea was already more than a century old. Clement’s Jewish predecessor Philo wrote:

“For I myself, having been initiated in the great mysteries (μυηθεὶς τὰ μεγάλα μυστήρια) by Moses, the friend of God, nevertheless, when subsequently I beheld Jeremiah the prophet, and learnt that he was not only initiated (μύστης), but was also a competent hierophant (ἱεροφάντης), I did not hesitate to become his pupil” (Cher. 14.49).

Here particular books of the Bible (the five books of Moses and the book Jeremiah) have the special ability to metaphorically initiate a reader into the great mysteries. The Letter to Theodore similarly designates Mark’s mystic gospel as a mystagogue, and the unwritten explanations (“the hierophantic teaching of the Lord”) as the hierophant.

A brief explanation of how purely intellectual and pneumatic realities are revealed through allegorical exegesis appears in Strom. VI.11.86.1. Clement uses geometry, one of the disciplines studied in the lesser mysteries, to elucidate deeper meanings of certain design specifications presented in scripture. He explains that the tabernacle and Noah’s ark were “built so as to be of the most rational proportions, divine in conception, to accord with that gift of understanding which leads us from sensible to intelligible things, or rather from these particular objects to holy things and to the holy of holies.” The Letter to Theodore’s information that Mark “transferred to his former book the things suitable to those studies which make for progress toward gnosis” (I.20—21) would refer to passages of this sort, which are elucidated by knowledge gained through training in the encyclical disciplines that investigate the physical world (Strom. I.1.15.3).

ENTRY INTO THE INNERMOST SANCTUARY OF THE TRUTH

The preceding conclusions concerning the gnostic life setting of the mystic gospel are founded on the meaning of initiation into the great mysteries in Clement’s Stromateis (I.28.176.1—2; IV.1.3.1; V.11.70.7—71.5; cf. I.1.15.3). That this is what the Letter to Theodore is referring to can now be confirmed through an examination of what its description of entering the innermost sanctuary of the truth would mean within a work attributed to Clement: “but to the stories already written he (Mark) added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain logia of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the inner-most sanctuary of the sevenfold veiled truth” (I.24-26, [Brown's] Interpretation) ...


The Hellenic and Jewish-Christian Backgrounds

The Letter to Theodore’s imagery of entering the innermost sanctuary is a mixed metaphor, combining Greek mystery initiation language with Jewish mystical reflection on the veils and sanctuaries of the Jerusalem temple. The metaphor of a mystagogue leading initiates evokes the practice at Eleusis, where persons who had already undergone the great mysteries served as sponsors for the first-time initiates and led them into the Telesterion, the temple in which the spectacle of the great mysteries occurred.


CONCLUSIONS

Everything that the Letter to Theodore says about the mystic gospel fits within this framework. It explains that Mark’s Alexandrian gospel was expanded with “the things suitable to those studies which make for progress toward gnosis,” which naturally implies an audience of aspiring gnostics (I.20—21; see the appendix on the meaning of “those who were being perfected”). Further, the letter tells us that the mystic gospel was “kept with utmost discretion, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.” ... This sentence rather implies a select few, as we would expect if the audience consists of the gnostics, whom Clement frequently refers to as “the few” ... [pp.277]

. . . < . . omit . . >

[p.278] The letter is describing a text that was expounded allegorically(mystically) to the most advanced students as a means of transmitting the unwritten gnostic tradition. As the present paper illustrates, this practice is amply attested in Clement’s undisputed writings. Its foundation in Alexandrian Judaism is visible in Philo’s writings, especially his description of the Therapeutae, the senior members of which spent their days in the sanctuary of a special room being “initiated into the mysteries of the holy life” (τὰ τοῦ σεμνοῦ βίου μυστήρια τελοῦνται) by reading the Torah allegorically (Contempl. 25, 28, 30. 78), Incidentally, Philo tells us that these Jewish philosophers commonly dressed only in a linen sheet (ὀθóνη; 38), which is what the young man in the mystic gospel wears when Jesus teaches him the mystery of the kingdom of God (περιβεβλημένος σινδόναἐπὶ γυμνοῦ). Hence, I can see no justification for treating this letter as a work about some other practice, from some other era, written by someone else for reasons that nobody is quite sure about.

https://www.academia.edu/4605298/Behind ... el_of_Mark
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Behind the Seven Veils, II: Assessing Clement of Alexandria’s Knowledge of the Mystic Gospel of Mark -

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We first learned of a letter of Clement of Alexandria “to Theodore” and of the “mystic” Gospel of Mark that it quotes in 1958, when Morton Smith catalogued a manuscript (Mar Saba 65) that constitutes the only extant evidence for both these works. The lack of external corroboration for this gospel has made the spectre of forgery particularly hard to dispel.

Fortunately, indirect evidence bearing on Clement’s knowledge of this gospel exists but has been mostly overlooked. Given the letter’s premise that the gospel pericope which it quotes has a “true interpretation” of a mystical (i.e., allegorical) nature, we might expect that aspects of this interpretation would appear in Clement’s undisputed writings in the various places where he expounds equivalent phrases (e.g., “for he had many possessions” in Mark 10:22; “the mystery of the kingdom of God” in Mark 4:11) and themes (e.g., Jesus raising a person from the dead, a period of seven days, wearing a single linen garment) in other texts. The present paper asks, what would happen if we apply those allegorical expositions of other texts to the mystic gospel’s story about Jesus and the young man? Certainly if the letter isn’t by Clement, and he did not actually know this gospel story, we wouldn’t expect these scattered expositions to make much sense when brought together, and we most certainly wouldn’t expect them to combine into a consistent allegorical interpretation that could constitute the “true interpretation” promised at the point where the letter breaks off. Yet that is precisely what happens.

The conspicuous parallels in Clement’s expositions of other texts all concern aspects of his path to perfection through the church, and they combine in their proper order and with remarkable detail to represent Jesus leading the young man through this entire progression. Hence we can conclude that he indeed knew this gospel and wrote this letter.

https://www.academia.edu/35573174/Behin ... el_of_Mark
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