Secret Mark's Angry Jesus

[Aleph One]

Can anyone tell me who Jesus is angry with in this passage (supposedly) from the Secret Gospel of Mark, as it appears in Scott Brown's Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery:

II.23 “And they come to Bethany. And
there was there a certain woman
whose brother of hers [sic]
II.24 had died. And coming, she prostrated
before Jesus and says to
him, ‘Son
II.25 of David have mercy on me.’ But
the disciples rebuked her. And
having become angry
II.26 Jesus went away with her into
the garden where the tomb was.
And
III.1 immediately was heard from the
tomb a great cry. And approaching,
Jesus
III.2 rolled the stone from the door of
the tomb, and going in immediately
where
III.3 the young man was, he stretched
out the hand and raised him, having
grasped
III.4 the hand.

Part of the Secret Mark letter from Brown's 'Mark's Other Gospel'

SecretAngryJesus.JPG (78.29 KiB) Viewed 10073 times

I can recall some past talk here about Gospel manuscript variants which disagree on whether Jesus was, or wasn't, angry with someone while performing a miracle. (Was it John 11:33 maybe?) This seems similar but the source being apocryphal is making it hard for me to find anything about it.

Is Jesus angry with the woman for some reason? With his disciples for being dismissive of her? Or could it be a translation issue, and (e.g.) it means "his emotions were raised" maybe? (That's how I see some trying to explain it in John 11:33.) And, sorry my fonts suck apparently, so I had to use a screenshot to get the untranslated version in, but maybe that will help?

Thanks a lot to anyone who gets a chance to look at this!

[Aleph One]

Welp, speak of the devil (as they say ):

Brown's Explanation

SecretAngryJesus2.JPG (41.19 KiB) Viewed 10068 times

I was able to find the above later on in the book. It appears as far as Scott Brown is concerned, Jesus's anger is directed at his hard-hearted disciples. I would say that's the most natural interpretation anyway, IMO. Maybe someone out there disagrees with this reading, though, so please reply if you do. If I find anything more that's relevant in the rest of the book I'll probably post it here too.

[Secret Alias]

My supposition would be that the anger and emotion that is characteristic of the gospel of Mark (not just 'secret' Mark) is deliberate. It is even at odds with Clement's repeated notion of the 'impassible' nature of Christ. Some takeaways:

1. when Irenaeus says that those who prefer the gospel according to Mark say that Jesus suffered and Christ was impassible likely applied to Clement's church of St Mark in Alexandria (and thus represents the original exegesis of the text as well as its original lost form = 'secret/mystery')
2. the dividing of 'Jesus' and 'Christ' is important to understand the anger and emotion of Jesus in the narrative. He is clearly not the ultimate God but a subordinate imperfect (note his statement about God the Father in chapter 10)
3. Jesus is most likely the angry 'Jewish' god, the young warrior who defeated the army of Pharaoh

If these suppositions hold up then it would stand to reason that Morton Smith did not compose and write (indeed these are two different 'acts' if you will, each of which have technical difficulties associated with them) the fragment. Morton Smith assumed (as was his prejudice) that Jesus was a human (Jewish) magician.

[Secret Alias]

On another note it is noteworthy where my research on the text is at the present moment. I recently went through Quesnel's attempts to reproduce the document on lined paper (while he stayed at the Jerusalem Patriarchate in 1984). All his attempts were unsatisfactory even though he had the forms of each letters in front of him and all he was doing was attempting to reproduce something rather than create something fresh (the difference between copying the Mona Lisa and inventing a new Mona Lisa-type painting). The secret which Morton Smith and Quesnel did not realize was that the scribe and indeed all scribes in the period used a mastara, a simple object which has been discovered in discarded form, in other monasteries - http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/. This object 'scratches' impressions in blank pages to allow for writing to appear as 'straight lines' rather than drunken jiberish. Smith knew nothing about the mastera nor did any researchers until recent times. They were known to be used by Arabic scribes. But recent research has shown they were staples in Greek monasteries. To argue that Smith wrote the text by hand implies that he not only:

1. knew Mark's habits better than scholarship of his day (i.e. the 'anger' of Jesus, chiasmic structures).
2. knew Clement's habits better than scholarship of his day (stylistic, language)
3. knew ancient letter writing conventions better than scholarship of his day
4. knew Byzantine scribal conventions (= the use of the mastara) better than scholarship of two minutes ago (the use of mastara in Greek monasteries was first uncovered by Tselikas's visit to Mount Athos this decade).

All of these representing things he was not a specialist in. Once again, scholars should on occasion be clobbered with sticks for their insane defense of their parents ideals (and at the expense of real research into the period of early Christianity). I would like to be first in line giving out these 'patty-whacks'

[Aleph One]

@Secret Alias: Thanks for the replies. As far as the angry and emotional Jesus being characteristic of GMark, I'd never thought about it from that angle before, but I think I see what you mean. There are some points in there where he behaves more like an individual human being, instead of an all-powerful, all-knowing angel knowingly fulfilling his purpose in the world, like it sometimes seems elsewhere in the NT.

I also agree with you wholeheartedly (from the research I've done, and as a lay-man) on the Secret Mark letter NOT being a forgery, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. That's a great list actually and I'd like to see anyone still strongly in the forgery camp respond to the points in it!

[Roger Viklund]

In this context, I think Scott Brown’s point is better presented in his reply (or review) of Peter Jeffery’s book, in which Jeffery argues (or more correctly asserts) that Jesus becomes angry on the woman because he dislikes women and love men.

Essay review of The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, by Peter Jeffery:

This novel reading of proskuneō and its implication that Jesus became angry with and rejected the sister are all but impossible to reconcile with the subsequent detail that Jesus “went away with her” (ἀπῆλθεν μετ᾽ αὐτῆς) to the tomb (LGM 1:4). Clearly Jesus was not angry with the sister but with his disciples for rebuking her. The interpersonal dynamics are the same here as in Mark 10:13–16 and 10:46–52. In the former, people bring children to Jesus “that he might touch them,” but the disciples rebuke them, and Jesus becomes indignant with them. In the latter, “a blind beggar” cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” and “many rebuked him, telling him to be silent,” whereupon Jesus alone takes interest in him. Unless we apply a hermeneutics of perversion to the words “touch them” and “Son of David, have mercy on me!” we must suppose that in both cases the rebuke reflects a misunderstanding that the Messiah is too important to be bothered by insignificant people such as children and a blind beggar and that Jesus reproves this elitist attitude in the act of granting the request. Jesus’ decision in LGM 1:4 to leave his disciples behind and to go away with the sister to the tomb makes perfect sense as a third instance of showing compassion on a person whom his own followers dismissed as trivial. The story makes little sense in Jeffery’s terms, for if Jesus shared his disciples’ disdain for the sister, he would have left the sister behind and gone off with his disciples; likewise, if the sister’s request were for sex, there would be no reason for Jesus’ decision to go to the brother’s tomb. Clearly, Jesus thought that she was seeking a miracle on behalf of her brother. There is no room for sexual double entendre here.

[Aleph One]

@Roger Viklund thanks for that quote. It reinforces the point and presents a very good theory for why the episode was told like so in the first place. Also, I'm not sure what kind of Mark Peter Jeffrey is positing, but it sounds unconventional, to say the least. Even so, I shouldn't prejudge something I haven't even studied.

[rakovsky]

Can anyone tell me who Jesus is angry with in this passage (supposedly) from the Secret Gospel of Mark, as it appears in Scott Brown's Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery:

I can recall some past talk here about Gospel manuscript variants which disagree on whether Jesus was, or wasn't, angry with someone while performing a miracle. (Was it John 11:33 maybe?) This seems similar but the source being apocryphal is making it hard for me to find anything about it.

Is Jesus angry with the woman for some reason? With his disciples for being dismissive of her? Or could it be a translation issue, and (e.g.) it means "his emotions were raised" maybe? (That's how I see some trying to explain it in John 11:33.) And, sorry my fonts suck apparently, so I had to use a screenshot to get the untranslated version in, but maybe that will help?

Thanks a lot to anyone who gets a chance to look at this!

In John 11:33, I take it that Jesus is angry because the women, having sent for him, and the Jews are weeping when he meets them, not focusing on his power to raise Lazarus.("33. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.") Jesus I think usually in the NT gets angry over things like faithlessness, impiety, and sin.

In Secret Mark, however, Jesus, like the disciples, just seems angry as soon as a woman comes up to ask him for help. This reminds me of how the disciples wanted to keep children away from Jesus (implicitly because children were seen as inferior in society) and he rebuked them that the children should be allowed to come to him and that one must be like a child to enter heaven. In Secret Mark however, Jesus is joining the disciples in rebuking a woman who comes to him for help, suggesting that Jesus is rejecting women from his circle. In the NT, Jesus wasn't angry that women or children wanted to come to him or get his help. This incongruity between Secret Mark and the known gospels is another piece of evidence against Secret Mark's authenticity for me.

It's not clear at first in the first passage of Secret Mark what Jesus is mad about - the woman's request or the disciples' rebuke. But in the second passage of Secret Mark (after Mark 10:46), the same women want to meet with Jesus and Jesus rejects them, with no further explanation. So the sense in the second passage, and consequently in the first passage, is that Jesus is angry over women wanting to join or get help from him.

[Roger Viklund]

I personally think it’s obvious that Jesus, if he became angered with anyone, became angered with the disciples. 1) The woman prostrates herself before Jesus and asks for his help. 2) Then the disciples rebuke the woman. 3) Then Jesus becomes angry. 4) And he follows the woman. Why would he follow her if he became angry at her request? The obvious reading is that he became angry with the disciples because they rebuked the woman. And the second passage only says that Jesus did not receive the women, not that he became angry with them. It could, of course, be that he did not receive them because he was angry (with them), but that is not in the text and not an obvious interpretation of the situation. Fact is, we are told nothing about why he didn’t receive them.

[rakovsky]

My supposition would be that the anger and emotion that is characteristic of the gospel of Mark (not just 'secret' Mark) is deliberate. It is even at odds with Clement's repeated notion of the 'impassible' nature of Christ. Some takeaways:

1. when Irenaeus says that those who prefer the gospel according to Mark say that Jesus suffered and Christ was impassible likely applied to Clement's church of St Mark in Alexandria (and thus represents the original exegesis of the text as well as its original lost form = 'secret/mystery')
2. the dividing of 'Jesus' and 'Christ' is important to understand the anger and emotion of Jesus in the narrative. He is clearly not the ultimate God but a subordinate imperfect (note his statement about God the Father in chapter 10)
3. Jesus is most likely the angry 'Jewish' god, the young warrior who defeated the army of Pharaoh

If these suppositions hold up then it would stand to reason that Morton Smith did not compose and write (indeed these are two different 'acts' if you will, each of which have technical difficulties associated with them) the fragment. Morton Smith assumed (as was his prejudice) that Jesus was a human (Jewish) magician.

I don't know why Christ getting angry is against the impassible (incapable of suffering or feeling pain, referring to the divine) nature of Christ, since there are plenty of places in the OT where the immortal God gets wrathful, as pointed out in point #3 above ("the angry 'Jewish' God").

Point 1 should be reworded to be better clarified:
"when Irenaeus says that those who prefer the gospel according to Mark say that Jesus suffered and Christ was impassible likely applied to Clement's church of St Mark in Alexandria (and thus represents the original exegesis of the text as well as its original lost form = 'secret/mystery')"
I think you mean that when "when Irenaeus says that those who prefer the gospel according to Mark say that Jesus suffered and Christ was impassible, IRENAEUS' CHARACTERIZATION OF MARK'S FANS likely applied to Clement's church of St Mark in Alexandria (and thus represents the original exegesis of the text as well as its original lost form = 'secret/mystery')"

But anyway, I don't perceive Secret Mark to be portraying Jesus as wrathful and Christ as not wrathful, since Mark seems to equate Jesus with Christ. To argue otherwise, or even to say that Morton Smith forged the text and put that division of Jesus vs Christ into Secret Mark would be reading too much into it, I think. The whole Jesus vs. Logos & 2 natures divisions debate seems to deal more with the 5th century Nestorianism and Monophysitism debates.

Sometimes simpler is better.