Secret Mark's Angry Jesus

[rakovsky]

Why would he follow her if he became angry at her request?

He could still follow the woman because, as John 11 says, this was a man whom Jesus loved.

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.

Good point that passage #2 doesn't specify that Jesus was angry at the women.

Still, this is my educated guess because #1 says that he was angry (either at the woman's request or at the disciples who rebuked her) and #2 says that he didn't welcome the women. I put #1 and #2 together to make this inference.

I would respond the same way to Scott Brown's objection (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2660#p59333) that takes the same view that Jesus was rebuking the disciples. In Mark 10's story of the children, it's clear that Jesus rebukes the disciples:

13 And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.
14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them ['Let the children come']

In Mark 46 etc. on the beggar, there is no indication that Jesus is mad.
In Secret Mark on the other hand, the woman makes a request, the disciples rebuke her, Jesus gets mad and follows the woman to help the young man whom he loves [sexually?] and a few verses letter doesn't welcome the women.

[Giuseppe]

The anger of Jesus against the disciples who prevent the woman from meeting Jesus seems to find the more close parallel here again:

“Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”

(Luke 11:53)

But there is not an identical anger when Jesus wants, pace the disciples, to meet the blind Bartimeus.
Despite of the fact that both Bartimeus in Mark and the woman of Secret Mark call Jesus as "son of David". This supports interpolation.

The anger is found really as a judaizing feature of Jesus as the Jewish god. Hardly a feature that goes against the judaization (as the Bartimeus episode was, since there the blind recognizes that Jesus is not the Jewish messiah).

[rakovsky]

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.

1. Did scholars of the day really not know about chiasms, and is such knowledge even needed if John 11 is a good fit for a chiasm in Mark 10:34, where a raising story would fit well (as one can see via gospel harmonization)? Some scholars like Michael Turton don't think that Secret Mark is part of a real chiasm in Mark. The scholars would have known about Jesus' anger issues in the NT though.
2. Clement's relevant style was known in 1958 due to the Compendium of his phrases, which M.Smith possessed.
3 & 4. I am skeptical that Morton Smith couldn't have known about the Mastara tool, since he spent much time with Greek monasteries and research on such topics. And I'm skeptical that one couldn't produce a similar looking document without using such a tool, because I there are plenty of modern reproductions of art and documents that don't use the same items used in the original's creation. I know that we don't have the physical Letter that M. Smith found for investigation and that scholars have had opposite views based on the photos.

This statement is strange and denigrating:

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'

But I know that there is a cultural problem called the English Vice. One of the theories some critics have written about Morton Smith's motives for forging Secret Mark is that he suffered from psychological and cultural issues related to repressed upper class English homoeroticism, and the forgery was an outlet for his problems.

[rakovsky]

The anger is found really as a judaizing feature of Jesus as the Jewish god. Hardly a feature that goes against the judaization (as the Bartimeus episode was, since there the blind recognizes that Jesus is not the Jewish messiah).

I don't know what you mean, since in the verse below the blind man says:

48 And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.

[Giuseppe]

The anger is found really as a judaizing feature of Jesus as the Jewish god. Hardly a feature that goes against the judaization (as the Bartimeus episode was, since there the blind recognizes that Jesus is not the Jewish messiah).

I don't know what you mean, since in the verse below the blind man says:

48 And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.

before the healing, he identified Jesus as davidic. But after the healing, there is some doubt about his still believing so.