Secret alias wrote:
Nakedness in antiquity wasn't the same as it is today.
Tell it to Ham.
A gymnasium was quite literally a naked place. There were a lot of naked with nakeds. In Maximus naked with naked means naked (dead) bodies. In that way there is a parallel. The youth is naked because in part he was dead. There are many Pauline references to death, baptism and unclothed.
Did the ancients have a different understanding of what a blasphemous carnal interpretation of the youth's naked body would be?
I find these conversations often take on a Tarantino on (gay) Top Gun dimension. If you want to see a cigar as a penis you most certainly can. But it can also just be a cigar.
I find that when you don't want to deal with the argument someone else is putting forward, you dodge it with inappropriate analogies and suggest the person reached their conclusion out of personal desires rather than dealing with the reasons they gave.
Let me run through this again.
When Clement writes:
But “naked man with naked man” and the other things about which you wrote are not found.
The things about which Theodore wrote are the same things referred to earlier in the Letter when Clement says:
I shall not hesitate to answer the questions you have asked, refuting the falsifications by the very words of the Gospel
So 'naked man with naked man' and the other things about which Theodore wrote, which are not found in the gospel, are the things Theodore asked about, the falsifications that Clement is refuting.
In the logic of the Letter, “naked man with naked man,” then, is one of the falsifications the Carpocratians added to the Letter. Clement has earlier told us that these added falsifications are shameless lies, and we might presume that the nature of these shameless lies is in keeping with the blasphemous and carnal interpretations of the Carpocratians which Clement referred to earlier.
Therefore: “Naked man with naked man” is one of the Carpocratian falsifications added to the secret Gospel. These falsifications are shameful lies. The shameless lies should be understood in a manner in keeping with the blasphemous and carnal interpretations the Carpocratians make of the secret Gospel (i.e., they are themselves also blasphemous and carnal). I seriously doubt the blasphemous and carnal shameless lies of the Carpocratians should be understood on the basis of the way words are used in Maximus of Tyre.
The reading I've proposed may not be an incontestable one, but it is a strong one, much stronger than what you've come up with so far. So far, you've preferred to ignore the context that “naked with naked” actually has in the Letter and just pulled a linguistic parallel out of some other text.
Secret Alias again:
It's the reference to the agape between youth and Jesus that contextualizes the nakedness too. And agape was taken to mean an orgiastic love feast outside of to Theodore. And Clement himself defends the Agape from these charges elsewhere in his writings.
Could you cite some examples of Clement defending against “these charges” elsewhere? I'd be interested to compare them to what we see in the Letter to Theodore. Maybe start with the closest parallels you can find.
Are you trying to tell me that this HAS NOTHING TO DO with the why the youth appeared 'naked with naked' with Jesus in Secret Mark? THAT'S why I brought up Maximus of Tyre.
I'm trying to tell you Clement says that the words “naked with naked” are not found in Secret Mark, but are falsifications of the Carpocratians and should be interpreted as such.
Best,
Ken