Let's start at the beginning. It is a sign of a low intellect to demand certainty about things that can't be fully ascertained by our limited understanding. In the case of To Theodore I begin with the acknowledgement that there is going to be more that we don't know than we will ever know. This is compounded by the loss of the MS. If we had the MS this could be put to bed in an instant. But given the homophobic sensationalism initiated no doubt by QQ when he was at the monastery the MS is gone. Tselikas has told me, it's not there - anywhere. Probably destroyed because the implications of it being a homosexual forgery made to discredit the Church. So bye bye MS at least for now.
Without the MS we are left with competing explanations of the text. None of these explanations can in themselves be ever proved to be true without corroborating evidence. In the case of Morton Smith, a written confession, papers which show him working out the handwriting or the content of the letter, eyewitness testimony etc. With regards to the case for authenticity the bar is even higher. For even if there was a source somewhere which made mention of a secret gospel of Mark (which there isn't) the forgery proponents argue and will always argue that Morton Smith knew that piece of evidence and it shaped his fabrication of the letter. So in the case of a collection of letters of Clement at Mar Saba, so with regards to a 'secret gospel' used by the heretics in Prescription against Heresies, so with regards to anything that gets in the way of the evidence-less case for Morton Smith's alleged forgery of the MS.
That's where we start. So we start with TWO references to a 'youth' 'naked' with a 'linen cloth' in gospels attributed (somewhat reluctantly) to Mark. Why 'reluctantly'? Well the earliest gospels of Mark have or had to superscription. The first line of the gospel must have been its title. "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus." This is explains no doubt why Clement COULD deny the authorship of the gospel in the same way that the Marcionites apparently denied that the Letter to the Ephesians was addressed to the Ephesians (they said it was 'to the Laodiceans'). The Marcionites also apparently called their gospel 'the gospel of Jesus' owing - I believe - to a similar lack of superscription on their gospel. They similarly argued that NONE of the canonical gospels were actually written by the people ascribed in their respective superscriptions. To that end I conclude that they saw a lack of superscription as a sign of antiquity and the addition of such identifying markers as later developments.
Given then that we have two naked youth linen references in 'Mark gospels' IT COULD BE argued that Mark 14:51 - 2 STRENGTHENS the case for the authenticity of the Secret Mark passage.
Mark liked naked youths with linen cloths. It was an 'interest' of his. In the same way the case against Michael Jackson was based around the singer possessing certain 'art books' with naked men.
If Mark 14:51 - 2 sounds 'gay' to you then it seems reasonable that the Secret Mark passage should also sound gay and vice versa. But
arguing that one is gay but the other is not gay requires some justification. As such I make the case that the Secret Mark passage COULD represent a homosexual or homoerotic interest on the part of Mark. The Secret Mark passage could also be the product of someone attempting to manufacture a 'Markan passage' using Mark 14:51 - 2 as a kind of template - at least in theory. That person could be ancient or modern again in theory.
But with regards to what the Carpocratians say about Secret Mark this is even more ambiguous. This is because the Church Fathers are above all else polemicists. As Celsus demonstrates it is easy to put a spin on anyone's beliefs. Celsus says that those who stress a bodily resurrection are carnal. We don't get much in the way of heretical polemic against the orthodox but is certainly the example of the survival of such a 'zinger.' Similarly I feel that Clement's statement about a 'carnal and destructive' agape rituals is similarly rooted. Look at the citation from Instructor 2.1:
They partake of luxurious dishes, which a little after go to the dunghill. But we who seek the heavenly bread must role the belly, which is beneath heaven, and much more the things which are agreeable to it, which "God shall destroy," says the apostle, justly execrating gluttonous desires. For "meats are for the belly," for on them depends this truly carnal and destructive life.
The citation is from 1 Corinthians chapter 6 which, after discussing the example of 'sexual impropriety' in the previous chapter the apostle writes:
You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”
A few things can be extracted from Paul's original statement and Clement's 'spin' pertaining to the modern 'agape' in Alexandria:
1. the apostle addresses a sexual deviant or group of sexual deviants who like their sexual impropriety to the 'dietary freedom' that Christianity introduced to Judaism. They say 'we can consume any flesh' we want. The apostle says no, you will eventually be destroyed by God.
2. Clement similarly identifies the ritual or sacrament here as the 'agape' which is connected with the raising of the dead. Like Paul, Clement says there are those who would corrupt the 'love feast' with carnality and by inference sexuality.
The fact that the Carpocratians are specifically mentioned elsewhere in association with this carnal agape has great import on the discussion of Secret Mark.
For we see in Stromata 3 the following reference:
These then are the doctrines of the excellent Carpocratians. These, so they say, and certain other enthusiasts for the same wickednesses, gather together for feasts (I would not call their meeting an Agape), men and women together. After they have sated their appetites (" on repletion Cypris, the goddess of love, enters," as it is said), then they overturn the lamps and so extinguish the light that the shame of their adulterous "righteousness" is hidden, and they have intercourse where they will and with whom they will. After they have practiced community of use in this love-feast, they demand by daylight of whatever women they wish that they will be obedient to the law of Carpocrates-it would not be right to say the law of God. Such, I think, is the law that Carpocrates must have given for the copulations of dogs and pigs and goats. He seems to me to have misunderstood the saying of Plato in the Republic that the women of all are to be common. Plato means that the unmarried are common for those who wish to ask them, as also the theatre is open to the public for all who wish to see, but that when each one has chosen his wife, then the married woman is no longer common to all.
The obvious takeaways are:
1. the Carpocratians are likely also to be the sexual deviants who celebrate a carnal agape in Instructor 2.1
2. the Carpocratians are Platonists and apply Platonic myths and allegories to their celebration of Christian rituals.
This will be very significant when we consider what Clement says about the Carpocratians in To Theodore.
So once again I stress that unless it is conceded that Mark 14:51 - 52 is homosexual there is no overt homosexuality in the passage cited from Secret Mark. Clement does make reference to the Carpocratians being carnal and what not and adds that they make mention of "naked with naked" and it can be argued that he insinuates that this has a carnal origin or dirty implications but Clement's interpretation is subjective and consistent with his other statements about the group - save for the fact that in to Theodore he makes reference to homosexual carnality. If the statement he makes in Instructor 2 and Stromata 3 about Carpocratian 'carnality' are accurate then it might make sense to see the homosexual reference in To Theodore as not quite the same as what appears in the other books. But if we assume that Clement is exaggerating the libertine tendencies in the Instructor 2 and Stromata 3 then the reference in to Theodore is absolutely consistent with the other two.
So this is what it comes down to. We have one of two options. Either Clement is reporting the facts in all cases namely:
1. the Instructor 2 represents an attempt at factual reporting regarding a gourmands fantasy agape - with the ancient equivalent of smoked salmon, caviar and creme brule - or as I would hold Clement exaggerating the Carpocratian 'carnality' based on 1 Corinthians chapters 5 and 6.
2. the Stromata 3 represents an attempt at factual reporting where Carpocratian devotees ACTUALLY got men and women together and fucked each other in a massive orgy every Sunday or Clement is exaggerating the groups interest in Plato's Republic and the dictum that 'women should be shared in common.'
3. the to Theodore reference represents an attempt at factual reporting where Carpocratians say that Jesus and the youth fucked each others brains out or as I would hold it the Carpocratians betraying their Platonic roots interpreted not only the passage in Secret Mark but the mystery rite given to the catechumens when they completed their initiation as 'naked with naked' - i.e. the myth of the naked judged by the naked in the Gorgias.
I think that even in Celsus the 'Harpocratians of Salome' represent a Markan mystery cultus. Salome only appears in Mark. Marcellina is the original 'Carpocratian' in orthodox texts of Hegesippus. Epiphanius had access to Hegesippus and reports orgies in which men and women were fucking each other and men with men (orgies are necessarily bisexual affairs). I think the original anti-Carpocratian text was Hegesippus's Outlines and it started the nonsense that they were sexual libertines. I don't think it was factual and I think Clement was pinning any strange sounding statement that Theodore might have heard about the secret gospel on this Alexandrian heresy. Not sure if he actually believed it. Origen says he never saw a Carpocratian in his entire life.