Matthew 13.10-17: 10 And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?" 11 Jesus answered them, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. 12 For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. 13 Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, 'You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; 15 for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes; otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them.' 16 But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. 17 For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.
Mark 4.10-12: 10 As soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables. 11 And He was saying to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, 12 so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven."
Luke 8.9-10: 9 His disciples began questioning Him as to what this parable meant. 10 And He said, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.
Mark 4.10-12: 10 As soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables. 11 And He was saying to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, 12 so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven."
Luke 8.9-10: 9 His disciples began questioning Him as to what this parable meant. 10 And He said, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.
Now, this emphasis on keeping things a mystery for outsiders but instructing insiders is by no means universal throughout the synoptic gospels. The eschatological materials, for example, appear to give information and signs which are meant to be intelligible to anybody who listens, as summed up in a Marcan verse at the end of the Olivet Discourse:
Mark 13.37: 37 "What I say to you I say to all, 'Be on the alert!'"
While the parables seem, according to the explanation, to be designed to separate insiders from outsiders, this open warning to all gives one pretty much the opposite impression.
I do not actually think that the parables were originally composed for any such divisive purpose; I suspect that the theme of mystery has been imposed upon them after the fact. Indeed, I have argued before, with respect to the very parable to which this explanation is attached, that the interpretation of the parable of the sower postdates the actual parable itself:
I stand by that analysis. The secret teaching which the disciples receive consists of the interpretation of the parable; the parable itself is, just like all of the other (mostly uninterpreted) parables in the synoptic gospels, the free and open teaching which characterizes early Christian preaching: "What I say to you I say to all."Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Tue Jun 05, 2018 8:09 amThis is my current best explanation for the unevenness, and for the parable as a whole with relation to its Marcan context:
I believe that this explanation of mine attempts both to understand each aspect on its own (understanding the fourfold parable as a traditional element forced imperfectly into the Christian twofold understanding of one's status in the kingdom) and to understand how it all works together for Mark as an author (whose purpose is not descriptive, as if to map out the different kinds of Christians, but rather prescriptive: do this and not that). It explains both why the numerous discrepancies exist (because the author is adapting materials to uses they were not originally intended for) and why Mark would tolerate them (because the author was instructing, not analyzing).
- The parable is not of Marcan origin. Mark likes to simplify spectra of humans into binary categories: insiders and outsiders, those "with me" and those "against me," those who will enter the kingdom and those who will not. (Mark is not alone in this Christian predilection.) The parable, however, dwells upon nuances. A similar process can be seen in Matthew and Luke with respect to the parable of the pounds/talents, vis-à-vis the version in one of the Jewish-Christian gospels, which I argue to have preceded the canonical version: an original array of three separate outcomes has been flattened into only two outcomes, acceptance and rejection.
- But the parable is colorful and meaningful, is part of the growing tradition, and it is a good example of something that a Galilean peasant teacher might have uttered, so Mark includes it in his gospel, the more so because he can both relate it to the kingdom of God and wring an allusion to Peter out of it in the second kind of soil.
- The explanation of the parable is younger than the parable itself, however. The explanation does not always fully reflect the parable itself. For example, there is no real sense in which the first seed, which falls by the side of the road and is immediately eaten by birds, can be said to have entered into the ground, yet the explanation speaks of the word that "has been sown into them" (τὸν ἐσπαρμένον εἰς αὐτούς), the hearers. The first soil, for which "hearing" consists of the seed merely falling upon the ground, contrasts with the third soil, for which "hearing" seems to consist of the seed actually starting to sprout.
- Mark knows that the disciples would later become apostles and leaders of the church, and he has no desire to mitigate this fact. However, Mark also wishes to use the disciples as foolish foils for Jesus in the gospel. This bifurcation creates a real tension in the gospel: are the disciples insiders or outsiders? In fact, Mark is inconsistent on this score, even within chapter 4. On the one hand, the disciples are given "the mystery of the kingdom of God" in verse 11, explicitly contrasting them with outsiders who receive only parables; the disciples receive, not only the parables, but also the explanations, which Jesus immediately proceeds to give them in verses 13-20. So obviously the disciples are insiders. On the other hand, it is outsiders who are characterized as hearing and not understanding in verse 12; and Jesus immediately expresses frustration that the disciples, despite hearing, have not understood in verse 13. So obviously the disciples are outsiders. Real life does not tend to fall neatly into insider and outsider categories. Just as the disciples' insider/outsider status is ambiguous, due to the uneasy interplay of the fact that they became respected church leaders with the probable fiction that they were bumbling idiots during Jesus' ministry, so too the insider/outsider status of each of the first three categories of soil is ambiguous, because it is hard in real life to force nuance into binary categories.
- The whole parable comes off in the end as a warning not to lose one's insider status and become an outsider. Be like the soil in which the seed multiplies manifold, not like the soils in which the seed sooner or later fails to produce. This paraenetic focus is what renders the imperfect fit of the four categories with a simple insider/outsider status irrelevant from the authorial point of view, explaining why the author either did not notice or did not care about the tensions in this chapter.
Now, this observation that the secret explanation seems to postdate the open teaching affects only a tiny portion of the synoptic record. There are, however, gospels for which the emphasis on the receipt of secret teaching or the explanation of mysteries seems to impact most of or even the whole of the text. These are the sayings or dialogue gospels, texts which purport to offer discourses, practically uninterrupted by narrative, between Jesus and various followers of his. A quick survey of (most or all of) the sayings or dialogue gospels which predate Constantine (both for convenience and because Christian culture changed so dramatically under Constantine) yields the following results:
Gospel of Mary 10: 10 Peter said to Mary, "Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than all other women. Tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don't because we haven't heard them." Mary responded, "I will teach you about what is hidden from you." And she began to speak these words to them. ....
Gospel of Judas 0: 0 This is the secret message of judgment Jesus spoke with Judas Iscariot over a period of eight days, three days before he celebrated Passover.
Gospel of Thomas 0: 0 These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.
Apocryphon of James 0: 0 James writes to [...]: Peace be with you from Peace, love from Love, grace from Grace, faith from Faith, life from Holy Life! Since you asked that I send you a secret book which was revealed to me and Peter by the Lord, I could not turn you away or gainsay (?) you; but I have written it in the Hebrew alphabet and sent it to you, and you alone. But since you are a minister of the salvation of the saints, endeavor earnestly and take care not to rehearse this text to many — this that the Savior did not wish to tell to all of us, his twelve disciples. But blessed will they be who will be saved through the faith of this discourse. I also sent you, ten months ago, another secret book which the Savior had revealed to me. Under the circumstances, however, regard that one as revealed to me, James; but this one .... ...the twelve disciples were all sitting together and recalling what the Savior had said to each one of them, whether in secret or openly, and putting it in books — but I was writing that which was in my book — lo, the Savior appeared, after departing from us while we gazed after him. And five hundred and fifty days since he had risen from the dead, we said to him, "Have you departed and removed yourself from us?" But Jesus said, "No, but I shall go to the place from whence I came. If you wish to come with me, come!"
Apocryphon of John 0: 0 The teaching of the savior, and the revelation of the mysteries and the things hidden in silence, even these things which he taught John, his disciple.
Book of Thomas the Contender 0: 0 The secret words that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas which I, even I, Mathaias, wrote down, while I was walking, listening to them speak with one another.
Sophia of Jesus Christ 0: 0 After he rose from the dead, his twelve disciples and seven women continued to be his followers, and went to Galilee onto the mountain called "Divination and Joy." When they gathered together and were perplexed about the underlying reality of the universe and the plan, and the holy providence, and the power of the authorities, and about everything the Savior is doing with them in the secret of the holy plan, the Savior appeared — not in his previous form, but in the invisible spirit. And his likeness resembles a great angel of light. But his resemblance I must not describe. No mortal flesh could endure it, but only pure, perfect flesh, like that which he taught us about on the mountain called "Of the Olives" in Galilee. And he said: "Peace be to you, My peace I give you!" And they all marveled and were afraid. The Savior laughed and said to them: "What are you thinking about? Are you perplexed? What are you searching for?" Philip said: "For the underlying reality of the universe and the plan."
Gospel of the Savior: [Too fragmentary.]
Dialogue of the Savior 0: 0 The Savior said to his disciples, "Already the time has come, brothers, for us to abandon our labor and stand at rest. For whoever stands at rest will rest forever. And I say to you, be always above [...] time [...] you [...] be afraid of [...] you [...] anger is fearful [...] arouse anger [...] but since you have [...] they accepted these words concerning it with fear and trembling, and it set them up with governors, for from it nothing was forthcoming. But when I came, I opened the path, and I taught them about the passage which they will traverse, the elect and solitary, who have known the Father, having believed the truth and all the praises while you offered praise." .... "And to someone who will not know the root of all things, they remain hidden."
Gospel of Mani: I, Mani, the Apostle of Jesus the Friend, by the will of the Father, the true God, of Him, by whom I have become.... Everything that is and everything that was and will be is by His Power. The blessed ones will receive this message, the wise ones understand it, the strong ones will take on the wisdom of the wise....
Traditions of Matthias apud Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.1a: 1a Basilides, then, and Isidore the legitimate child and disciple of Basilides say that Matthias spoke to them apocryphal words which he had heard from the savior, having been taught in private.
Gospel of Judas 0: 0 This is the secret message of judgment Jesus spoke with Judas Iscariot over a period of eight days, three days before he celebrated Passover.
Gospel of Thomas 0: 0 These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.
Apocryphon of James 0: 0 James writes to [...]: Peace be with you from Peace, love from Love, grace from Grace, faith from Faith, life from Holy Life! Since you asked that I send you a secret book which was revealed to me and Peter by the Lord, I could not turn you away or gainsay (?) you; but I have written it in the Hebrew alphabet and sent it to you, and you alone. But since you are a minister of the salvation of the saints, endeavor earnestly and take care not to rehearse this text to many — this that the Savior did not wish to tell to all of us, his twelve disciples. But blessed will they be who will be saved through the faith of this discourse. I also sent you, ten months ago, another secret book which the Savior had revealed to me. Under the circumstances, however, regard that one as revealed to me, James; but this one .... ...the twelve disciples were all sitting together and recalling what the Savior had said to each one of them, whether in secret or openly, and putting it in books — but I was writing that which was in my book — lo, the Savior appeared, after departing from us while we gazed after him. And five hundred and fifty days since he had risen from the dead, we said to him, "Have you departed and removed yourself from us?" But Jesus said, "No, but I shall go to the place from whence I came. If you wish to come with me, come!"
Apocryphon of John 0: 0 The teaching of the savior, and the revelation of the mysteries and the things hidden in silence, even these things which he taught John, his disciple.
Book of Thomas the Contender 0: 0 The secret words that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas which I, even I, Mathaias, wrote down, while I was walking, listening to them speak with one another.
Sophia of Jesus Christ 0: 0 After he rose from the dead, his twelve disciples and seven women continued to be his followers, and went to Galilee onto the mountain called "Divination and Joy." When they gathered together and were perplexed about the underlying reality of the universe and the plan, and the holy providence, and the power of the authorities, and about everything the Savior is doing with them in the secret of the holy plan, the Savior appeared — not in his previous form, but in the invisible spirit. And his likeness resembles a great angel of light. But his resemblance I must not describe. No mortal flesh could endure it, but only pure, perfect flesh, like that which he taught us about on the mountain called "Of the Olives" in Galilee. And he said: "Peace be to you, My peace I give you!" And they all marveled and were afraid. The Savior laughed and said to them: "What are you thinking about? Are you perplexed? What are you searching for?" Philip said: "For the underlying reality of the universe and the plan."
Gospel of the Savior: [Too fragmentary.]
Dialogue of the Savior 0: 0 The Savior said to his disciples, "Already the time has come, brothers, for us to abandon our labor and stand at rest. For whoever stands at rest will rest forever. And I say to you, be always above [...] time [...] you [...] be afraid of [...] you [...] anger is fearful [...] arouse anger [...] but since you have [...] they accepted these words concerning it with fear and trembling, and it set them up with governors, for from it nothing was forthcoming. But when I came, I opened the path, and I taught them about the passage which they will traverse, the elect and solitary, who have known the Father, having believed the truth and all the praises while you offered praise." .... "And to someone who will not know the root of all things, they remain hidden."
Gospel of Mani: I, Mani, the Apostle of Jesus the Friend, by the will of the Father, the true God, of Him, by whom I have become.... Everything that is and everything that was and will be is by His Power. The blessed ones will receive this message, the wise ones understand it, the strong ones will take on the wisdom of the wise....
Traditions of Matthias apud Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.1a: 1a Basilides, then, and Isidore the legitimate child and disciple of Basilides say that Matthias spoke to them apocryphal words which he had heard from the savior, having been taught in private.
The last two on that list may be too fragmentary for our purposes, but I have included them for the sake of completeness because we can discern the same theme among their fragments or patristic descriptions as we do in the extant texts of the others on the list. Other gospel texts, including the gospels of Eve, of the Twelve, and of Basilides (which I am not convinced ever even existed; I think it may simply be a confusion for the attested commentary written by Basilides), fail to make the list because whatever fragments or descriptions we possess of them are too slender to allow us to tell whether the theme of mystery or secrecy was present or not. Furthermore, I have completely discounted texts which, like the Gospel of Truth (which happens to contain the theme of mystery or secrecy nonetheless), do not fit the genre; that is, they are not presented as sayings or dialogue by Jesus or his followers; they are just the author talking, as if in a sermon or a pamphlet.
The Sophia of Jesus Christ, it ought to be observed, is basically a rewrite of Eugnostos the Blessed, turning an explanatory text much like the Gospel of Truth into an actual dialogue gospel, simply by inserting Jesus and his disciples as mouthpieces for the discussion presented anonymously in the original. A similar process has happened in the Targumim of some of the canonical psalms, such as Psalm 91, which is transformed from a discursive whole into a brief dialogue between David, Solomon, and the Lord of the World.
The gospel of Philip is a marginal case, being comprised of nothing but sayings, but with the only attribution for those sayings residing in the title, "gospel of Philip." There is no real dialogue, and with the exception of a handful of sayings there is no figure (whether Jesus or "the Savior" or any of the disciples) speaking in the text. The theme of mystery definitely appears, but it does not explicitly describe the whole of the text in as obvious a manner as the rest of the examples:
Gospel of Philip 135-136: 135 At the present time, we have the manifest things of creation. We say, "The strong who are held in high regard are great people. And the weak who are despised are the obscure." Contrast the manifest things of truth: they are weak and despised, while the hidden things are strong and held in high regard. 136 The mysteries of truth are revealed, though in type and image. The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden. It is the Holy in the Holy.
Finally, the Epistle of the Apostles, while not entirely in the form of a dialogue gospel, certainly bears some of the stronger elements of the genre, and it seems both (A) to know this theme of secrecy or mystery and (B) to deliberately eschew it:
Epistle of the Apostles 1: 1 The book which Jesus Christ revealed unto his disciples: and how that Jesus Christ revealed the book for the company of the apostles, the disciples of Jesus Christ, even the book which is for all men. Simon and Cerinthus, the false apostles, concerning whom it is written that no man shall cleave unto them, for there is in them deceit wherewith they bring men to destruction. (The book has been written) that you may be not flinch or be troubled, and depart not from the word of the Gospel which you have heard. Like as we heard it, we keep it in remembrance and have written it for the whole world. We commend you our sons and our daughters in joy <in the grace of God (?)> in the name of God the Father the Lord of the world, and of Jesus Christ. Let grace be multiplied upon you.
This introduction sounds much more in keeping with the spirit of openness in the synoptic Olivet Discourse than it does with whatever is going on with the synoptic parable of the seed.
My suggestion is as follows. The offering of secret teaching, as expressed in many of the dialogue and sayings gospels quoted above, seems to presume the existence of free and open teaching. The sense is that you, the intended reader, have already been exposed to what is meant for the masses or for outsiders, but hold on! There is more; there is secret information granted only to the wise, only to the elect, only to insiders. In the case of the Apocryphon of James we also have a keen awareness of books purportedly written by the apostles, which would be, to my eye, another presumption, one which rests upon the existence of earlier gospel materials being circulated. The way in which the secret teaching in most of the above texts is offered is, I suggest, a sign of relative lateness in the gospel tradition.
I also suggest that the converse, the lack of a motif about such secret teachings, is not necessarily useful for relative dating. I doubt that a late text is obliged to tip its cap to secret teachings or to the existence of apostolic books or to anything else in particular; a late text may simply be imitating earlier texts. A text like the gospel of Philip, then, I do not think is touched by my suggestion; it may be early, or it may be late in the line of transmission. Likewise, too, a text like Eugnostos the Blessed. Its counterpart, however, the Sophia of Jesus Christ, would probably be relatively later than Eugnostos, which is the impression that a comparison of the two texts tends to have left, I think, upon most exegetes. Here, for example, is an excerpt from page 4 of the introduction to both texts in volume 3 of The Coptic Gnostic Library (Eug = Eugnostos; SJC = Sophia of Jesus Christ):
- Coptic Gnostic Gospels 3, Page 4.png (123.67 KiB) Viewed 9705 times
The analogy with the Targum of the book of Psalms, as mentioned above in connection with Psalm 91, would point in the same direction. I would add that, just as it was very tempting (but not necessarily universally so) in antiquity to publish originally anonymous Christian teaching under the name of one of the apostles or other important early figures, so too it was probably very tempting (but not necessarily universally so) to place originally anonymous Gnostic teaching (whether Christian or not) on the lips of Jesus and his apostles or other important early figures. We are looking at two manifestations of the same tendency.
The suggestion I am making is similar to, and also partly inspired by, a discussion by Mark Goodacre:
Mark Goodacre, "Dating the Crucial Sources in Early Christianity," pages 36-38: The more blatant signs, though, of the relative lateness of John and Thomas lie in their attempts at authorial self-representation. Where earlier Gospels like Mark and Matthew are anonymous and avoid attempting to project an authorial presence to lend authority to their work, the author of the Fourth Gospel makes claims to have been present, most notably in 19.35 and of course 21.24, “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and wrote them down (καὶ ὁ γράψας ταῦτα). We know that his testimony is true,” similar in style and literary function to the Incipit of Thomas, “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.” In both, the authorial self-representation legitimizes the message of the book in a way absent from the earlier Gospels but found explicitly in later texts like the Apocryphon of James. John’s claim enables the author to establish his Gospel’s authority – he knows that the things he reports are true because he was there. In Thomas, there is a further step: the author was present and, moreover, he was privy not just to the public teaching but also the secret teachings (Incipit, Thomas 13). / There is a trajectory among these early Christian texts, from the absence of authorial self-representation in Mark and Matthew, to hints in Luke and Acts (with the first person found in Luke 1.1-4 as well as in the “we” passages in Acts), to the marked but nevertheless still unnamed authorial presence in John, to the explicit self-representation of Didymos Judas Thomas in its Gospel’s Incipit, a naming that also leads the reader to pay special attention to Thomas 13. The same texts likewise witness to a growing consciousness of predecessor texts, from the πολλοί of Luke’s preface, to the many other books that could fill the world in the last verse of John, to the twelve disciples sitting around writing their books at the Last Supper in the Apocryphon of James.
Goodacre, however, did not cast his net in a very wide arc, limiting his discussion to the four canonical gospels (plus Acts) and the gospel of Thomas, with a single point from the Apocryphon of James thrown in, as well. Also, Goodacre may have been suggesting, at least indirectly, that an absence of authorial self-representation is a positive sign of the text being early, and I would probably demure from that suggestion. Its presence is probably a sign of being late; its absence is probably not a sign of much in either direction. A hopefully helpful insight that I am adding to the mix is that the offering of secret teaching is, in and of itself, a sign that other material, not so secret, has already been published. The secret material is filling in the gaps left by the free and open material, as it were.
I would not press the suggestion in this post so far as to precisely date every single text by the exact degree to which it offers secret teaching; rather, I would suggest merely that the overall trend probably leans in the direction I have outlined.
Ben.
