JW:
The Mark Saba Letter and The Difficult Reading Principle combined already make Secret Mark a candidate for originality. If Clement of Alexandria was aware of it late 2nd century, this would be long before any extant Manuscript of GMark containing the offending chapter 10 and would explain why.
The related Bible Scholarship has been dominated by looking at the Case for forgery. Prior to The Gospel Hoax Hoax Bible Scholarship generally assumed/argued that Secret Mark was forgery. Stephen Carlson's God-awful The Gospel Hoax attempted/claimed to definitively conclude forgery, but in an irony that the author of GMark/Secret GMark would really appreciate, ended up demonstrating the opposite. There is no direct evidence that Secret Mark is a forgery.
Hence this Thread. What is the argument for Secret Mark? As usual, because so little has been written on the subject, after a review of a few of my related posts at this forum, a brief search on the Internet and the analysis that follows, this Thread immediately becomes the best article ever written on the subject.
For Skeptical Textual Criticism, the only kind I ever use, Internal Evidence is exponentially more valuable than External evidence. Probably the most important criterion of Internal evidence is Theme. Theme has scope because it consists of quantity and quality. Quantity in repetition and quality in motivation. Our quest/question then for this Post, does the offending excerpt of Secret Mark have an important Markan theme? Where Is The Love?:
Verse | Who Has The Love | Successful Result? | Connecting Phrase For Goal | Commentary |
10
|
Jesus | No | The Kingdom of God | This is the last story in GMark before what's below. |
Secret Gospel of Mark
|
The Youth | Yes | The Kingdom of God | Goooooooal! |
Note the key parallels and the contrasting differences in the stories. In the first, Jesus loves the 1% but the 1% loves being the 1% so even though Jesus does all he can do, there is still failure. In the following (so to speak) story it is the 1% that loves Jesus and there is success. The lesson of the two stories combined is that it is the love for Jesus, and not from Jesus, that is the key to success. As far as Markan theme, is this theme repeated in GMark and is it an important theme of GMark?
Bonus material for Solo = "Mark's" (author) teasing of a physical relationship here with that type of language but a sub-text meaning of a spiritual relationship, is that a Markan theme and just how difficult a reading would it have been for 2nd century Christians who at the time could not simply kill those who criticized/interpreted it as a physical relationship?
Joseph
Skeptical Textual Criticism