Criddle and Secret Mark, Part 2

In Part 1, I showed how Stromata shows Clement of Alexandria employing language and thought similar to that found in the Mar Saba letter, supporting Clementine authorship of that letter. We were left, however, with two observations:

1) The first was that Secret Mark wasn't just an esoteric reading of Mark; rather, it contained more material than Mark, and that was where the esoteric readings lay.

2) The second was made by Andrew Criddle of the blog Hypotyposeis (and clarified in the comments to Part 1 above) that the use of Secret Mark in the Alexandrine church still doesn't quite make sense. It was kept from the public--whereas it shouldn't have mattered whether the public read it or not. Its esoteric teachings could only be revealed in private, so there should have been no fear of that keeping it from public reading.

We'll address these two observations now.


I think the key here that I don't think Clement is telling an accurate story at all in the Mar Saba letter. Why should we assume he was? There is no real non-apologietic reason to believe that the apostle John Mark wrote both the Gospel of Mark and the Secret Gospel of Mark for the purposes that Clement describes (or even to believe that "John Mark" wrote the Gospel of Mark at all).

Instead...I think "Secret Mark" is original Mark. Secret Mark is just the gospel of Alexandria. It is being used as the gospels were originally used: as texts read to initiates, to teach them the mysteries of the faith. They were read esoterically, in exactly the way that Clement describes in Stromata 6.

It's the existence of canonical Mark that needs an explanation. And Clement has tried to give one: he says that Mark wrote it for everyone to read. But this is a just-so story. Canonical Mark is a later revision of Mark. I would argue it is an anti-Marcionite revision, and that explains why it was widely-read: to combat the influence of the Marcionite gospel. Furthermore, this may also explain why it's missing material that Secret Mark has: it may have been considered dangerous, and was removed specifically to counter the Carpocratian heresy. (Or for any number of reasons, but note that the Carpocratian heresy was extant around the same time as Marcionism.)

We still have the question of why Secret Mark was kept a secret—because why should Clement fear the public reading of the gospel? It would be read literally, without misinterpretation. But I think Clement is actually ambivalent about sharing scripture publicly; technically no harm can come from it, but there remains the danger of misreading—led by a different interpreter, perhaps, or someone who adds new material (like Marcion, or Carpocrates).

So I would argue that Secret Mark was made secret, at some point, for fear that Marcionites would misinterpret it in just the way that Clement warns about in Stromata (as they did when Marcion wrote his gospel, probably based in part on a version of Secret Mark he had available). Canonical Mark, on the other hand, was distributed widely, to counter the popularity of Marcion's gospel (being shared freely, I would guess, by the Marcionite church), as well as perhaps to fend off the Carpocratians. So the state of affairs was not originally due to the esoteric exegesis that Clement describes. Instead, it was just a practical measure, to defend against already-existing heresies. Clement tries to defend it post hoc in the Mar Saba letter, and the fact that he doesn’t quite succeed can be seen as evidence that he’s trying too hard to explain the situation away. It doesn’t quite fit into his theological framework.

The proto-Orthodox church couldn't admit that canonical Mark was a latter-day edit, because it needed apostolic authority to counteract the Marcionite and Carpocratian gospel. So they claimed antiquity for it--they said Mark wrote it himself. But then they needed to explain Secret Mark. Well, they said, that's just the other version that Mark wrote. They had to say he wrote it as an esoteric, initiatory text, because that's what it was by then being used for. Then they had to go back and explain why, in that case, canonical Mark was being shared freely: because, they claimed, that's what Mark intended! Why, of course!

This is the reality behind the situation described in the letter to Theodore. There isn't actually any esoteric theology motivating the different uses of canonical Mark and Secret Mark; instead, Clement (or whoever the author is; the Mar Saba letter could still be inauthentic) is trying to explain the already-existing situation, using his esoteric theology. If his explanation resembles Neoplatonic practices at all, it is either a coincidence, or else it is among the causes of those very practices (which would not surprise me).

I’ll admit that it could be a fourth-century letter, influenced by Neo-Platonism, but that still would not technically detract from the argument I make above, even if it might take away some of its force.

It's unfortunate that Secret Mark bears its current name, because it isn't a secret version of the gospel at all. It’s the source of the gospel itself. Possibly it originally bore no name, and was included among the “memoirs of the apostles” that Justin Martyr said were read on Sundays. Whereas canonical Mark should be called "Second-Century Anti-Marcionite Redaction of the Alexandrian Gospel" :) Indeed, it’s possible GMark got called “KATA MARKON” just to counter the popularity of the gospel of “MARKIWN”.)