Is There a Problem With Secret Mark 2? (part 1)

[ETA: some small edits have been made below]

While most of the attention that To Theodore earns centers around the first quotation from Secret Mark, much less attention is given to the second quotation.

Yet it's the second quotation that is really the source of all the trouble.

Secret Mark 1, without Secret Mark 2, is a largely unproblematic passage.  It's only Morton Smith's somewhat bizarre interpretation of it that has made it notorious.  There is simply no conceivable way, for example, that the "mystery of the kingdom" in Clement's time could have anything to do with an erotic ritual.  Maybe for the Carpocratians, but the author of To Theodore is writing against the Carpocratians.  There is simply nothing in Secret Mark 1 that would imply any such ritual, in the context of the 2nd c. CE.

It's Secret Mark 2 where things get a little more complicated: now we have a Jesus who loves back the man (NEANISKOS, an adult male in his twenties) who loves him.  Jesus also rejects the women at Jericho--as though they were unworthy to be in his presence.  It's really Secret Mark 2 that is in any way scandalous!

So, the "scandal" is two-parted: 1) the man's love for Jesus is reciprocated, and 2) Jesus wants nothing to do with the women disciples of Jericho.  But let's look at each part a little more carefully.

1) Is this really in any way scandalous? We already know, in the Gospel of John, that there was a disciple Jesus loved.  This same disciple reclines with Jesus at the last supper, and leans upon his chest.  We even know that Jesus loved Lazarus (btw, this is evidence for a relationship between Secret Mark 1 and Jn 11).  So there is really nothing in Secret Mark 2 that is more scandalous in regard to Jesus' love for a disciple than what is already in canonical GJn.

The only oddity Secret Mark introduces is the fact that the love is reciprocal.  The man of Secret Mark loves Jesus, in addition to Jesus' love for him.  There really seems to be no erotic suggestion here whatsoever, regardless of the reciprocality of the love between Jesus and the disciple.  Jesus asks Peter in Jn 21 whether he loves him, and Peter affirms this.  (Notice that this, too, is found in the Gospel of John.)  An interesting detail is that Jesus asks Peter if he has agape love for him--sentimental love, the love a parent has for a child, the kind Christians are asked to have in general--but Peter replies by affirming he has phileo for Jesus, i.e. brotherly love, or the love of a friendship.  Neither kind, however, is eros, romantic love.

The love which Jesus and the man share for one another is likewise agape love.  (BTW, Clement talks about agape, and love as food, in Stromata 3.)  There is no romantic connotation in this.

In Mk 10:21, Jesus himself looks upon the rich man and loves him, and, in the Matthean parallel (Mt 19:20) the rich man is even a NEANISKOS, just as in Secret Mark.  So Secret Mark, it would seem, carries no connotations that are not already present in the gospel tale as a whole: in the synoptics, we have a rich man (from GMt) who is loved by Jesus (from GMk).  Jesus likewise loves Lazarus in GJn, and the beloved disciple (who doesn't make an appearance until after the raising of Lazarus, btw) sits beside him at the Last Supper, implying the broad, familial agape love that Secret Mark speaks of, IMO.  And Peter, too, loves Jesus.  It is phileo love, but this is still an example of a disciple of Jesus who loves him, in a non-erotic way, that is already present in the canonical gospels.

So it turns out Secret Mark, when read in context, doesn't actually contain anything suggesting any sort of relationship between Jesus and the resurrected man, besides one of devotion--the same devotion that is already described in the canonical gospels, and the very same love with which God loves the world in Jn 3, and with which Christians are supposed to love one another (in Mt and Lk).