What are the chances?

What do Green Arrow, the Titanic, and The West Wing have in common?


They're all examples of life imitating art, without a causal mechanism.

The superhero Green Arrow, in the comic book miniseries "The Longbow Hunters", discovers a CIA plot to use money from an arms deal with Iranians to fund the Contra rebels of Nicauragua.

The miniseries was published in 1987. However, the author, Mike Grell, has stated that he created the plotline years earlier.

I can concede that we don't know for certain whether Grell is embellishing or not, though we have no real reason to believe that he is engaging in fabrication. He has stated that he simply tried to think of something the CIA was capable of. And he turned out to be right.

Similarly, the 1898 novel "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan" uncannily evokes the real sinking of the Titanic--fourteen years later, that is:

How did he do it? Probably he simply observed the ocean liner economy of his time, and wrote a novel about what was capable of happening. And he was right.

And finally, Aaron Sorkin seems to have scripted the events of the 2008 US presidential election in 2006.

"But," you might protest, "couldn't it be the case that The West Wing did, in fact, cause certain events of the 2008 campaign, like early media support for the Santos-like candidate, or the somewhat remarkable popularity of Palin among US conservatives, and McCain's somewhat unusual choice of her as his running mate?"

Maybe, but...it turns out it's the other way around--it's the West Wing writers who modeled their characters from life!

Obama, McCain, et al. were not trying to live out a TV series. They were just trying to live out their real ambitions (which they held long before The West Wing came along) in their real lives. The writers just took certain elements from those real lives, took a look at the contemprary electorate, and wrote a plausible story. And they were right--in the sense that they correctly read the character of those real people, and successfully predicted the real consequences of their real ambitions.

So we have three examples of art prefiguring life, simply based on the fact that authors are students of life, whose job it is to tell stories that, under other circumstances, would be true. And sometimes, those circumstances come about.

What does this have to do with Secret Mark?

Well, what if James H. Hunter simply managed to pull off the same feat?

James H. Hunter is the author of The Mystery of Mar Saba, a 1940 thriller that some claim is so similar to Smith's story of discovery, that it must be the cause of his announcement--meaning, that Smith forged Secret Mark.

But we see above that it's not impossible that Hunter simply got lucky, so to speak; sometimes, art accidentally prefigures life.

We'll spend the next couple of posts examining this. But for now, one must concede it's not unprecedented for a work of fiction to prefigure history.

More on early Christian rites

A few more curiosities regarding early Christian rites:

Socrates of Constantinople, writing just before the mid-5th c., writes in his Church History (ch. 22)

"The Egyptians in the neighborhood of Alexandria, and the inhabitants of Thebaïs, hold their religious assemblies on the sabbath, but do not participate of the mysteries in the manner usual among Christians in general: for after having eaten and satisfied themselves with food of all kinds, in the evening making their offerings they partake of the mysteries. At Alexandria again, on the Wednesday in Passion week and on Good Friday, the scriptures are read, and the doctors expound them; and all the usual services are performed in their assemblies, except the celebration of the mysteries. This practice in Alexandria is of great antiquity, for it appears that Origen most commonly taught in the church on those days. He being a very learned teacher in the Sacred Books, and perceiving that the `impotence of the law' of Moses was weakened by literal explanation, gave it a spiritual interpretation; declaring that there has never been but one true Passover, which the Saviour celebrated when he hung upon the cross: for that he then vanquished the adverse powers, and erected this as a trophy against the devil. In the same city of Alexandria, readers and chanters are chosen indifferently from the catechumens and the faithful; whereas in all other churches the faithful only are promoted to these offices."

Here:

1) The Alexandrians celebrate their mysteries in the evening
2) During Lent, the scriptures were given a "spiritual interpretation" (dating at least back to Origen in the early 3rd c., a tradition still extant more than two centuries later)
3) Readers (a minor order, like subdeacons) are chosen from both catechumens and faithful

We also have Logion 37 of GThomas, discussed at length in Johnathan Z. Smith's 1966 article "The Garments of Shame":

His disciples said: "When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?"
Jesus said: "When you undress without being ashamed and take your clothes
(and) put them under your feet like little children (and) trample on them,
then [you] will see the son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid."

Peter Jeffery even mentions this in his book (p. 114), but only to glibly dismiss it as no evidence that a sindon was used in early 2nd c. baptismal ceremony. Perhaps it is no evidence of a sindon, but it is certainly not counter-evidence either! Surely it is evidence of a disrobing ceremony (whether symbolic or literal) in at least some early Christian baptismal rituals. It is amazing that Jeffery cannot acknolwedge this. Furthermore, Jeffery himself brings attention to the fact that there is actually evidence of sindon use in early Christian baptism, in the Acts of Thomas! Jeffery wants to link this to Syrian practices for women alone (unfortunately I haven't found a copy of his reference for this yet), but it's at least a historical example of sindon use which Jeffery tries so hard to dismiss. Jeffrey provides ample evidence that the post-baptismal garment was not a sindon. But that is not necessarily what Secret Mark indicates: the sindon seems to be the garment of an initiate. I'm not sure if this initiate is really a pre-baptismal initiate, or if the sindon somehow represents the sinful state of the initiate prior to any church rite. But see my notes to the passage from Socrates of Constantinople above: minor orders, like reader and subdeacon (which Secret Mark may allude to) were sometimes chosen from catechumens. (And, as we shall see below, we shouldn't assume Secret Mark was read only for the parallels with the rich man; it may also have been read for parallels with Jesus as the minister of the rite.)

There are also the following passages in F. E. Brightman's 1899 article "The Sacramentary of Serapion of Thmuis" (Journal of Theological Studies)

"The preparation of the catechumen is covered by nos. 8, 9, 15, 10. It is clear from the terms of the question and response mentioned in the last paragraph (eziwn, proeiselqwn), that this part of the rite did not take place in the baptistery itself, but in the vestibule (cp. Cyr. Hier. Cat. myst. i 2)."

"The renunciation (apotagh), alluded to in the title of [prayer] no. 9, follows [in Serapion's rite]. It was the function of the deacons 'to prepare the catechumens to make the renunciation' (paraskeuazein tous kathcoumenous apotaxasqai [Tim. Al.] Resp. 10), where the allusion is clearly to the undressing and the adjustment of the catechumens' attitudes, facing to the west and outstretching the right hand (Assemani i 157; Denzinger i 19, 223: cp. Cyr. Hier. Cat. myst. i 4)." (249)

"The catechumens have now passed into the baptistry (to agion baptishrion St. Ath. Encycl. 2) and they are there presented (apididonai) and their names proclaimed by the deacon, or in his absence by a subdeacon or a reader ([Tim. Al.] Resp. 11)." (252)

Here:

1) Alexandrian 4th c. catechumens were prepared in semi-secluded room, i.e. the vestibule
2) preparation for baptism involved an undressing (at least symbolic?)
3) the subdeacon and/or reader, in some cases, assume the deacon's role

While we're at it, here's Origen, Contra Celsus, iii. 51:

"The Christians, however, having previously, so far as possible, tested the souls of those who wish to become their hearers, and having previously instructed them in private, when they appear (before entering the community) to have sufficiently evinced their desire towards a virtuous life, introduce them then, and not before, privately forming one class of those who are beginners, and are receiving admission, but who have not yet obtained the mark of complete purification; and another of those who have manifested to the best of their ability their intention to desire no other things than are approved by Christians; and among these there are certain persons appointed to make inquiries regarding the lives and behaviour of those who join them, in order that they may prevent those who commit acts of infamy from coming into their public assembly, while those of a different character they receive with their whole heart, in order that they may daily make them better."

So,

1) The early-mid 3rd c. Christians instruct initiates in private
2) They then divide initiates into two groups, also private:
a) beginners, those who are not purified
b) those who manifest ideal desires (and would receive "the mark of complete purification")
3) They exclude those with bad character, but receive others, "in order that they may daily make them better", i.e. more perfect.

Was Secret Mark used for minor orders?

Andrew Criddle and I, in comments below, began discussing what ceremony a Secret Mark could have been used for (actually, Andrew raised the question himself). I replied by suggesting it could have been a confirmation/chrismation ceremony, to which Andrew replied very well, but where's the evidence? I conceded there was very little. But researching the question a bit further, I had the following speculative ideas.


First, we know there were numerous minor orders within the early church, including reader, cantor, doorkeeper, and acolyte, some of which Pope Cornelius gives mid-third-century evidence of in Rome, only a few decades after Clement. As Paul F. Bradshaw states in Ordination Rites of the Ancient Churches of East and West, "The most ancient of these offices seem to have been those of reader and subdeacon, which are the only ones to appear consistently in the later rites of the East. The first source to mention both offices together is the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus...but they may well have existed for some considerable time before this." (p. 93) The Apostolic Tradition is typically dated to 215 C.E. in Rome.

I noted to Andrew that Secret Mark in some ways evoked the foot-washing ritual featured in the Gospel of John. And the Orthodox rite for ordination of subdeacons (and the Antiochene Orthodox rite for deacons) involves a basin, jar of water, and towel which the candidates carry and use to wash the bishop's hands. The ceremony for subdeacons includes the prayer "Make him Your perfect servant at the time of Your Second Coming" (and the ceremony for Antiochene deacons says "and proclaim him Your perfect [TELEION] servant"). This language is also reflected in our earliest eastern subdeaconal ordination prayers (i.e. the Byzantine ones), from the eighth century.

And, the man carrying a jar of water in Mk 14 (just like the candidates for subdeacon, and sometimes deacon) is also clearly a tie with the foot-washing of Jn 13. (The evidence that Mk and Jn are textually linked via a common ancestor is IMO obvious). Notice it happens in Mk right after the pericope of the woman with the ointment--and that pericope, in Jn, happens at Lazarus' house, right after his resurrection!

(In Mk the woman with the ointment at "Simon the Leper's" house. It's also at a Simon's house in Lk 7, though in a different narrative location--notice that in Lk it's a foot-anointing, rather than a head-anointing.)

Early Western rites show no washing traditions in their subdeaconal texts, but Eastern rites do. (I should admit our earliest texts for many Eastern rites date from the medieval era.) There is no mention of washing in the Coptic rites for subdeacons, but there are in the Melkite rites. Melkite subdeacons are given the vessel for washing (as they are also in Maronite rites) and then wash the hands of the bishop. The Byzantine rites of the eighth century, too (again our earliest Eastern text unfortunately) have the subdeacon wash the bishop's hands, and later versions also feature the presentation of the ewer, basin, and towel. We might have no Eastern texts earlier than the eighth century, but if Peter Jeffrey (in his The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled) can use Byzantine-era texts to make his arguments, so can I. And as Bradshaw says:

"Though it is not specified in the rubrically sparse text of the older manuscripts, this ceremony may well have been practiced from earlier times, especially as it also turns up in the fifth-century Gallican Statuta Ecclesiae Antiqua, which seems to have been subject to some Eastern influence." (p. 98)

Furthermore, in the west, as early as the Apostolic Constitutions, subdeacons held the role of guardian of the "liturgical vessels". And in the Jacobite rites, the subdeacon is given the oil for lighting the lamps--as the subdeacon appears to have held the role of lamplighter in both Western and Eastern traditions, and doorkeeper in Eastern traditions, even when also assisting with the hand-washing.

Speaking of doorkeeping, one of the doorkeeper's jobs was to exclude the unbaptized from early Eucharistic rituals (echoed in the modern Orthodox liturgies where the cry of "The Doors! The Doors!" announces the beginning of the Liturgy of the Faithful, as it was originally a call to expel the unbaptized and catechumens and to close and guard the doors). And what does the water-carrier in Mk do? He leads the disciples to the unspoken (i.e. secret) location of the Last Supper! (In the Byzantine eighth-century rite, the subdeacon and reader are even ordained in a private--i.e. secret--ceremony in a diaconicon.)

My guess is also that the nakedness of the young man in Secret Mark refers to the bodily purity required to attend at altar. As the Jacobite rite of subdeaconal ordination says, "cleanse us from every defilement of body and spirit".

Probably this is also why Jesus refuses to receive the women in the other Secret Mark passage. (While I'm at it, this is also why Jesus tells Mary not to touch him at the end of Jn.) The Canons of Hippolytus--our earliest text from Egypt, mid-fourth-century--required that subdeacons be celibate (i.e. that they have witheld themselves from women, as in the second passage of Secret Mark): "He is not to be ordained still celibate and if he has not married, unless his neighbors bear witness for him and testify that he has kept himself away from women during the time of his maturity. One is not to lay the hand on someone in the state of celibacy, unless he has reached his maturity or is entering into mature age and is thought [worthy], when one bears witness for him." That is, the subdeaconate was reserved for men or young men who have attained adulthood and who can bring testimony that they have kept themselves celibate. The Testamentum Domini likewise orders subdeacons to "practice the ascetic life". So a subdeaconal ordination appointment sounds like a perfectly appropriate event for Secret Mark to have been read at (hypothetically).


None of this is demonstratory evidence of the ritual or rite that Secret Mark was used for. But they are real possibilities, are strongly suggestive, and merit further consideration. It's disappointing that Smith couldn't think outside of a baptismal ritual (but then he got so much else about Secret Mark wrong that it's not surprising).

(Changed the settings)

Anonymous users may now post. We'll see if this works.

(Backlinks are also enabled.)

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”.)

Criddle and Secret Mark, Part 1

Andrew Criddle, on the blog Hypotyposeis,makes an argument for the inauthenticity of Clement of Alexandria's letter To Theodore (aka the "Mar Saba letter", so called after the monastery where the scholar Morton Smith claimed he discovered it). He suggests that the letter describes a milieu in which theological texts are divided into two groups: one for education, the other for initiation. The educational texts may be read by anyone, whereas the initiatory texts require an esoteric reading, and are harmful if not read in that manner. Criddle uses an example from Proclus to demonstrate his point, trying to show common vocabulary between To Theodore and Proclus in the use of TELEIOUMENWN, "(those having been) perfected", in To Theodore, apparently used to describe a group of initiates distinct from others merely being "instructed", and TELESTIKON, "initiation", in Proclus.

I think that Criddle has pointed out a real problem in To Theodore. The author's division of gospel texts into those suitable for "instructed" listeners, and those suitable for "perfected" listeners, does seem to be unusual for its time. However, not only do I think his comparison with Proclus is insufficient, but I think there is a better explanation to be found in Clement's own writings, demonstrating the veracity of the Mar Saba letter.

---

I first note that esotericism itself assumes a division between exoteric readings and esoteric readings of the same text, so it's hard for me to really draw a line between esotericism
in general and the specific kind of "initiatory texts" Criddle describes.

Yet even if we can make this distinction, I still find it present in Clement. Stromata 6:15, For example:

"But prophecy does not employ figurative forms in the expressions for the sake of beauty of diction. But from the fact that truth appertains not to all, it is veiled in manifold ways, causing the light to arise only on those who are initiated into knowledge, who seek the truth through love."

Notice the reference to veiled truth (! as in To Theodore) and to initiation. True that Clement refers to MEMNHMENOIS here (probably not "MEMUHMENOIS" as in Migne??), but notice the half-echo with TELEIOUMENWN. And, just prior to this, at the end of 6:14, he says:

"Conformably, therefore, there are various abodes, according to the worth of those who have believed....For the comparative shows that there are lower parts in the temple of God, which is the whole Church....These chosen abodes, which are three, are indicated by the numbers in the Gospel— the thirty, the sixty, the hundred. And the perfect inheritance belongs to those who attain to "a perfect man," according to the image of the Lord....To the likeness of God, then, he that is introduced into adoption and the friendship of God, to the just inheritance of the lords and gods is brought; if he be perfected [TELEIOQH], according to the Gospel, as the Lord Himself taught."

So here we see different stages, or levels, of believers--and the highest level is attained by perfection, by way of the gospel. This book of Stromata is entirely taken up with the ways in which correct reading of Christian scripture leads to knowledge of the truth, which is equivalent to a mystical oneness with God.

Read also in 6:15 where Clement says:

"For many reasons, then, the Scriptures hide the sense. First, that we may become inquisitive, and be ever on the watch for the discovery of the words of salvation. Then it was not suitable for all to understand, so that they might not receive harm in consequence of taking in another sense the things declared for salvation by the Holy Spirit. Wherefore the holy mysteries of the prophecies are veiled in the parables—preserved for chosen men, selected to knowledge in consequence of their faith; for the style of the Scriptures is parabolic."

Here we see that scripture, when misread, can cause harm! It can cause harm when read by those who are not "chosen", whose faith does not give them the necessary "knowledge" to read the "mysteries" present within the gospel text. (And notice another reference to veiling.)

If you're still not persuaded, look towards the end of 6:18, where Clement says of Paul:

"But he teaches that knowledge, which is the perfection [TELEIOSIN] of faith, goes beyond catechetical instruction, in accordance with the magnitude of the Lord's teaching and the rule of the Church."

Here, knowledge, a kind of perfection, is explicitly that which "goes beyond" mere "catechetical instruction".

---

There still remains one central point of Criddle's argument, namely that Secret Mark seems a very unusual text--it was not merely an esoteric reading of Mark, but also contained more than Mark--passages for those being "initiated", passages that themselves were not available to everyone, i.e. to those merely being "instructed". This, Criddle claims, is without parallel in Clement's time. Criddle makes an interesting observation, and we'll turn to it in the next post.