The Touch of Healing, Secret Mark, and Simon Magus

There's something interesting about the Gospel of Mark: many of the miracle healings are accomplished by touch.

Here's the list:

• Simon's mother-in-law: he "took her by the hand" (1:31)

• the leper: he "streched forth his hand, and touched him" (1:41)

• the man with the withered hand (this miracle does not mention a healing touch, but the man "stretched [his hand] out" (3:5) just as the leper does in 1:41, implying that the healing is accomplished in the same manner as that one).

• the multitudes: "as many as had diseases pressed on him that they might touch him" (3:10)

• Jairus' daughter: Jesus heals her, "taking the child by the hand" (5:41)

• the bleeding woman: she "touched his clothes" (5:27)

• healing at home: "he laid his hands on a few sick folk" (6:5)

• healings at Gennesaret: "as many as touched him were made well" (6:56)

• the deaf mute: he "put his fingers into his ears, and he spat, and touched his tongue" (7:33)

• the blind man of Bethsaida: he "took hold of the blind man by the hand...he had spit on his eyes, and laid his hands on him...again he laid his hands on his eyes" (8:23-25)

• the boy with the deaf and mute spirit: he "took him by the hand, and raised him up" (9:27)

And the gospel carries this symbolism of touch further, even in the non-miraculous pericopes:

• Jesus is baptized by John (in GJn, for example, John does not baptize Jesus).

• the children: he "took a little child, and set him in the midst of them.  Taking him in his arms, he said to them..." (9:36)

• the anointing: the woman pours the ointment "over his head" (14:3)

• The Last Supper: Jesus breaks bread and takes a cup, invoking symbolism of his "body" and "blood" (14:22-24)

• Gethsemane: Judas "kissed him" (14:45) and the authorities "laid their hands on him, and took him" (14:45)

• the Scourging: "they struck his head with a reed, and spat on him" (15:19)

• Joseph of Arimathea: he "wound him in the linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb" (15:46)

• the Resurrection: the women "bought spices, that they might come and anoint him" (16:1)

The Touch of Healing in Secret Mark

Now consider SGM1, the raising of the man by Jesus.  This, too, is a healing-touch miracle:

• "he stretched forth his hand and raised him"

It would appear that SGM1 was written by the same author who wrote all the above miracles.  The prevalence of this touch-motif throughout GMk means that it is a feature of the writing of the Markan author himself.

So SGM1 was written by the Markan author, too, and is an integral part of the Markan gospel.


The Embodied Resurrection of Jesus

There is another interesting set of passages that involve the symbolism of touch.  However, these are not found in GMk; instead, they're found in the other three gospels.  Specifically, they're found in the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus:

• Mt 28:9--"They came and took hold of his feet, and worshiped him"

• Lk 24:39--"Touch me and see, for a spirit doesn't have flesh and bones, as you see that I have."

• Jn 20:27--"Reach here your hand, and put it into my side."

• Furthermore, we know that the Syriac/Aramaic gospel that Jerome translated (what he calls the "Gospel of the Nazoreans") echoed the Lukan event, for Jerome indicates that Ignatius' words in To the Smyrneans (Jerome gets the citation wrong) relate to that gospel: "When, for instance, he came to those who were with Peter, he said to them 'Lay hold, handle me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit.'  And immediately they touched him, and believed." (Smyr 3:2)

• The Gospel of Peter, too, draws on this language: the people push Jesus and slap his cheeks, draw out the nails from his hands, and place him on the earth--an act which causes the earth itself to shake.  The GPet fragment breaks off before Jesus appears to any disciples, and Jesus' angelic appearance after resurrection is mysterious and ambiguous (though even there, Jesus is "led out by a hand") but at least prior to his resurrection, the author of GPet is clearly determined to portray Jesus' body as very physical and real.

• And the Epistula Apostolorum presents another version of this episode: "That you may know it is I, put your finger ("hand", Eth.), Peter, in the nailprints of my hands". (Ep. Apost. 11:7)  This is probably derived from one of a) GJn, b) the same GNaz that Ignatius and Jerome describe, or--more likely--c) an early Diatessaron now lost to us.

All these accounts seem preoccupied with demonstrating that Jesus' risen body is material.  (They do remain somewhat conflicted about this, however: in Matthew, the disciples doubt on the mountain; in Luke, Jesus vanishes at Emmaus and the disciples doubt again when he appears at table; in John, Jesus appears even though the doors are locked, and the author technically never describes any disciples actually touching the risen Jesus.)

However, these other gospels add little if any such language to the remainder of the narrative, relying instead on the language found in GMk.  (Jesus touches the eyes of the blind men in Galilee in GMt, but this seems derivative of the Markan account of the blind man of Bethsaida; the woman anoints Jesus' feet in GLk and GJn, but this seems to just be an alternate version of the Markan account; John does add the foot-washing in GJn, but nothing else.)  Thus, this symbolism and language of touch and healing is Markan, and originates with the Markan gospel.  But I have shown that this same language is present in Secret Mark.  Hence, it originates with Secret Mark, i.e. the original Markan gospel.


"But how can that be?" you might ask.  "The Gospel of Mark has nothing like that in its resurrection appearances."  That's true...but, of course, the endings to GMk are notoriously suspect, and most scholars nowadays reject them as authentic parts of the gospel--they are late additions to it.  This has raised the question of what the "original ending" of GMk was, for it seems to unnaturally break off at the end of Mk 16:8.

But we have no evidence that there was ever anything else after Mk 16:8.  Therefore, I think Mk 16:8 was indeed the ending of GMk--of canonical GMk, that is.  What the canonical author did is break off the material he found there.  This was material he found...in Secret Mark, i.e. the original Markan gospel.  So in a sense, there was indeed an original ending to GMk--it's just that it was the original ending to Secret Mark, rather than canonical GMk.  So what did this ending contain?


The Original Ending of Original GMk (=Secret Mark)

It must have contained a post-resurrection appearance that involved one or more disciples touching the risen Jesus' body.  That's how Doubting Thomas ended up in GJn.  And it also explains the appearances in GMt and GLk...by way of Q.

Matthew says the women--including Mary Magdalene--fall at Jesus' feet and "took hold of him".  In GJn, Jesus says to Mary after she recognizes him "Do not touch me".  At first these seem unrelated, but why would John's Jesus specifically tell Mary not to touch him?  It would seem that John knew an account in which Mary did touch Jesus after his resurrection, and wanted to reassure his audience that she did not, in fact, touch him.  That source, in light of the evidence above, must have been orginal, Secret GMk.

Luke, for his part, does not describe an appearance to the women, but describes the same kind of apparition of Jesus as John does: he appears to the disciples together (apparently indoors), and then tells them to touch his wounds.  John separates this into two incidents--one without Thomas, then one with Thomas.  But both authors are re-telling the same story.  Again, John's Thomas does not in fact touch Jesus--but he must have, in one of John's sources.  Otherwise, John's Jesus would not have asked Thomas to touch him.  The incident woudn't exist at all.  The fact that John felt he had to present it indicates he had something to explain.  That means that one of his sources featured a post-resurrection appearance in which Jesus tells Thomas to touch his wounds, and Thomas does do.  That source, in light of the evidence above, must have been original, Secret GMk.


So, both Matthew and Luke parallel GJn in describing an apparition of Jesus to the disciples in which they touch him, but each in a separate way.  GMt and GLk bear little resemblance with GJn, so a direct relationship among them seems unlikely.  So how could these two parallels exist?  The answer is straightforward: Matthew and Luke were both using a source that related to GJn, featuring a post-resurrection account in which first Mary, then the disciples, witnessed the risen Jesus and touched his resurrected body.  The middle term between this source and GJn was Secret Mark.  So the "lost ending of Mark" involved just such an account.  And we know Mark--the original Markan author, that is--was the author of this account, because Mark is the author who is preoccupied with the symbolism of touch.

So what what the purpose of this symbolism?


Simon Magus' Docetism

I argue that Mark was writing in opposition to Simonianism.  We know that Simon Magus was some kind of a docetist; Irenaeus, for example, identifies him as such:

"He had come to amend matters, and had descended, transfigured and assimilated to powers and principalities and angels, so that he might appear among men to be a man, while yet he was not a man; and that thus he was thought to have suffered in Judæa, when he had not suffered." (Haer. 1.23.3)

Irenaeus' understanding of Simon Magus' theology may have been somewhat confused, but he seems to be describing a docetistic system, one in which Jesus' presence on earth was as a kind of apparition, an illusion.  There is an interesting discussion to be had about this claim and what it could have meant for Simon, but for now we can at least accept that Simon Magus originated the claim that Jesus had an illusory career on earth that at least involved a crucifixion.  And all this would have been prior, of course, to Jesus' reincarnation in the person of Simon Magus.

Simon Magus was active during the middle of the 1st century CE, so this would have been one of the earliest Christian theologies (nowadays we would call it a "heresy" but we should not be anachronistic; "Christianity" was still a very fluid concept in its first decades).  So what Secret Mark was doing was combating this claim, by presenting a very real, embodied Jesus, who could both touch others and be touched.  He is writing specifically to counter claims like Simon's, that Jesus was either an illusion or a spirit, a phantom, a ghost.  Mark's Jesus is no allegory or myth; he is a real person who really speaks with the disciples and really performs miracles and healings.  And perhaps most notably, in the ending of Secret Mark (what we would call the "lost ending" of the Gospel of Mark) he really rises from the dead, in bodily form.  His fate thereafter is somewhat obscure, and if GJn is any evidence, Jesus may simply have walked away at the end of Mark's gospel.

Any symbolism here seems confusing at first, but a clue lies in the fact that in GJn, as well as in GLk, Jesus is not at first recognized by the disciples--in GJn by Mary, and in GLk by the two on the road to Emmaus.  (There is also possibly a relic of this in GMt, when some of the disciples "doubted" Jesus on the mountain in Galilee.)  If this, too, is indeed a piece of the "lost" ending of original GMk, Mark's overall message suddenly becomes clear, especially in light of Mark's adoptionism: the spirit of Jesus has descended upon someone else's shoulders.  Possibly Mark was pointing to a specific person (Paul, perhaps?), though he may have just meant to be enigmatic; the lesson for the disciples, and for disciples of Jesus everywhere, is that Jesus could be anybody.  At any rate, for Mark, Jesus remains with us today, in human form, whether as one of the emerging church's leaders, or simply as a kind of Everyman who shows up now and then--or perhaps who chooses to descend upon this person or that person at different times.  Mark probably was not worrying too much about exactly what happened to Jesus' original body.  (Did it vanish?  Was it taken to heaven?  Or was it changed into a new form?  Remember what Paul says about the resurrection body in 1 Cor 15, "we shall be changed"...)  The point is that the risen, resurrected Jesus also has a body--and one that his disciples might not recognize as Jesus.  Mark's gospel probably then ended with a simple command: "Come, follow me."


So Mark is the author of the passages in GMk (and, by inference, Secret Mark) in which Jesus physically interacts with others.  In the next post, we'll see what happens when we subtract these passages from GMk.  We'll find that we're left with something very interesting; we'll find we're left with evidence of the Signs source.