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Mark's Other Gospel

Posted by diogenes on 2024-April-14 04:51:35, Sunday
In reply to another story I learned recently posted by kit on 2024-April-13 20:14:23, Saturday
Then, of course, there's the Longer Gospel of Mark, which its discoverer Morton Smith dubbed the Secret Gospel of Mark:
And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me." But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.
Wikipedia devotes far too much space to the debate about its authenticity. But that it is undoubtedly an ancient document is, I believe, conclusively established by Scott G. Brown in Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005), which is the best book on this fragment, and which I would very highly recommend. Indeed, I believe that Brown establishes very persuasively, using modern textual analysis, that the fragment must have been authored by the same hand that wrote the Gospel of Mark.

The fragment is also woven into a Guy Davenport story ("The Ringdove Sign" in The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 137-138.). (Pharmakon's recent post about "The Bicycle Rider", which I very much appreciated, makes me want to reread that story! I haven't glanced at it in years and there's probably a lot that I missed the first time.)

The story in the fragment is plainly a more primitive version of the Lazarus story, and I have read scholars (serious academics, not amateurs) weave it into a story about the Rich Young Man whom Jesus loved but who rejects the path of Jesus, who then dies, before being resurrected and becoming the Beloved Disciple who is also the mysterious young man who runs away when Jesus is arrested at Gethsemane etc. ("And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: and he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked." Mark 14:51-52) Davenport also alludes to this narrative.


diogenes
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