The gospel of Mark tells us that when Judas led the mob to arrest Jesus at Gethsemane his apostles fled from the scene. The gospel then goes on to tell us that there remained with Jesus a single, mysterious young man. When someone from the mob grabbed hold of him to arrest him along with Jesus he ran right out of his clothes to get away. But the gospel says nothing about who the young man was or why he was there at that moment. His identity remained unknown to scholars for nearly two thousand years. It remained a mystery until 1958.
The young man was Lazarus.
Mark 10:32 - And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them; and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid.
This strange passage held an important key to the identity of the stranger in Gethsemane. What were the apostles amazed about? Why were they afraid? Nothing in the passages surrounding it suggests anything to be amazed at or afraid of. They were simply a group of men on their way to the big city. The answers to this question and to the question of the identity of the stranger in Gethsemane would come from the same source.
In 1958, in the library of the monastery of Mar Saba, near the Dead Sea, a copy of an ancient letter was discovered. This letter was written by Clement, bishop of Alexandria, early in the 3rd century. In it he explains to the addressee, Theodore, that Mark 10: 32 - 34 is only the remnant of a much larger story that was once contained in these passages. He tells Theodore that the guts of the story had been removed by the Church fathers because that portion was suspected of being both a forgery and an apostasy. Clement then went on to provide Theodore with a full quotation of the missing verses. I cite them below. The capitalized portions are from the common (modern) edition of Mark while the lower case portions are from Clement's letter.
"AND THEY WERE IN THE WAY GOING UP TO JERUSALEM; They came to Bethany, and a woman was there whose brother had died. she came and prostrated herself before Jesus, saying to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me." But his disciples rebuked her. Jesus became angry with them and went off with her to the garden where the tomb was.
Immediately a loud voice was heard from the tomb. Jesus approached and rolled the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. Immediately he went in where the young man was, stretched out his hand, and raised him by seizing his hand.
The young man looked at him intently and loved him; and he began pleading with him that he might be with him. When they came out of the tomb they went to the young man's house, for he was wealthy.
And after six days Jesus gave him a command. And when it was evening the young man came to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. He stayed with him that night, for Jesus was teaching him the mystery of the kingdom of God. When he got up from there, he returned to the other side of the Jordan. AND JESUS WENT BEFORE THEM AND THEY WERE AMAZED; AND AS THEY FOLLOWED, THEY WERE AFRAID. AND HE TOOK AGAIN THE TWELVE, AND BEGAN TO TELL THEM WHAT THINGS SHOULD HAPPEN TO HIM, SAYING, BEHOLD, WE GO UP TO JERUSALEM, AND THE SON OF MAN SHALL BE DELIVERED UNTO THE CHIEF PRIESTS, AND UNTO THE SCRIBES, AND THEY SHALL CONDEMN HIM TO DEATH, AND SHALL DELIVER HIM TO THE GENTILES: AND THEY SHALL MOCK HIM, AND SHALL SCOURGE HIM, AND SHALL SPIT UPON HIM, AND SHALL KILL HIM, AND THE THIRD DAY HE SHALL RISE AGAIN.
Now keep in mind that Clement claimed that the story was not part of the original version of Mark. It was a forgery that was added later. I agree that it was a forgery. Someone had tried to make it look as though Jesus sanctioned homosexuality by portraying him as having engaged in it himself. The Church fathers recognized it as a forgery and removed most of the story. It is believed by some scholars that the Church fathers removed other things from Mark that did not meet their approval as well. But they overlooked at least one other forgery that had been added to Mark by the same smear merchant. They neglected to remove his stranger from the garden of Gethsemane.
The 'young man wearing the linen cloth over his naked body' who was raised from the dead at Bethany was the same 'young man wearing a linen cloth over his naked body' at Gethsemane. The implications are clear in both stories. The young man was Jesus' lover. Whoever the forger was, he was extremely clever. He took the opportunity presented by Jesus being alone - in a garden - at night - to imply that he was not really alone. He had taken his lover off into the dark for an intimate encounter.
The discovery of the letter from Clement shook the foundations of Bible scholarship. It gave scholars an inside peek at the the way the first gospel had been changed and manipulated in its first hundred years of existence. And it gave great insight into the purposes and methods employed by the other three gospel writers. For example, Matthew and Luke make no mention of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. It would make sense then, since both authors used Mark as a source, that the forger had not put his story into Mark's gospel until after Matthew and Luke were written. The gospel of John, on the other hand, devotes a great deal of attention to the story of Lazarus. In fact the forged story in Mark does not give the name of the young man. Only the gospel of John reveals that name. Clearly, then, the author of John was thoroughly familiar with the altered version of Mark's gospel.
There is much, much, much more to this story and the implications it suggests for the authorship of the New Testament. I will be covering some of the more interesting aspects of this in future posts. Of course you don't have to believe anything of what I've shown you but if you care to do a little follow up I suggest you begin by Googling 'Morton Smith', the man who discovered the letter from Clement. In fact you can read the full content of the letter yourself.
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By the way, have you read Clement's letter to Theodore?
Which of us believes in miracles? [ROLLEYES]
For myself I cannot imagine that it was even possible to have forged this document. The contextual evidence by itself provides conclusive proof of authenticity. It was not Morton Smith who created the seam in the text of Mark 10:32. It's always been there. It was not Smith who put the young man in Gethsemene. Someone did that 2000 years ago.
And how could Smith have known why the gospel of John alone contains the story of the raising of Lazarus?
1. Mark wrote his gospel.
2. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source in writing their gospels. Neither of them mentioned the raising of Lazarus or the young man at Gethsemene.
3. Someone (Mark or Carpocrates) added the story of the "young man's" being raised and and his appearance at Gethsemene.
4. John wrote his gospel with a long apologetic account of the miracle at Bethany. The obvious implication is that he used an altered copy of Mark containing the added story of Lazarus as his source rather than the 'clean' Mark used by Matthew and Luke.
5. The Church fathers removed the guts of the forgery because it was offensive to Christian theology and also, perhaps, because they knew it was a forgery. But they failed to notice that they had left the "young man" in Gethsemene.
How could Smith have created a phoney letter that could perfectly meet every one of these criteria? How could he even have known about them? And there is more.
I assume from your informed methods of argumentation that you are familiar with the term "apologetics". The gospel of John, as I have suggested above, contains apologetics that refer to the implied homosexual relationship between Jesus and Lazarus.
1. John 11:3, 5, & 36 all refer to Jesus' love for Lazarus. The intent here is to show that his love for Lazarus was of a filial nature and not a carnal one.
2. 11:39 might also be considered an apologetic. It would argue against the claim that Jesus could be sexually attracted to a body that stinks after 4 days of being dead.
Clement's letter does not say that Jesus was gay. In fact he denies it. He claims that such references in "Secret Mark" were either forgeries or later additions from Mark himself. No one; not me, not Smith, not Clement nor any of the gospel writers suggest that Jesus was gay. Only the forger who tampered with "Original Mark" suggested that.
A further question: if the manuscript copy of the Clement letter appearing in the Voss printed book is authentic, what happened to the document the copier was using as a source? No answer is likely ever to be made. [THUMBUP]
I like to think they might have sent it to the Vatican for safe keeping - even though the monks of Mar Saba are Greek Orthodox. Who knows? The Vatican may still be sitting on a copy of "secret" Mark