the secretive christ - part ii of ii
Continued from part i
One trajectory from the time of Mark has captured much attention in the 20th century, especially since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts: the Gnostic Christians. The comparatively radical Gnostic Christians competed alongside what would become orthodox Christianity as well as different forms of Jewish Christianity, and was eventually forced underground as it was declared heretical by an ever-increasingly hierarchal and relatively unified church in Rome. Gnostic Christianity is best represented by a theology of material dualism amalgamated with cosmological myths drastically opposed to the Judeo-Christian worldview; Jesus was not a Saviour of the sinful, but rather a divine transmitter of special knowledge – delivering the Truth to those whom were worthy. This view is portrayed in Gnostic Gospels ranging from the Gospel of Thomas (50-120 CE) through to the Gospels of Peter (70-160 CE), Judas (130-170 CE), Mary (130-200 CE) and Philip (200-250 CE), just to name a few. There are many prevailing features in these Gnostic Gospels that appear to be borrowed from the tradition of Mark: the disclosure of teachings to certain persons, the enigmatic nature of the teachings, and the nature of Jesus’ appearance.
The relative dating between Mark and the Gospel of Thomas is unknown, but there is no mistake that Thomas accentuates the notion of secrecy. The Gnostic gospel even begins, “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke…”; the first verse following the introduction is just as arcane: “”Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.” Thomas already diverges towards a strictly Gnostic interpretation by insinuating that salvation comes solely from knowledge, a soteriological argument silent in Mark. The revelation of special teachings to exclusive persons just as in fourth chapter of Mark, except for in this case the teaching is revealed only to one disciple, Thomas. Unlike the Gospel of Mark, which makes vague references to the explanation of parables, the Gospel of Thomas, in saying 13, explicitly states that Jesus told Thomas three secrets, none of which are given to the other disciples or are written in the text. Not only does this secret revelation carry on a tradition of esoteric teachings, but also disseminates the convention of restricted worthiness. The same principle will be used in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, even though the recipient changes to Judas rather than Thomas, the idea is the same as Jesus tells Judas, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom.” We see the same attitude again in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary. After Peter asks for Mary to teach, she replies “I will teach you about what is hidden from you.” Not only is this a continuation of exclusive revelation, but also appears to be taking some literary freedom and filling in a narrative gap in Mark 16:9-11. The passage in Mark informed readers that Mary had indeed seen the resurrected Christ first, as previously mentioned, and then followed Jesus’ instructions to tell the other disciples, yet they did not believe her. The Mary Gospel plays on this narration, stating that she saw Jesus in a vision, but after her speech the disciples did not believe her. It is evident that the Gnostic Gospels were stressing the secretive nature through extremely limited revelation, much more so than Mark’s Gospel. Mark usually limited his revelation to the twelve apostles, and at the very most to the three most intimate disciples, yet each of the Gnostic Gospels purposely restrict the special teaching to one, emphasizing the esoteric nature of Christ. An additional argument could be made that the disciples that did not receive “the mysteries of the kingdom” or “the special knowledge” were literary devices meant to contrast the writer’s purpose with that of opposing viewpoints at the time.
While the exclusivity of revelation radically re-interprets Mark, the teachings themselves are much more subtle, yet equally powerful. Mark is a short, concise, and often theologically primitive. Because of this fact, other Gospels, both Gnostic and what became known as Canonical and orthodox, could add what was felt necessary to advocate a certain theological or philosophical idea (or ideal), without radically perverting the original source. Deducing from the two-source hypothesis, this is exactly what the writers of Matthew and Luke did. As mentioned earlier, Mark makes vague references to the secrets of the kingdom of heaven and then makes use of parables to explicate this nature of this kingdom, only to reveal their true meanings to the disciples. One can only speculate on the criticisms the Gnostics must have had towards those who would argue that the secrets of the kingdom of heaven was actually the secret of the redeeming Messiah; we know that the Gnostics ridiculed Luke’s literal resurrection, harshly pronouncing it a “faith of fools.” Even the idea that the disciples, who were apparently given the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, continually misunderstood the teachings of Jesus, even after the resurrection, as their disbelief is illustrated in the last chapter of Mark: this in itself is an argument for the reduction of twelve recipients of the secrets in the Canonical Gospels to one in the Gnostics. The problem with trying to explicate the
comparisons or contrasts of Mark and the Gnostic Gospels in reference to the teachings themselves is the esoteric quality of the latter. In the Gospel of Thomas, in saying 13 after the disclosure of the secrets to Thomas, the other disciples inquire into the aside, only to receive the response that the revelation of those secrets would surely cause the other disciples to stone Thomas and then they themselves would be destroyed; afterwards, in saying 62, Jesus asserts that the mysteries are told to only those who are worthy. Later there is a reference to Jewish Christianity in saying 39, stating that the Pharisees have hidden the keys of gnosis, not only had they not let anyone attain gnosis, but they themselves have not. Mark 4:11’s revealing of secrets is expanded and prioritized in the Gospel of Thomas, becoming a foundation for Gnostic Christian Gospels. In the Gospel of Judas, the secrets revealed are those of the Gnostic cosmology, similar to that found in the Pistis Sophia. In the Gospel of Mary, the secret is the adultery of dualism, borrowing ideas similar to Platonic Idealism.
Because of the uncertainty of the historical relationship between the Gospels of Thomas and Mark, the only claim that can strongly be made is that a tradition of withholding certain knowledge had developed between the time of Jesus and the writings of the Gospels, with Mark taking a looser, cautious approach and Thomas promoting a much more radical perspective. I personally doubt the earliest datings of the Gospel of Thomas that would admit a precedence of Thomas before Mark or two competing independent traditions. The overlapping sayings that are found in Thomas and the synoptic gospels point more convincingly to fracturing of trajectories, especially if there was a so-called later “gnosticizing redactor”, after Mark rather than a Thomasine precedence or a dual primacy of Mark and Thomas. It is certain that the writers of the Gnostic Gospels, at least after the Gospel of Thomas, certainly had access to the Markan text whether they extensively used it or not.
The most conclusive argument concerning the relationship between Mark and the later Gnostic Gospels is that the ambiguous and seemingly unexplained references to secretive acts and teachings in Mark’s Gospel was exploited and advanced by future works. To claim that the Canonical Gospels are of much more authority solely because of the reliability of their dating could possibly be erroneous, since not only is there is reason to believe a relatively early dating of Thomas, it is also possible that the Gospels of Judas and Mary were written shortly after the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The Messianic secret in Mark’s Gospel, later reduced in Matthew and Luke, may have simply been a way to explain why Jesus was not recognized as the Messiah, but the tradition that developed in Gnostic trajectory did not interpret it as such. Rather, Mark allowed an opportunity to present the Gnostic Saviour, a source of divine knowledge, ready to bestow the secrets of the kingdom of haven upon those select few who were worthy.
