Apocryphal does not equal Gnostic

[patrick457]

The thread’s title says it all.
Oftentimes I see some people who, upon hearing the mention of an apocryphal work (say, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), will be rather quick to comment, “Oh, that’s Gnostic.” Now let me remind everyone though: just because something is apocryphal does not automatically mean that it’s a Gnostic work.

Thoughts?

 

[zach_dunn]

The thread’s title says it all.
Oftentimes I see some people who, upon hearing the mention of an apocryphal work (say, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), will be rather quick to comment, “Oh, that’s Gnostic.” Now let me remind everyone though: just because something is apocryphal does not automatically mean that it’s a Gnostic work.

Thoughts?

I agree that an apocryphal work should not be considered Gnostic simply because it is not Scripture, my question is how do we determine if the apocryphal work is indeed historically accurate and true, thus OK to read? Do we consider the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to be historically accurate? I’m sure many Protestants will shy away from this thought, doesn’t this gospel talk a lot about Mary’s dedication to a religious life or something?

 

[kepha1]

The term “Apocryphal” is not a Catholic term describing the 7 Deuterocanonical Books. The term was used by the so called reformers to classify them into something they were not. newadvent.org/cathen/01601a.htm

 

[NotWorthy]

Protoevangelium of James - Apochryphal, not gnostic.
Shepherd of Hermas - Apochryphal, not gnostic.
The Didache - Apochryphal, not gnostic.
Clements Epistle to the Corinthians - Apochryphal, not gnostic.
Ignatius’ Epistles - Apochryphal, not gnostic.

All of these are great teaching aids, “Revealing” if you’ll pardon the pun, but not gnostic.

 

[patrick457]

I agree that an apocryphal work should not be considered Gnostic simply because it is not Scripture, my question is how do we determine if the apocryphal work is indeed historically accurate and true, thus OK to read? Do we consider the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to be historically accurate? I’m sure many Protestants will shy away from this thought, doesn’t this gospel talk a lot about Mary’s dedication to a religious life or something?

I think you’re thinking about the other Infancy Gospel, that of James. Thomas talks about the child Jesus - how He was a holy brat using His divine power to kill or to heal (yes, there are some people who feel queasy about the work due to its portrayal of Jesus).

I don’t think we should judge apocryphal gospels on the basis of ‘historical accuracy’ alone since a good deal of them would probably just fail the test. We might as well not read what I consider to be modern-day NT Apocrypha - since they usually follow the same vein as their ancient predecessors: novels like Christ the Lord, Ben-Hur or The Robe simply because they’re not 100% historically accurate or ‘true to the facts’.

A better question is: how can we determine if a work is Gnostic? Many Gnostic literature were, unlike many ‘safe’ apocryphal gospels which were written to satisfy popular hunger for knowing more about the people and events which the Scriptures barely touch upon (these were pop literature for religious entertainment, people. You can say these NT apocrypha were one of the first fanfictions in history ), usually written to serve as vehicles for relating the teachings or even the practices of the group. Some of them were not even meant to be read in public but just to the initiated few.

Many of these works usually have telltale signs in them - what one needs is to check for these. That usually works.

 

[patrick457]

The term “Apocryphal” is not a Catholic term describing the 7 Deuterocanonical Books. The term was used by the so called reformers to classify them into something they were not. newadvent.org/cathen/01601a.htm

I’m sorry, but we’re not talking about the Deuterocanon here.

 

[rcjones]

It might help to identify what made the Gnostics heretics.

Some think any reference to hidden things is also Gnostic. It is not, since God himself says that it is His Glory to hide things…

Pr 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

The things hidden in the Old Testament have been revealed in Christ and the New Testament. So although we can find hidden pictures of Christ in the Old, there is no secret handshake club.

The error of Gnostics was to misidentify God and Christ. They taught a form of hierarchical polytheism, so that there was a plethora of demigods between God and his creation. Some also taught that Jesus was just a man who possessed the Christ Spirit. Some that he didn’t literally rise from the dead in bodily form.

So any writing of any age that contain these errors contain Gnostic errors whether they were written by professing Gnostics or not.

 

[patrick457]

The error of Gnostics was to misidentify God and Christ. They taught a form of hierarchical polytheism, so that there was a plethora of demigods between God and his creation.

Yes! These various emanations of the one God are usually called the Aeons. In the different systems these are differently named, classified, and described, but the emanation theory itself is common to all forms of Gnosticism.

God in Gnostic thought is usually termed as the One, the Monad, Aion Teleos (The Broadest Aeon), Bythos (“depth, profundity”), Proarkhe (“before the beginning”), or Arkhe (“beginning”). This Source of all being is an Aeon in which an inner being dwells, known as Ennoia (“thought, intent”), Charis (“grace”), or Sige (“silence”). These are the primary roots of the Aeons. The split perfect being conceives the second Aeon, Caen (“power”), within itself. Along with the male Caen comes the female Aeon, Akhana (“love”). Complex hierarchies of Aeons are thus produced, sometimes to the number of thirty. There are movements, however (like say, the Basilideans or Sethites), who ascribe other names for the Aeons: the Sethites, for example, believed that the first Aeon emanated by God was named Barbelo.

The Ophites meanwhile believed that the One emanated the Father of All (the First Man), which then begat the Ennoia (the Second Man), which then begat the Holy Spirit (the First Woman), which in turn begat Water, Darkness, the Abyss, and Chaos. Of the beauty of the Holy Spirit, both First and Second Man became enamoured, and they generated from her a third male, an Incorruptible Light, called Christos. But the excess of light with which she had been impregnated was more than she could contain, and while Christos her right-hand birth was borne upward with his mother, forming with the First and Second Man the True and Holy Church, a drop of light fell on the left hand downwards into the world of matter, and was called Sophia or Prunikos, an androgynous being.

By this arrival the still waters were set in motion, all things rushing to embrace the Light, and Prunikos wantonly playing with the waters, assumed to herself a body, without the protection of which the light was in danger of being completely absorbed by matter. Yet when oppressed by the grossness of her surroundings, she strove to escape the waters and ascend to her mother, the body weighed her down, and she could do no more than arch herself above the waters, constituting thus the visible heaven. In process of time, however, by intensity of desire she was able to free herself from the encumbrance of the body, and leaving it behind to ascend to the region immediately above, called in the language of another sect the middle region.

These Aeons belong to the purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas. Together with the Source from which they emanate they form the ‘fullness’, the Pleroma.

The transition from the immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or a sin, in one of the Aeons. According to Basilides, it is a flaw in the last sonship; according to others the sin of the Great Archon, or Aeon-Creator, of the Universe; according to others it is the passion of the lowest Aeon Sophia (“wisdom”), who emanates without her partner Aeon, resulting in the monstrous Demiurge, a creature that should never have come into existence.

Philo once inferred from the statement in Genesis, “Let us make man in our image” that God had used other beings as assistants in the creation of man (very much like the Ainur in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium), and he explains in this way why man is capable of vice as well as virtue: the latter was the product of God, the former that of His assistants. Therefore, in many early Gnostic movements the creation of the world is then ascribed to the angels, usually to the ones lowest in the hierarchy. St. Irenaeus thus tells of the system of Simon Magus, of the system of Menander, of the system of Saturninus, in which the number of these angels is reckoned as seven, and of the system of Carpocrates. Again, in his report of the system of Basilides, we are told that our world was made by the angels who occupy the lowest visible heaven; their chief was the God of the Jews. The prophecies are ascribed not to the chief but to the other world-making angels.

(to be continued)

 

[patrick457]

Now the Ophites and the Sethians also held a variation of this belief:

The Sethites held that when the lion-headed serpent Ialdabaoth was created by Sophia in the freak accident mentioned earlier, he was hidden by her but subsequently escapes, stealing a portion of divine power from her in the process. Using this stolen power, Ialdabaoth creates a material world in imitation of the divine Pleroma. To complete this task, he spawns a group of entities to assist him known collectively as the ‘rulers’, Archons. Like him, they are commonly depicted as theriomorphic, having the heads of animals. Ialdabaoth eventually goes around to creating Adam, during the process unwittingly transferring the portion of power stolen from Sophia into the first physical human body. He then creates Eve from Adam’s side, in an attempt to isolate and regain the power he has lost. By way of this he attempts to rape Eve who now contains Sophia’s divine power; several texts depict him as failing when Sophia’s spirit transplants itself into the Tree of Knowledge; thereafter, the pair are ‘tempted’ by the serpent, and eat of the forbidden fruit, thereby once more regaining the power that the demiurge had stolen. In the Apocryphon of John, the Demiurge arrogantly declares that he has made the world by himself:

Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth (probably from Hebrew yalda bahut “son of chaos”), the second is Saklas (Aramaic “fool”), and the third is Samael (Aramaic “blind god, god of the blind”). And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, “I am god and there is no other god beside me,” for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.

The Ophites, according to St. Irenaeus, meanwhile held that Ialdabaoth was born from Sophia-Prunikos’ contact with the waters, having in him a certain breath of the incorruptible light left him from his mother. Using this, he generates six offspring: Iao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, Elaios, Astaphanos, and Horaios. All seven of them ruled the seven heavens.

Later however, Ialdabaoth’s sons strove to overpower their father. He became filled with passion and consolidated his longing, thus obtained a son, a serpent-like (ophiomorphos) being called Nous (‘thought’). In his pride at generating children without any mother, Ialdabaoth ignorantly proclaims himself to be god and father with no equal; at which Sophia rebukes him by revealing the existence of the First and Second Man. As an answer to this Ialdabaoth at the instigation of Ophiomorphos commences the creation of man.

Then the six powers formed a gigantic man, Sophia having given assistance to the design (but only in order to take back the Light from Ialdabaoth). For the man whom the six powers had formed, lay unable to raise itself, writhing like a worm until they brought it to their father, who breathed into it the breath of life - and with it some of the Light that was in himself. But the man, having now Thought and Conception, gave thanks to the First Man above, disregarding those who actually made him: in jealousy Ialdabaoth creates a woman to despoil the man. The six powers were enamoured with the woman and generated sons from her: the angels. Of course, the story goes on about how Sophia used Ophiomorphos to seduce Eve and Adam to transgress the precept of Ialdabaoth. When they ate the fruit they gained true knowledge, and revoked from those who had made them When Adam and Eve was expelled from Eden, Sophia had secretly emptied them of the Light in order that it might not share the curse or reproach. So they were cast down into this world, as was also Ophiomorphps. The latter brought the angels who were under his power with him, and himself generated six sons, a counterpart of Ialdabaoth’s Hebdomad. These seven demons always oppose and thwart the human race to avenge their father (I guess you can see now who Ophiomorphos is supposed to be…).

 

[rcjones]

You have demonstrated why studying the Gnostics is like studying Greek mythology and why both are largely a waste of time.

One is served better by spending that time in the truth of God’s word.

The Gnostic doctrine is mistakenly discerned from Gen 1 where each day represents a layer of creation in the descent from God.

The actual hidden picture is a repeating picture of Christ where each picture refers to a block of human history wherein God has painted a shadow of the Son.

Day 1 refers to the Fall
Day 2 refers to the flood
Day 3 refers to the patriarchs through Joseph
Day 4 refers to Israel in the wilderness
Day 5 refers to Israel in the promised land
Day 6 refers to the Life of Christ

The actual hidden message is like a table of contents to the rest of the Bible.

 

[patrick457]

Some also taught that Jesus was just a man who possessed the Christ Spirit. Some that he didn’t literally rise from the dead in bodily form.

Correct! Let me just relate two out of many other beliefs about Christ that Gnostic movements have:

Basilidean: In St. Hippolytus’ account of Basilidean beliefs, the time came when the Monad (=God) decided to send a wake-up call to the Demiurge, known as the Great Archon that there were beings above him, so through the Holy Spirit the Gospel (which the Basilideans believe to be ‘the knowledge of things above the world’) was conveyed to the Great Archon. First, the son of the Great Archon received the Gospel, and he in turn instructed the Great Archon himself, by whose side he was sitting. Then the Great Archon learned and repented of his faults. From him the Gospel had next to pass to the Archon of the Hebdomad. The son of the Great Archon delivered the Gospel to the son of the Archon of the Hebdomad. The son of the Archon of the Hebdomad became enlightened, and declared the Gospel to the Archon of the Hebdomad, and he too feared and confessed. Eventually, the only one who did not know the truth yet was mankind.

The light then came down from the Archon of the Hebdomad upon Jesus both at the Annunciation and at the Baptism, enlightening him. Therefore by following Jesus, the world is purified and becomes most subtle, so that it can ascend to the Monad. Hippolytus also mentioned that the Basilideans believed in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life (differing only in the Nativity), also holding that Jesus’ death was necessary because through the destruction of His body the world could be restored.

St. Irenaeus however relates a different picture. When the Unbegotten saw the discord which prevailed among men and among angels, and how the Jews were perishing due to the wild antics of the Demiurge, sent His Firstborn Nûs, Christos, to deliver those who believed on Him from the power of the makers of the world. Unlike Hippolytus’ account, here Jesus’ body was merely an illusion; He did not really take on human flesh.

Also, it was Simon of Cyrene that was crucified, while Jesus, in the form of Simon, mocked those who did the deed. He then ascended into heaven, passing through all the powers, until He was restored to the presence of His own Father.

Ophite: Sophia, planning to save mankind from condemnation, appealed to her mother the Holy Spirit, who in turn begged the First Man that Christos should be sent down to her assistance. Sophia then got things ready, and using Ialdabaoth, prepared a clean vessel to receive Christos: Jesus the son of Mary, who was better than other men due to being born of a virgin. Christos descended through the seven heavens, taking the form of the sons of each as he came down and depriving them of their power. When he finally came into this world he first united himself with his sister Sophia, and they refreshed one another as bridegroom and bride, and the two united then descended into Jesus, who thus became Jesus Christ. This aroused the wrath of Ialdabaoth and sons, who arranged for Jesus to be crucified, at which Christos-Sophia withdrew themselves into the incorruptible Aeon. They however did not forget Jesus and raised him from the dead. Jesus then remained on earth after his resurrection eighteen months, at first himself not understanding the whole truth, but enlightened by a revelation subsequently made him, which he taught to a chosen few of his disciples, and then was taken up to heaven.

The story proceeds to tell that Christos, sitting on the right hand of Ialdabaoth, without his knowledge enriches himself with the souls of those who had known him, inflicting a corresponding loss on the guy on his left. For as righteous souls instead of returning to him are united to Christos, Ialdabaoth is less and less able to bestow any of the Light-fluid on souls afterwards entering this world, and can only breathe into them his own animal breath. The consummation of all things will take place when, by successive union of righteous souls with Christos, the last drop of the Light shall be recovered from this lower world and be reabsorbed to the One.

Pretty colorful yet complicated if you’ll ask me.

So any writing of any age that contain these errors contain Gnostic errors whether they were written by professing Gnostics or not.

Amen.

 

[rcjones]

I posted a detailed note on how the Gnostic error was mistakenly discerned from Gen 1, and related how the actual hidden meaning was a table of contents to the rest of the Bible showing multiple pictures of Christ.

I verified that the post was here and in the index above. It is now gone without comment. Is this a technical error or a policy to just delete stuff without comment?

edit: Now it shows up… This technical error is annoying.

 

[simspt]

Sorry if this is a little off the subject but why do so many liberal scholars today claim that these gnostic writings were contemporary with the NT writings in terms of dating them??

 

[NotWorthy]

Sorry if this is a little off the subject but why do so many liberal scholars today claim that these gnostic writings were contemporary with the NT writings in terms of dating them??

Because then they can say the Catholic Church tried to squelch the Truth! What ELSE is the Catholic Church trying to hide! :hypno:

 

[patrick457]

Because then they can say the Catholic Church tried to squelch the Truth! What ELSE is the Catholic Church trying to hide! :hypno:

Yeah, funny how it’s always orthodox Christianity (= the Catholic Church ) gets the blame for each and every evil you can think of in history.

 

[nordskoven]

So, lessee, the Gnosticky Muslims believe Allah would not have let Jesus be crucified so a “ringer” was put to death, right? “Life of Brian” style? Also, one pre-Christian school of Roman philosophy despised the Gnostics for faking ancient documents–paralleling Mormon cobbling up of antiquities–so nothing new under the Sun. And Gnostics are Luciferic like the Theosophists (Lucifer Publishing, now Lucis Trust) in their obsession with spiritual=good; material=evil; so light and enlightenment is good and the body is evil. Those are the Albigensians, are they not? The anti-marriage as anti-material; and suicides for Gnostic god as repeated by one sect in this era in Canada? That spiritual/material derivatively flows through to the genetic “christianity” claiming Mr. Jesus was knocking boots with Ms. Magdalene to give us the master race of Merovingians or whoever the claimant of the day is like in The DaVinci Code. And one Gnostic “scripture” I read long ago said homosexual “Jesus” raised a boy from the dead and went in to have naughty relations with him. That’s the NAMBLA Gnostics and the St. Sebastian’s website of renegade priests. And the elaborate hierarchies are like the 33rd degree Masons and the 144,000 of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Hindu caste system and all elitists versus God’s elect, i.e., men and women, slave and free, all one in God’s eyes with His elect known only to Him.

And the secret doctrines of most of the above are contradictions of God’s revealed word; and exposed by the Virgin Mary’s unique and powerful charism to reveal all that is hidden by virtue of a sword of sorrow piercing her being per the prophecy in the Temple. Wait, the other half of the spiritual=good, material=bad is licentiousness: why suicide out to destroy your evil body when you can just accept it and indulge yourself, eh? That’s the Shirley MacLaine-promoted channeled spirit guide of J.Z. Knight urging people to do whatever despicable thing they wish as they are only expressing themselves…One notes MacLaine said she cashed in more heavily on her spiritism books than from the movies. And that Gnostic writings, like Last Temptation of Christ and and Duh-Vinci Code and Gnostic reprints by that lady of anti-lady Gnostic stuff and so on have been topping the best seller lists for over a decade. As Saint John Bosco’s vision showed, the Barque of Peter was being assaulted by shot and shell and (Gnostic) books.

Blessed Virgin Mary, pierced with a sword of sorrow “that the thoughts of all may be revealed,” expose all thoughts; cleansing them in the fire of love of your Son, Jesus Christ’s Sacred Heart. AMEN

 

[patrick457]

So, lessee, the Gnosticky Muslims believe Allah would not have let Jesus be crucified so a “ringer” was put to death, right? “Life of Brian” style?

Nah, if you’ve ever watched the film and paid attention, you’ll find that Brian Cohen and Jesus of Nazareth are two different people - who just happened to be born next to each other and both be crucified under Pontius Pilate. So nah, Monty Python’s not even close to actual Docetic beliefs.

And one Gnostic “scripture” I read long ago said homosexual “Jesus” raised a boy from the dead and went in to have naughty relations with him.

Ah, now THIS is what I’m talking about when I say that apocryphal does not automatically equal Gnostic. For those who don’t know, the reference here is to this fragment supposedly from a longer version of the Gospel of Mark (known as the Secret Gospel of Mark). This fragment is contained within a document called the Mar Saba Letter, an epistle of debated authenticity attributed to Clement of Alexandria and purportedly discovered by Morton Smith in the summer of 1958 in the monastery of Mar Saba in Jerusalem. While there are some who think that it could be a later adaptation of Mark in a gnostic direction, there is still some disagreement on the nature of this letter and its authenticity.

And they come to Bethany, and a woman, whose brother had died, was there. And coming, she fell down before Jesus and says to Him, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” but the disciples rebuked her. And becoming angry, Jesus went with her to the garden where the tomb was. And immediately from the tomb was heard a great voice, and going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb.

And going in immediately where the young man was, He stretched out a hand and raised him up, holding his hand. The young man looked at Him and 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 young man - for he was rich, and after six days Jesus instructed him. And in the evening the youth comes to Him, having a linen cloth thrown around his naked body; and he remained with Him that night, because Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And arising from there, He returned to the other side of the Jordan.

While there are some folks out there who try to read this as Jesus having relations with the young man because the latter is described as ‘loving’ Him and coming to Him wearing only a linen sindon (as the young man in Gethsemani does; Mark 14:51), the text does not explicitly imply anything about Jesus doing naughty stuff or practicing hypnotism or magical ritual or something of the sort. All that the text just says is: “And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God.” Indeed, there are some scholars think that this is a reference to baptism: Jesus taught the young man His teachings and then performed baptism (“the mystery of the kingdom of God” is also used in Mark 4:10, where Jesus describes the inner circle of His disciples as being given it).

Second, let’s look on the word for ‘love’. The word used here (egapēsen)- related to agape - is also found in the New Testament to describe God’s love (John 3:16; 13:1; Ephesians 5:2 for example), yet no one claims that God or Jesus are homosexuals in those passages! The young man is here showing agape to Jesus - which does not really suggest a sexual sort of love (which another word for love, erōs, covers). Clement himself denies any sexual meaning here.

If we are to believe that this passage portrays Jesus in a homosexual light, we would, in my opinion, fall into the same trap as the Carpocratians, which is thus described by Clement in the Mar Saba letter:

You [Theodoros] did well in silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians, for these are the “wandering stars” (Jude 1:13) that had been prophesied, who wander from the narrow road of the commandments into an endless abyss, deceived by the fleshly and bodily sins. For having been puffed up of their knowledge - as they say - “of the depths of Satan,” (Revelation 2:24) they do not know that they are throwing themselves down into “the blackness of darkness” (Jude 1:13) of lies. And having boasted that they are free, they have become bondservants of base desires. Such are to be opposed in all ways and altogether. Because even if they say something true, still the lover of the truth should not agree with them, for not all true things are truth, nor should that truth which merely seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faith.

Now, concerning their babblings about the “God-breathed” (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16) Gospel according to Mark, some are wholly lies, while others, even if partly true, nevertheless are not reported truly. For the true things being mixed with inventions are debased so that, as the saying goes, “even the salt has become tasteless” (cf. Matthew 5:13).

As for Mark, then, during Peter’s stay in Rome he wrote an account of the acts of the Lord, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the mystical ones, but picking the things he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being catechized. Then when Peter was martyred, Mark came to Alexandria, bringing both his own knowledge and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his first book the things suitable about knowledge for those who are making progress. Thus he arranged a more spiritual gospel for the use of those who were being perfected.

 

[patrick457]

(continued)

Nevertheless, he did not reveal the things which are not to be uttered. He did not write out the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others, and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the adyton of the truth which is veiled seven times. Thus he prepared them - in my opinion - not ungrudgingly or unguardedly. And dying, he left his writing to the church in Alexandria, where even now it is still extremely carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.

However, since the polluted demons are always devising destruction for the race of man, Carpocrates, taught by them and using their deceptive arts, so enslaved a certain presbyter of the church in Alexandria that he got from him a copy of the mystical gospel, which he both interpreted according to his blasphemous and fleshly authority and, moreover, defiled, mixing with the most spotless and holy words the most shameless lies. From this mixture is derived the teaching of the Carpocratians.

To them, therefore - as I said above - one must never give way. Also, when they put forward their falsifications, one should not concede that the mystical gospel is by Mark, but should deny it even on oath, for not all truth are to be said to everyone. For this reason, the wisdom of God through Solomon gives a message, “Answer a fool from his folly” (cf. Proverbs 26:5), teaching that from those whose minds are blinded the light of the truth should be concealed. Again it says, “From him who has not, it will be taken away,” and, “Let the fool go in darkness.”

But we are the “sons of light” (John 12:36) who have been illuminated by “the dawn from on high” (Luke 1:78) of the Spirit of the Lord. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” it says, “there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17), for “to the pure, all things are pure” (Titus 1:15). Therefore to you I will not hesitate to answer the questions you have asked, refuting the falsifications by the very words of the gospel. For example, after “They were in the road, going up to Jerusalem,” and what follows, until “After three days He will arise,” (Mark 10:32-34) it takes up according to the text…

After quoting Secret Mark, Clement follows:

After these things, this follows, “And James and John come to Him,” (Mark 10:35) and all that section. But the “naked man with naked man” and the other things which you wrote about are not found. And after, “And He comes into Jericho,” it adds only: And the sister of the young man whom Jesus loved, and His mother, and Salome, were there, and Jesus did not welcome them. But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are lies.