Secret Gospel of Mark - Secret Mark and The Gospel of John

Secret Mark and The Gospel of John

The story of the resurrection of the young man by Jesus in Secret Mark bears clear similarities to the story of the raising of Lazarus in John’s Gospel (John 11:1-44), and this was already noted by Morton Smith.

Smith tried to demonstrate that the resurrection story in Secret Mark does not contain any of the secondary traits found in the parallel story in John 11, and that the story in John 11 is more theologically developed. He concluded that the Secret Mark version of the story contains an older, independent, and more reliable witness to the oral tradition.

Helmut Koester agrees with Smith that the two stories are very close,

"That it is, in fact, the same story is evident in the emphasis upon the love between Jesus and the man who was raised by him (cf. John 11:3, 5, 35-36), expressed twice in the additions of Secret Mark. Both stories are also located in Bethany.

Further, Koester argues that the resurrection story in Secret Mark appears to be independent from that of John 11, and that the author of Secret Mark may have acquired it from some other source, possibly from the free tradition of stories about Jesus,

"But it is impossible that Secret Mark is dependent upon John 11. In its version of the story, there are no traces of the rather extensive Johannine redaction (proper names, motif of the delay of Jesus' travel, measurement of space and time, discourses of Jesus with his disciples and with Martha and Mary). As to its form, Secret Mark represents a stage of development of the story that corresponds to the source used by John. The author evidently still had access to the free tradition of stories about Jesus, or perhaps to some older written collection of miracle stories."

However, other scholars have come to the conclusion that Secret Mark is dependent on John, and not the other way around. Raymond E. Brown finds it likely that the author of Secret Mark relied on John at least from memory. Skehan, in reviewing Brown's work, calls the reliance on John "unmistakable".

Other scholars such as Robert M. Grant, Helmut Merkel, and Frans Neirynck also point out Secret Mark is most likely dependent on the Synoptics as well (see "Other Views" above). If Secret Mark is dependent on all four canonical gospels, then it was written after John and could not have been used as a source by John's author.