Salome is another peculiarity to this Gospel. She cuts an orthodox figure to-day, but the earliest texts tell a different story.
In the First Apocalypse of James, the Lord instructs James to "encourage these four: Salome and Mariam and Martha and Arsinoe" out of the "the seven women who have been your disciples". Mari[am] and Martha are a doublet found in Luke 10:38-42, in which Jesus rebukes Martha for interrupting Mary's tuition. Arsinoe means "woman with uplifted mind". In this gnostic text, the four are to be associated with the holy teachings of Jesus.
Pistis Sophia 54.7 has Salome cite Psalm 51 as in interpretation of "the eleventh repentance of the Pistis Sophia". 58.9 has Salome interpret another metaphysical doctrine with "Solomon", probably one of the Odes. In both, Jesus praises Salome for her insight.
Infancy James, 19:18-20:12 by the Jesus Seminar reckoning, speaks of a Salome who is contemporary with Jesus's mother. She is not introduced, which implies that the author assumed that his audience already knew her. This Salome mimics the doubter Thomas in John 21:25, because she must "insert her finger" to be assured that the post-pardum Mary was still virginal.
According to Stromateis 3.13 by Clement of Alexandria, the heretic Cassianus related a saying with parallels in Thomas and 2 Clement. In this saying, Salome asked when she would get an answer to some earlier questions. Jesus replied (agreeing with 2 Clement 12:2-6 and Thomas 22) that the Answer would come when "the two become one" and "when the male with the female is neither male nor female"; he also added "when you tread upon the garment of shame", which reflects Thomas 37. Clement went on to say that this saying was to be found in the "Gospel according to the Egyptians", but it is not in Nag Hammadi's Gospel of the Egyptians.
We needn't bust our chops looking for yet another "lost gospel", though. We already have this one. The "garment of shame" may not be out of place thematically, but it is far out stylistically; the rest of Egyptians (and 2 Clement 12, and Thomas 22) is constructed in a very chiastic pattern: every verse is "when A becomes B" or "neither A nor B". I conclude that Cassianus was juxtaposing and interpreting verses from his copy of Thomas, and that Clement caught him at it. Clement nicknamed Thomas "the Gospel of the Egyptians" so as to deny that it had apostolic authority; he assumed any readers who were familiar enough with the text could draw their own conclusions.
Salome appears once in the extant Coptic copy of Thomas. In Thomas 61:1-5 she is one who has received Jesus as a guest. The two talk about Jesus's origins and about being whole or divided.
Finally, the "Harpocratians" revered Salome, according to On the Real Logos by Celsus (cited by Origen: Against Celsus V.61). I've already pointed out that the Carpocratians used a version of Canonical Mark. Salome also appears in Secret Mark's additions to Mark, as quoted by Clement of Alexandria, again, in Epistle to Theodore. In Secret Mark's expansion to Mark 10:35, Salome was present when Jesus visited Jericho. The Carpocratian version which Theodore ran by Clement had "many other things", which Clement insisted "both seem to be, and are, falsifications". Instead, Clement claimed that the real Secret Gospel read, "and Jesus did not receive them". This strongly implies that the Carpocratian Gospel ("Harpo Mark"? :^) had a scene where Jesus did receive Salome, perhaps carrying on a dialogue (c.f. Thomas 61:1-5).
In this literature, Salome is especially associated with the Egyptians / Thomas sayings tradition (Thom 61, and 22+37 as interpreted by Cassianus). She is a doubter with access to the secret sayings, like Thomas or Jude in the Gospel of John; Infancy James even had her take Thomas's place.
Salome appears in the New Testament only twice - in Mark 15:40 and in Mark 16:1. Both are within Mark's account of the Passion and Resurrection. When did she appear on the scene?
| Mark 15:40-41, 15:47, 16:1 | Matthew 27:55-56, 27:61, 28:1 | Luke 23:49, 23:55, 24:10 | John 19:35, 20:1 | Peter 12:1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mary of Magdala | all | all | 24:10 | both | x |
| other Mary | mother of James Jr. and Joses: 15:40; Joses 15:47; James 16:1 | mother of James, Joses/Joseph 27:56; "other Mary" 27:61, 28:1 | mother of James 24:10 | wife of Clopas 19:35 | - |
| Salome | 15:40, 16:1 | - | - | - | - |
| Mother of the Sons of Zebedee | - | 27:56 | - | - | - |
| Joanna | - | - | 24:10 | - | - |
John refers to (but does not name) Jesus's mother and his mother's sister; but his mother is only there so that Jesus may bestow His authority upon the Beloved Disciple. Peter has no witnesses to the crucifixion, although he does agree with the other gospels that Mary was the first witness to the empty tomb. In Peter, Mary of Magdala invited some "friends" (12:2) who included "women" (13:3) - in context, the group were probably all women.
The Synoptic tradition stands against Peter and John in its devotion to a shared story. Each has a triple mention of the women who witness the miracle, from crucifixion right up to the empty tomb: Mark 15:40-41, 15:47, 16:1 and parallels. Each also follows the Magdalene with Mary mother of James.
Joanna (Luke 24:10) is only found elsewhere in the Bible in Luke 8:3. She also breaks the unit established in Mark and Matthew, of Mary Magdalene and Mary mother of James (and Joses/Joseph). This "wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod's household" is Luke's insertion, presumably a foundress of Luke's community.
Matthew's "mother of Zebedee's sons", similarly, only appears elsewhere in Matthew 20:20. She is not even mentioned as a full witness (27:61, 28:1), and may even be a (contradictory) modifier for the mother of James and Joses.
That leaves us with Mark's Salome. Like Joanna and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, Salome is unique to one canonical Gospel. If Salome was in the Mark which Matthew and Luke used, the other synoptics agreed to omit her and to replace her with their own favoured figures.
I have difficulty believing that Matthew and Luke would edit out Salome and not one of the Mariae, who perennially confound would-be Tatiani in their attempts to make sense of the "greatest story ever told". There is no evidence for a power-struggle; on the contrary, the power-struggle was between the followers of Peter and Mary Magdalene. I have argued above that Mark is a Petrine document; it is also alone in depicting Mary as a frightened girl who could not tell of what she saw (Mark 16:8 vs. Matt 28:8 and Luke 24:9). Mary 10:3-6 and Thomas 114:1 both record Peter attacking Mary because of her sex. Mary and Thomas then attempt to reconcile the two: Mary 10:7-14 in Mary's favour, and Thomas 114:2-3 (partly) in Peter's.
It is very questionable whether a disciple named "Salome" ever existed. Salome's place within the early Church is a Gnostic one, and outside Egypt a Salome first appears in Infancy James in the middle of the second century - in a Johannine context. In fact, Salome's very name is Gnostic. King Shlomo (Gk. "Solomon") was proverbial in the Old Testament for wisdom, and in Gnostic thought Wisdom was female: Swfia. Salome looks like an avatar of Solomon's Wisdom, a gnostic myth made flesh in first-century Alexandrian exegesis.
Finally, Salome is missing from Mark 15:47's group of women. The author of Canonical Mark must have missed that verse.
I conclude that Salome's presence in Mark is foreign to original Mark; she comes from Secret Mark's editorial hand, perhaps influenced by contemporary dialogues between Jesus and Sophia-Salome, and by the lure of the magic number three.
Here is the text of Original Mark, which I adopted from the NIV with emendations and footnotes:
In the first century, the attestation for Mark was limited to its revisions: Matthew and Luke. In the early part of the second century, outside Egypt there survived one word - "kingdom" - in a pre-Tatianic gospel harmony, and a possibly-unrelated tradition by Papias that Mark and Peter had written a narrative. Later, Justin Martyr quoted the harmony and Mark 3:17; and he declared that the latter verse came from a Petrine writing. For almost a hundred years after it was written, Mark was barely used - outside Egypt.
In Egypt, meanwhile, Mark had become a source for "secret knowledge"; a central - and corrupted! - text for the Carpocratians. Mark evolved in Egypt together with John - the Egerton Gospel may reflect an early attempt to write a more Johannine version of Mark.
At some point, the Alexandrian church (gnostics all) aimed for order. They were doubtless spurred by the scorn of the Roman world for their internal bickering and strange beliefs; the Carpocratians were a foul case in point, and had already publicized a version of Secret Mark.
The ecclesiastical elite therefore opted to publish the "true" secret scriptures, but first they engaged in one last round of redaction: the resurrection of the young man was excised from Secret Mark. Both texts were now ready for the outside world - in Mark's case, for the second time. Fortunately for the orthodox, copies of both original and secret Mark were rare; when the Church marshalled her resources in preserving her preferred recensions (and in eliminating "heretics" who kept the originals), the less-favoured recensions vanished. In some cases, the Church had to clean up afterwards (hence the Epistle to Theodore), but in the ensuing centuries of Christian dominance, the Church has successfully covered up even the evidence for the cover-up.
In order to get the new Mark to complement John even further, the last chapter of Mark was removed and added to John. At first Mark was released ending at 16:8, but someone read Luke and decided to add a few verses to the end. In Mark, the last twelve verses have been intermittently accepted and rejected to the present day; John 21 had a rockier start but has been accepted more firmly - 'til now.
If Mark could see it now, he would disown it; it has literally become a Second Gospel. I suggest it receive a new name, one preferably based on the internal evidence. I suggest The Gospel According to Salome. A version without the Carpocratian additions should be used instead, and Mark's original title is as good as any: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^) zimriel@sbcglobal.net
27 March 2002: had to update a link. 7 April: Rearranged Mark 14. 26 June: Matt 14:28-33 from Perkins.
17 June 2000: Well, well, well... looks like Irenaeus didn't know of John 21 either. This is getting good. I also took the opportunity to redirect the patristic links to www.ccel.org. On 23 June added Celsus's testimony.
18 June: I made the first page a lot more readable. Also, I mentioned that the Montanists esteemed a Gospel of John, but we do not know which Gospel of John. 30 April: I finally thought of a name for this thing.
12-14 Nov: I'm baaa-aack. While on a source-hunt for another (possibly moribund) project, I started looking into the patristic and textual attestation for John 21.
6 Nov: I realized that Luke 5:1-11 was closer to John 21 than I thought, thanks to the Jesus Seminar's Acts of Jesus. I expanded the Powell section with a synoptic comparison chart, and harmonized John 21 closer to Luke 5. I also added the AoJ to the Bibliography. I also explained why I think the gospel "according to the Egyptians" which Clement "quotes" was probably (1) Clement's summary of (2) Cassianus's midrashic paraphrase of (3) an older form of Thomas.
25-28 Oct: Wrote a new section - almost a new project - to explain Salome and her place within Mark. 1 Nov: altered the following Gospel to take into account (1) the non-Secret genesis of all the Bethsaida section and (2) some scribal errors in the Passion narrative, which are still not Secret and do not require a full quotation with footnotes. Also added a new pro-Petrine aspect of Mark as opposed to John.
First version 3 Oct - 25 Oct 1998.
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