Back to the Garden (of Gethsemane)

The Secret Gospel of Mark (Mar Saba 65), which scholars argue alternately is an elaborate modern forgery or a genuine gospel fragment, is here examined to show unnoticed inconsistencies in the layout of the text that point unequivocally to authenticity. Two passages whose present order yields little sense, once restored, elucidate the true meaning of a text otherwise lost to the manuscript tradition. By simply switching a pair of sentences, especially a cryptic sequence regarding Jesus's ordering of a young man (νεανίσκος), raised like Lazarus (John 11), we discover that the youth is being commanded to return to the garden of Gethsemane dressed in the very funeral shroud (σινδών) that Jesus himself will be buried in. The νεανίσκος will thus be identical to the mysterious figure found in Mark 14:51-52,whoin abandoning his garment, will foreshadow Jesus's own resurrection.