On the Acrostic at the Beginning of the Diatessaron

Some more good came out of J P Holding today. He asked our mutual friend Roger Pearse to fact check some quotes that appear in my book. I added two links at Roger Pearse's site one of which included Danny Mahar's excellent Marcionite site. This site is over at Geosites which will soon be defunct. We will have to find a place for all of Danny's excellent resources that have been available for free to anyone that visits his site. I am trying to get the two of them to meet. Roger and Danny have actually been doing the same thing - i.e. preserving translated manuscripts in the subject of early Christianity since the turn of the century. It doesn't matter whether the two have theological points of view. The truth as I have said time and time again is on the side of everyone who is on the side of truth.

I think it is also important that our ongoing debate is drawing attention to a number of individual discoveries which makes up the mosaic which is my book, the Real Messiah. Again as long as J P argues against the text he does good because he is scrutinizing the evidence which as I have noted is welcomed and encouraged.

I am not trying to goad him on because I want to get rich from this book. It will be impossible for anyone to make any serious money from any non-fiction book which doesn't end up on Oprah (and this book is certainly not going there). The truth is that my book was languishing in obscurity before he came along. While he is not a 'titan in the industry' his attempts to refute my evidence at least allow me a forum to represent my argument to somebody and for this I am truly grateful.

So let's go to his fuller review which is now available at Amazon as well as his hyperbolic vitriol throughout the comments section which actually ended up weakening his original argument. No one trusts passion (which is a pity because I suffer from the same outbursts that he does from time to time). I trust my passion, he trusts his passion but sadly most people (as I have learned see this as only a sign of mental instability.

Anyway so much for my advice to Holding to help destroy the argument in my Real Messiah. In his published review he writes:

On page 106, Huller discerns a secret code proving that Mark (eg, Marcus Agrippa) ultimately wrote all of the Gospels:

"Matthew the elect, whose symbol is M, Mark the chosen, whose symbol is R, Luke the approved, whose symbol is K, and John the beloved, whose symbol is H."

According to Huller, the Latin parallel letters are M, R, K, and A, and this is a secret code informing us that Mark was the author of all four gospels. Unfortunately, Huller neglects to mention that the manuscript (Borgian Diatessaron) that has this opening is in Arabic, and dates to around the 14th century AD. Why didn't he reveal this important fact when trying to convince his readers about the authorship of documents written over 1000 years before?

I thank Holding for drawing attention to this discovery of mine. It will be the subject of this post.

I don't understand the point of Holding's argument here. The point isn't that the manuscript of the Diatessaron is ancient. He's right about the dating but the Old Latin gospel harmony is much older than this date and preserves the correct reading i.e. M R K A.

No one doubts that the Diatessaron goes back to the second century and Tatian. Many think a form of that text goes back to Justin. I don't think anyone doubts that the original text was written in Syriac. The question of when the acrostic was written is anyone's guess but it would have to be before the Old Latin gospel harmony. Yet it is impossible to think that this wasn't done in Syriac. This Syriac manuscript with the acrostic became the original source for the introductory remarks of the Old Latin and the Borgian Diatessaron.

Does everyone follow me.

The point is that someone in the period between the second century and the Old Latin Harmony decided to make a cryptic reference to Mark being behind the four gospels. It can't be a modern individual named Mark because it wouldn't make sense 'finding his name' among the witnesses of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Syriac tradition identifies our canonical gospels as 'the separated gospels.' The question has always been 'separated from what?' The answer now is apparent - separated from an 'super gospel' of Mark.

At least that's my take on it. If someone has another suggestion it would be certainly welcomed in the literature but the point is that before I noticed this fact no one had written anything about this curious acrostic - hence my service to the cause of truth (and J P's for mentioning this again and allowing for me to talk about it some more here).

If we were to develop a scholarly argument on the subject Holding might have found some traction with the Arabic manuscript. The Arabic has MRQH. But the last letter is H.ET not HE, so to connect it with Marqe you have to assume an alteration. This is plausible but not proven.

BUT the Latin MRKA almost certainly comes from Semitic MEM-RESH-QOF-HE or MEM-RESH-QOF-HE both of which are Marqe or in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Marqa. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Indirectly the supposition of an alteration in the Arabic is strengthened as well, though still not proven.

If you take the letters MEM-RESH-QOF-HE and write MRQH or then that’s a transcription of the letters as marks, or what is called a graphemic transcription. If you write Marqe or [marqe], then that is a phonetic transcription, a representation of the sound.

The Latin acrostic MRKA is graphemic but according to an old system, not the modern system. It would correspond to MEM-RESH-QOF-HE or MEM-RESH-QOF-ALEF. If it is meant to represent a word, the pronunciation would still be Marqe or Marqa.

Marqe is the Babylonian or Samaritan spelling of the Roman name Marcus. Florentin has argued that the Samaritans preserved names in the vocative tense. No one knows why but we see 'Titus' for instance become Tite, just as Marcus becomes Marqe.

The reason as to why someone would want to argue that Mark is found 'within' the names of the evangelists is open to debate. In other words, you can dispute my conclusions but not my evidence (at least here).