Another Clue Linking the Alexandrian Tradition of Mark with the Palestinian Tradition of Marqe

I know it isn't much to go on. I am sure that most people think the weakest part of my book is when I try and argue that the throne of St. Mark which now resides in Venice says something about earliest Christian traditions in Alexandria.

I suspect that the reason for this difficulty is the fact that New Testament scholars are conditioned to only think in one direction (I have seen this manifested over and over again).

Whatever the case may be I have finally solved one last piece in the puzzle with regards to the throne of St. Mark which had confounded me since the very beginning ... and I did it by developing the arguments about the citation from the most important Samaritan text after the Pentateuch, the so-called 'Sayings of Mark' (Memar Marqe) with regards to the idea that only the ten utterances came from heaven.

There are five torches on the right and left sides of the throne of St. Mark






I knew that the symbolism had something to do with the ten utterances (Ten Commandments) but I couldn't figure out why they were there.

It has been argued by some that the symbols on the throne are really from the Book of Revelation. However it has never made any sense to me why this would be so. Revelations is associated with St John or Cerinthus, the throne by contrast makes clear that it belongs to St Mark.

Of course there would be no reference to anything resembling 'ten torches' in the Book of Revelations. Yet - for some idiotic reason - I was hesitant to say that it represented the ten utterances.

Now that I have been talking about this for the last few days it has all come together.

Notice at once that Marqe the son of Titus repeatedly emphasizes that the ten utterances came as fire down from heaven. The idea is present in the reports of Simon Magus. Yet now we have the divine throne being illuminated as it were by ten torches which essentially preserve the divine essence embodied in the ten utterances.

We have been talking for days about the 'cross cultural Mark phenomenon' of the first century. Here 'St. Mark' said by Copts to be 'the son of Aristobolus' is represented as emphasizing the same idea as he originally placed in his gospel - viz. that 'in the beginning' God gave one dispensation, while Moses developed that original 'gift' into the six hundred and three other commandments which weren't part of that original dispensation.

The ten torches on the sides of the throne - five on the left and five on the right just like God's original dispensation - is a bold and indeed eternal statement going to the essence of what it means to be Christian as developed by Marcus Julius Agrippam, the last king of Israel (see the various rabbinic references in Heschel).

Now if only I can find a way of demonstrating to Rory that the 'Dositheans' were originally so identified - i.e. 'the gift of God' - because they too emphasized that the original 'dispensation' - the ten - were of a different quality or character than the other six hundred and three ...